I really like the % food increase, as it also relates back to the tiles of the city in question, making city placement at least slightly more important than it currently is, while still making the maritime city state bonus as pretty cool. But you're not going to be able just plop cities in the middle of the tundra and have them be at +8 food. Same with culture.
ICS: A list of factors that contribute to its success
- Thread starter Irgy
- Start date
Excellent list in the OP. I would add one more thing: inability to settle the Great People. Settling GPs in cities with NWs was one of the features that allowed you to build couple of really powerful cities in Civ4.
If their goal was to make small empires competitive, like they have said, why an earth did they nerf National Wonders so ridiculously (like NE which is now +25% GP spawn rate compared to +100% in Civ4), make city growth much slower, and remove GP settling? It's like their real objective was just the opposite.
If their goal was to make small empires competitive, like they have said, why an earth did they nerf National Wonders so ridiculously (like NE which is now +25% GP spawn rate compared to +100% in Civ4), make city growth much slower, and remove GP settling? It's like their real objective was just the opposite.
One very small and simple change would be allow trade route gold to be increased by buildings, and also allow the capital to generate trade route gold. I feel like the game is robbing me of gold by not giving us that bonus.
ohioastronomy
King
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2005
- Messages
- 714
Letting the capital benefit from railroads would be nice too, as would partial unit/building buys. I still can't parse why buildings are so slow to make and so costly in maintenance given their (quite modest) impact.
bryanw1995
Emperor
sulla is just bitter that he wasn't consulted on the game. Does it have many flaws? yes, but many of us here still like it and have hope that it will get better in the future, while you just complain a lot. Go play civ iv.
Bandobras Took
Emperor
Have to agree with letting the capital benefit from railroads -- please!
I just wanted to agree with this point. I think that part of the reason ICS is such an effective strategy is because the buildings are underpowered why would you want to build them instead of just building another settler and founding another city... Making buildings more expensive hammer-wise but with better effects would make people want to grow cities and specialize them. For example, make the library cost 1.5x the number of hammers, make the upkeep 2 and have it make each citizen in the city worth 2 beakers instead of 1.5.
DarkestNight
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2010
- Messages
- 4
Ok quick disclaimer, im pretty new to civ (noble player in civ4) and i dun play ICS cuz its boring
but couldnt the issue of tile yields be fixed with buildings?
i mean you could just make the forge give +1 hammers for all mines and lumber mills..... (for hills and forests)
or change the granary so that it gives only +1 food and an additional +1 food for every improved food resource tile..... this would make placing cities near better tiles more important...and it makes tundra city spam much less productive
This combined with other changes like rebalanced growth for cities (make big cities grow faster and small cities slower), rebalanced trade routes (maybe something like gold=1+ (pop^2)/(#of cities*2) ), and fixed maritime CS ... would help the bigger cities be more competitive as they would have better tiles and would be more costly for ICS users to take advantage of because of increased maintance costs which cannot be resolved by simples trade routes and decreased effectiveness of the buildings for close together cities.
the small cities would also have to balance trading post spam with mines and other tile improvements
This would help speed up the game by providing more hammers and faster growth....
but couldnt the issue of tile yields be fixed with buildings?
i mean you could just make the forge give +1 hammers for all mines and lumber mills..... (for hills and forests)
or change the granary so that it gives only +1 food and an additional +1 food for every improved food resource tile..... this would make placing cities near better tiles more important...and it makes tundra city spam much less productive
This combined with other changes like rebalanced growth for cities (make big cities grow faster and small cities slower), rebalanced trade routes (maybe something like gold=1+ (pop^2)/(#of cities*2) ), and fixed maritime CS ... would help the bigger cities be more competitive as they would have better tiles and would be more costly for ICS users to take advantage of because of increased maintance costs which cannot be resolved by simples trade routes and decreased effectiveness of the buildings for close together cities.
the small cities would also have to balance trading post spam with mines and other tile improvements
This would help speed up the game by providing more hammers and faster growth....
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
That would be very cool. Combined with giving more science to larger cities will be great. Of course, that would require increasing tech costs a touch.
Rebalancing resources to make city locations more important will ultimately be very useful, but also very difficult to balance with everything else.
