Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density: The solution to ICS!

[polypheus]

Define:
Cultural Density = Cultural Points/(# of cities)
Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density
= (# of cities)/cultural points

Since barbarian strength is inversely proportional to cultural density, the more you ICS (thus lowering cultural density), the greater the barbarian strength. It forms a good, realistic counterbalance to ICS.

Here is what the ICSer will face using this model:

He builds as many low population, low or zero culture cities as possible. As he does this his cultural density drops further and further (therefore barbarian strength increases further and further). Therefore he will need to start building more and more military units to confront this ferocious barbarian assault (or risk being overrun).

Of course, military units have absolutely no bearing on cultural density and hence barbarian strength so the ICSer continues to have to replace military units in the field against the constant neverending relentless assault.

OTOH, of course military units cost money therefore inhibits the spending on cultural buildings.

The ICS spends all his time doing nothing but defending and falls further and further behind in development.Therefore he will have to increase his cultural density by either abandoning some cities or by suddenly changing production from military to cultural city improvements and risking being overrun (since the cultural points will take some time to accumulate).

This formulation does not make ICS impossible but it does make it extremely riskly and unlikely to work everytime (probably most times it will NOT work).

ICS is solved!

[Dauphin]

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

At a glance it looks promising. Although what happens in parts of the world that are uninhabitated - they would have no cultural rating and be swarming with ever more barbarians that would descend upon you.

[Dr Strangelove]

Hmmm, interesting idea. I think I like it.

[Grumbold]

I follow the concept but the way I read your math makes it look like attacks will range in strength from 1 to a fraction of 1 so no barbarian attack will ever be any threat. How about:

Number of barbarians per attack = # cities - cultural strength.

BUT if we are going to have waves of 10+ barbarians then they need to come from somewhere sensible. Not a single mountain tile not in one of your cities ZoC. Once Empires are butted up against each other the threat should be from each other, not units springing like magic out of the ground. The talk of barbarian towns that can only appear in the unoccupied parts of the world reassure me here.

[polypheus]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I follow the concept but the way I read your math makes it look like attacks will range in strength from 1 to a fraction of 1 so no barbarian attack will ever be any threat. How about:

Number of barbarians per attack = # cities - cultural strength.

BUT if we are going to have waves of 10+ barbarians then they need to come from somewhere sensible. Not a single mountain tile not in one of your cities ZoC. Once Empires are butted up against each other the threat should be from each other, not units springing like magic out of the ground. The talk of barbarian towns that can only appear in the unoccupied parts of the world reassure me here.

Cultural Density = Culture Points/#cities
Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density = #cities/cultural pts

Thus as you increase in the number of cities while keeping your cultural pts low, the barbarian strength continues to increase linearly with each new low culture city you found.

The math seems to be about right.

I also agree that barbarians should only come from uncivilized areas. If you are butted up against another empire, ICS is naturally blocked by that other empire.

[War4ever]

i don't like the idea. cultural rating..... why should it care how big a city is...... i realize that one big city has more culture than several small ones......

But, think of small cities as camps, and i think they should have some sort of solidarity if they are huddled together.

Enough camps together should be powerfull enough to hold off rogue barbarians

[polypheus]

Originally posted by War4ever
i don't like the idea. cultural rating..... why should it care how big a city is...... i realize that one big city has more culture than several small ones......

But, think of small cities as camps, and i think they should have some sort of solidarity if they are huddled together.

Enough camps together should be powerfull enough to hold off rogue barbarians

AFAIK, cultural points are accumulated based on how many marketplaces, libraries, universities, and wonders you have and also their age. I don't think it has anything to do with size of cities at all.

The formulas:
Cultural Density = Culture Points/#Cities
Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density
= #Cities/Culture Points

say nothing about the size of cities directly only the number of cities and your total culture points.

It merely prevents you from building tons of undeveloped cities in order to claim as much land as possible and then developing them later on.

Instead it encourages you to expand and develop at a more balanced paced.

[JamesJKirk]

this is great stuff, I was actually wondering about this after reading a story on Chechnya and cruising the forums at the same time, I sure hope that culture isn't a flat rating throughout out empire. Thinking of this more, it would really suit a US expansion type scenario too, with "barbarians" attacking new settlements.

