City-area overlapping allowed On/Off option?

[Ralf]

I was playing a SMAC Crossfire session the other day, then I bumbed into the Morganites who had (of course) founded some of their bases only 2-3 squares away from each other. I then realized (again) how much I really hate this type of sloppy inflationary ICS-style city-expansion strategy, and how sad it would be if such heavy city-area overlapping was to be allowed in Civ-3 as well.

Then it suddenly struck me. Why not add a rigid just-in-case preference-screen "city-area overlapping allowed?" On/Off option to Civ-3? If set to "No"; then its simply impossible, both for the AI-civs and the human player, to found cities so that their 21-square city-areas overlaps with already existing 21-square city-area radiuses, in any way. Then the Civ-3 AI-settler/ human settler tries to found a city, the software quickly calculates any nearby city-areas and compare it with the settler city-area surveying area. If it overlaps, the settler surveying frame turns red & a fail-sound beeps, meaning "not possible".

The game-default can be set to "Yes" (overlapping IS allowed), of course - just give me the possibility to enforce this rule globally if I want to. Before you vote - bevare that this Poll isnt about if you personally gonna use this option, or not. Its instead about if you have anything against the idea, of adding such an free option to the game preference-screen.

[Adagio]

Personally I like to have some options, I don't think anyone could have something against it, if it's a free option, if you don't like it simply choose no, I know I will have it on no all the time, but there might be somebody out there who actually would like to have it on.

I think this poll is unuseable, it will be the same as making a poll like this:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Which color would you like your civilization to be?

A1. Blue
A2. Red
A3. I would be able to choose my color by myself when the game starts
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It just doesn't make any sence to make it without any options (Except to make the game be released a couple days before)

[Ralf]

To those who voted "No":

Care to explain why it so utterly wrong to make Civ-3 as tweakable and optional as possible? Personally, I dont like "unlimited RR-moves", but that doesnt mean that Im against having it as an free-to-choose option. Whats wrong with adding some optional just-in-case rigid "house-rules", if some Civers really would appreciate it?

[Adagio]

If you wanted the poll to make any sence you could have done it this way:

A1. Yes, I would like that on
A2. Wouldn't care about it
A3. No way

Just in case you misunderstand, take it as some positive critic

[Ralf]

Originally posted by ADG
If you wanted the poll to make any sence you could have done it this way:

A1. Yes, I would like that on
A2. Wouldn't care about it
A3. No way

Well, If some Civers "wouldnt care about it" - Why would they suddenly care about choosing the "wouldnt care about it" Poll-option? If I, for example, dont care about the optional limited/unlimited RR-moves - isnt that indirectly; like saying "Yes, if its a free option - what do I care?".

Anyway, perhaps you right: Adding a third "Dont care" option wouldnt harm, I guess.

[JellyDonut]

Everybody wants lots of toggle on/off options. If Firaxis follows thru on enough of these, we'll be designing our own games in the options window! Some things should remain unchangeable. I don't blame them, however. Firaxis is being so quiet about Civ3 people are straining themselves to find some new option to talk about amidst the silence.

[KoalaBear33]

City areas are supposed to grow so how do you determine what is a good value? Should cities be restricted based on their max radius or something lower (something that is achieved more easily)?

Whoever that wondered how options can ever be a bad thing, here is why. When you have too many options, people get confused and it takes a longer time to figure out what they do. In addition, most people won't even change the default options so why waste time coming up with these options? Lastly, if developers spend time on developing something then why let players shut it off? It's a complete waste. Anyway, I'm not saying options are bad; just saying that they should be something useful and something that will affect gameplay or game enjoyment.

Border overlapping seems like a simple option so I would be in favour of it (though what I said above must be addressed)...

