Proposals to Fix ICS in Civ3: Firaxis, please stop by...

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by yin26
And you shouldn't guess how I would react...

Please accept my apology, and note that ive changed the offending remark

Having gone through this thread several times now, I think that's really all I'm asking. If I can have the ability to send the settler packing, I'd be satisfied. I'm fully aware the AI will still sneak some by on boats or whatever. I'm fine with that. Heck, it will add some fun to the scouting effort.

C'mon. That point seems to be agreed by most or all of us. And it shouldn't be too hard to implement I would think.

I definately agree on that point. Hopefully someone will mention it to Soren during the chat tomorrow *hint hint*

Originally posted by Talenn Even something so simple as making it so that a city must have a pop of at least 4-5(?) before it can build a settler would cure many of the problems.

I have to disagree with this propsed implementation as well. Its main effect would be to slow everyones expansion down, but leave all other gameplay options the same. Instead of waiting for the city to go from 2->3 before popping a settler, all cities would just wait until they were size 4->5 or whatever, and pop a settler out just as soon as they can. The only great change I can see is that it would make the 'wall of warriors' more likely to be a viable strategy.

[Talenn]

Skanky Burns:

Well, I think you just hadn't thought through the implications of needing, say, a size 5 City before you can make a settler. True, it would slow down everyone (but I thought this was intended) and perhaps capital cities (ie, those with Palace and Forbidden whatziz) could be exempt.

The other results are:

1) The little useless cities crammed into worthless location that can never really grow but that hog territory will never 'spawn'.

2) You have to at least make SOME cultural improvements (on Regent) or make an effort to get luxuries, or a decent military just to keep order in a size 5 city.

3) Many city locations will take a LONG time to reach size 5. This might encourage early Monarchy/Republic to allow irrigation to really take hold and let you start growing. It would encourage people to be a bit further up the tech tree before the true 'land grabbing' could begin.

4) Since early settlers will be fewer and the amount of time needed to make more increased, the QUALITY of your cities will be more important. Again, this provided more incentive to take GOOD locations instead of just plopping down wherever there might be open ground.

In short, this little change could do quite a bit to change the face of the game. Just because its simple doesnt mean its ineffective. In fact, I've found that very often the simplest changes provide the most satisfactory results...ymmv.

[Yaga]

Two things:

Perhaps a good "middle ground" solution is to make the AI a little more intelligent about where it decides to build its new cities: I've seen land-hungry Civs (on Regent) cross half an empire to plant a city on a patch of hill otherwise wholly surrounded by other civs. Eventually they assimilate into my Civ, and I'm forced to take them over (as my only other option is to rebuff them, at which point they go back to their original Civ. IMHO they should become Barbarian, but I digress) and they invariably end up being virtually worthless.

Still, there may be reason to land such a city - perhaps as a foothold on a new continent, or for a resource - and no one, the player or the other Civs, should be punished and limited artifically because of this irking or otherwise annoying the Player. Therefore, let the behavior continue, hopefully more intelligently, and make a different limitation, one that to me seems a little more realistic: No new city (which starts, afterall, with a culture of 0) impinge the borders of another Civ. And, let the AI realize that putting a city on the boarder of another Civ will have a decreased beneft. This will make landing a city on one small square in the middle of nowhere *much* less attractive to all Civs, both AI and Player alike. Afterall, settling a city within another Civ's borders is an Act of War - shouldn't founding a city that pushes back borders similarly be an Act of War? Especially in an instance where it deprives the original Civ of a resource, luxury, or even a contigious trade route?

Of course, this might need to be an option. You might be willing to go to war over borders, which is, of course, a common cause of war in our world.

Finally, the impact of violating borders needs to be greater; if a Civ is willing to violate the Player's borders, the other, AI Civs should be a little more wary. And they need to discern for themselves if the reputation impact is worth the possibility of a patch of tundra far, far from home.

