INTERESTING New Screenshots with ICS implications

[korn469]

from the new gamespot preview

Indian City of Madras

City view of Captured city of Madras

take a careful look at the foodbox in the second screenshot

size 4 city, no granary...

SIZE 20 FOODBOX!

what does this mean for ICS? and this is most likely a screenshot from the final version of the game

EDIT:

btw the purple women are most likely Indian Nationals under Roman Occupation...but what is the princess (harem girl) looking citizen? it looks like smoke is coming off of the yellow ball to me...so could she be a member of the resistance or is she a happy person or what?

[Faboba]

Maybe they moved the 40 food box from size 3 to size 5.

Interesting though

[Sarxis]

I was thinking that the women in the veil might be an entertainer; but because the other three women look angry, the entertainer doesn't seem to be generating enough happiness to keep the locals from unrest.

As far as the twenty food slots: Yeah, what is up with that? I thought new population was supposed to cost 40 food without a granary. Must be something else factoring in.

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by korn469
take a careful look at the foodbox in the second screenshot
size 4 city, no granary...

SIZE 20 FOODBOX!

Ah, I believe you are mistaken. The "20" is for the number of turns it will take to build a Spearman.

Originally posted by korn469
what does this mean for ICS? and this is most likely a screenshot from the final version of the game

Irrelevent since it's a 20 turn build queue and not the granery/storage. The 20-hold granery/storage is located just left of the build queue - and it's empty. As a matter of fact, it states right above it "-Zero Growth-". The city only gains 2 food per turn as it's setup in the snapshot.

Originally posted by korn469
EDIT:

btw the purple women are most likely Indian Nationals under Roman Occupation...but what is the princess (harem girl) looking citizen? it looks like smoke is coming off of the yellow ball to me...so could she be a member of the resistance or is she a happy person or what?

I believe the 3 purple women are "unhappy" citizens after the city falls. The 1 light blue woman is a "happy" citizen.

The "smoke coming off a yellow ball" is not a ball at all, but rather a coin, suggesting either luxury tax, upkeep, or some kind of cost or income; but I'm not to sure.

Well, that's what I make out of it anyway.

[korn469]

well if they the size 40 foodbox doesn't hit until size five, think of how quickly cities will be able to grow to size 4 they will need 60 food compared 90 food in civ2

also Anunikoba the veiled girl could be an entertainer, because the Indian Nationals are smiling so i guess they are happy...but i thought that nationals of other civs were always unhappy...it also doesn't look like they are working tho, so why isn't the city starving?

we've got questions...now where is dan with the answers

[korn469]

Wittlich

Ah, I believe you are mistaken. The "20" is for the number of turns it will take to build a Spearman.

under -zero growth- there are 20 food shaped containers, count them yourself

Irrelevent since it's a 20 turn build queue and not the granery/storage. The 20-hold granery/storage is located just left of the build queue - and it's empty. As a matter of fact, it states right above it "-Zero Growth-". The city only gains 2 food per turn as it's setup in the snapshot.

ahh so you know where the granary storage area is already
like i said count it

[Wittlich]

Actually, when I reread my post prior to submitting it, I thought - humm, it looks like I'm confusing the build queue with the food storage. But I explain myself in the second part. So I figured "what the hey" let me just send it as is and see if everyone reads my entire post or just the first part....That didn't take long!

[Jeje2]

I looked at the map-pictures and quite soon I noticed no colonies present. So are colonies "a good idea that didn't work" or what?

[Wittlich]

Good observation Jeje2. It is rather strange that there isn't even one colony shown...