I am going to use the below quotes as examples to point out why a many of the proposed "solutions" aren't solution but just another form of unbalancing (as said, these are just examples, other proposals aren't much better):
The second part, though, may harm you in the early game, long before ICS has shown its whole strength.
Imagine you have two good spots for cities in the beginning, yet very near to each other. Your example would literally punish you for correctly making use of both spots for early growth of your empire (not taking into account that this is quite unlikely to scale well with different mapsizes).
The other suggestions are a nightmare to balance. What exactly makes an empire qualify for the "sprawling empire happiness penalty"? When is an empire considered to be "sprawling"? Do 8 cities qualify for this, and if yes, is there a difference between 8 cities in turn 100 and 8 cities in turn 250?
Bottom line:
a) Rewarding city size does not help against ICS, but even accelerates it, as now you will have the benefit from many small cities PLUS the benefit from the bigger cities.
b) Having "fixed penalties" for small cities doesn't help, as this can limit ANY growth of the empire, even when ICS was not intended.
c) Penalties for having many resources are completely counter-productive as being pointed out above.
The main problem is first and foremost the maritime CS.
Since they follow the same logic of bribery as any other form of CS, a solution is not easy to find. They HAVE to offer a remarkable benefit as otherwise the gain isn't worth the effort.
Most probably a fixed amount of food to be spread in equal numbers amongst your cities would be the best solution. Let's say 10 food (numbers are just examples) which will be spread amongst your 10 biggest cities.
That way any city past the initial 10 doesn't benefit from it, but has to be grown in the "traditionial" way.
To fight the income from roads I would propose certain thresholds, after which additional, fixed costs occur (let's say for the road department). That way, after 10 road hexes there could be costs of additional 2 gold . After 25 road hexes there would be additional 5 gold, and so on (once again, the numbers are just for display purposes, and might have to be adjusted per mapsize).
This principle is similar to "inflation", yet is easy enough to be understood by the player and doesn't harm the early build up of your empire.
Any suggestion to help bigger cities in comparison to smaller ones runs at the risk of actually making ICS even more successful, because the bonus for the bigger cities just adds to everything which you already get from the smaller ones.
The second part, though, may harm you in the early game, long before ICS has shown its whole strength.
Imagine you have two good spots for cities in the beginning, yet very near to each other. Your example would literally punish you for correctly making use of both spots for early growth of your empire (not taking into account that this is quite unlikely to scale well with different mapsizes).
The first suggestion is even worse than in the quote above. It might make founding the third city (when we are far away from anything like ICS yet) almost impossible since at that point of time you might not yet be able to cover the additional unhappiness.
The other suggestions are a nightmare to balance. What exactly makes an empire qualify for the "sprawling empire happiness penalty"? When is an empire considered to be "sprawling"? Do 8 cities qualify for this, and if yes, is there a difference between 8 cities in turn 100 and 8 cities in turn 250?
We have already some kind of "inflation" in the game (rising unit costs by number AND time), which nobody understands. The Civ4 inflation was rather opaque, too.
Once again, this additionally harms the forming of "non-ICS" empires.
So to cripple my opponent, I have to kill his resources? Well, this would just make the human combat even more powerful, as I could not only cut the production of units and city improvements, but additionally would be rewarded by him running even deeper into "inflation".
Bottom line:
a) Rewarding city size does not help against ICS, but even accelerates it, as now you will have the benefit from many small cities PLUS the benefit from the bigger cities.
b) Having "fixed penalties" for small cities doesn't help, as this can limit ANY growth of the empire, even when ICS was not intended.
c) Penalties for having many resources are completely counter-productive as being pointed out above.
The main problem is first and foremost the maritime CS.
Since they follow the same logic of bribery as any other form of CS, a solution is not easy to find. They HAVE to offer a remarkable benefit as otherwise the gain isn't worth the effort.
Most probably a fixed amount of food to be spread in equal numbers amongst your cities would be the best solution. Let's say 10 food (numbers are just examples) which will be spread amongst your 10 biggest cities.
That way any city past the initial 10 doesn't benefit from it, but has to be grown in the "traditionial" way.
To fight the income from roads I would propose certain thresholds, after which additional, fixed costs occur (let's say for the road department). That way, after 10 road hexes there could be costs of additional 2 gold . After 25 road hexes there would be additional 5 gold, and so on (once again, the numbers are just for display purposes, and might have to be adjusted per mapsize).