This makes me wonder one thing though, should it be possible to send "cultured" citizens from one culturally high city to a low one, and in effect bring its culture level up? Also, when you found a city in a far off place how many people emigrate there because they're nearby natives, how many are due to natural growth, and how many come from the homeland? Or is this being too complex?

Even if these questions aren't answered it looks wonderful, and I'm sure we all may be inadventently caught off guard when trying to overexpand, and I can't wait for that to (hopefully) happen

[War4ever]

Originally posted by polypheus


AFAIK, cultural points are accumulated based on how many marketplaces, libraries, universities, and wonders you have and also their age. I don't think it has anything to do with size of cities at all.

The formulas:
Cultural Density = Culture Points/#Cities
Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density
= #Cities/Culture Points

say nothing about the size of cities directly only the number of cities and your total culture points.

It merely prevents you from building tons of undeveloped cities in order to claim as much land as possible and then developing them later on.

ah i was misinformed.... my mistake..... i agree with what your saying then so long as the ai doesn't cheat.... which is why ics sprung up in the first place i would imagine

Instead it encourages you to expand and develop at a more balanced paced.

[TechWins]

Polypheus, this is a brilliant idea. I love it. It really will help a lot for the fight against ICS.

The barbarians would come from there encampments. Which of course would come in the unhabitated parts of the world. The encampments you caused because of your low barbarian rating would go next to you and not anybody else. If you caused some barbarians and they saw another civ right next to them I hope they would still attack that other civ. Basically the barbarian reactions should stay the same as Civ2 it's just the place and number of barbarians that should be determined by your barbarian rating. This was to just help add the final touches to your system. Which is a great one.

[connorkimbro]

The way i'd see it working (and maybe this was your intent, but i didn't catch it)

is the barbarians units have the normal attack/defense strength, but instead get an attack bonus when attacking your units or cities. .
if another civ has a higher culture rating, then they wouldn't get that bonus.

overall though, very good, innovative idea. i wonder if it would be easy for firaxis to add?

[Urban Ranger]

Hmmm....

Since barbarian hordes don't appear that often anyway how much of a thread is this to ICS?

Now if you do something to the frequencies of the raids in additional to the strength of the units, you could have something there.

[connorkimbro]

given raging hoards, it seems like they occur quite often
but increasing their frequency isn't a bad addition either.

[Juggernaut]

what i dont really get is why the cultural rating should mean something to the barbarians. should they think; "hey, there´s a city with almost no universitys and temples. they got a city wall and lots a miltary, but no culture, so let´s attack it!". and get an heavy attack bonus? unrealistic...

the risk of ICS should be, as in reality, to leave your new, tiny cities unarmed with no military defense, making them easy prey for foreign civs and barbarians.
so:

- increase the amount of barbarians. make barbarians less willing to attack a stacked city.

- make foreign leaders more eager. if they discover a civ with no miltary units, they shouldn´t just accept a 200 gold gift and sign a peace treaty! it should be almost impossible to hold peace at that level, meaning the same moment you meet your first civ, your ICS has seen it´s last days...atleast if you want your civ to survive.


another way would be to introduce the fact that undeveloped cities with no city improvements dont last if they haven´t got ie. a marketplace. who wants to live in a city with no trading? no trading, no food...

the terrain could also work as a reducement. if you bild a city on a mountain tile, it shouldn´t be allowed to grow beyond the size of ie. 2 - if you dont build a marketplace and import trade to it. or maybe the city shouldn´t exist more than a few turns?
this would mean the player has to improve trading between the cities, and the ICS becomes heavily reduced.

[Zeevico]

the fact that it is unrealistic is besides the point. It effectively combats ICS, and therefore recieves my thumbs up. In case you haven't noticed, Civilization is meant to be more fun than realistic, and without ICS, it would be much more fun and realistic as well, because, realstically, ICS style civs would get the **** beaten out of them in real life.