[korn469]

Wittlich

how funny

also i went over to civfanatics and got these two screen shots

http://www.civfanatics.com/cgi-bin/a...mgt_queues.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.com/cgi-bin/a...s/citymgt2.jpg

they are both rather old, but carefully (this means you wittlich ) count the food boxes in those cities

first pic: size 6 city, size 20 foodbox
second pic: size 12 city, size 40 foodbox

i am guessing that cities change from a size 20 foodbox to a size 40 foodbox when you build the population lifting building, which is hospitals iirc

but what are the implications of a size 20 foodbox for ICS? especially since granaries work like they do in Civ2

EDIT:

also why is the city of Madras not starving? if you look at the older screenshots it shows you when citizens are working, and it appears that none of the citizens in Madras are working

also i think i figured something out, the green shoe thing with smoke coming out of it is the button you click to change what you are building

[yin26]

Well, if a size 12 city takes twice at long to grow as does a size 6 city, can't you have several size 6 cities going by the time it would take you to get one size 20 city?

But I guess by pulling out the settler...So in other words, is it the optimal ICS strategy to build a a few 'breeder cities' without hospitals so you can keep cranking out settlers?

What am I misunderstanding here, Professor Korn?

[Sarxis]

Yeah yin- something doesn't sound right.

And I looked at those nationals again- they do look they are smiling, but I before I thought they were angry (see their mean eyebrows?).

[korn469]

So in other words, is it the optimal ICS strategy to build a a few 'breeder cities' without hospitals so you can keep cranking out settlers?

yeap, father beast was the first to pick up on this, so unless firaxis has some anti breeder city policy then a city between 5-7 would be best for building settlers

but not only that with the low food requirements population will grow much faster in civ3 it will take 120 food to grow a city from size 1 to size 7, compared to 270 food to grow a city from size 1-7 in civ2

hehe here's a new strategy for you wanna be Stalins
i'm naming this the

korn's commie rush

ok in the communist government, build several cities without hospitals and get their pop close to the limit, make sure you have a full police garrison then start work on a nuke (or other expensive unit) then once you can get close enough used forced labor to reduce the size of the city to 1 and build the nuke...let the city rapidly grow back (60 food with a granary) and repeat

the garrison will keep them in line and you should be able to quickly churn out nukes (unless forced labor isn't very effective)

[yin26]

Quick, Markos! CLOSE THE THREAD...KORN IS ALREADY BREAKING THE GAME! LOL! Father Beast beat me to it, eh? Bastard...

[korn469]

Jeff Briggs: The final design of Civilization III profited in myriad ways from the Herculean play-test effort.

hehe and here i thought that they only used people from firaxis...but i know they wouldn't have let something like ICS slip into Civ3
right guys?

[Sarxis]

In one of the recent interviews, Briggs did actually mention ICS (Infernal City Sleeze) by name. He mentioned the new pop cost of settlers and 'other' balancing features to combat all sleezyness.

[yin26]

hehe and here i thought that they only used people from firaxis...but i know they wouldn't have let something like ICS slip into Civ3 right guys?

This gets back to the heart of the matter. A pre-release demo with the note: "Please try to ICS me" would have turned up an absolutely rabid response that within a week would have matched a month or more of in-house testing.

Anyway, Korn, you still recall "THE PLAN"...right?

[korn469]

Anunikoba

yes i do think that Civ2 style ICS is dead, firaxis did a great job of killing it...but i think we are glimpsing at what could be the new and improved ICS 3.0

60 shield settlers are more of an ICS hinderance than 2 pop settlers under the new grow rules

but it still should be impossible to do, it'll be more of a mid game happening than an early game strategy

[yin26]

Which raises the question: Is it all that different? We are all hampered until mid-game...after which ICS takes off again...delayed but still dominant?

[korn469]

yin if the plan you refer to is what we discussed in PMs and email, then yes i still recall it and i am waiting on a responce from Dan and Mark

new opening game strat

choose the English or Americans (Exp/Com Exp/Ind)
first thing you build is a granary...then it will only cost 60 surplus food to grow your city from size 1 to size 7

somewhere before size 7 build a worker and use it to build a high mine so you can have a high shield tile, then switch to settlers and crank them out, adjusting your citizens between a high food setup for rapid growth and a high shield setup for rapid production of settlers

[yin26]

Yep. That's "THE PLAN"

Second: Why, oh why, weren't you testing for Firaxis? BTW, did you see my comments about the Essential List in my List comparison thread? Amazing stuff there, Korn.

