Ics?

[yin26]

Skanky Burns: Ha! I cross-post the MP part. Yes, that is a valuable point.

[korn469]

And my point is that an ICSer will fill the entire area of a map, from coast to coast, with cities. As many that will fit without being next to another city.

Skanky Burns

this will be harder than it sounds

one settler in civ2 cost 20 (10) food and 40 shields
one settler in civ3 will most likely cost 50 (25) food and 40 shields

as you can see the factor that limits how quickly you can produce settlers is shields, if civ3 keeps the same cost in shields then food will become the limiting factor...it will take over twice the amount of food to build up two population and then you lose two population from your city, so the overall recovery time for building two settlers will greatly increase in civ3

lets say have a size one city that harvest 2 food and one shield from every square, it has no buildings and it is constantly producing settlers with no rushbuying

in civ2 it will take that city 17 turns to build its first settler which will make it a size one city with 14 food in it's food box, 32 (17 + 15) turns to build its second settler which will make it a size one city with 24 food in its food box, and 46 turns to build its third settler (17 + 15 + 14) which will make it a size two city with 2 food in its foodbox

in civ3 it will take that city 25 turns to build its first settler which will make it a size one city with no food in it's food box and an extra 25 shields it could devote to another purpose, 50 (25 + 25) turns to build its second settler which will make it a size one city with no food in its food box and an extra 50 (25 + 25) shields it could devote to another purpose, and 75 turns to build its third settler (25 + 25 + 25) which will make it a size one city with no food in its foodbox, and an extra 75 shields (25 + 25 + 25) it could devote to another purpose

so in civ2 a single city could produce 3 settlers in less time than what it would take a single city to produce two settler in civ3

[yin26]

Korn:

Any ideas what this will do to the pacing of the early game? My feeling stated long ago is that this approach to fixing ICS has essentially killed early game pacing whether you ICS or not. Any comments?

[korn469]

yin (and others) please check over my math, because the way the growth model works it might add an extra turn in for growth, but those numbers should be close

as for pacing, it would slow down the game for players who are agressively expanding no matter if they are using ICS or not...but a perfectionist shouldn't see as much of a slow down...but this will really effect the ICS player...in the numbers i presented above the newly founded cities would also be producing settlers, and i just thought of something else...my figures are wrong because i forgot to add in the effect of food the settler uses...should i fix it?

the point i'm trying to make is that i didn't add in growth for the extra cities which they will have three extra cities in civ3 in the same time it took to found 2 extra cities in civ3...those three extra cities will found nine new cities in the same amount of time as it will take the civ3 player to found four new cities...it really looks like ICS won't be as good in civ3 as it was in civ2

on the same hand, when you add in culture the perfectionist should be in an even better position than in civ2

[dearmad]

Yin and Korn, think about THIS: That "settler" you just built can't even spare a few turns along the way to founding a new city to build you a road or any irrigation! It CAN'T! You need to build a worker unit first!

Seems to me expanding at ALL before your city reaches some sweetspot of resource units and food is about wiped out in the early game- you need WORKERS TOO now! The attack on ICS was not a left jab, it's a one-two punch.

[yin26]

So what about the guy in the middle...the non-perfectionist, non-ICSer. The: "ICSer with some perfectionist tendencies." I am such a player. I like robust cities, but I also see the value in eating up the map. I think I'm really going to feel a sluggish start...something like CtP.

[Urban Ranger]

Yin,

Not sure about that. After all Firaxis should have tons of experience and feedback on scouting.


korn,

I was just thinking how all the new features tie together. Slowing down regular expansion during early in the game will make the expansionistic ability that much more powerful. Extra civ advances, money, free mercs, and even an advanced tribe or two. It is the advanced tribes that will make the difference.

[yin26]

The attack on ICS was not a left jab, it's a one-two punch.

Yes, but I think it is killing the OVERALL game-pacing in the process.