KoalaBear33

[Grumbold]

1. Firaxis are already making moves to address ICS. Building cities close together is not, in itself, ICS.
2. There are sometimes very good reasons to overlap city radii a little.
3. If you can't overlap you will never be able to harvest certain squares and unless you explore widely before founding your cities you won't know what they are.
4. This sort of restriction is likely to hamper the AI more than the player.
5. The new concepts of resources and culture have made planting cities close together in certain spots potentially very useful in the short term. You will still suffer in the long term for adopting this strategy.
6. Assuming ICS is ineffective in Civ3, this hampers tactics for no real discernable benefit.
7. A high density of cities in optimum real estate is accurate and while Civ is a game, it is one attempting to imitate history.
8. This doesn't stop you creating your own scenarios with those limits, I just don't believe it should occupy Firaxis' attention and although it is just a tickbox it would need to be tested and the AI tuned to cope with it.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by KoalaBear33
Anyway, I'm not saying options are bad; just saying that they should be something useful and something that will affect gameplay or game enjoyment.

KoalaBear33

Sure it should be to something usefull and affect the gameplay or enjoyment (or to decrease the annoyment of some parts of the game). Like an option which allows the game to flash a bottle (?) in the middle of the screen each 10 minutes wouldn't actually make the game more interesting (unless you od cause love to look at a bottle )...Don't ask me about why I choose the bottle, it just sounded so "grabbed out of nowhere"

[Ralf]

Originally posted by ADG
If you wanted the poll to make any sence you could have done it this way:

A1. Yes, I would like that on.

Hmm! Some additional thoughts:

If a Poll gave me a choice, if I personally would like to have the "Limited RR-moves" option (or this overlapping city-areas not allowed" option), in position "On" all the time - then I would vote "Yes".

But the problem is that such a Yes-choice wouldnt picture my viewpoint correctly. I would have choosen "Yes", but at the same time, I wouldnt mind if other could choose "No" instead. This is why It make more sense to me to put the limelight on the fact that the feature is optional - not if this or that player personally would use it, or not.

Originally posted by JellyDonut
Everybody wants lots of toggle on/off options. If Firaxis follows thru on enough of these, we'll be designing our own games in the options window!

Yes, JellyDonut - thats the whole point. Also, I think you can safely put issue of too much/too few options in the hands of the game-designers at Firaxis. Dont you worry about that. All you/we have too care about is to post new ideas and impulses that can add something to the game.

Originally posted by KoalaBear33
City areas are supposed to grow so how do you determine what is a good value? Should cities be restricted based on their max radius or something lower (something that is achieved more easily)?

No, thats wrong. Only culture-borders (dealing with special resources & luxuries) grow. The city-areas (dealing with food-trade-shield outputs) remains static all the time - as in Civ-2 & SMAC.

When you have too many options, people get confused and it takes a longer time to figure out what they do.

All you have to do is to play by the game-defaulted rules until you gradually understand the game better. Is this hard to figure out?

In addition, most people won't even change the default options so why waste time coming up with these options?

Because it would follow an already established Civ-tradition - Civ-games ARE in fact very tweakable. Why not continue and enhance this TBS Civ-game tradition?

Lastly, if developers spend time on developing something then why let players shut it off? It's a complete waste.

Well, If EVERYBODY would shut it off, perhaps. But how likely is that?? One dont have to read the posts here at Apolyton for such a long time, in order to realize that people have very opposing viewpoints on how the game should be played, to say the least.

Anyway, I'm not saying options are bad; just saying that they should be something useful and something that will affect gameplay or game enjoyment.

Well, it does. As I was describing, the ICS-problem is a very severe and inflationary one indeed. Some Civers here already suspicions that the suggested anti-ICS measures isnt going to be enough (some even braggs about how they gonna ICS their way through Civ-3 MP-sessons). This is why it cant be wrong to add some rigid (but optional) just-in-case house-rules - especially in MP-games.

Originally posted by Grumbold
1. Firaxis are already making moves to address ICS. Building cities close together is not, in itself, ICS.

