A Solutions to ICS

[chiefpaco]

Actually, the most extensive ICS thread I've seen was at Apolyton, where I participated, but was ignored.... Way too long to read in 1 sitting, but for those interested:

Getting Rid of ICS - No free centre square

Some ideas were to increase the settler cost to 3 citizens. That might make them come at way more of a premium. That would also slow down the land grab.

Also, extend the concept of corruption to culture. To me, that is not a good idea...

Multiple cultural buildings/city. Might encourage big production centres over many smaller ones...

 

[MAS]

I have a WAY better solution!

Instead of restricting the player in how to play the game, why not improve the AI to include ICS as one of their strategy options!

Small towns close to each other is how it looks like here in Europe, and they are being swallowed up by bigger city's at the moment. Our small towns share a city hall, effectively becomming one bigger city district.
In the game, you can start with ICS, and later abonden city's to allow bigger ones that are more effective in republic or demo.
So for realety's sake, there is no need to curse at ICS!

The real problem is that the AI is stopid! It just uses the most optimal strategy for every situation, rather than adopting its strategy depending on its situation. And the firaxians simply forget to think about ICS when they created the AI.
I don't see how that's imposseble to progrem, it just needs more things to check true or false before doing a certain action, or a certain set of actions! Of course it won't be as good a human, but it can still improve!

UPDATE:
I mean, take shakka for example, in most games he sux becouse he is warring all the time but does noet improve his city's or his tiles! In one of my games his largest city was size 7 in the industrial age!
ICS would be great for this guy, it would give him just the extra punsch that he lacks! The extra unit support would also be exactly what he needs, combined with the fact his fav gov is despot, and in despot towns support 4 units instead of 2!

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

MAS - that's the best suggestion i've heard so far. rather than the continuous narrowing of the latitude for the human, expand the latitude for the AI.

 

[Craterus22]

edit - i missed reading the second page when I posted thus my suggestion is slightly repetitive


I havent played the game in several months, but I don't recall the AI using ICS in the game... this might be what some are talking about when they say "in the spirit of the game". Anything I could do the AI should be able to do - in fact why not have the AI follow my lead some of the time(then save it in a custom build file when successful)?

One of the things that was good about the process of making my map(at least as far as information gathering goes), was that you could see that the AI places the cities in the same spaces nearly everytime. In fact the ONLY time they didn't place a city in the same exact spot was when i placed a city to force them somewhere else...

There is very little variation in the strategy of the AI... It would be nice if some civs used different strats... defensive megolopolis culture builders vs. offensive ICS bodycount builders vs aggressive researcher vs. etc.

 

[Agamemnus]

chiefpaco, I think we might be talking about different things.

I take ICS as an early strategy to increase the amount of cities by using overlap.. perhaps your idea of ICS is actually using all the squares? I hope I haven't offended.

Now, if it is the latter, then I say why not? What's wrong with taking advantage of your land?

And the former, you said that ICS gives you more production, culture, and income. I disagree. There is still the same amount of space to work with, it is only divided into two cities: and both must pay improvement costs (and for the improvements themselves) on what otherwise would have been one improvement.. The same amount of resources involved, but twice (or more) buildings.. supposing that your cities get to sizes >17, of course.

If you space your cities so that they include all of the titles near your 2 capitals, you don't need to clutter that space with more cities. You would in fact get more corruption because of the limiting optimum city number..

ICS is a limited strategy used to pump out units in preparation for an ancient/early middle ages (dark ages?) war.. if you can make settlers fast enough..)

Using ICS depends on whether you can get a lot of land early, I suppose.. I never get any land in Deity.. and the AI almost always get 4 wheat tiles in their first 3 cities! (That's why they don't use ICS) And I don't use ICS either. Maybe that's why I keep losing..

 

[GI Josh]

The problem right now is that there is virtually no downside to ICS. The fun for the human is the strategy and art of playing off benefits, drawbacks, and risks. Do I go light on military to build infrastructure? What's the risk of an attack by neighbor Y? How much will an alliance cost, instead of building military? etc., etc., etc.