[korn469]

yin26

well i will PM them again tonight to see what they think...but dan sounds ok with it

as to why i'm not testing for firaxis hehe if only i knew
but no i didn't see your comments, and basically i just organized the EC3 list (the one thread that i really took to was the nuclear weapons thread which the owner didn't even submit to the list! ), but i think that it did have an impact on firaxis so they are listening!

anyways firaxis could minimize the damage caused by breeder cities with a few rule changes

#1 allow growth over the limit without a hospital but make it cause double unhappiness (ie the 9 citizen is unhappy and makes another citizen unhappy too)
#2 require all cities to have at least one civilian working a tile
#3 allow heavily repressed cities to have a chance of switching sides as if they had been assimilated through culture

those three could minimize the abuse of ICS breeder cities (and army laundering and abuse of the happiness system)

[yin26]

#1 allow growth over the limit without a hospital but make it cause double unhappiness (ie the 9 citizen is unhappy and makes another citizen unhappy too)

Simple. Elegant. Heck, realistic (greater pop w/o adequate health care causing disease outbreaks, etc.).

[korn469]

yin

it's not perfect, because it could cause you to have to build settlers, but i can't think of anything else that would combat it

[yin26]

But if the unhappiness wrecks the productivity of that city, then you're going a long, long way toward making ICS a kind of dead-end road until much, much later in the game when you can afford it all. As it stands, it looks like ICS is feasible still a bit too early in the game.

[Shiva]

Perhaps there is a harsher version of the too many bases thing from smac? Possibly if you go over so many cities with too low a culture you get beat over the head with some sort of penalty? Something like that?

[korn469]

yin

i think that civ3 has gone a long way towards addressing ICS, but that there might still be lots of ways to abuse the system

i haven't played the game yet, but the fixed size 20 foodbox looks a little small (especially with granaries) however it is an improvement over population booms from WLTKDs, since it is slower than that, plus the AI can take full advantage of it...on positive thing is that it will make Civ3 play faster than civ2 because of the quick early growth in the game

another thing that could hinder ICS would be to add in additional unhappiness penalties when a city was too far away from the capital (or forbidden palace) this could discourage early game ICS

our assumptions can't be proved till we have played (and played) the game, but it does look like mid game ICS could be a problem...then again it might not be

hopefully firaxis will listen to us on easy to implement ways of dealing with balance problem that arise in civ3...for each problem we find i suggest that we try to get as much feedback as possible and then find a consensus and beg firaxis to make the changes

EDIT: Shiva, having a decent culture shouldn't be too hard, i mean on deity the player is going to have to at least build temples and build them early

i still wanna see culture in action, i am in doubt as to what kind of effect it will have on civ3

[yin26]

Well, you can't permanently 'solve' Civ 3 on food production alone. This fix Firaxis has given addresses EARLY GAME ICS, which is perhaps a good way to leave it since completely pounding ICS throughout the ages could really make the game crawl.

[korn469]

yin

which is perhaps a good way to leave it since completely pounding ICS throughout the ages could really make the game crawl

you might be right, if the player and AI are closer in output going into the early game and the AI is smarter than the SMAC in both military tactics and strategic choices then ICS might not matter once you have armies showing up on your doorstep (especially if the AI can halfway manage armies)

plus with the no collateral damage rule the AIs huge stacks might be able to actually do something...i remember countless times in SMAC playing as the Spartans and i would use three elite rovers with better tech in a choke point kill zone that i had setup to destroy hundreds of AI units (mostly yang and miriam) but using the power of collateral damage the AIs tactics of stacking tons of units together would always fail

so this is one rule change that should help massive attacks (especially by the AI)

[yin26]

Yes. I think the rule of the day should be: If you don't harass your enemy, you deserve to have him ICS you.