A Solutions to ICS

[Tassadar]

Oups little mistake, not 1000 b.c. but a.d. with my forbiden palace almost done.

On smaller map 5 city size 12 is much better than 30 city size 2 IMO. Each got 60 citizen.

I was able to kick out 2 a.i. on my continent with only 3 productive city, so why should i built 30 small and non-productive city ? it is a waste of ressource IMO. With only 3-5 city i can produce horsman or archer very fast while an ics will still produce settler in 15 turn. So for an early strike, it is better with fewer city than a lots small one.

A core city with marketplace and library worth much more than 10 small and corrupted city.

 

[MAS]

Good, so the possible "ultimate guide to PTW multyplayer" would start something like this!

"inteligence is very importand, while you could do without it against the AI, you will be crushed without it against other human players. First of all you need to know if the opponend next to you is going to rush you in the early ages! You can see this by looking at his city layout. If he builds lots of city's very close to each other -often refered to as 'ICS'- then you can bet he is going to pump out some charriots and try to run over you. If there is an other player on the same continent, an alliance would be a good idea! You may also want to do a pre emtive strike and make sure he will have some trouble gettig horses and iron online!" --- possible future quote from "the ultimate guide to PTW"


About wther you enjoy playing this way or not:

Just agree with each other before you start playing not to use ICS!

If you are going to play a ball game with someone you will also agree to some rules before starting to play? not?

If the person opposes,it means he simply does not like a non ICS playing style, then so be it! Play with someone else!

If he sais yes but does no, then that means he is a social nimwit! You can find such persons everywhere in life, just deal with it!
If you have trouble finding reasonable people (on the internet, this appears to be a problem very often, in many games. So Civ PTW will be no exeption!) then join a guild or community!

 

[MAS]

Yes, while the ICS guy is still occupied pumping out settlers, you will have a few better devoleped city's and be in a perfect condition to de a pre emtive strike against him and take some horse and iron resources!

Exactly like i said

 

[hr_oskar]

MAS, I think you need to remember things don't run so smooth when you're playing against human players. Especially on smaller maps. If you have some great build-strategy which in single-player gives you lotsa power around 1000 AD, you can be pretty sure your MP opponents will do anything to ruin your build-up before you ever reach that stage.

As I said, I really don't like ICS; but I'm pretty sure that without any changes to the game, it will dominate MP. And if it will be so, I don't think I'll be very happy to play MP after all

 

[hr_oskar]

BTW, I already played one form of MP civ, Freeciv, where an ICS strategy ruled completely. The Freeciv community called it 'Smallpox'.

 

[chiefpaco]

I can't argue the merits of ICS because I don't use it. I also do not play HOF games and ALWAYS play the way I want to. I understand the arguments made on all sides.

My main point is that settling is a no-brainer. By allowing ICS, the player can get the best out of the lands, no matter what. What I would appreciate about tougher anti-ICS restrictions is that the player is suddenly forced to make sacrifices. As it is now, the player can get just about everything in their lands. The 3-square no-settle zone (or other stricter control methods mentioned) is much more strategic than it is annoying or limiting.

 

[Kemal]

I know that ics/horsemanrush players use their stacked cash to upgrade to knights/riders but wouldn't it be more difficult for those players to reach chivalry in time? After all when a player is a known ics'er other (builder style) players will never trade their technology with this player, that would be like commiting suicide, so the ics player will have to develop those techs himself with all his small corrupted no-library cities.

 

[MAS]

hr_oskar

What you are saying is EXACLY what i am saying about ICS players, The ICS player needs to pump out settlers, other players can then halt his progress when they discover that someone is going ICS!

An other thing.
I may have an other brilliant idea!

What if we just make it impossible to poprusch units?

It makes sense for reality's sake.
The buildup of shields when making an improvement like a temple or harbor, represents the ppl in the city gathering resources and building the damn thing, if you use a whip you can get them to work a lil faster!
The buildup of shields when making a unit represents only for a part the gathering of resources for weapons and armour, aswell as making the weapons and armour. For the other part it represents the training of the soldiers, and that can't be whiped!

(drafting still makes sence becouse they yield conscripts wich is an other word for untrained men!)

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Not all ICS players poprush units or build unending streams of settlers. Never cared much for it.

PTW will be alot more fun for most people, if the opponents play the game with a similar style or skill level, that's for sure. Trade deals will be very much different with human opponents and change the game more than most other factors, IMHO.

CB

 

[MAS]

Yes, humans are not the AI

The AI is stopid, and that is probably why ICS works so well against it! there is no proof it will work just as wel against the human!