Oh, this may be unrelated, but is anyone else a little surprised that by, oh, 1000 AD the whole of the world is under someone's domain in Civ III? Whatever happened to Deepest, Darkest Africa?

My 2 cents on it all,
Yaga

[yin26]

Please accept my apology, and note that ive changed the offending remark

Cool! Very civil of you. Thanks.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Talenn
Skanky Burns:

Well, I think you just hadn't thought through the implications of needing, say, a size 5 City before you can make a settler. True, it would slow down everyone (but I thought this was intended...

While its true that it would slow expansion down a fair bit, im fearing that it would merely delay the AI spreading cities into bad positions, rather than forcing it to think. But thinking about it further, perhaps the added delay would allow your borders to expand somewhat, thus forcing the AI settlers to not build as close to your cities as they otherwise would. Hmmm.

I dont know. To answer this, i would need some first-hand experience with the AI expansion pacing and city placement.

[Lord of the Isles]

Disclaimer: I don't have the game yet (only 10 more days to go though ).

One of the good things about user modifications made to CtPII (like Cradle of Civilization) was adding stuff to eventually eject AI civs from your territory. And even if you suffered from badly placed AI cities you could edit the default limit for disbanding a city. I want to know if Civ3 as any such restrictions: either a maximum city size for disbanding or penalties (like your reputation among other civs going down) if you disband?

[Stuie]

Originally posted by yin26
1) "Continguous City Borders" -- CCBs

The idea is simple: You may found a city ONLY if its borders will touch your existing border.

2) "Settler Deporation"

Another simple fix: If an AI with which you are not at war brings over his escorted settler into your land, any military unit you send to that stack will bring up the following two options:

Yin, are you a programmer? Did you help code Civ3? If you cannot answer "yes" to both of these questions, then please refrain from characterizing substantial changes to the game's code as "simple fixes". Most programming changes are anything but simple, especially when you start tinkering with the basic mechanics of what the program does. In this light, I feel that your first idea unneccessarily changes basic game mechanics. The borders as implemented provide a simple, elegant abstraction of small towns becoming city-states and eventually merging to form a nation. I don't want them to touch right away! I honestly like the borders the way they work now, and I do not feel that the AI is doing anything particularly unfair/unwarranted.

As for your second idea, if you don't like them tramping around on your property, declare war on them and get them the hell off.

[yin26]

Stuie: Relax, man. We're just discussing ideas here.

[inca911]

I do like the "Deport Settler" option that yin has proposed. Their refusal to move the settler can always be countermanded with an attack, but diplomacy should allow a more forceful option in this area. I'd be satisfied with just the ability to select a "Remove Unit or War" option in the diplomatic menu. I ignore AI requests all the time just like he ignores me, but he can then give me the "Remove or War" message and I'd simply like to do the same to him. However, it is important to note that Civ3's cultural borders are just prettly lines that must be enforced with troops. One very enjoyable departure from Civ2 was the removal of the Zone of Control concept (ZoC). In Civ3, you cannot simply remain tucked inside your cities with one fortified mountain unit maintaining a perimeter. Certainly I am getting tired of seeing the warrior/settler stack attempting to skirt my city and ignoring any requests to leave my territory, but now I have a line of veteran troops actively containing the AI. Just a tiny bit of a dipomatic change would help immensely to mitigate this problem.

On a second note:
I would like to see a method of attack in which the unit holds the territory from which it attacks. My Ancient Era Maginot line is continually stepping off of prime defensive territory out into the open and the same is true for my city defenders. Perhaps my desire to grab a couple of workers from the enemy should be tempered by having to move into the enemy's square, but it certainly is annoying....

[Stuie]

Originally posted by yin26
Stuie: Relax, man. We're just discussing ideas here.

Hey, maybe I'm on edge from the lack of sleep, ok?

Honestly though, I do get the option to say "leave or else I'll declare war" sometimes, and other times I do not. I think it has to do with your relations with the offending Civ. So if they are ticking you off, go to diplomacy and make some unreasonable demands until their attitude toward you crumbles, then you should be able to evict them (or go to war - but hey, that's civ). Having played the game a lot in the last week, I guess I don't see where any additional options are needed in that regard.

