ICS: A list of factors that contribute to its success

[7thGate]

So far, my only finished CiV games have been with a small number of cities. I tried playing a ICS once, but I don't like the playstyle so I got bored and stopped.

One thing that I would greatly appreciate would be a way to open up more more specialist slots for larger cities. I would like to see the last tier buildings on each track and the national wonders unlock an unlimited number of specialist slots of the appropriate type similar to caste system in Civ 4.

I played my first game as a one city challenge as Ghandi, and I ended up with a size 45 city by the end. I was starving for tech, but if I had been able to allocate large number of scientists I could have kept pace with tech based on the number of great scientists that could produce over a large number of cities employing 2 scientists each. Also, that city was very close to simply running out of useful slots; it had every available specialist slot worked and had I think 4 or 5 tiles to go before it would have just started making unemployed people. If I had realized how We Love the King days worked, I think I might have maxed it out.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere faster growing would be nice. It shouldn't take 1000+ food to grow a population point.

 

[DaveGold]

I would suggest that research in later eras is highly reduced unless there is an appropriate technology building in the city. Cut renaissance research by 50% without a library. Cut industrial research by 50% without a university and 75% without a library. The capability always remains within a nation to develop and advance to the next era but a level of infrastructure (or technology transfer via agreements) is required.

Social change can be instigated by peasants anywhere but that is already instigated entirely through culture via policies. Future era technology is not being researched by a billion Chinese farmers, its being researched by scientists in hi tech labs with computer analysis.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I'm not sure at all that nerfing libraries would solve this problem. It would make non ICS weaker, too.

Not necessarily a bad thing -- it will only make early scientist techbulbing weaker if the specialist slots are removed, which I don't see as a significant negative.

 

[MkLh]

Not necessarily a bad thing -- it will only make early scientist techbulbing weaker if the specialist slots are removed, which I don't see as a significant negative.

There is a point slowing down early tech rate by nerfing libraries - it feels a bit too quick now when it's possible to get rifling at BCs. I just don't think it would help to solve the ICS problem.

Besides, early game is quite boring already. It would be more boring without all those GSs and slingshots.

 

[andrewlt]

Funny, it seems the designers of Civ 5 never played any of the Total War games. The problem is almost similar. The earlier buildings are much cheaper and provide better bonuses than the later ones.

I think almost all the buildings have to be rebalanced. The later buildings should have much larger bonuses versus maintenance costs than the earlier buildings. Stadiums should have a higher happiness:maintenance ratio than coliseums. Bonus resources and resources in general have to provide larger bonuses so that cities without them would be marginal to close to useless in comparison.

A few building balance suggestions that come to mind:

1. Have cities produce 0 science before library. Library can be 1 science per 2 citizens, with universities, public schools, research labs giving bigger bonuses. The palace can give 1 science per citizen for the early pre-library phase of the game. Rebalance tech costs accordingly.

2. Circus/monastery and other such buildings should be made a lot stronger. Settling a city near an appropriate resource should be a much larger benefit than what it currently is.

3. Decrease maintenance costs of theatres and stadiums and increase the happiness they give drastically. I'm thinking 7 happiness for theatres and 10 for stadiums. Maybe add another happiness building somewhere along the line.

4. Make gold increasing and production increasing buildings more powerful. Make cities actually cost gold. The goal should be for small, undeveloped cities to be close to useless in the mid to late game unless they were actually developed.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Haven't gone through all the posts here but my ideas:

1) Minimum tile distance to place next city could be dynamically changed based on current population and number of current cities. For instance, off the top of my head, you could add a minimum distance of (say) 21 for each city in existance and then subtract total population. So, with your first city down, you start with a pop of 1, so the second city must be at least 21-1=20. However, as population increases, the distance becmes smaller. So, let's say you have built a settler and now have a pop of 5. So you go build a city 21-5=16 tiles away. With a second city, the distance is now (21x2)-(5+1)=36 for the next city. that may be too much and the formula may have to be adjusted but you see my point.

2) Exponentially increase unhappiness and policy cost for each new city rather than a fixed amount.

3) Limit settler building in some way, increase cost is a quick solution but a better idea might be the following. The minimum population to build a settler in a city is two. Could this be increased, or dynamically changed based on the number of cities, say number of citiesx2? So, if you have 1 city, you need a population of 2 in a city to build a settler. If you have 2 cities, you need a population of 4 in any city you want to build a settler and so on. Again, this formula could be adjusted in some way.

 

[Celevin]

This is an interesting thought here. What if, to mirror Civ 4, we had increasing happiness costs, while also allowing core cities to build happiness without any cap? Seven Colosseums in one city.

Well for the former we'd need access to more than just the XML, but I agree with it completely.