No matter how you put it though, ICS yes or no, winning from humans has everything to do with speed! The AI allows you some slack, humans don't.

Sun Tzu sais: "Although people often talk about the stopid haste of war, victory has never been associated with long delay's"

A human will war with you when you are not readdy, and there will be no bribing them with some smallish gold per turn or a lux resource!
If a human wants to defeat you with war, you'll need to pump units like mad, even if you ban ICS, there will be no rest!

The only way to play the game in your "spirid" or whatever you want to call it. Is to play with people who are like you, who have a similar "spirid"!

And you can find such people concentrated in community's, guilds and clan's!

And i believe i have been repeating that for several times now?!

 

[hr_oskar]

You're right, MAS, that ICS will possibly not work properly because of early rushing, just as with other strategies.

I disagree with what you said earlier, that if all the players hate ICS they can simply agree not to play it; it's hard to define and likely to lead to conflicts between players. Like, "Hey, you're playing ICS!" - "No I'm not, I just didn't have anywhere else to place my city".

Perhaps we'll see a "get-the-ICS-guy" convention, where players in some games outlaw ICS and unite against those suspected of playing it.

---

Meanwhile, I'm coming up with my own methods to get ICS out of the single-player game. Currently I've modded the game so that citizens require three food each, and raised the food-yield of most terrains (except tundra and desert). This way, the free city-square is comparably much worse, making it less desirable to fill up your land with city-squares.

 

[Ronald]

ICS is a very powerful strategy for some types of games:
For HOF attempts on huge maps it seems to be the best strategy
For early conquests on small or tiny maps its very bad
For cultural victory at lower difficulties its very good
For fastest domination its not the venue to proceed
For diplomatic victories it has no advantages
For early space race, it could be an option, but I'm not sure its best

To get to my point: ICS is one good strategy for several goals, but is not the answer for everything.
Try the civ tournament and you will find out, that the best players sometimes use ICS (when it fits the required goal) and sometimes take a complete different venue.

Ronald

 

[Tweedledum]

I've never tried ICS (I might give it a go next time...) but it seems a very chancy strategy. Using Bamspeedy's Chinese game as a template:

(a) It needs an absolutely ideal start position (lots of grassland). I wonder how many times he started a game, played a few turns and decided the start location was wrong. I'd bet it was a fair few, and these all (IMHO) count as ICS losing...

(b) If it depends a clearing out your immediate neighbours, then there is a lot of luck involved - Chariots/Horsemen against Spearmen looks marginal unless you've got a hell of a lot of units, but just try it against Hoplites and all you'll have is a big pile of horsemeat at the end (may be OK if you're the French )

(c) In Bamspeedy's game, look at all those undefended cities. Aaargh. Me no like. I'm assuming that ICS also relies on having sedentary barbarians...

 

[Bamspeedy]

When barbarians do attack they take a % of your treasury that is proportionate to the # of cities you have. If you have 10 cities and barbs hit a city they take 10%. If you have 100 cities, they take 1%. 2 cities = 50% of your money.

Yes, you need a good starting position for it to be most effective. It still works on other terrain, just not quite as powerful. ICS players can stop producing settlers also and just produce horseman. Veteran horseman against Regular spearman like the AI had was very easy. I'm sure it would be a little more difficult vs Veteran Spearman. Horseman rush against Greece, yes would be very hard if not impossible to do against a good human player.

With cities built densely, it is alot easier to defend also, as you almost always would have some units nearby in some other city that can come to that city. Or if you poprush from all nearby cities you can quickly recapture any city that is taken. You take 1 city from an ICS player, it is no big deal as that probably represents less than 10% of his empire. If he takes just 1 of your cities, that is a crucial blow for you.

 

[Tassadar]

If i ever play aginst ics , i wont capture their city, i will raze it to dust, one after another what is the point to capture 1 of 30 small city. Which may culture flip and destroy your entire invasion force, capturing an enemy city is like a boomy-trap.

 

[TheNiceOne]

MAS, I think your arguments are quite good, but still I think its something you've overlooked:

An important factor in good strategy games is that there must be several viable strategies that all have different strengths and weaknesses. If one strategy is much better than the others, then much of the strategy aspect disappears.

A good game shuld have several different, but pretty balanced strategies. Not that all strategies should be equally good all the time, but so that there should be no overall best strategy. A cultural builder should be able to compete with a conqueror etc.