ICS has very little downside, and thus unbalances the game. I've won with widely spaced cities, but on MP, I'd be a fool to do it, it's all downside with little gain. I don't like a rigid rule spacing out cities. Sometimes it makes sense to have them close together, and this happens in real life also. There need to be more drawbacks. I think 1 unhappy face for every overlapped tile is too much, but some ratio of overlapped tile to unhappiness is a good idea.

My humble idea: decrease food production in each city by 1 for each overlapping tile (or perhaps for every 2 overlapping tiles). Tightly packed cities will be possible and perhaps wise where in fertile grasslands and floodplains, not so wise on less productive land, like plains. This mimics real life and more importantly, adds some depth to game play, without the strait jacket of rigid distance rules. Think of it this way - a city needs its full radius, even if a particular tile is not being worked at a particular time (think crop rotation, living space, whatever). The penalty is not overwhelmingly harsh, but not too weak either.

Reactions?

 

[Bamspeedy]

If you space your cities so that they include all of the titles near your 2 capitals, you don't need to clutter that space with more cities. You would in fact get more corruption because of the limiting optimum city number..

If you build dense enough each city will use every single tile when at population 6 or 7 (sometimes less than this). Why wait for your cities to get to size 12 to use every available tile? And for size 12 cities you need alot of happiness improvements. ICS players don't build infrastructure. Barracks maybe, but nothing else, just settlers, workers and military units. Marketplaces and aqueducts only in the milking phase of the game. The corruption is not a strong enough handicap. Even with 1 shield cities, if you have 100+ cities and poprush a horseman out of each one.....

A good example of ICS is available in the HOF forum in the Civ 3 HoF thread. I uploaded a couple saves yesterday where I played China. Only built barracks, settlers, workers, and chariots/horseman/riders. I have 120+ cities and 90+workers and got 6 great leaders by 10 A.D. Monarch level.

Do you think that is a little unbalancing? If I end up needing to build bigger units (like tanks), I would just disband some of my cities around the palaces to allow those cities to grow bigger for more production. Since I have no improvements in them, there is no lost investment there.

 

[MAS]

Look, you guys don't get it!

If you want to challance yourself, then do so!
In the Realms Beond clan they do almost nothing else than restricting themself to up the challance!

There is absolutely nothing that forces you to use ICS against your will!

If you think ICS is a lame way of winning the game than thats OK
But i think playing chieftian mode is even more lame!
Still i often play in chieftian just becouse its relaxing. If i want challance i play regent, and if i want even more challance i play 5CC or some other variant.

The only problem is that the AI is stupid and the human is smart.
But you using your logic on that one can even consider it cheating to manually controll workers becouse the AI can't controll its workers the same smart way a human does!

So all that you want is give the AI some slack so that it has a fair chance against the human! Same as when you play chess against a young child, you'd play very "gentle" to make it more fair for the child! Well, go ahead!

I agree with you that some games have certain things that a human player can do but can be concidered not to be in the spirid of the game! Mostly in RPG's where a certain fluke allows you to level your character very fast but destroys the role playing aspect of the game. No prob in SP here but in MP i often wish they would patch such a cheat out of existance!

But in Civ3 and with ICS this is not the case!
In multyplayer (with PTW) your opponand has the same options as you at his disposal so ICS would not be a problem in multyplayer.

In singleplayer one can consider it unfair becouse the AI never uses it, but the ultimate solution for this problem would be to make the AI use ICS! Exactly what i said before!

 

[Matrix]

MAS, have you read what Bamspeedy said? All these people who use ICS only build settlers, workers, units and perhaps barracks. Now that's lame! I once played Civ2 against Woke23. He won because he used ICS to the extend. I know I could've but there's really no fun in it. Civ3 is a complex game, but ICS spoils all sorts of funny little aspect.

I can imagine that if ICS remains to exist I'll never play MP with some people because it's simply boring. And I'd really hate that.

GI Josh's idea about decrease of food is not such a bad idea either.

I wonder what Firaxis' view on this is...

 

[MAS]

I understand your point!

