A Solutions to ICS

[Beard Rinker]

There is little debate that ICS style city layout is the best strategy for city layout. This is true regardless of whether your goal is fastest finish by some victory condition or the most points. However, in my opinion, this strategy is not within the spirit of the game and it just plain bugs me.

A simple modification to negate this strategy would be a penalty of one unhappy face for every tile that is overlaped by another one of your cities. This would include the 21 tile area that can be worked, not the entire cultural boundary. For example, if your capital had 3 tiles overlapping a neighboring city of yours, the capital and the neighboring city would have three unhappy faces each.

This of course requires a modification to the game and is not likely to happen, but one can hope. I have gotten away from the ICS style with my cities seldom having more than 2 tiles of overlap. It's allot more fun and much less tedious.

 

[SirJethro]

That's pretty brutal. Sometimes there is a reason to put them close even if you aren't playing ICS (say in one part of your empire). Under your proposal, if you placed cities so they each just got their initial 9 tile square, there would be 12 overlapping squares per city in that area.

That would be 12 unhappy faces. Probably a bit harsh.

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

civ3 police, eh? if u do not like ICS and it's not fun for u, please do not use it. But to even think about imposing what you think is the "spirit of the game" on the rest of us is unbelievably audacious. Indeed there are penalties for crowding - there are unhappy faces for that. The size of cities is determined by the food tiles available and the number of citizens to work them and their state (happy/content/unhappy). When your empire starts, u could have all the food available but there are not enough citizens to work the tiles without overlapping cities. Why should one be limited to this wasteful result just to serve a nebulous "spirit of the game"?

 

[Beard Rinker]

SirJethro
I'm not saying there are no reasons to crowd cities. There are plenty of good ones, all of which go directly towards exploiting the game for maximum points or fastest finish. The game can be won without crowding cities on all levels up to perhaps deity. It's a little more challenging, more fun and much less tedious.

wohmongarinf00l
No worries, nothing will come from this. It is mearly the opinion of one player.

It doesn't matter how you cut it though, with the current game rules do not penalize crowding but encourage it. More total production and commerce. Fewer and cheaper improvements required in most cities. More points if that matters. The added corruption due to city count does not nearly counteract the benifits.

Yet despite this obvious advantage all of your AI opponents do not use this strategy. That alone tells me this is not the way the game is intended to be plyed.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Beard Rinker

Yet despite this obvious advantage all of your AI opponents do not use this strategy. That alone tells me this is not the way the game is intended to be plyed.

Yep, we should all just play crappy.

 

[chiefpaco]

Now that is overcrowding! Nice idea. A penalty but a possibility. The extreme closeness of some cities would make the people very unhappy and very unproductive - and therefore accomplish exactly what needs to be done to hamper ICS's strengths.

I was just playing Master of Magic a bit this week and there, they do not let cities be built within 3 squares of another. There's another way, though more restricting.

 

[Matrix]

Why start a second thread about the same subject?

Anyway, what I suggested in the other thread about ICS:
Increase the corruption for every overlapping square.

 

[Homie]

Color me ignorant, but what is ICS style?

 

[Jon Shafer]

ICS: Infinite City Sprawl.

Basically, putting all cities very close to each other.

Clearly, it is along the lines of an exploit, and is out of the spirit of the game, and could use fixing, just like early game Archer/Horseman/Swordsman rushing. With a bit of refinement, I would consider this a fine idea.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Matrix,

I didn't see the thread you started. What are the odds of two people starting nearly identical threads on the same day on this obscure topic? For anyone interested, here it is.

I don't think increasing corruption would have much of an effect on this strategy. With ICS style, most of your cities are at maximum corruption anyway. This would prevent ICS in your core cities, but not in the outer regions.

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by Beard Rinker
I didn't see the thread you started. What are the odds of two people starting nearly identical threads on the same day on this obscure topic? For anyone interested, here it is.

That's the one I ment, but never mind. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough, but my intentions were the same.

Originally posted by Beard Rinker
I don't think increasing corruption would have much of an effect on this strategy. With ICS style, most of your cities are at maximum corruption anyway. This would prevent ICS in your core cities, but not in the outer regions.

If maximum corruption occurs anyway, why build them? My thought was that it's lucrative because you get commerce and production of almost all squares instead of just six per city radius.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Originally posted by Matrix
If maximum corruption occurs anyway, why build them? My thought was that it's lucrative because you get commerce and production of almost all squares instead of just six per city radius.

Even at maximum you still get 1 shield, sometimes 2. Multiply that by 8 gazillion and it is a force. Food production is also not subject to corruption or waste and if you combine that with pop-rushing it can be a substantial factor. Another useful pupose for garbage cities is to milk for points. Pack those cities in and you can cover every square up to the domination limit with a happy working citizen.