Firaxis has obviously worked to make several different strategies available. If you ignore the cultural part too much, you're in danger of city flipping etc.

Now, ICS isn't properly balanced as it has very little negative consequences - the only reason not to use it is that it doesn't 'feel' right. You argue that in MP, the builders can cooperate against the ICS player to stop him, but IMHO it is a sign of a flawed game if one strategy is so much better that the players using other strategies have to ally to stop him. What if a MP game consists of only two players, or three where two prefers ICS?

The way the game works now, you have to fight unhappiness when the cities grows. Therefore there would be a good way of balancing the strategies if ICS players would have to fight unhappiness as well. It even makes sense that citizens starts complaining about overcrowding sooner if the cities is built close together.

One unhappy citizen in each city for every overlapped square is clearly too much - it effectively disables ICS and achieves just what I want to avoid: a game where there is only one viable strategy. But some unhappiness penalty like 1 unhappy for every third overlapping square is sensible - and improves the game (IMHO) since the ICS strategy then must be used with a lot more thought.

 

[mydisease]

It seems silly to base unhappiness on some arbitrary number related to the number of shared squares. I have a simpler solution:

Count the number of worked squares in a city's 21-square radius as the base number of citizens in that city for the unhappiness count. Add any excess non-working citizens(specialists) in that city to the count as normal. This is then the unhappiness of this city which acts on the citizens of that city. For example, a size 5 city with no specialists, but all surrounding tiles in the 21-square radius worked would have the unhappiness of a size 21 city acting on only 5 citizens. Result - Unmanagable unhappiness.

Of course the problem with any such idea at limiting or eliminating ICS is that it narrows the spectrum of city building strategies and if people want to use ICS and enjoy doing so, why should they prevented from doing so. However, there could be a rules tag when you start the game saying "Anti-ICS" and using some proposal for eliminating ICS. This would leave the game open for ICS and non ICS players and both would be content.

 

[warpstorm]

If you really want to get rid of ICS (and I'm not convinced you do) all Firaxis would need to do is force cities to require one addtional space between them than currently.

 

[Pembroke]

It seems that most suggestions to counter the ICS strategy want to do it by penalizing the ICS player. How about doing it the other way round, instead?

Currently the consensus is that ICS is a "supreme" strategy and non-ICS strategies are chosen only because ICS just "doesn't feel right". But isn't this just another way of saying that non-ICS strategies ,from a purely "I want to maximize my chances" point of view, are _not_attractive_enough_?

Thus if there were more (and enough) advantages to having large metropolii then ICS would lose its status as The Strategy. Simply because you would have to forego the metropolis advantages, which turns the ICS into a trade-off question and a matter of style.

So, what kind of bonus advantages would be enough to counter ICS attractiviness? Bearing in mind that too much will simply tip the scales towards the other end.

My suggestion:

Town: As is
City: Extra shields and commerce. ENOUGH extra shields and commerce to make a difference.
Metropolis: Even more extra shields and commerce plus a research bonus.

(Obligatory historical check: larger cities attracted merchants, artisans, philosophers, and trade in general, so that a large city produced more than two towns with the same pop, e.g. "more than the sum of its parts")

Of course, shield and commerce bonus is not the only way to do this. Any other ideas?

 

[metalhead]

I think this whole debate should be saved until PtW makes its debut. For now, people can only compete against the AI. If they choose to use an exploitative strategy to defeat the inferior AI, well, it's their game and they can do it any way they want. I think the anti-ICS crowd thinks that because the strat works against the AI, and worked in Civ2 MP (apparantly - I never played it), it will work in PtW. I don't think that's necessarily the case. It looks to me as though ICS is a fairly mindless strategy. Civ3 is complex enough that I think there are ways to combat the ICS strategy that the AI never uses. One that comes to mind is walls. The AI NEVER builds walls that I have seen. Walls are cheap and require no maintenance, and will beef up spears nicely. Put a few hoplites or Legionaries behind walls (or in Cities, obviously) and watch that horseman stack turn right around and look for slimmer pickings.

Now, it may turn out that ICS will dominate PtW. I think that the easiest way to get rid of it would be to base unit support on land area rather than # of cities, which is way more realistic. It doesn't seem realistic at all that one player can draw twice the # of resources for troop support as another player from the same land area just by founding another settlement. The support comes from the land and population, not the cluster of buildings. If you changed it so that under Despotism, for example, every 10 squares of land area supports 2 units, with no more support than 4/city possible, it would be much more realistic and greatly diminish the effectiveness of ICS. Not to mention make culture buildings a necessity.