Being able to build 7 colosseums in one city is interesting. Basically you're taking the big empire happiness benefit (ie being able to buy a colosseum anytime) and giving it to small empires. I think it's a good idea, and would solve some issues, but I wonder if we're missing any. I have a feeling that in the mid and late game, some cities would do absolutely nothing but build colosseums, which wouldn't be very pleasant.

 

[Bezurn]

I think maritime city states need to give a fixed amount of food (which adjusts for the map size) to help limit their power. That or make them give little food to all cities, (like less than 2 until the industrial era) and instead give cities a % food stored on growth effect instead.

I think a helping hand in making bigger cities more powerful than small cities would be to give a gradient increase in building productivity the more people you have in a city.

I'll flesh out some rough numbers to illustrate on a few buildings. Right now a library gives 1 science for every 2 people. Instead it could give increasing benefits the more people in the city such that Additional science = (Pop/2)+(Pop/2)-1. This equation looks like this.

For universities it would be 25% modifier base, and then +5% modifier every 4 population.

Similar mechanics could be used to change the science and perhaps even the culture buildings. Heck, even workshops / windmills could get a slight bump in hammer production the larger a city is.

I would change the happiness buildings by lowering the static happiness and basing the effect of the building on the size of the city.
Colloseum = 3 happiness, and 1 Happiness = (Rounddown(Population / 10),0)
Theatre = 2 happiness, and 1 Happiness = (Rounddown(Population / 8),0)
Stadium = 1 happiness, and 1 happiness = (Roundown(Population / 8),0).

I put those numbers into a spreadsheet and the break even points on happiness are slightly lower, but the larger the cities are the easier it is to keep an empire happy as long as your happiness buildings are well placed. I think this would also help happiness scale better to larger map sizes.

In short, I think there needs to be more incentive to grow cities larger overall. My ideas would have to wait for the C++ code to come out as there would be a lot of changes to make there to make them work.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Well for the former we'd need access to more than just the XML, but I agree with it completely.

Being able to build 7 colosseums in one city is interesting. Basically you're taking the big empire happiness benefit (ie being able to buy a colosseum anytime) and giving it to small empires. I think it's a good idea, and would solve some issues, but I wonder if we're missing any. I have a feeling that in the mid and late game, some cities would do absolutely nothing but build colosseums, which wouldn't be very pleasant.

You'd be able to go bonkers on culture (with the right social policies) and golden ages (imagine Persia...)

 

[Celevin]

You'd be able to go bonkers on culture (with the right social policies) and golden ages (imagine Persia...)

Persia should be building big empires either way. The bigger the empire, the more impressive the golden age. Also, the bigger the empire, ironically the more the happiness.

 

[MkLh]

I think maritime city states need to give a fixed amount of food (which adjusts for the map size) to help limit their power. That or make them give little food to all cities, (like less than 2 until the industrial era) and instead give cities a % food stored on growth effect instead.

I think a helping hand in making bigger cities more powerful than small cities would be to give a gradient increase in building productivity the more people you have in a city.

It's not just about making big cities more powerful. They aren't that weak even now, after all. Its more about difficulty and opportunity costs to create them in the first place. The growth model that demands exponentially growing amount of food for each new population point should be fixed first.

 

[Bezurn]

It's not just about making big cities more powerful. They aren't that weak even now, after all. Its more about difficulty and opportunity costs to create them in the first place. The growth model that demands exponentially growing amount of food for each new population point should be fixed first.

Right, I understand that. That is why I would propose to change maritime bonus to give a similar effect as the Civ 4 granary, probably 10-20% free food on growth per city state (or a diminishing returns system to avoid people getting beyond 50% on growth). If you give free food on population growth, without actually giving 'free food' then that changes a lot of things as the cities still have to provide the food needed to grow by themselves, but decreases the time between growths and would benefit larger cities more than smaller cities as the larger cities would get more free food on each growth. The hospital and the medical lab would need new functions if that were implemented though.

The way maritime city states work now benefits lots of small cities because of the 1-3 free food per city. This makes it easier to just spam lots of 4-8 size small cities along the map abusing the center tile bonus of the maritime CS's and various social policy benefits.

I know from playing my own games that once I get a hospital in a city it becomes a lot easier to grow the city population, the problem is that they come very late and are quite expensive to produce.

 

[Mr Jib]

How's about making each additional city cost an extra happiness? So the first adds 1 unhappiness the next 2 and so on.

A bit like the way maintenance worked in Civ 4.

Courthouses could then half the amount of unhappiness you get from each city (the unhappiness would be averaged first).

 

[andrewlt]

Well for the former we'd need access to more than just the XML, but I agree with it completely.

Being able to build 7 colosseums in one city is interesting. Basically you're taking the big empire happiness benefit (ie being able to buy a colosseum anytime) and giving it to small empires. I think it's a good idea, and would solve some issues, but I wonder if we're missing any. I have a feeling that in the mid and late game, some cities would do absolutely nothing but build colosseums, which wouldn't be very pleasant.