This principle is similar to "inflation", yet is easy enough to be understood by the player and doesn't harm the early build up of your empire.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
How do you support large cities if they're all packed together in infinite city sprawl? The problem isn't with large cities, it's with lots and lots of small cities that fit every possible space being a boring strategy if it's the dominant one.
iscnharchsdhsdhc, I think you missread what I wrote.
It's simple:
The more cities you have, the more late-game resources you need to prevent crippling inflation.
I'm not sure how you got the idea that I meant exactly the opposite even though I explained it in 2-3 posts by now.
Your comments regarding my idea are all non starters however:
1) Of course there's an inflation system. so what? I'm proposing something very specific in addition
2) Of course it harms overly large non-ics empires. we're talking number of cities. but it harms ICS MORE which is the point of the exercise and thus balance is retained. All you need to do is play hard for resources. which makes perfect sense both gameplay-wise and if you look at our shiny little world in it's 'modern era'.
In fact, it serves a double purpose --- It allows smaller empires to remain a little bit more competitive, although bigger = better if you can get resources to sustain that growth. same as with happiness etc.
3) AI comes after game systems, not before. so the point is moot.
As for nerfing city states, i've posted it in this very thread (2 good ways to do it).
Also, all roads solutions are pointless because ICS is actually more effecient without roads or with minimal roads.
Read mrgametheory's civ5 guide.. he's correct on every point.
The problem is with the cities themselves.
That's why cities should be in themselves be considered. per-city inflation does that.
nerfing roads is a nice addition. but really the whole trade system in civ5 is kinda crap.. no international trade, infinite trade nodes, etc.
and then of course terrain.
but see, EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM is flawed, and then their interactions as well.
It's just mind boggingly awful design.
It's simple:
The more cities you have, the more late-game resources you need to prevent crippling inflation.
I'm not sure how you got the idea that I meant exactly the opposite even though I explained it in 2-3 posts by now.
Your comments regarding my idea are all non starters however:
1) Of course there's an inflation system. so what? I'm proposing something very specific in addition
2) Of course it harms overly large non-ics empires. we're talking number of cities. but it harms ICS MORE which is the point of the exercise and thus balance is retained. All you need to do is play hard for resources. which makes perfect sense both gameplay-wise and if you look at our shiny little world in it's 'modern era'.
In fact, it serves a double purpose --- It allows smaller empires to remain a little bit more competitive, although bigger = better if you can get resources to sustain that growth. same as with happiness etc.
3) AI comes after game systems, not before. so the point is moot.
As for nerfing city states, i've posted it in this very thread (2 good ways to do it).
Also, all roads solutions are pointless because ICS is actually more effecient without roads or with minimal roads.
Read mrgametheory's civ5 guide.. he's correct on every point.
The problem is with the cities themselves.
That's why cities should be in themselves be considered. per-city inflation does that.
nerfing roads is a nice addition. but really the whole trade system in civ5 is kinda crap.. no international trade, infinite trade nodes, etc.
and then of course terrain.
but see, EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM is flawed, and then their interactions as well.
It's just mind boggingly awful design.
Tylerryan79
Emperor
If you have a large Empire more likely than not you'll have more late game resources than a smaller one. Add to that thefact that you'll be able to ally every Cs with all that gold you'll be getting, and this idea of resource inflation doesn't work out. Also when you get the sp for adding 100% resources from city states, it's going to reward a large empire.
When I play "normal" I'll have maybe 20 oil tops. My last game I had well over 30, and the same with aluminum. I didn't even have that sp.
When I play "normal" I'll have maybe 20 oil tops. My last game I had well over 30, and the same with aluminum. I didn't even have that sp.
If buildings were cheaper and more powerful, production and gold would effectively increase, which would lead to making too many units for the map.
Bandobras Took
Emperor
Unfortunately, if you front-load building trees, it's still an encouragement for people to found new cities rather than develop the ones they already have.
Unfortunately, none of this is possible with the current lack of c++ sdk. However, putting in an effect of capital city size on trade route income is possible:
Modify TRADE_ROUTE_CITY_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER in global defines. Had to look it up, would have answered earlier but I'm at school.