ICS is partly about the fact that it was too easy to send out huge amounts of settlers all over the place (and that have been fixed, I agree), but it also partly about the fact that it is too beneficial to overlap city-areas.

2. There are sometimes very good reasons to overlap city radii a little.

And this is why it should be optional. Personally I would like to have the option NOT to overlap. Why deprive some players from having that free choice?

3. If you can't overlap you will never be able to harvest certain squares and unless you explore widely before founding your cities you won't know what they are.

Just use the colony-founding Worker-units. No problem.

4. This sort of restriction is likely to hamper the AI more than the player.

I dont believe so. In fact; I think its the other way around. Also, the MP-hosts can choose (or not choose) to have it in MP-games only, if they prefers that.

5. The new concepts of resources and culture have made planting cities close together in certain spots potentially very useful in the short term. You will still suffer in the long term for adopting this strategy.

Well, perhaps you right.

6. Assuming ICS is ineffective in Civ3, this hampers tactics for no real discernable benefit.

The benefits is better looking Civ-empires, without having each city-area overlapped with most cities cramped together. Also, it forces you to make use of the colony-founding worker - this alone makes this option worthwhile.

7. A high density of cities in optimum real estate is accurate and while Civ is a game, it is one attempting to imitate history.

This feature is about making it a free player-choice, if one MUST make use of the colony-founding workers, or not. If you have it on, you pretty much is forced to make use of colonies.

8. This doesn't stop you creating your own scenarios with those limits,

You cannot create scenarios with those limits - neither the human player, nor the AI-civs can be hindered to heavily overlap their city-areas, if he/it wants to, both in Civ-2 or SMAC.

I just don't believe it should occupy Firaxis' attention and although it is just a tickbox it would need to be tested and the AI tuned to cope with it.

Both Civ-2 and SMAC (and also CTP & CTP-2) offers the player buckloads of options & tweaks. Do you really think that Firaxis or Activision have counteracted this with a "tested and tuned" AI for every possible screwed up combination of unit-, city-improvement-, wonder-, government-, tech-advance or empire/faction -tweak their customers can possibly come up with in the Rules.txt file?
Not to mention completely overhauled scenarios with their completely different rules - comparing with the standard main game. Theres no way they can possibly do that.
Thats why the AI:s choices should be player-tuneable and tweakable as well - as much as possible. The player should be able to "spoonfeed" the AI in advance, by giving it a tweaked "Blind-read map" that can help it along the way, as much as reasonably possible - at least on a overall strategical level.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by JellyDonut
Some things should remain unchangeable. I don't blame them, however. Firaxis is being so quiet about Civ3 people are straining themselves to find some new option to talk about amidst the silence.

Some additional thoughts:

If you have read THE LIST you will notice that many civers did their best to squeeze as many historical & real world parameters into the game as they possible could. Just look at the suggestions in the Technology department, for example. Hardly anything of that have been implemented - and I dont blaim Firaxis. After all: there are limits.

I have always been heavily against such an historical/ present day over-detailed quantity-approach - at least in the main game. Play a tailor-cut historical scenario instead, or play "Europa Universalis". The Civ-3 main-game is just aimed to be a fun game for "the desktop caesars and empire-megalomaniacs amongst us - with some historical flavour attached to it." Thats all.

The sensible thing Firaxis did was to ignore and bypass most of the suggestions (but definitely not all) and choose very carefully those suggestions that could improve gameplay & game-balance instead. I also think that a pretty big part of all the already revealed Civ-3 features have either been their own ideas, or tweaked and enhanced by the team, so they can call them their own. They havent just followed our suggested ideas blindly - far from it.

Now, once that they have come up with a few carefully weighted selection of ideas and parameters, they could concentrate on making the best of these parameters - but also (in best Civ-game tradition) try to put most of the fintune-tweak possibilities in the hands of the players/ scenario-designers. Both "optional infinite/finite RR-moves" and "optional city-area overlapping allowed" is examples of such preference-screen (or Rules-txt file) additions that really dont add that much work to the development-project. They are really only small tweak-additions that deals with already existing game-parameters.

