I'm considering getting into civ 3 but I'm concerned about ics. A game where brainless city spamming is the optimal strategy just doesn't sound appealing to me. And before you say it I can't just play civ 4, my computer is too old. I'm wondering if there are any mods or settings that would make ics obsolete like in civ 4.
anti ics mod?
- Thread starter MACGRUBER
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Don't know anyone using ICS in a normal game. Neither the AI nor human players. If anything most people use quite wide spacing. You can win the game with just one city, if that makes you happy.
Most games fall somewhere between OCC and ICS. It is really up to you. Not going to get me to recommend IV or V. I have them, but not a fan.
Most games fall somewhere between OCC and ICS. It is really up to you. Not going to get me to recommend IV or V. I have them, but not a fan.
It might be a necessary strategy if you play on something like the Deity difficultly level or higher. The past few games I've trounced the AI using loose placement on Monarch level, it's time for me to move up to Emperor and maybe I'll find I need to go a bit tighter but we'll see.
I don't think you need any sort of mod, just set the difficultly where it is comfortable and still challenging.
I don't think you need any sort of mod, just set the difficultly where it is comfortable and still challenging.
ICS was a powerful method in the early version of III and got toned dwon by patches and addons. I suspect you could still use it, but I see no one doing so.
Optional
Deity
What is ICS? More cities is definitely beter in Civ III, you don't get a penalty for adding another city in Civ III, in both successors you do, so I understand what you've heard about it. Civ III has a corruption system that is meant to prevent you from sprawling all over the place, but it doesn't really stop you. However, if you're afraid Civ III is just about cranking out the highest amount of cities in the shortest amouint of time, then no, it's not quite like that.
Okay, part of it is, otherwise players wouldn't go on and on about the maths of settler farms. Most high level players are judging a start by its ability to produce settlers efficiently, that's true.
But you get most out of the game if you're building stuff as well, and for that, fewer, bigger cities are better.
If, for example, you want to build spaceship parts, it's more efficient to do that in big towns with an excellent production than in a small town that had to remain small because you've put so many other towns right next to it.
What you'll see in Civ III is that many players will leave their core cities with plenty of space for building stuff, but in remote regions, where the corruption is very high, ICS rules. Nobody will argue against ICS in completely corrupt regions... unless perhaps you've chosen Communism as your goverment, as it has a flat corruption system, that's different.
Civ III is not a lesser version from its successors. It has tech trading, map trading, contact trading, real trade networks, reputation, espionage, embargo's, war weariness, alliances, and those are all things that are lacking in Civ 5. With Civilization every new game has seen the developers throwing systems overboard and replacing them with new ones. It depends a lot on individual taste which version you like better.
Okay, part of it is, otherwise players wouldn't go on and on about the maths of settler farms. Most high level players are judging a start by its ability to produce settlers efficiently, that's true.
But you get most out of the game if you're building stuff as well, and for that, fewer, bigger cities are better.
If, for example, you want to build spaceship parts, it's more efficient to do that in big towns with an excellent production than in a small town that had to remain small because you've put so many other towns right next to it.
What you'll see in Civ III is that many players will leave their core cities with plenty of space for building stuff, but in remote regions, where the corruption is very high, ICS rules. Nobody will argue against ICS in completely corrupt regions... unless perhaps you've chosen Communism as your goverment, as it has a flat corruption system, that's different.
Civ III is not a lesser version from its successors. It has tech trading, map trading, contact trading, real trade networks, reputation, espionage, embargo's, war weariness, alliances, and those are all things that are lacking in Civ 5. With Civilization every new game has seen the developers throwing systems overboard and replacing them with new ones. It depends a lot on individual taste which version you like better.
Awesome! Thanks a lot civinator. I'll have to try it out. Got any feedback on it?
It is an excellent mod, but you will be on bigger maps. No armies. There are many games in the SG forum from TheRat.