In MMORPG's there is this Player Killer problem. While almost everyboddy agree's there should be an option to kill other players in a RPG for no reasen other than its fun, becouse after all, you could roleplay an evil character

However, there are so manny Player killers in some RPG's that you'l start to treat other players like just an other "monster" that has a slightly better AI.
While the purpose of an MMORPG is that you can interact with other players!!

So i can understand the problem, the problem is just that there are so manny ppl bend on bloodlust! yeah, it sais something about human nature!

the only solution is to form clan's or guides where one can trust one and other, and agree with each other about some extra rules.

Take an example from the Realms Beyond clan!

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

bottom line is, if u don't like it...don't use it...as we have all pointed out, the AI does not use it so u never have to worry about it when playing what u consider fun games.

if for the purposes of this site's HOF another rule needs to be made against ICS, then fine. i may have misunderstood the motivations for this anti-ICS stance a lot of people as i am assuming it's for the HOF. if indeed i misunderstood the motivations then this whole debate makes no sense.

 

[Agamemnus]

I see why ICS is so powerful, now, Bamspeedy.

Thoughts:

I have never used ICS but I imagine it's more micromanagement.. I don't like micromanagement..

What you could do is just increase corruption / shield waste for every overlapping tile.. (and conversely decrease corruption as a whole as well)

Or you could make it so that a city is absorbed into other cities around it automatically if it doesn't use much land.

Usually ICS would require a lot of good land in one spot, and I usually only have small patches of land, whereas my opponents have gigantic stretches of good land.. ICS also limits expansion, and acreage IS acreage.

I build my cities near river tiles if possible and I try to get them to grow to 12 as fast as possible..

In conclusion, my opinion is still unchanged:

IMHO, 'my land, my choice'

 

[Merd346]

This is the first I've heard of this play stile, but it doesn't sound like much fun to me because it's totaly opposite of how I play. I like to try to have as many large, productive cities as I can with my capital being the best. While this may not maximize score it does make for a more enjoyable experience.
Maybe instead of using negative things like penalties for overlaps they could award bonus points for larger cities. Say, for instance, double the points for citizens over 12 and triple points for citizens over 20? I don't think this would help in MP though because the person going for bigger cities would just get wiped out by the ICS guy:die:

 

[Beard Rinker]

One thing I think all can agree on is ICS was not the way the game designers intended the game to be played and it does give you an advantage. Sure, you can win without using this strategy but once Play the World is released that may no longer be true.

To me, any game strategy that meets this criteria is essentially an exploit. This differs from not automating workers as when you move your workers manually, you're usually not doing anything with them that they were not intended to do, your just being smarter with them. By that definition there are certainly allot of exploits but in my opinion ICS is the most powerful and unbalancing exploit in the game. BTW, an exploit with workers might be to prevent a ship from landing.

Having a rule for ICS for GOTM, HOF or PTW is not very practical either. Agreeing exactly where reasonable overlap ends and ICS begins is tricky. Add to that other sticky issues like what if I assmimilate or capture an city that meets the ICS definition or what if I need to build one close city to facilitate an invasion. With other exploits like excessive pop rushing or worker dogpiles, there is not much gray area between using or not using the strategy so a rule about it works fine.

Modifying the AI to use this strategy also does not seem like a good idea. The game was clearly not intended to be played this way so why would Firaxis adopt this strategy when there are so many ways this strategy could be negated. I'm quite sure it would be far easier to implement one of the solutions in this thread than to program the AI to use this strategy.

ICS is a fact of life in this game. You don't have to use it and you can still win at most, if not all levels. Not using it does put you at a disadvantage in any GOTM style tournament and could mean your death in PTW. My dim hope though is for some future patch that plugs this obvious exploit.

 

[Matrix]

Hear, hear... Good post, Beard Rinker!

ICS is indeed a very tough thing to disallow for any tournament thing. That's why it bothers me so much, cos I get punished because I don't use it.

 

[hr_oskar]

Personally I hate playing ICS (though I'm no anti-overlap perfectionist either), and prefer to play my games without resorting to that.

For Civ3 we can only hope for some arbitrary solution to limit ICS, it's too late to make the radical changes necessary.