The constant is right above that, TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_GOLD. There is also TRADE_ROUTE_CAPITAL_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER, but that is set to 0 atm; Evidently the formula is actually as follows:
TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_GOLD * [(City Size * TRADE_ROUTE_CITY_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER) + (Capital Size * TRADE_ROUTE_CAPITAL_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER)].
Currently that would be: 1 * [(City Size * 1.25) + (Capital Size * 0)]
The only thing I don't understand about that explanation is where the extra +1 is coming from. as in 1.25*city size + 1
I am not an expert, i am a casual civ fan who grew up playing computer games from the 80s. I think people are looking at ICS as a cause, when in fact it is a symptom of a problem,rather then the problem itself.
To eliminate ICS as a strategy really only restricts gameplay to fewer playstyles, an reduces overall strategy options of the player. Yes ICS should be balanced, but it needs to be balanced in context to the overall game allowing players choices, something civ 5 fails at currently. off the top of my head its easy to see why ICS as a strategy makes sense, and works especially well.
1. Cities growth is drastically reduced from Civ 4, Small cities grow faster, which means small cities or new cities actually increase wealth faster then established cities.
2. Culture growth is slow, making it easier to start a new city,then expand existing cities influence. its prohibitive to expand cities using gold.
3. Social policies allow for easy best production/income/science scenario, making ICS an easy choice when it comes to strategy, as it gives players more options.
4. City placement is a non issue due to social policies, as well as Tiles being reduced in importance. Improvements do not compensate for tiles having less of an impact
5.Production & Income are the two most important factors in the game.
6. Buildings have diminishing returns and increasing costs. Advanced buildings do not contribute enough given the costs associated with them
We can talk about fixing ICS or attempting to remove it from the game, but it wont solves the fundamental problems that exist with Civ 5 in my opinion. Additionally eliminating various strategies & options in regards to the game, frankly is a bad choice, and only reduces the overall quality of the game, thus reducing the fun factor.
What should be happening, is discussion on how to improve gameplay, to allow for increased strategies & options, and allow for a deeper more fulfilling gaming experience. ICS it has been argued is boring gameplay, The solution to that is not to eliminate or reduce ICS, its to find the root cause of why it is boring game play, and fix that. Additionally, Counters to ICS need to be placed into the, making it viable to actually compete with ICS in terms of small or mid sized empires. I would much rather see Civ 5 fixed by addition then subtraction as its current state is rather woeful.
To eliminate ICS as a strategy really only restricts gameplay to fewer playstyles, an reduces overall strategy options of the player. Yes ICS should be balanced, but it needs to be balanced in context to the overall game allowing players choices, something civ 5 fails at currently. off the top of my head its easy to see why ICS as a strategy makes sense, and works especially well.
1. Cities growth is drastically reduced from Civ 4, Small cities grow faster, which means small cities or new cities actually increase wealth faster then established cities.
2. Culture growth is slow, making it easier to start a new city,then expand existing cities influence. its prohibitive to expand cities using gold.
3. Social policies allow for easy best production/income/science scenario, making ICS an easy choice when it comes to strategy, as it gives players more options.
4. City placement is a non issue due to social policies, as well as Tiles being reduced in importance. Improvements do not compensate for tiles having less of an impact
5.Production & Income are the two most important factors in the game.
6. Buildings have diminishing returns and increasing costs. Advanced buildings do not contribute enough given the costs associated with them
We can talk about fixing ICS or attempting to remove it from the game, but it wont solves the fundamental problems that exist with Civ 5 in my opinion. Additionally eliminating various strategies & options in regards to the game, frankly is a bad choice, and only reduces the overall quality of the game, thus reducing the fun factor.
What should be happening, is discussion on how to improve gameplay, to allow for increased strategies & options, and allow for a deeper more fulfilling gaming experience. ICS it has been argued is boring gameplay, The solution to that is not to eliminate or reduce ICS, its to find the root cause of why it is boring game play, and fix that. Additionally, Counters to ICS need to be placed into the, making it viable to actually compete with ICS in terms of small or mid sized empires. I would much rather see Civ 5 fixed by addition then subtraction as its current state is rather woeful.
I cannot disagree more. Well maybe a little more, but not much.
True, but you do need to dedicate some of those resource to your military.
Also, I always play on 'sparse' resources because playing on standard feels pretty much like fallout3 (food/meds/gold/ammo every 2 steps)