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The CCM thread at present has 1.108 replies and 72.275 views. Here is a link to the complete thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352057
Additionally the CCM Preview thread (with tons of screenshots) until now had 395 replies and 30,076 views yet: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=291104, RAT40-Introduction to CCM until now had 711 replies and 28.178 views yet: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352229, RAT 41CCM -AW a first attempt had 831 replies and 33,299 views yet: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=396228, Rat 42 - CCM Heading to the Moon had 842 replies and 38,808 views yet: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=408169, and the current succession game Rat43 CCM - Every Knee Shall Bend has 484 replies and 16,189 views yet: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=440992.
Additionally there are threads about CCM in German language in the civforum.de with 205 replies and 8,430 views: http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?65722-CCM-Beta-Anregung-Kritik-Bugs-und-Fragen and in French language at civfr.com with 71 replies and 1.361 views (so the last ones were to a scenario that has nothing to do with CCM): http://www.civfr.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20409.
So: Yes, there was some feedback to CCM.
To have a look to the linked threads was interesting for me, too. I have never thought, that CCM will receive so much feedback. 
Most parts for CCM were created on a pc with a single 2,66 CPU. Even with the biggest maps at medium difficulty levels there were no problems until 2/3 of the era-two-techtree were researched. After that border - even with much better pcs- AI-turntimes climb massively when playing with the huge world size (that in CCM is much bigger than at standard C3C).
So may be it could be a good idea (depending on the strength of your pc) to play CCM with a tiny map size (what are the dimensions of a standard-map in normal C3C) or a small map (what are the dimensions of a huge-map in normal C3C).
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Diplomatic victory: CCM operates with several leaders for a civ in a game. To avoid some distortions in the diplomacy texts these leaders are named ruler. An election ruler against ruler is somewhat confusing and the diplomatic victory is mostly considered the cheapest and most boring victory typ in C3C.
Culture Victory: CCM has next to 256 buildings and most of them had to be set to produce culture, so they are gone when another civ conquers the city. Cultural victory in CCM would happen too early and in last consequence is also somewhat boring in my eyes.
MACGRUBER7693
Chieftain
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Any other mods that limit ics/rex? Does Rhye's mod do anything to stop ics?
vorlon_mi
Emperor
First, welcome to CFC, MACGRUBER7693 
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
Next, Civ 3 limits you to spacing of CxCxC, while Civ2 let you go even closer.
A more nuanced question ... at what point do you consider city placement to be too much like ICS (infinite city sprawl)? Would you consider an empire of 30 cities too much? What about 50? 80 cities?
On standard or larger maps, it is not hard to get to 50 cities with CxxC spacing, and after conquering an AI or two. And that's my play style, which still needs a lot of work at Regent. The play style of vmxa (who regularly beats games up to and including Deity / Sid) involves lots of military, and conquering lots of cities. IIRC, he also expands, filling in some regions with more closely packed cities.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, the optimal strategy in Civ3 seems to be prudent and efficient use of your initial worker moves and city production. Making the right choices in the first 100 turns, and a well-timed war or two to grab some good land and resources are more important than just spamming out cities.
Next, Civ 3 limits you to spacing of CxCxC, while Civ2 let you go even closer.
A more nuanced question ... at what point do you consider city placement to be too much like ICS (infinite city sprawl)? Would you consider an empire of 30 cities too much? What about 50? 80 cities?
On standard or larger maps, it is not hard to get to 50 cities with CxxC spacing, and after conquering an AI or two. And that's my play style, which still needs a lot of work at Regent. The play style of vmxa (who regularly beats games up to and including Deity / Sid) involves lots of military, and conquering lots of cities. IIRC, he also expands, filling in some regions with more closely packed cities.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, the optimal strategy in Civ3 seems to be prudent and efficient use of your initial worker moves and city production. Making the right choices in the first 100 turns, and a well-timed war or two to grab some good land and resources are more important than just spamming out cities.
cain3456
King
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Really? I thought the patches and expansions brought it back. Isn't Vanilla where corruption was so crippling that ICS was counterproductive?
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
Are you talking ICS as in too many cities, or ICS as in cities have only 1-3 tiles between their city centers?
For the human that's easy to fix, just don't do it. For the AI you can't control the spacing of their cities, but how many cities they build could be controlled by a method like the CCM uses.