As for my border comment, sorry you ignored just to say "relax". The game does an incredible job modelling city-states growing into a nation, and I for one would hate to see them start mucking around with how the borders work.

[yin26]

Yeah, lack of sleep seems to be going around.

Hey, I think I just understood something (hopefully) that could be VERY important to this discussion if reproduced: The *moment* an enemy units steps on your land, you issue the warning, which is just given lip service. Now, if the unit's next square is ALSO in your territory, the second warning DOES say:

"Remove your troops or declare WAR!" and unless war is declared, the troops get pulled back to the original spot.

Of course, it the AI can get in behind you through just one square, he'll move by you. But now that I seem to understand this ... hoping it wasn't a fluke ... then this is much better off than I thought.

Can other people test this? Darn. These are the kinds of things that need to be in the manual.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by yin26
Now, if the unit's next square is ALSO in your territory, the second warning DOES say:

"Remove your troops or declare WAR!" and unless war is declared, the troops get pulled back to the original spot.

Of course, it the AI can get in behind you through just one square, he'll move by you. But now that I seem to understand this ... hoping it wasn't a fluke ... then this is much better off than I thought.

I knew there was a way to trigger the more threatening message, just couldn't remember exactly (and I'm at work now....). So you need to keep at them for a couple turns.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by saracen31
I also think they should use a random seed at the beginning of a game to determine just how expansionist each civ is going to be. Right now, every AI civ just makes a mad dash to plop down cities anywhere they can. I don't mind if some civs do that, but to have EVERY civ do that EVERY game is just a pain in the ass.

People have always tried to expand and grab land, it's human nature. Every successful civilization has tried to grab as much resources (and land) as possible because more resources = more power. Study some history books if you don't believe this.

Sometimes I want to play an expansionist game, sometimes I just want a few big cities. As it currently stands, I'm forced to play the expansionist in the early stages to combat the AI civ strategy. While fun, I hate to have to follow the same strategy every single game.

No, you can sit still currently and only have a few large cities, just expect to lose when the AI out produces you 10:1 because they have 10X the cities that you do.

It would be cool if some of the AI civs didn't expand so rapidly. Make it a random seed for every civ, which differs each time you start a new game. Some games they all might be ancient expansionists, some games they would chill out. Some games there would be a mix. The human player can take action accordingly. Wouldn't be a difficult programming fix either.

Hmm, so you'd have a few AI civ's that didn't expand and then they would be easily conquered and/or assimilated by either another AI civ or by the Human player. All because you don't like having to build more cities earlier.

How about this as a "fix" instead. You build as many or as few cities as you want and then deal with the game situation as it happens. If you build a few large cities then hopefully you'll have enough culture to keep them going and gobble up the smaller AI cities near-by. If you build a lot of citie then you have a stronger base.

Your choice, play as you want, just don't complain because you can't do a OOC in Civ3, hint this is not Civ2, thankfully!

[yin26]

Well, I just tested it again. Same two civs but just a few turns later. Same AI settlers, actually. This time, it did NOT work.

Now, I hate to scream 'bug' at this point, but I honestly can't see what the nice feature that worked just a few turns ago does not work a few turns later?

If Firaxis could keep the 'one warning then next turn you must declare war if still on my land' rule in place, that would really help this situation.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by TechWins

Yin, you are not the only one who is being annoyed by the expansion of other Civ3; I constantly have the Romans trying to get into my land building cities. In fact they have done it three times but two of those times the city has converted over to me. Again a 'normal' AI would not have had this happen to them.

Define "normal".

Is 'normal' simply sitting there with only two or three cities waiting placidly for another AI or Human player to destroy your civilization? I think not.

'Normal' would be trying to ensure the survival of your civilization by grabbing as much land, and hence resources, as soon as possible. Yes, this does mean that the AI will expand like crazy, which is fine because as a player I expand as fast as possible myself.