Another idea I can think of is to have cities give a higher happiness penalty but capping the unhappiness due to population somewhat. The idea should be that a huge, well-developed city should be a positive for your empire, not a penalty, while new cities aren't a benefit until you've built some infrastructure.

Let's say we change happiness so that each city is -5 while each citizen is only -0.5. Then have coliseum and theatre remove 50% of population unhappiness each and have a stadium give +5 happiness. That would nerf ICS while improving empires that have huge cities. (Yes, I know Gandhi's UA will have to be modified.) The ICS that I think is bad is having tons of small cities. If you can grow all your cities, I don't see a problem with creating as many cities as possible.

 

[r_rolo1]

How's about making each additional city cost an extra happiness? So the first adds 1 unhappiness the next 2 and so on.

A bit like the way maintenance worked in Civ 4.

Courthouses could then half the amount of unhappiness you get from each city (the unhappiness would be averaged first).

That would not work ... well, it would stop ICS, but probably would stiffle any empire size above 5 or 6 regardless of the infra inside ( think , 6 cities empire would mean 21 just from having the cities :bearable, but on the edge ).

And civ IV maintenance does not work like that:
<sinip>

From the relevant war academy article ( you can find the formulas posted in post #89 of the relevant thread )

Edit: The pics I have posted do not reflect the latest code. And BTW post #93 has a nice pdf in attachement explaining the formula ( the humps and plateaus that the original author talks about were due to rounding errors in early vanilla versions :/ )

A aproach like civ IV one to this issue allows both blocking of mindless city spam up to a point but also allows big empires. it is not by far a perfect system , but i think that it is surely the best system we had so far in the civ games in blocking ICS and i would not be surprised if we in the end get something similar to this.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Ah, well you could do the Call To Power thing with more unhappiness the further the city is away from your capital. The unhappiness would be based on movement so when you build roads, the unhappiness decreases but of course that means more road maintenance.

 

[Roxlimn]

Well for the former we'd need access to more than just the XML, but I agree with it completely.

Being able to build 7 colosseums in one city is interesting. Basically you're taking the big empire happiness benefit (ie being able to buy a colosseum anytime) and giving it to small empires. I think it's a good idea, and would solve some issues, but I wonder if we're missing any. I have a feeling that in the mid and late game, some cities would do absolutely nothing but build colosseums, which wouldn't be very pleasant.

Ah, well I guess I'm skipping ahead. I was thinking of toning down the Colosseum benefit, making it a little cheaper, and then have the advanced happiness buildings be better. This way, you would need to make one Colosseum for each "line" of happiness buildings in the core cities, but you won't be building Colosseums en masse, since they would be the least maintenance-efficient choice.

The way it would work would completely mirror the Civ 4 maintenance mechanics. In fact, since Colossuems and happiness buildings require maintenance, it would very nearly be the same thing.


andrewlt:

I really want to get away from the megatile concept. I like how some resource tiles are more important early on, and some more important later on. We could use more tiles that are very powerful later on (putting more Gold on Oil tiles at Combustion would be really good), but I don't like having to locate Cows when I have advanced farming technologies, and can supposedly grow Cows and Wheat anywhere I want to.

 

[andrewlt]

andrewlt:

I really want to get away from the megatile concept. I like how some resource tiles are more important early on, and some more important later on. We could use more tiles that are very powerful later on (putting more Gold on Oil tiles at Combustion would be really good), but I don't like having to locate Cows when I have advanced farming technologies, and can supposedly grow Cows and Wheat anywhere I want to.

I think that's what the basic farmland represents, though. Cows and Wheat represent areas that are really suitable for those things. Areas like that are still found in the modern world. It takes a lot of energy and various other resources to grow cows and wheat in places that aren't very suitable for them.

They could always add stronger tiles in the late game that you are more likely to settle right next to compared to cows and wheat.

 

[Roxlimn]

andrewlt:

Cows and Wheat tiles are supposed to represent areas of the world where they could be grown at all, especially in the early parts of the game - they are meant to replicate the ancient sites of civilization. As the world progresses and transport becomes more efficient, it begins to strain believability that a city, however suited to cow-raising it might be, be larger just because of such an industry. As well allow Gold to put out bonus food to replicate the Gold Rushes.

There are still areas where it's easier to grow Wheat, but those tend to speak to quality or efficiency, rather than whether it's possible at all.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I really want to get away from the megatile concept. I like how some resource tiles are more important early on, and some more important later on. We could use more tiles that are very powerful later on (putting more Gold on Oil tiles at Combustion would be really good), but I don't like having to locate Cows when I have advanced farming technologies, and can supposedly grow Cows and Wheat anywhere I want to.

Though one thing that got Civ 4 away from city spam was the fact that most tile improvements were a lot better than the city tile.