[Juggernaut]

ICS style civs would get the **** beaten out of them in real life.

yeah? why...technically, there´s absolutely no impossibilty. if they manage to be unattacked, that is.

besides, i myself, consider ICS to be really fun.

i think the effort to make a real ICS should pay off. while you´re making a pathetic settler every turn, your neighbour civ builds Hanging Gardens and developing an effecient road network. if you notice a foreign civ are doing ICS, its very easy to attack and eradicate them.

both the perfectionalist and the expansionalist style should be encouraged, none of them disabled.

[Juggernaut]

ofcourse the ICS advantage should be reduced, but it should be done in a realistic way, and not with an dumb, obvious punishment.

if the idea of removing the max-1-unit production-per-turn idea becomes reality, we already we have a more realistic and fun way to reduce this.

[Jarouik]

I think the idea is in no way unrealistic... and I like it a lot: the lower the culture rating in an area, the more Barbarians will appear. Of course, I do not think Barbarians should constantly appear on continents not colonized by any of the civs, but if you start founding cities with a low culture rating on uncivilized areas, you would encounter some resistance - even explorers might encounter hostile native Barbarians, although that is already represented by the huts.

The point here is that culture rating in Civilization 3, according to what I've read, represents the cultural influence your civilization has on its surroundings. The more libraries, Wonders etc. you have built, the more civilized the people on areas surrounding your cities are and the more prone to be affected by your culture to such an extent that they would not attack it. Since the culture rating increases the range of your civilization's borders, it should also push back Barbarians - I think Barbarians in Civ, especially now that they have cities and such, represent the indigenous people of a certain area that are not a part of your culture.

It seems only logical that the further your culture spreads, the less Barbarians reside near your cities. In addition, it might even make sense that a high culture rating would increase your cities' growth, as more and more people from the surrounding areas are affected by the city and might move to its vicinity or otherwise be considered part of your population.

Of course, this does not count for rebels and such, which I feel should appear as Barbarian units even if your culture rating is high if there is too much unhappiness/disorder in your cities. I think Civ 2 had no such feature - only the random Barbarians appearing in the middle of nowhere would sometimes be called rebels in the message informing the player.

[Jarouik]

Oh, I only now noticed Polypheus already suggested the rebels/insurgents as well in an earlier, excellent thread of his, http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=21358...

[KrazyHorse]

The idea of a high "Culture Density" lowering the chances of barbarian attacks is in no way unrealistic. I would also like to suggest that it be non-uniform (as somebody else already has). The way I would envision this is by the following:

P=F/(C1/d1+C2/d2+...+Cn/dn)

where P is the probability of a barbarian army appearing on a given tile, C1 is the #of culture points from city "1", C2 is the # of culture points from city "2", etc., d1 is the distance from the given tile to city "1", d2 is the distance from the given tile to city "2", etc. (note that all cities on the world are counted, not just the player's, and that there are "n" cities on the world), and F is an arbitrary scale factor which can be altered to affect gameplay. What this means in ordinary terms is that, while it is possible for barbarians to appear even at the centre of well-developed empires, they are much more likely to appear on the fringes of empires or within an undeveloped ICS empire. "F", the scale factor, could even be altered so that it changes as the date advances. This way, it would allow an empire the chance to get some improvements built before they're attacked by numerous hordes of barbarians. F could be very low for the first few turns, but then begin to rise as time goes on, until an empire with very low culture in 0 a.d. or later would be virtually assured of barbarian annihilation. To get back to why culture rating affecting the frequency of barbarian attacks is not unrealistic, you've got to realize that the barbarians don't come from nowhere; they're derived from the indigenous, uncivilized inhabitants of a region. If a region has a high culture density, then its inhabitants are more likely to become peaceable farmers, artisans, or merchants than they are to become nomadic raiders.

[Urban Ranger]

If your empire starts to develop a culture, but not a very high culture, the neigbouring indigenous peoples will see you as a heretic trying to encrouch on their existence, thus the increase in "barbarian hordes." However, if your culture is high enough, these peoples will begin to see the benefits of civ advances, things that make their life easier and richer. Thus, instead of attacking they may well start converting to your way.


KrazyHorse,

The original suggestion was to increase the "strength" of barbarian attacks. As I see it inceasing the frequency and strength (they are really mad) makes more sense.