[yin26]

If what we are doing is slowing down the production of cities but making production in a perfectionist city better, then we are still left with a troubling issue early on: You have very few cities. This means: Few units, longer time before you engage the enemy, longer time to do just anything...at least in the first part of the game. This worries me a great deal.

[korn469]

dearmad

lets say you build a worker (20 food 20 shields) for every four settlers (50 food 40 shields) in an ICS setup this means that the the total cost in food and shields for 4 settlers and a worker would be 220 (110) food and 180 shields in civ3 compared to 100 (50) food and 200 shields for five settlers in civ2...so in civ3 food, and especially WLTKD will be the backbone of your strategy if you are going ICS, but this will take ICS out of the early game

however later on in the game, when cities are slightly larger then WLTKDs could power ICS, but it still won't be as powerful as what it was in civ3, but you can still do it

Urban Ranger

i agree, early advanced tribes will be a very good addition to any empire, and this could give a player the with expansionist ability an edge

[saracen31]

How far in the future is the game going? With settlers now costing 2 pop points, I just can't see myself with a spaceship in time on Deity level.

[korn469]

saracen31

as far as we know the game ends in 2020

but i don't think that 2 pop settlers would prevent you from beating the game on deity with the space ship

getting 10-15 cities should be easy to do, and it shouldn't take forever to do that either if it really does take about 30 turns to produce a single settler in civ3 in 100 turns you could certainly have about 8 cities and your core cities could be fairly well developed

2 pop settlers won't nerf expansion completely, but will instead hopefully slow it down so that it doesn't allow ICS to dominate once more

[Father Beast]

I totally forgot about We Love the Consul Day!!

That changes everything. with republic as few techs away as monarchy, a player could shoot for republic and hold WLTCD's as neccesary to be able to pump out settlers at will WITHOUT waiting for the city to grow!!

the hell with the food box, just get the city booming.

of course, then you run into martial law, but if you've got a religious civ, you can switch govs without anarchy back to a martial type, just republicing for WLTCD's

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Will we have WLTCD in civ III?

[Nikolai]

I also thought We Love The King Day was gone, but I can't find any link... I can't believe that Firaxis would keep this feature, though.

[korn469]

this is according to firaxis Dan

Just FYI in case folks are confused about this:
AFAIK, "We Love the King Day" is still very much alive and has not been replaced by the "Golden Age". WLTKD is city-specific and can happen repeatedly, whereas the Golden Age is an empire-wide bonus that you only get once.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

however there has been one HUGE change that you people aren't taking into account

there is no luxery slider in civ3!

check out this screenshot

the slider is beside of the advisor and you can only allocate funds to research or to gold, so that means the only way you have of trigger of WLTKD is through entertainers and a variety of luxery resources

silk for example will make one person in each of your cities connected to the trade grid happy, however, it doesn't matter if you have one silk tile or 100 silk tiles, silk will only make one person happy, so it would be better to have one silk tile and one ivory tile than 100 silk tiles...if what they say is true there will be 8 luxeries, so if you are blessed with a wide array of luxeries then having WLTKDs shouldn't be too hard, but if you are unlucky and don't get any then you will only be able to rely on martial law,, entertainers, and wonders to trigger WLTKDs which i think will prove harder than it sounds

[lockstep]

Just FYI in case folks are confused about this:
AFAIK, "We Love the King Day" is still very much alive and has not been replaced by the "Golden Age". WLTKD is city-specific and can happen repeatedly, whereas the Golden Age is an empire-wide bonus that you only get once.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

But this doesn´t necessarily mean that WLTKD works the same way as in Civ2. Instead of a population boom, it could well result in one additional shield and trade per worked tile (just like in a civ-wide 'Golden Age').