Originally posted by KoalaBear33
Border overlapping seems like a simple option so I would be in favour of it (though what I said above must be addressed)...

Thanks! - you at least dont seems 100% against it (provided that your objections gets addressed, also).

[Grumbold]

Ralf I knew that you would disagree and level the "but its only optional, providing more choice" arguement at everything. Still, you wanted to know reasons for voting no, and I provided some. You're not going to convince me to change my mind. I can't ressit the temptation to reply to your long posts though

Originally posted by Ralf
Only culture-borders (dealing with special resources & luxuries) grow. The city-areas (dealing with food-trade-shield outputs) remains static all the time

Yes, but the amount you can actually farm inside that radius grows. If the best terrain on your island is inside one cities radius you want to be able to farm lots of it immediately, not wait for the one city to grow up while your other settlers were searching for somewhere decent to settle.

It would be possible, under your restrictions, to unknowingly start on a 7x7 island (anything up to a rounded 9x9 island), settle in the centre and find that you were now unable to build any other cities and were not able to build ships from your one and only land locked city.

ICS is partly about the fact that it was too easy to send out huge amounts of settlers all over the place (and that have been fixed, I agree), but it also partly about the fact that it is too beneficial to overlap city-areas.

No its about getting free production from the city tile. Physical proximity was not an advantage of ICS, it just meant one less turn was spent moving before settling.

Just use the colony-founding Worker-units. No problem.

Colonies harvest special resources ONLY. The food, shield and trade production would be lost.

Well, perhaps you right.

Thanks Ralf. You have a strong case yourself, I just don't agree with it.

The benefits is better looking Civ-empires, without having each city-area overlapped with most cities cramped together.
...
You cannot create scenarios with those limits - neither the human player, nor the AI-civs can be hindered to heavily overlap their city-areas, if he/it wants to, both in Civ-2 or SMAC.

It must have been CtP that had a minimum distance variable available to be tweaked in its files. I think you are being overly pessemistic about Civ3 if you don't think they will be making such things modifiable. CtP SLIC code has shown what can be done if you are prepared to try and Firaxis have promised to support the mod community even better than before.

Both Civ-2 and SMAC (and also CTP & CTP-2) offers the player buckloads of options & tweaks. Do you really think that Firaxis or Activision have counteracted this with a "tested and tuned" AI for every possible screwed up combination of unit-, city-improvement-, wonder-, government-, tech-advance or empire/faction -tweak their customers can possibly come up with in the Rules.txt file?
Not to mention completely overhauled scenarios with their completely different rules - comparing with the standard main game. Theres no way they can possibly do that.
Thats why the AI:s choices should be player-tuneable and tweakable as well - as much as possible. The player should be able to "spoonfeed" the AI in advance, by giving it a tweaked "Blind-read map" that can help it along the way, as much as reasonably possible - at least on a overall strategical level.

I've no objection to changing anything in the rules.txt or SLIC files because you do so at your own risk. You are then expected to do whatever is necessary to improve the AI if it doesn't cope. I hope the user accessable code allows you to do everything you could ever want and think that MedMod II is a shining example of why this is a good thing. However this is not the same as Firaxis putting an option box in a game screen, which is what you were asking for. Those options they will be expected to have tested and accounted for.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Still, you wanted to know reasons for voting no, and I provided some. You're not going to convince me to change my mind. I can't ressit the temptation to reply to your long posts though

Well, we dont have to convince each other. All we can do is to present our arguments for others to read (hopefully some people from Firaxis as well). Thats in itself is enough.
Also, the Civ-3 team-members can (of course) think very much for themselves. If there are big loopholes in my argumentation, or if it makes the game too undigestible - then you can be pretty sure they will ignore this particular idea, regardless what I write. Rest assured. At the end of the day, its all up to the Civ-3 design-team alone to choose what (and what not) to implement.