Check out Aeson's Expansionist Chariot Gambit with ICS topping for idea of the horrifing power of ICS style. He makes great use of those garbage cities.

 

[Matrix]

Hmm... Point taken.

Perhaps unhappy citizen would be better, but a bit toned down then. I mean, a bit overlap shouldn't hurt. Like: after 3 squares of overlap, every extra overlap produces one unhappy citizen. Just an idea.

 

[BCLG100]

it cant be changed it is quite a lot of peoples whole strategy and you dont have to do ICS you can do other types of stuff and still get large amounts of points

 

[Bamspeedy]

Chiefpaco has the best idea and most logical one. Firaxis would just have to program it so that is impossible to build cities with just 1 tile in between. 3 or 4 tiles from one city center to the next would be the closest you could build, for example. This would require players to better plan ahead where they want their cities, so exploring the map ahead of time will become more vital. Imagine building a city and finding that the coast is 2 tiles away, so you can't build a city on the coast! The only problem I see with this is how to figure out diagonals, etc. (like going 2 tiles west and 3 north from one city). The computer may figure out that distance easily, but for the casual player it may be difficult to know if a city can be built there or not.

But of course whatever the minimum distance between cities is, players will push that limit to the max.

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by BCLG100
it cant be changed it is quite a lot of peoples whole strategy and you dont have to do ICS you can do other types of stuff and still get large amounts of points

Quite a lot people used pop-rushing too before that was corrected in a patch. If many people use this doesn't mean it's plain wrong.

Bamspeedy, completely disallowing cities to be built so close to each other doesn't seem like a good idea. Pop-rushing has also not been removed completely. Though one square is indeed very little; they could change that to two. But no more!

 

[chiefpaco]

To elaborate a bit on the minimum spacing restrictions (possibly to 3) as played in Master of Magic.

I find it a very good system. It does make one think a lot about best city sites. For example, if I place one city in a certain spot, I know that knocks out a 7x7 (something like that) grid of possible spots for other cities. What if my island is 10x10? How many cities should I squeeze in there? 1? 2?

To add to this, there are bonuses for being on a certain square, but only if your city is on that square. Like a 5% discount for unit production. Food, Production, and Magic bonuses can be had as well, making the choice very tough. Hmm, should I take the production bonus, or the higher population cap...?

Overlapping city radius' also are penalized with 1/2 production going to the cities. Sounds difficult to calculate? Not at all. A clever mouse-over system lets you see the population, production, gold potential of any square along with any bonuses. All in all, a very good system, especially for a game about a decade old.

Personally, I think this system is the best for many reasons:
- Eliminates ICS. Still want cities packed as closely as possible, to maximize cities, but things do not get ridiculous.
- No corruption to frustrate players.
- Adds more strategy for city placement.
- Known in advance the potential for the city (though there is no tile improvement in this model).

Drawbacks:
- Less customizable for the empire.
But I don't see that being so important. In fact, I appreciate the challenge with having to waste so many good potential city spots with one city. That is where strategy meets fun for me - in the sacrifice of good alternatives - and is something the current game lacks, IMHO. Corruption is a nice idea, but I don't think it should be used to restrict so much.

 

[Agamemnus]

I don't understand what is wrong about ICS... Big cities and small cities occur in groups (patches of civilization) across the world...

If the player wants to more use out of his land in the early stages at the expense of constricting his future growth and decreasing efficiency, what's wrong with that?

What is the spirit of the game anyways? To allow the AI to use cheats? Or is it just my AI that's cheating, and all the others are pure?

 

[chiefpaco]

Originally posted by Agamemnus
I don't understand what is wrong about ICS... Big cities and small cities occur in groups (patches of civilization) across the world...

If the player wants to more use out of his land in the early stages at the expense of constricting his future growth and decreasing efficiency, what's wrong with that?

If you asked me, I would say it is because city spacing and locations are quite a no-brainer when it comes to playing Civ 3. Two cities will (for most of the game, if not all) outproduce, outculture, out-"income", one in the same space. Furthermore, military unit support increases, cultural borders grow, and score increases.

Place 1 small city from near the start of a game that would otherwise take 2 or 3 tiles of production away from a city near the end of the game. Now, build a temple and library to get 5 culture points/turn (then 10 after doubling). Then build 20 settlers. Are you not better off?

What combats this? Corruption. Actually, it also helps you. By packing cities around your capital, you actually incur minimal corruption by distance. In most governmental models, new distant cities don't produce much anyway, so you'll reach the cutoff point at some time anyway.

So where is the tradeoff? Rewards for dense city packing and little for those who like to space their cities like the AI. This is just one area where I'd like to see some more strategy.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Chiefpaco,

A little more fundamental of a change then I was suggesting but I like it. No corruption would change the game dynamics significantly.

It just goes to show there are probably allot of easily implemented solutions to discorage ics style play.