All these 'solutions' are very narrow minded.

1. Have a 3 pop cost settler. Say what? So now the expansionistic phase lasts longer?

Yep, that fixes the 'problem'.

2. Have CCB. Huh? So much for transporting that settler to the other side of your continent, around the AI's civ to get those juicy resources.

Yep, that fixes the 'problem'.

3. Make each city border touch or not be able to found that city. WTF? The idea was to get RID OF ICS, not promote it.

Yep, that fixes the 'problem'.

4. Not allow a city to found if it's borders touch an opposing civ's borders. Huh? Gee, I guess there goes the idea of converting enemy cities by making then touch more of the culture border of my civ.

(In other words, get a high culture and build a city like a wedge into a culturally weaker AI's empire, you convert cities quicker).

Yep, that fixes the 'problem'.

The only problem I have seen is that the AI settles in some of the worst possible places like the middle of a desert or in an area with all tundra, hills & mountians.

If the AI could be tweaked so they wouldn't settle these areas so readily unless vital resources were there (and maybe use colonies more) then this wouldn't be an issue.

As for those who complain they can't build any culture improvements while expanding...

What have you been building between settlers?? Usually a temple fills the gap nicely between the settlers. Add a wall, and granery in there (depending on city growth due to available food) and you can easily have city infrastructure, culture, and empire growth all at once.

BTW, ICS means you plop your cities down extremely close to another. Expanding like crazy does NOT equal ICS.

As far as the AI having small cities all over the place.. Well, that's what those temples in between settlers are for and that's what war's are for. On Regent level (only level I have played thus far) usually on the second warning I get the option to declare war or not. If they don't leave or declare war then I mop them up, or try to.

[LaRusso]

two years ago:
1> "we want AI that is not like CTP AI and will expand really agressively". we want AI to kick ass!
2. november 2001: "AI is even more agressive than we are! help! argh! it is annoying! it plays like a civ2 vet!"
hehehe, well, one can not satisfy them all....
so when is the patch out?
yin are you enjoying the game? i am glued to the screen

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by yin26
Well, I just tested it again. Same two civs but just a few turns later. Same AI settlers, actually. This time, it did NOT work.

Now, I hate to scream 'bug' at this point, but I honestly can't see what the nice feature that worked just a few turns ago does not work a few turns later?

If Firaxis could keep the 'one warning then next turn you must declare war if still on my land' rule in place, that would really help this situation.

There is a system in place to determine when you can just warn the AI to get out and when you can demand that they get out in lieu of war. It depends on the number of turns they have been in your territory, how close they have come to your cities, how many of the units are combat units, whether they are on land or sea, etc. At any rate, the AI follows the same rules you do in this regard... it can only demand that you get out if your incursion has reached the "second level."

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by LaRusso
two years ago:
1> "we want AI that is not like CTP AI and will expand really agressively". we want AI to kick ass!
2. november 2001: "AI is even more agressive than we are! help! argh! it is annoying! it plays like a civ2 vet!"
hehehe, well, one can not satisfy them all....
so when is the patch out?
yin are you enjoying the game? i am glued to the screen

LOL!!

If they tone it down then more people will complain that the AI doesn't expand enough and are too easy to beat.

Me thinks people should work to win, or deal with the game situation through dipolmacy and culture if they refuse to expand.

Oh well, I like assimilating enemy cities the AI founds near my borders, means less settlers I have to build..

[player3]

Yin, I disagree with some of your solutions to the ICS problem. I know your opinion on them has evolved a bit since your first post in this thread, but for simplicity I'll respond to the points made in the initial post;

1) CCBs: Other people have addressed the problem with this already, stating that you can't start new cities on other continents. My other problem is that people's strategies (including my own) don't necessarily follow your 'flowering' analogy. Consider the following situation: you start a game where there are two areas rich in resources separated by a natural barrier of mountains and jungle. Many players would rush to build citys on both sides of the barrier and later link them with roads. This would be impossible with CCBs, and would force you to build citys in the jungle/mountain region before you could access whatever lies beyond. Personally I'd rather build cities on both sides first and then link them with roads later.