[Darkknight]

Inspired by this thread I started a civ one ICS game
I've been playing for five days about 10 hrs total.
It's now around 1000BC and playing as the russians I have around 60 cities tech tree is going slow but I just got democracy and am now on 1 turn per tech
In the F4 screen I'm onto the fourth screen and have about 5 in that. I've gone through about 3 different civ city names and am now about to finish the romans
The POWERgraph screen has a little huddle of people at the bottom with me maxed out at the top
I'm playing on emperor and have adopted a make peace (simple they all fear me and will do as I command, damn if only I could demand their cities) expand through and around them then smash them or starve them
Military efforts have plummeted ( forgot you cant even have units in non-hometown cities) .
I've slowed down my expansion and am thinking of irrigating alot of my city squares. I'm playing on earth though and Americans and Aztecs are over there. but I do have magnetism verging on nukes

[Darkknight]

DP.
Lot's of smilies

[Ozymandous]

Doh! Nevermind, someone already mentioned what I said.

[Admiral PJ]

Maybe with the new City Rebelling rules, small cities will be more vulnerable to enemy rebels, or internal rebellions(people who don't like your leadership).
This may help reduce ICS , making a large empire harder to control.
MOO3's Imperial Focus point system might help stop ICS problems , where you need government control to be able to control lots of cities and defenders.

hey, what about putting a ring of coastal cities around a island continent, to protect the centre of it? might be a good strategy in civ3 with less settlers available etc.
PJ

[Skanky Burns]

Thanks for the math details Korn

But what we've got to understand is that the the *other* players, playing perfectionist or "ICS with perfectionist tendancies" are also hit by the 2 pop settler cost. Unless you are playing OCC, you will need to expand your number of cities early and often.

Sure, expansion will be a third of what could be achieved in Civ 2, but its a level playing field in Civ 3 - all players are slowed down to the same rate of growth. Which indicates that ICS will still be alive and sleazing in Civ 3. So an ICSer, after founding their second city, will still be able to produce 2 settlers after (a larger than Civ 2) growth time, these four cities will still then proceed to build four settlers... the goemetric growth is only slowed down, but not prevented from growing geometrically. The point is: in the beginning game, all civs will be slowed down.

Finding an advanced tribe would be a massive bonus. Say, after 3 settler-building cycles, you've got 8 cities. Capital builds 1 settler, those 2 cities grow and build 2 settlers, those four cities grow and build 4 settlers... 8 cities. Getting another city early on would double your growth potential, meaning in the same time you would get 16 cities, not 8 (barring any 'accidents'). Just a side-point.

About Civ 3 potential ICS tactics:
*Plonking* down wonders would no-longer work. No caravans and no rush-buying. Perhaps "military convoys" would still work though (disbanding military units in the wonder-producing city).

Culture would be a pain for an ICSer. However, military units in a city counter the effects of culture. Therefore, when an ICSers territory is near a perfectionist territory, the ICSer will need a heavy military presence.

A heavy military presence would increase the strain on the ICSers budget. Some coping strategies can be found in Metamorphs posts. If the empire is large enough, an ICSers inner cities builds improvements that are then sold.

Captured cities dont produce culture for the occupying force, and may even revolt against their oppressors. While a perfectionist player, capturing another perfectionists city would probably rebuild each improvement in the city, just so it would become a cultural power-house for their civ. This wouldnt interest an ICSer thought. However, all is not lost. The newly captured city, if wanting to be kept by the ICSer, will need a large garrison to prevent the city revolting. This will cost money to pay their upkeep. One benefit of having a large, improvement-filled city is that these improvements can be sold, giving the ICSer some much-needed cash. More importantly for an ICSer, though, is the population potential of the new aquired city. A large city can pump out many 2 pop settlers before it reaches size one. This gives an ICSer two distinct benefits. First, it reduces the cities population, thereby making the possibility of revolt lower. Secondly, this gives the ICSer a chance to build more cities!!