Yes, but the amount you can actually farm inside that radius grows. If the best terrain on your island is inside one cities radius you want to be able to farm lots of it immediately, not wait for the one city to grow up while your other settlers were searching for somewhere decent to settle.

Well, thats a trade-off, of course - IF one choose to play with this option activated. But dealing with inseparable mixtures of advantages & trade-offs, is in itself a nice challenge. Thats the whole point. Its not fun playing if you can bypass all trade-offs, and only pick-and-choose the avantages.

It would be possible, under your restrictions, to unknowingly start on a 7x7 island (anything up to a rounded 9x9 island), settle in the centre and find that you were now unable to build any other cities and were not able to build ships from your one and only land locked city.

Hmm! You right. But remember that the game-default should be set to "overlapping IS allowed". The player must actively choose this option - and if he does, Firaxis can assume that the he understands the full consequences of his preference-decision, and adjust his gameplay with that in mind. Also, If its too much for the AI to cope with (which I dont believe), they can always make a MP-only host-optional "house-rule" of it.

No its about getting free production from the city tile. Physical proximity was not an advantage of ICS, it just meant one less turn was spent moving before settling.

Well, I dont agree - but I shall not trying to convince you. Lets just leave it to the The Ultimate ICS-thread instead.

Colonies harvest special resources ONLY. The food, shield and trade production would be lost.

Well, again - thats a negative trade-off of course - IF one choose to play with this option activated. But dealing with trade-offs makes the game more of a challenge.

Thanks Ralf. You have a strong case yourself, I just don't agree with it.

OK, I respect that. You concentrate your objections about this idea around gameplay-, game-balance and game-develop issues - and I like that.

I think you are being overly pessemistic about Civ3 if you don't think they will be making such things modifiable. CtP SLIC code has shown what can be done if you are prepared to try and Firaxis have promised to support the mod community even better than before.

OK, then - we will se if they can come up with something similar, or better.

I've no objection to changing anything in the rules.txt or SLIC files because you do so at your own risk. You are then expected to do whatever is necessary to improve the AI if it doesn't cope. I hope the user accessable code allows you to do everything you could ever want and think that MedMod II is a shining example of why this is a good thing. However this is not the same as Firaxis putting an option box in a game screen, which is what you were asking for. Those options they will be expected to have tested and accounted for.

Well, perhaps they should add this option to the Rules.txt / SLIC files only, then. As for an extensive preference-screen; just look at the one in SMAC. That one is pretty impressive, if you ask me. I hope they add something similar to Civ-3, as well. I just love these preference toggle-buttons.

[Ralf]

Double-post. Sorry!

[Gramphos]

I don't care.

[Inverse Icarus]

i voted no.

although it would stop ICS well, i would hate to take over an AI city, or have a size 3 city from a village in a stupid spot, making me so i cant reach a whale or two

[Urban Ranger]

What is the rationale of not allowing overlapping city radii?

I don't think this should be an option because:

1. Too artificial. There are better ways to fight ICS
2. Slightly overlapping cities allows all squares to be used.
3. City centres 3 squares apart allows "foot" units to move from one city to another in one turn using roads.
4. If you don't want your cities overlap it's entirely up to you.
5. More options = more chances for bugs
6. To allow for better use of resources

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Gramphos
I don't care.

The question isnt so much about if one personally dont care, or if one like it/ dont like it. The question is instead more about if such a feature could interest enough civ-customers, to make it worthwhile to implement. I realize now that I should have tweaked the Poll differently - but now its to late.
The fact that some civers actually like these kind of optional tweaks (the more the merrier) - why couldnt this fact alone be enough reason to implement it, under the condition that the Firaxis-team themselves have no serious objections against it?

Lets say this poll was about PBEM. Most customers dont play by internet (at least not currently, thanks to slow 56K modems), and even less play by PBEM. Is this reason enough to enforce a "I personally must agree, otherwise no PBEM" attitude?