For Civ4 I hope we'll get a fundamentally different system that will make ICS-or-not irrelevant. The land and its resources should be the main asset, not simply each city having value only through being an arbitrarily defined 'city'; cities in reality are primarily centers of distribution, manufacture, military, and culture, not the alpha and omega of human civilization.

I'm saying that way the question of many or few, small or large, cities, would simply be a matter of which way you can most efficiently distribute the food and materials, and manufacture from those materials. As part of the same system, a city's access to resources (i.e. food and shields) should depend on the strength of your infrastructure (roads, harbors, transportation technology), not an arbitrary city radius.

 

[MAS]

To all those of you who keep going on about how ICS should be patched away by firaxis:

Unlike popular belief, A game is made by its players, not the devolepers!
Devolepers only make the tools. And becouse there are just as much diffrent wants and needs as there are people, those tools need to be as flexible as possible in order to be good!

Take a look at the history of playing with a ball!
there are lots of diffrent fun things you can do with a ball. But playing with each other is even more fun. But how do you play? do you use your food to kick the ball? can you pick it up and throw, or does dat make the game cheesy?
Like minded ppl joined together to play with a ball in a way they agreed with each other. They formed communety's, club's, whatever.
All those way's to play with a ball eventually evolved into the diffrent ball sports we have today!
And even now, there is absolutely no one who forces you to (or is allowed to force you IMHO) use a football soly to play football with, or to play football exactly according to the official rules!

The same with computer games! Maybe a bit diffrent becouse the tools are more complex and only devolepers are able to make them.
But if you want to play civ3 in a certain way, then do so and go enjoy yourself!
if you want to play civ3 in a certain way, with others, then form or join a community/clan/club/guide or whatever of like minded people and go enjoy Yourself together!

 

[Bamspeedy]

The people who hate ICS do for the most part avoid it and play to their preferable playing style. They are just commented on how unfair it is when the other guy builds his cities ICS style. In the HoF or GOTM the players who are playing their stlyle (non-ICS) will rarely be on the top of the leaderboard. Sure, most play the GOTM just for fun, but they would like to see their score towards the top, too .

And when MP comes out, how would you play AGAINST someone using ICS? You'll be peacefully building your marketplaces in your 5 size 9 cities, wondering what your opponent is doing with his 15 size 3 cities, when all the sudden out of the fog comes 30 horseman!!

Will it result in certain players being labelled as an ICS player, so anyone who doesn't want to play ICS will avoid that person like a disease?

 

[Tassadar]

I never played an ics game, neither against someone using it, but i am pretty sure if i reach Chevalry and i can produce knight in 3-5 turn, no ics will stand up against that, unless they are on another continent.

ics can built only cheap units, do you realy think a 1 or 2 shield city can produce knight, i dont think so.

So i think too counter an ics, you need to attack them with knight, i am pretty sure a stack of 20 knight will crush those little and worthless city defended by cheap units.

I prefer much more 12 city pumping out 15 - 23 shiled than 70 city pumping 2 shiled.

ics is an extrem settler diarhea, and i dont beleive it is THE BEST way of playing the game. It may work against a deficient a.i. but not against a skill human.

ics player will start building city improvement around 1000 bc, while aroud that time all my size 12 city got marketplace,bank, university, cathedral and give me 20 shield per turn with an income close to 1000 gold per turn.

Edit: mistake, you should read 1000 a.d. and not 1000 b.c. sorry.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Tassadar, did you take a look at my game in the HoF thread? Even without any libraries or marketplaces I am making lots of money. I can use all that money for several purposes. I could have saved up all that money and upgrade 100+ horsemen to riders when I got chivalry. But I researched instead and focused more on settlers and workers, than horseman, so I only had about 30 or so horseman. With every tile mined I can still produce more riders at a decent pace to replenish my riders that do get killed.

On smaller maps, ICS players will slam you before you reach chivalry. And escpecially before you reach Fuedalism and get pikeman. Spearman are so much easier for your veteran horseman to kill than pikeman. When you get rushed, you won't have the time to build all your fancy libraries and marketplaces, you will be building defense just to ward off the attack.

1000 gold/turn at 1000 B.C.??? Are you exaggerating things just a little here?