Finally, i think ive read somewhere that WLTKD, while still included, does NOT give your cities massive growing power under any government type. It provides other benefits, but not growth, making it not too useful for an ICSer. I cant seem to find where i read that. I think it must have been said by Dan here on Aployton, as ive searched the Civ 3 site to no avail. As always, let everyone here know if you find it (or info contrary to this )

[korn469]

Skanky Burns

like i said, in civ2 the limiting factor to settler production was shields, in civ3 the limiting factor to settler production will now be food, especially if WLTKD don't give population booms to the player

however i don't think that you realize what a change it is in civ3 changing the limiting item from shields to food...with the growth model in civ2 if you just focus on settler production then each time you build a settler it takes a little less time (if we disreguard happiness and say all squares have equal value) but the growth model in civ3 will mean that without buildings all settlers will take the exact same time to build, also rush buying settlers in civ2 would speed up the rate of settler production to a certain point, but in civ3 rush buying won't have an effect

since food is the limiting factor, then that makes the granery a key building to ICS and just general expansion in civ3 i will run some more figures later on tonight, because the granery could almost take ICS back to civ2 days, but i'm not sure...we'll just have to see

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by korn469
however i don't think that you realize what a change it is in civ3 changing the limiting item from shields to food...

Maybe you're right, i dont see it changing too much, just making expansion by *all* civs slower

The way i see it, the ICSer will be building settlers when possible, making cities as close together as possible, and in-between building garrison, scouts, settler-protectors, and most probably (from your post) a granary in each city. Maybe a worker initially too, if they dont need food for upkeep, to improve some terrain so faster city growth.

The perfectionist, on the other hand, will be building settlers when possible, making cities with no (or only 1 square) overlap, and will definately have a worker before their third city is made. Will be building garrison, scouts, settler-protectors, and some city improvements.

The only difference is that the perfectionist expansion will peter-out much faster, as they will start concentrating more on improvements (or pumping out military units, for the warlords), and will fill up available land-space much faster.

The ICSer will continue as started, building settlers to found new cities, and military units in between time to explore/guard/harrass. Forcing the ICSer to wait between production of settlers would also play into the hands of the culture thing. To counter it, they would need heaps of military units, which waiting for city growth would allow them to produce. A potential problem would be negative cash-flow though, which could lead to cities building improvements between settlers, and then selling these improvements.

Ill be interested in seeing your figures, with a no-granary pure ICS expansion, and a full granary pure ICS expansion pattern... Demanding, arent i

If a granary is necessary, then that would mean greater expenses for the empire, unless there is a wonder like the 'Trading Co'. Probably the 'Wall Street' Small Wonder...

Which leads me to another point i forgot.
In ICS, as players will probably ignore most buildings, then they wont be building the necessary prerequisits for some of the SWs. For examples, 5 banks for the wall street wonder, 5 sams for the SDI SW...

[Metamorph]

Skanky: "*Plonking* down wonders would no-longer work. No caravans and no rush-buying. Perhaps "military convoys" would till work though (disbanding military units in the wonder-producing city)."

Possibly. But unlikely. I dare to hope that Firaxis has some semblance of a clue by now, and will not permit this particular sleaze. *cough* *gasp* *sputter* *wheeze* *choke* *vomit* *spontaneous combustion*

"Culture would be a pain for an ICSer. However, military units in a city counter the effects of culture. Therefore, when an ICSers territory is near a perfectionist territory, the ICSer will need a heavy military presence."

Actually, this suddenly gives me horrible, horrible nightmares. Consider the ICSer's goal: lots'n'lots of small cities. Culture is produced by buildings. The more buildings you have, the more culture you're producing -- taking into consideration that the bigger, more expensive buildings will probably produce more culture points; but still, the principle holds. More is better.

The ICSer, having vastly more cities, may rather readily be able to build a whole bunch of small culture-producing buildings in his huge city network. (As an ICSer, I ordinarily build all of the 'cheese buildings' in each of my ICS cities anyhow; library, marketplace, etc. -- some of these will produce culture [not sure which ones tho]). This in turn would give him huge bleeding piles of culture points as compared to his opponents, who are constrained by the few cities they have (and what technologies are available for building culture buildings at all).