Foreign settlers building citys within your empire can get annoying but I don't object to it since you can do the same to them. It's an interesting strategy; they're effectively disrupting your empire in a 'peaceful' manner. Furthermore, I can see how the player could use this to THEIR advantage (for example, found a city in somebody else's territory to cut off their trade route without going to war!!)

2) Settler Deportation: This sounds like the 'Expel/Kill Diplomat' option from Civ2. This is reasonable, except in most of my games the settler is escorted by a military unit. This would also do nothing to stop settlers transported by naval units. Also, I've noticed that sometimes it will give you the option to demand that they leave/else declair war, as Soren noted. But I've had instances where I would ask a foreign worker to leave several times and 5 turns later he's nowhere closer to leaving than when I first told him. Ugh.

With regards to ICS in general, the introduction of new corruption conditions, the culture factor and bonus resources for large cities makes ICS less feasable in my opinion. More tweaking may be needed, but we don't need something extreme like CCB, IMHO.

[Arrian]

Here are my thoughts on the matter, having played several games now (mostly on Warlord):

- AI expansion, by and large, is a good thing... it makes me work. Access to resources is critical, so early expansion is obviously key.

- The latter stages of AI expansion are silly. The AI, as Yin pointed out, will expend time and energy (and attempt to violate your borders) in order to plunk down cities that are on bad terrain/are too far away from his Cap. to be useful/will be assimilated by your culture anyway. If there is a scrap of land ANYWHERE, the AI will build a city there.

- I personally wonder how the AI seems to get to islands in the middle of nowhere so quickly (especially when they are using only galleys) in the game. It would be nice to stumble upon a small piece of empty land (say big enough for 4-5 cities) during the Industrial era... ala colonial times.

- Regarding kicking people off your land... in my latest game I didn't have a problem, really. I managed to prevent them from walking through my territory to found cities (the zulus tried no less than 6 times). I think what helped was that due to the geography, in order to get by me they had to get through a bunch of territory. If the border was only, say... three squares deep, they probably could've just waltzed right on through.

- Slightly off the topic of the thread: colonies. Twice now I've built a colony in neutral territory in order to gain access to a key resource. This was because the surrounding land was pretty bad and thus not worthy of a city. The AI came along a little while afterward and plopped down a city one square over from the colony, thus swallowing the colony. Apparently, this is totally kosher. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing... but my initial reaction was WTF!

-Arrian

[Ralf]

Originally posted by yin26
1) "Continguous City Borders" -- CCBs

The idea is simple: You may found a city ONLY if its borders will touch your existing border.

The way you describe this problem (havent played the game yet) certainly sounds alarming. I have no problem with completely occupied modern-era maps (on the contrary; I hated those large areas of Civ-2 style no-mans-land) - but the expansion must be slower and more natural for all participants.

An alternative to above "Continguous City Border" idea, could also be that a new city cannot be founded unless its road-connected to another city.
In other words; you must prepare in advance, by building a road from an already existing city to that prefered city-placement. As the icing of the cake; you found that new city in conjunction to the newly built road.
The first city on islands/continents previously uninhabited by your people, is obviously excused.

[Arrian]

I almost forgot...

I was pondering the AI's tendency to violate the human player's borders when something occurred to me - have you ever mistakenly ordered a combat unit to move into an AI unit? Remember what happens? There is a pop-up box which gives you two options: 1) Oops, didn't mean that; and 2) Yes, KILL!

Simple solution: same thing w/borders. "Supreme leader, such a move will violate the sovereign territory of China, and will lead to a major international incident." 1) Oops. 2) Consequenses Shmonsequences!

This would obviously have to apply to the AI as well as the human player. Thus, borders would act as barriers, unless you are willing to invade.

This makes the most sense to me... after all, civilian airliners have been shot down in real life because they strayed into the wrong airspace.