Like I hinted before: These "just make it an option" arguments has its limits. Especially then it comes to fullblown game-structural parameters, like if "Religion should play a MAJOR role in Civ-3 (similar to EU); dont agree - OK, just make it an option". Its obviously isnt that easy, of course.
But this isnt about "fullblown game-structural parameters" - its about small optional tweak-additions that deals with already existing parameters. Theres a difference, you know.

Originally posted by Uberkrux
although it would stop ICS well, i would hate to take over an AI city, or have a size 3 city from a village in a stupid spot, making me so i cant reach a whale or two

And - again - this is the reason why it should be an optional free toggle-choice (or Rules.txt choice), with "City-area overlapping IS allowed" as game-default.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
What is the rationale of not allowing overlapping city radii?

Well, what is the rationale of NOT allowing that as an free option?

1. Too artificial. There are better ways to fight ICS.

This isnt primarily about "fighting ICS". Its about adding an optional free tweak: a free choice to bend the existing settler-surveyor parameters somewhat.

2. Slightly overlapping cities allows all squares to be used.
3. City centres 3 squares apart allows "foot" units to move from one city to another in one turn using roads.
[...]
6. To allow for better use of resources.

OK, so play by the game-default settler-surveyor rules then.
Its really that simple - Im not trying to pursuade you to personally use this option, you know.

4. If you don't want your cities overlap it's entirely up to you.

No it isnt. I can only play by these rules myself. I want to have the option to enforce these rules on the AI-civs, as well.

5. More options = more chances for bugs

Many computer-games are very linear, and most games doesnt allow the player that many options at all. NO extensive SMAC-style preference-screen and certainly no tweakable Civ-2/SMAC-style Rules.txt files. Guess what - they STILL have bugs though.

Im beginning to suspect that the REAL reason why some civers are so drop-dead against optional "house-rules", is mostly multiplayer-related. To give the MP-host the optional power of enforcing a rigid max number of cities per player, or if city-area overlapping should be allowed/ not allowed, is just more then some ICS-style MP-players can bear.

Well, as this poll actually proves; there always gonna be enough Civ-enthusiastic MP-hosts that never would enforce such (from their viewpoint) stupid house-rules. And you can always appoint yourself as MP-host, also. So dont worry.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
5. More options = more chances for bugs

You're talking about a Sid Meier game where bugs a killed (at least most of them) compared to other games, most games has tons of bugs but no (or very little) gameplay related options, while games with the name Sid Meier on the box has little bugs and a few gameplay related options

More options = More chances of people having more fun playing the game

If it's just because of MP games, then simply be the host and use the standard rules (or convert the host to use standard rules). I know, if I someday would play a MP game it wouldn't be hard to make me use the standard rules, though I offline would use my own rules...It is that simple

[Urban Ranger]

Ralf,

"Well, what is the rationale of NOT allowing that as an free option?"

Well we could go around in circles forever, but the truth of the matter is you need to establish a case for your suggestion.

" Many computer-games are very linear, and most games doesnt allow the player that many options at all. NO extensive SMAC-style preference-screen and certainly no tweakable Civ-2/SMAC-style Rules.txt files. Guess what - they STILL have bugs though."

That just proves my point

The less options there are, the less chances things will go wrong. If it's not a device for fighting ICS, what's it for?

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ralf,

" Many computer-games are very linear, and most games doesnt allow the player that many options at all. NO extensive SMAC-style preference-screen and certainly no tweakable Civ-2/SMAC-style Rules.txt files. Guess what - they STILL have bugs though."

That just proves my point

The less options there are, the less chances things will go wrong. If it's not a device for fighting ICS, what's it for?

That exactly doesn't prove your point! At least not if I understand it right, I understand it this way:

Games with NO tweakable options has the same amount of bugs (or even more) as games with such options.