Furthermore: you mentioned that having military units in cities cancels culture generation. If this is so, then the 'regular' player, with a few, large cities, will be even more screwed, having to directly protect some or all of those cities, thus cancelling major portions of his culture income. The ICSer, on the other hand, merely needs to populate his border cities with military presence; the billions of cities on the inside of his borders do not need protecting, and thus can sit there, merrily churning away culture points.

Icky. What are the additional benefits of culture points? Is there any other way to generate them? I shudder to think that an ICSer can just sit there, doing nothing, building up a culture-based nation, protecting his borders. Like a festering boil waiting to burst...

"A heavy military presence would increase the strain on the ICSers budget. Some coping strategies can be found in Metamorphs posts. If the empire is large enough, an ICSers inner cities builds improvements that are then sold."

Capitalization is ordinarily the better way to deal with money problems, in games where unit supply is based on cash. Selling buildings is tedious. Besides; who buys all of these buildings, anyway?

But I've never seen a 'strained' ICS budget. Usually, as an ICSer I don't know what to spend all of my resources on! I'd make military units and take over the world; but do you know how *long* it takes to move all of those bloody units all over the place? Yawnsies.

Easier to just sit there, building up tech and cash, waiting for 1 AD so I can construct a spaceship in one turn. Did you know that you could use freights to build spaceship parts?

"A large city can pump out many 2 pop settlers before it reaches size one. This gives an ICSer two distinct benefits. First, it reduces the cities population, thereby making the possibility of revolt lower. Secondly, this gives the ICSer a chance to build more cities!!"

Now you're talking! But ICSers have little desire for conquest for economic purposes. I only attack when I want to achieve global victory through military means (or very early in the game if I'm sharing a continent... I hate sharing!) Usually, the newly conquered city is far more trouble than it's worth -- it's constantly in revolt... it's much farther away from my capital than the rest of my nation... it requires so much food to keep from starving... it has to be well-protected, otherwise the bad guys will steal it back from me (and grab one of my superior techs!)... blah blah, blah blah blah.

At the point in the game where I'm bothering to take over enemy cities, I don't have the time, the patience, or the need to build new cities. It's just not worth bothering. Is there an option to raze a city in Civ3?

korn: "since food is the limiting factor, then that makes the granery a key building to ICS and just general expansion in civ3 i will run some more figures later on tonight, because the granery could almost take ICS back to civ2 days, but i'm not sure...we'll just have to see"

Building a granary was fundamental in many CtP ICS strategies. It's not all that big a setback; you have to sit there and wait for the population to reach sufficient size before you can make a settler in the first place anyway. Meanwhile, what else are you going to do with all those extra shields? Make military units?

- Metamorph

[dennis580]

Well here's a thread from Dan Magaha form Firaxis who has actually played the game; which ends up totally contradicting what Yin(who has not played the game) said about the AI being conservative

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=1

Zulus started out very aggressively, sending their Impis everywhere (and getting their golden age early), but I've pushed their borders back with a cultural strategy (several of their cities have defected to me due to culture) and they now have to beg me for resources (which I naturally won't give them).

So, will Civ III force you to think differently about the way you play Civilization? I really think so. Will it be a good change? So far for me, I'd say "absolutely."

Here Dan said the Zulus was extremely aggrevise sending thier Impis everywhere. So Yin's specualtion about the AI being conservative goes right out the window.

It just so happened that everyone else was intent on forcibly removing the Aztecs from the face of the planet, so I took advantage of that fact and went into culture-producing mode while they were geared up for military conquest.

Here's another quote form Dan on just how agrresive the AI is. As Dan said everybody ganged up on the Aztecs and wiped them off the planet.

So from these 2 quotes it appears that the AI is extremely aggresive.