-Arrian

[libredr]

I like these two ideas to prevent ICS. There are other solutions however.

There is an Open Source/Free version of Civ which is called Freeciv (http://www.freeciv.org), which is an excellent clone of civII for Win, Linux, and other OSes. They have also worked on ways to prevent ICS (they call it "smallbox") by increasing the number of unhappiness citizens when the number of cities is too important and/or they are too close. They have completely solved the ICS issue. The whole thing is explained on http://www.freeciv.org/tutorials/nopox.html However, I like your idea to use borders.

What is funny is that Civ3 will have an "open source" rule improvements from now (hope so !). If, like for Freeciv, Firaxis uses the ideas and critics found in this forum, the game could be really brilliant. IMO, they are too far away of the "Civ" game style, e. g. I don't like the planes movement system : I prefered to move the airplanes myself... But I love borders.

[Admiral PJ]

Well I suppose having to join your cities together for new cities would be good, perhaps something to do with far colonies being too expensive to maintain unless you have a leader :doitnow: or something better (like a famous explorer/christopher columbus /James Cook for new zealand etc).

A game that did this was Birth of the federation, by having a 'fuel' limit to how far you could travel with medium class ships, which included settler colony ships so you had to make outposts and other colonies nearby before you could settle.

[eMarkM]

I disagree that anything needs to be changed, though the idea of far off cities going barbarian is interesting. Many have made points that you need to defend your borders and this has worked for me. Not everytime, of course, but I keep my eyes peeled for those pesky little settler/warrior combos and rush units over to out flank 'em. Not just from coming into my empire, but trying to claim those open spaces between our empires that are open to all. Often they retreat back into their own territory even if they can normally slip by w/o ZOC. This is very compelling early game action that NEVER occurred in Civ2. Far from being annoyed, I like this feature.

A lot of people saying the AI builds cities in "silly" spots like mountains, tundra and jungles. In Civ2, no one built cities in these areas and they would remain unclaimed throughout the game. But with strategic resources, there's no such thing as a silly spot to claim territory. Jungle, mountains, tundra, desert and other "silly" terrain is where the great bulk of strat resources lie. Look at the terrain table in the manual and see what kind of terrain they appear in. Grassland with a shield and a river next to it is great, but you're not going to find uranium there. Oil, for example only appears in desert, tundra and plains. So that ugly, unproductive spot of desert you don't want may be unappealing now, but when the civ that claims it has the only petro on your continent, you'll be kicking yourself for not having in your borders.

e

[Admiral PJ]

I like the idea of needing roads connecting land before you settle a city.. I might add that in my big game i'm making

Some games like MOO have different nearby settlers and remote settlers, this might work here.. use pioneers for distant settlements.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


There is a system in place to determine when you can just warn the AI to get out and when you can demand that they get out in lieu of war. It depends on the number of turns they have been in your territory, how close they have come to your cities, how many of the units are combat units, whether they are on land or sea, etc. At any rate, the AI follows the same rules you do in this regard... it can only demand that you get out if your incursion has reached the "second level."

Thanks for checking in, Soren.

I'm glad that the AI follows the same rules.

[Stuie]

Double post! Bah!!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
I like the idea of needing roads connecting land before you settle a city...

I think this road-connected newbie-cities idea could be easy to implement a an option. After all; its not that big difference, game-mechanically speaking, if a colony must be road-connected in order to produce output, compared with a city that must be road-connected in order to produce output, is it? Of course, the AI must be able to adjust, of course.

A compromize would be: Lets say you could found a city anywhere, but unless its road-connected (or harbour-connected) it wont grow beyond 1 pop.

I think this idea would solve Player3:s argument as well:
"Consider the following situation: you start a game where there are two areas rich in resources separated by a natural barrier of mountains and jungle. Many players would rush to build citys on both sides of the barrier and later link them with roads. This would be impossible with CCBs"

[Ralf]

Double-post. Sorry!