But I see a few potential problems with that. If settlers are limited to only being auto-produced by the palace every 20 turns, then on larger maps (huge especially), with fewer civs then getting domination could be a problem before time expires. And it would cause problems with difficulty level (Chieftain gets cities faster than it would otherwise and Deity/Sid would get cities slower than it would otherwise). But at least maybe on levels like Chieftain their cities will be better defended than by a lone warrior or spearman because they had time to build other stuff than settlers.
A 95% corrupt city still produces 1 shield, 1 gold so having 100 of these cities will still produce stuff (think cheap, upgradeable units or workers/settlers and owning a wonder that puts a free building in every city).
The worst ICS is a huge pangea map with few civs. Can create a 'settler flood' of 100 or so settlers on their way to build cities and get domination without fighting a battle. But the AI would never do that, so if you don't like that then just don't do it.
But obviously that isn't the only way to win and it's a huge headache managing that many cities.
Don't use automated workers and don't use governors and your cities could probably be at least twice as productive as the AI.
For the human that's easy to fix, just don't do it. For the AI you can't control the spacing of their cities, but how many cities they build could be controlled by a method like the CCM uses.
But I see a few potential problems with that. If settlers are limited to only being auto-produced by the palace every 20 turns, then on larger maps (huge especially), with fewer civs then getting domination could be a problem before time expires. And it would cause problems with difficulty level (Chieftain gets cities faster than it would otherwise and Deity/Sid would get cities slower than it would otherwise). But at least maybe on levels like Chieftain their cities will be better defended than by a lone warrior or spearman because they had time to build other stuff than settlers.
A 95% corrupt city still produces 1 shield, 1 gold so having 100 of these cities will still produce stuff (think cheap, upgradeable units or workers/settlers and owning a wonder that puts a free building in every city).
The worst ICS is a huge pangea map with few civs. Can create a 'settler flood' of 100 or so settlers on their way to build cities and get domination without fighting a battle. But the AI would never do that, so if you don't like that then just don't do it.
But obviously that isn't the only way to win and it's a huge headache managing that many cities.
Don't use automated workers and don't use governors and your cities could probably be at least twice as productive as the AI.
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
I got totally burned out from Civ3 I took a long, long vacation from it (7 years!)
I'm playing around with it a bit now just toying with the conquest scenarios I didn't really explore before (no more ICS compact cities for me, but I do enjoy filling up the map and being a builder).
Found a map trading exploit too, so just playing the AI is an exploit.
Everyone knows you can make some money selling your map every turn. Well, sell it after every tile you uncover since the AI will pay a minimum 1 gold for 1 tile. For example in age of discovery playing France, if you sold the maps on your first turn after sending your caravels straight west, you would make about 7 gold (which i don't think is an exploit, just tedious), but if you sell it after every tile you uncover you can make something like 32 gold on just the first turn. Doing that is powerful, but doing that every turn will burn you out and take the fun out of the game.
I'm playing around with it a bit now just toying with the conquest scenarios I didn't really explore before (no more ICS compact cities for me, but I do enjoy filling up the map and being a builder).
Found a map trading exploit too, so just playing the AI is an exploit.
Everyone knows you can make some money selling your map every turn. Well, sell it after every tile you uncover since the AI will pay a minimum 1 gold for 1 tile. For example in age of discovery playing France, if you sold the maps on your first turn after sending your caravels straight west, you would make about 7 gold (which i don't think is an exploit, just tedious), but if you sell it after every tile you uncover you can make something like 32 gold on just the first turn. Doing that is powerful, but doing that every turn will burn you out and take the fun out of the game.
MACGRUBER7693
Chieftain
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That's kind of my problem bamspeedy. While I certainly could just not do ics(like you said it can take the fun out of the game) there will always be a thought in the back of my head nagging me that I'm holding myself back. I wouldn't have a problem with Ics being a viable strategy in civ 3. I just have a problem with it being the clear dominant strategy. I wish there would be a few more drawbacks to it like in civ 4.
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