[yin26]

First, Dan himself admits he is not very good at the game. I wouldn't take his feedback too seriously. Especially considering:

but I've pushed their borders back with a cultural strategy (several of their cities have defected to me due to culture) and they now have to beg me for resources

If all it took to push back this 'aggressive' onslaught was to build a bunch of libraries (i.e. 'Cultural Strategy'), then I would simply call the AI "annoying." If Dan, who is not a great player of his own admission, beat back this 'agression' simply by expanding his borders, then the aggression was botched to begin with.

However, not having the game in front of us, this is impossible to tell for sure. I stand by my previous post now adding this:

"And if the AI does manage to be aggressive, we will continue to see what we have ALWAYS seen in the Civ series: Trickle attacks that do little more than annoy and waste the resources that the comp. might otherwise have put to good use in a coordinated attack later on."

[dennis580]

Yea but Dan also siad he usally played on the lower levels. So obviosuly if somebody was playing on Deity the AI would be even more agressive and better.

Well I definately disagree about the trickle attacks. I full expect the AI to be able to launch massive and well cordinated attacks with mulitapable allies against me. Will this expectation be met I hope so, but nevertheless it is what I am expecting and I will be extremely dissapointed if this isn't improve a 100 times over Civ2.

[yin26]

I full expect the AI to be able to launch massive and well cordinated attacks with mulitapable allies against me.

If this proves true, it will be the first of its kind, except for EU perhaps. And if that is the case for Civ3, there will be much rejoicing in the streets.

[korn469]

Dan's ability or lack thereof isn't the issue here guys

Metamorph

you are on to it

It's not all that big a setback; you have to sit there and wait for the population to reach sufficient size before you can make a settler in the first place anyway. Meanwhile, what else are you going to do with all those extra shields? Make military units?

this is exactly what i am trying to say about why civ3 will be different than civ2

in civ2 you didn't have to wait for the population to hit sufficient size, you had to wait till you had enough shields to build the settler

in civ3 you will have to wait for the population to hit a sufficient size, and there will be extra shields

the implications of this is that builders can now keep up with players adopting an ICS strategy; before in civ2 as fast as you could get enough shields to build a settler you could build one...in civ3 no matter how fast you get shields it will be population growth that controls the speed at which you produce settlers

ok i ran a few quick tests nothing official in civ2 and here is what i got

on an all grassland map only building settlers

civ2 no graneries

first settler on turn 18
second on 33
third on 47
fourth on 61
fifth on 75

civ2 pyramids

first settler on 18
second on 31
third on 42
fourth on 52
fifth on 62

simulated civ3 no graneries

first settler on 27
second settler on 54
third settler on 80

simulated civ3 pyramids

first settler on 21
second settler on 34 (shields prevented from building on 32)
third settler on 47 (45)

ok if this data is correct then without graneries ICS in civ3 is dead, and with graneries it is back to an extent

using this information i will say that the best ICS civ in Civ3 will be the English a commercial/expansionist Civ...since they start the game with pottery (graneries) and the Extra commerce in city center allows them to to afford graneries in every city, i would pick the Americans next (Industrious/Expansionist)

general strategy is to build a granery ASAP and then start pumping out settlers...as long as shields and not food is the limiting factor ICS works

however in civ3 there is a counterstrategy and i call it Perfansionistic and that basically means you follow a perfectionist strategy while staying close in number of cities, and the best civ for this strategy is the Egyptians (Religious/Industrious) who can build while they wait for their cities to grow to size 3, while they will sacrifice a little in terms of total cities however, they should have a much stronger Culture and infrastructure than the ICS English...i would say that the Romans (Militaristic/Industrious) would be second best at this strategy, except they would rely on military strength and not culture...the key would be to use a few breeder bases (ie bases that you build graneries in and all they do is pump out settlers)

if the ICS player does not build graneries (lets hope the pyramids get an overhaul in civ3) then they cannot obtain exponential growth against their enemies and instead will grow at a linear rate, to get the exponential growth the ICS player has to completely focus on growth (by building graneries and settlers), anything less and then a Perfansionistic player will have enough cities to stay competitive so i think that ICS is viable but not overwhelming, but we will just have to wait and see