@PhilBowles
The slider in Civ1 was a very powerfull tool. The only ressources in Civ1 were Food, Production and Trade. The Trade income was the budget and was divided into Science, Tax (Gold) and Luxuries (Happiness) according to the Players slider settings. The slider allowed to react on circumstances and quickly set a national focus for your empire depending on strategy and circumstances :
- Focus on Science to get access to new buildings, wonders, military units, government types sooner.
- Focus on Gold to rush buy military units or new buildings or to raise your income to pay for the upkeep of buildings, units.
- Focus on Happiness to counter Unhappiness due to lack of happiness buildings after population growth or to support population growth. More population means more production, more Trade. You could also counter war-weariness with Luxuries.
I miss the slider in Civ5. Without slider you have less options for game-play, e.g. to counter temporary Unhappiness. The slider is in Civ1 - Civ4 and it is a brilliant but simple game mechanic which contributed a lot to the fame of civilization.
By installing (up to 3)
trade-routes to other cities with high trade income, the trade income of every city in Civ1 could be significantly increased, and so the trade-route also
increased Science and Tax Income, which is equivalent to a (turn based) Economic and Science Agreement. In Civ4, open borders and trade routes usually generated up to 50% of national commerce (trade) income.
So by having trade routes between cities, you don't need to implement extra Research Agreements. The trade routes in Civ1 had revenues based on the two cities' real trade income, the Civ5 Research-Agreements on the opposite grant fantastic Research Results which are only based on Tech costs of Techs which are ready for research idependent of the two nations national Science output.
The new Civ5 trade routes actually represent a national tax system where all cities connected to capital pay around 1-1,25 Gold per pop per turn, completely independent of the cities economical value etc. The benefit of big cities is that the road / railroad costs to connect the city per pop is cheaper. The trade routes in Civ1 had revenues based on the two cities' real trade income.
ICS is quite natural.
It is natural, that a growing world population sooner or later will claim or settle all habitable and profitable parts of the planet. Todays world is completely partioned into countries with borders. In Civ-games population is represented as cities. Territory is claimed by building cities like placing stones on GO-board. And more territory often means more ressources. (Add national territory and diplomatic borders and you don't need that many cities in sibiria.) I would expect the world-map to fill with cities as long as people can make a living where they settle, even if the small cities do not contribute anything to tax or Science. Founding new cities / colonies is a natural process. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonies_in_antiquity for ICS in history.)
(In history colonies and new cities often were more or less independent from the motherland but had intense trade relations with it and were more likely to form defensive alliances against common enemies, etc. due to common origin and culture. In a Civ game this would result in many small independent, neutral greek cities around the coast of mediterraneum sea.)
Usually the more profitable / habitable regions in reach were settled first. Especially before entering industrial age, most people were just living from agricultural labour and every population growth forced the surplus people to emigrate to new habitable regions.
With industrialisation age, rural depopulation started. (Change the game mechanics to a Colonization-like game where you can freely move your population and food surplus and you will probably concentrate pop in your most developed tall cities where they are more productive (and have a higher salary) compared to the smaller, less developed cities.)
The modern developed world benefits from Free Trade, Globalization and modern Logistics. Cities can grow to very tall Metropolitan Regions where millions of people can live and work while food and ressources from all over the world are transported to these tall cities in exchange of consumer products and services. A global war or war between industrial nations would cost everybody much more in wealth and prosperity than could be won by either side so the industrial developed countries abstained from maior wars after WW2. (Wars against smaller, isolated countries as Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria, Irak, etc. do not count.)
The strength of ICS in Civ-games is based on (unrealistic) simplistic game mechanics as
- the free city tile production,
- the fact that population growth is based on food production,
- the fact that small cities grow faster than huge cities,
- the fact that there are no extra costs based on distance for transporting exploited ressources or collecting taxes or contributing to Science or installing a local government.
- the fact that most ressources are just additive, e.g. every single Science Point adds to Research, every single Gold coin adds to treasury.
- the fact that each new city is automatically added to your empire
- the fact that empires in Civ are stable and do not occasionally split into different fragments when reaching a certain size.
Effect of ICS and size of world population in Civ is still limited by available land-mass and Food-production (if you ignore the fantastic food production of maritime city states which is based on number of cities). The AI always seems to go for ICS except on small islands maps where they have problems to explore / settle.
Success of ICS in Civ1 was based on choosing the right government type, since corruption was limiting the benefit of more cities. Democracy and Communism helped against corruption.
... the general overwhelming dominance of large empires over small ones
Dominance is based on elements like effeciency (corruption), organisation (government), Tech Level, Ressources, Population-size, Industrial Production, economy / trade partners, but also military allies and global outposts / military bases.
In Civ your economy, research and production usually scale with the number of developed cities. The more developed cities you have, the faster you can research new techs and the more superior military units you can build, etc. But this is caused by the simplistic, unrealistic game mechanics for scientific research in Civ. In real life, You can't just add science points of millions of different people to get a new tech. (See
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=460497 for suggestions how to limit science progress in ICS.) In history, scientific progress was not guaranteed. Allthough there were society types which supported scientific research more than others. If one your neighbours had a new tech you could try to copy / reengineer or buy it. If you were unlucky, he would use the Tech against you.
History is filled with examples of large empires dominating smaller countries. However people usually remember the exceptions :
- Alexander (conquered persia with superior strategy and disciplined, experienced troops.)
- The Mongol invasions ...
- The Viking invasions ...
- The British Empire (success was based on their advance in modern weapons as well as their superior navy which gave them a naval monopol to the seas (as well as organisational / diplomatic skills to exploit the colonies at low costs).)
- The dominant powers today are USA, China, India, Russia ... maybe Europe if they would form the United States of Europe. However due to international trade and economic dependencies as well as WW2 experience, high military costs and nuclear weapons they avoid to start maior war compared to the maior powers 100 years ago.
xD.