[JamesJKirk]

Maybe an ambush multiplier and a chance for the barbs to destory a building or take money from the city's coffers would be more appropriate than a regular strength increase?

[polypheus]

It is good to see many people support this idea! I only hope that Firaxis can at least look into this.

Many people have raised various points so let me address them in turn.

1. The Meaning of Barbarian Strength
I did not intend barbarian strength to mean increased attack and defense ratings. What I meant by barbarian strength was the frequency of attacks and the size of the attacking forces. But the barbarians should be using standard units with standard ratings otherwise.

2. Is the model realistic?
I believe it is quite realistic! As others have pointed out, culture represents the amount of influence you have on the as yet to be civilized barbarian nomands. The more influence you have, the less nomadic and warlike and the more they want to settle down and become civilized themselves and join your your civ as the see the benefits of civilized life.

Also keep in mind that when you build these villages, you are building also in lands that barbarians might consider as theirs as well! Why should barbarians just let you take over all these lands with your sea of villages? So barbarians should consider it a threat to their very livelihood and resist you!

And if you look at the way the Roman Empire fell, you can see some correlation with "cultural density". Notice that the first regions to fall were Britain, then Gaul (France), Spain, and finally Italy was the last to fall in the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) lasted for another 1000 years and Greece finally fell to the Turks. But if you look at where the barbarians attacked and which regions of the Roman Empire fell first you might notice that low population, underdeveloped area fell first (low cultural density) but high cultural density areas fell last.

Also look at where the Vikings attacked during the era of Viking raids. Notice they attacked low cultural density areas mostly such as Russia and Britain.

3. Model Refinements
KrazyHorse makes a good suggestion to regionalize barbarian strength since cultural density is not uniform, so let me take his idea and expand it further. How about this?

Regional Barbarian Strength =
n/(c1/d1 + c2/d2 + ... + cn/dn)

n is the total number of cities
dn is the distance of city n to a certain region
cn is the cultural points of city n

As KH suggests, the formula should include all cities of the world.

Conclusion:
I think it is a very good, realistic, historic model that will add tremendously to gameplay and solve the unrealistic and stupid ICS strategy from working ALL the time.

Since it does NOT require new game mechanics, it is also extremely easy for Firaxis to implement! So I hope that this idea is given some consideration!

[KrazyHorse]

Just a quick remark: Polypheus, I think you meant "cn" when you wrote "c3", but other than this, your refined model is exactly what I was trying to propose.

[KrazyHorse]

Or not. Just looked at it again...you also want to penalize for the total number of cities in the world. The only problem is that this would penalize everyone on a map for another player's ICSing. Maybe the "n" on top should just count your cities.

[polypheus]

After further thought and after reading KrazyHorse's comment that a far away ICS Civ should not affect local babarian hostility, I have come up with a new model which should address these concerns.

Define barbarian Hostility to be the frequency and the size of a barbarian attack towards a given city.

Then
Barbarian Hostility towards City i = n/(Ci + C1/D1 + C2/D2 + ... + Cn/Dn)

where Ci is the cultural points of city i
Cn is the cultural points of city n
Dn is the distance between city i and city n
n is the total number of cities
and only Cities closer than, say, 12 squares from City i are included in the Barbarian Hostility formula.

This prevents far away ICS Civs from having any affect on the local barbarian hostilty towards city i.

The actual formula might need to be tweaked a little based how cultural points are actually accumulated and such but this formula embodies the basic idea.

[KrazyHorse]

Fine with me...cities past 12 tiles away would make less difference anyway.

[Sabre2th]

I fell asleep while reading this thread. Too many formulas! I like the idea anyway.

[To_Serve_Man]

Maybe this is like communism, "It worked on paper"


The Romans had much culture, yet a major part to the Roman collapse was pressure from those vicious barbarians

and also I think that there are many new elements to the game added already to combat ICS. Such as Culture and luxuary items.

[KrazyHorse]

Yeah, but the barbarians came from the fringes of the empire, not the centre. The attacked from the outside, and since the Romans had let their borders grow weak, the barbarians were able to ride all the way to Rome unhindered.