ICS: Love it or hate it?

[Peregrine]

I suppose its fun to debate such an issue, and that would explain most of this thread. The reality, though, is simply this; ICS was perceived as a PROBLEM. Something UNDESIRABLE initially in Civ2, and that needed to be eliminated. Whatever the reasons (and there are many, most of which have already appeared in the thread). If it wasn't, then CIV would NOT have been designed to ELIMINATE it. Based on this simple fact, the conclusion is obvious; 1.) it's bad. 2.) For whatever nonsensical reason, it's back, now in V.

Poor design.

 

[Just Checking]

I don't really get this. There isn't really a debate to be had here, is there?
I mean, no one forces you to play in any particular way. Civ 5 is mostly a single player game and even the Multiplayer is generally played with people you know and you've probably set a bunch of ground rules beforehand.

If you don't enjoy ICS, don't do it. I don't enjoy it and that's why i'm not playing like that. Actually i never go into a new Civ game with some specific strategy in mind as if it was Company of Heroes or something, with a specific building order etc. It takes away the immersion. All i have is a general idea in mind of what type of victory i'm going for and even that may change during the game. The rest is responding to the circumstances as i go.

It feels a bit stupid to complain about an overpowered strategy when it doesn't really affect anyone but you, it's not like the AI employs this strategy as far as i can tell.

 

[lschnarch]

It feels a bit stupid to complain about an overpowered strategy when it doesn't really affect anyone but you, it's not like the AI employs this strategy as far as i can tell.

A statement which renders all balancing obsolete. I mean, you don't have to make use of the unbalanced features, do you?

 

[ohioastronomy]

Actually the AI *does* employ this strategy, especially at higher difficulty levels. They have many small cities, connected with trade routes, and with happiness buildings in each.

 

[Bandit17]

I don't really get this. There isn't really a debate to be had here, is there?
I mean, no one forces you to play in any particular way. Civ 5 is mostly a single player game and even the Multiplayer is generally played with people you know and you've probably set a bunch of ground rules beforehand.

If you don't enjoy ICS, don't do it. I don't enjoy it and that's why i'm not playing like that. Actually i never go into a new Civ game with some specific strategy in mind as if it was Company of Heroes or something, with a specific building order etc. It takes away the immersion. All i have is a general idea in mind of what type of victory i'm going for and even that may change during the game. The rest is responding to the circumstances as i go.

It feels a bit stupid to complain about an overpowered strategy when it doesn't really affect anyone but you, it's not like the AI employs this strategy as far as i can tell.

I totally agree Our play styles and approach to ciV seem to be on par with each-other.

I still find it funny how people keep comparing ciV to cIV when they are two very different games. The devs obviously set out to make a completly different game regardless if it was for better or for worse. Also, for anyone wanting a realistic historical game please check out Paradox and their great line of historical strategy games (free plug).

I find ICS as boring and gamey and thus do not do it but I do like the option of using it if and when I want to. I also do not pursue the early horsemen rush unless the civ I'm playing is geared towards it (Greeks, Mongolians etc). Humans will always be able to find chinks in the armor in game designs. There are many more serious game design flaws in ciV atm (tp spamming, lack of importance in late game resources coal-oil etc) that are much harder to resist than ICS. If your a professional gamer who always has to use the strongest most optimal strategy in order to beat your last score or to win faster than your previous game than I feel sorry for you but it is your choice to play this way and more power to ya. I play ciV because I still feel that I am in control (when the game is working properly) and that the game is not controlling me. I use farms. I use different sp tactics depending on how the game is unfolding. I enjoy creating a handful of very large and powerful cities while slowly expanding and have no problems winning with these strategies (I also don't mind using ICS if it suites my civ and current needs). You could argue that I'm only hurting my cause and making it more difficult on myself but I'm having fun and if it creates a more competitive game vs the ai than I'm all for it! The ai needs all the help it can get!

ICS is just one of many strategies that are put on the table for the human player to win the game. In the end it is up to you, the player, if you want to impliment it or not. If your an alcolholic don't keep beer in the house. If your an ICS junkie than add more civs/cs's to your maps or maybe seek proffessional help.

 

[Eberon]

Or make techs more expensive after every new city, just like the social policies already are.

Of all of the proposed 'solutions' this is imo the absolute worst. This would gimp expansion big time. Optimal pink spaceship strategy is 3 cities only. Thats the kind of thing that would happen if this were imposed.


I like ICS. The problem isnt the number of cities its the fact that hindering their growth and production is better than working the cities and making something to be proud of. Its gamey.

My solution is to add a mechanic that causes a 10% per era reduction in the output of each city on an indivitual basis. Give the player a counter to the reduction in buildings in each era. Add the reduction to existing buildings.

I agree that having 50 crap cities and 2 good ones should not be an optimal strategy.

 

[MkLh]

I don't really get this. There isn't really a debate to be had here, is there?
I mean, no one forces you to play in any particular way. Civ 5 is mostly a single player game and even the Multiplayer is generally played with people you know and you've probably set a bunch of ground rules beforehand.

If you don't enjoy ICS, don't do it. I don't enjoy it and that's why i'm not playing like that. Actually i never go into a new Civ game with some specific strategy in mind as if it was Company of Heroes or something, with a specific building order etc. It takes away the immersion. All i have is a general idea in mind of what type of victory i'm going for and even that may change during the game. The rest is responding to the circumstances as i go.

It feels a bit stupid to complain about an overpowered strategy when it doesn't really affect anyone but you, it's not like the AI employs this strategy as far as i can tell.

This argument is told many times already and is utterly invalid. One could use it to sweep under the rug any unbalanced feature in any game, no matter how crazy ("just don't use it"). This would make any game balanced and great, wouldn't it? Many people don't want to restrict their game play to suboptimal stage (like playing in low levels or something) just because the optimal way to play is so boring and brainless. Rather they move on to more interesting games.

 

[MkLh]

Of all of the proposed 'solutions' this is imo the absolute worst. This would gimp expansion big time. Optimal pink spaceship strategy is 3 cities only. Thats the kind of thing that would happen if this were imposed.

No it wouldn't. The culture and research have different mechanics. Maximizing culture relies on wonders and city states. There are limited numbers of them, and they don't scale by empire size. Thus once your empire is big enough to build wonders and to bribe CSs needed, you don't need any new city. Research instead is a function of population - expanding would still benefit it, it just wouldn't be so straightforward and easy.

In fact, the expansion restriction mechanism in Civ4, which worked quite nicely, was largely based on fact that mindless expansion would destroy your science. The actual mechanism was different, but the point was the same.

 

[Jharii]

This argument is told many times already and is utterly invalid. One could use it to sweep under the rug any unbalanced feature in any game, no matter how crazy ("just don't use it"). This would make any game balanced and great, wouldn't it? Many people don't want to restrict their game play to suboptimal stage (like playing in low levels or something) just because the optimal way to play is so boring and brainless. Rather they move on to more interesting games.

Just because an argument may be valid for one item does not automatically validate it for another.

 

[Roxlimn]

MkLh:

The argument isn't actually invalid, if the point is for a single player game. It's true that this could be invoked for any unbalanced mechanic, but that doesn't mean that the reasoning is invalid - just that it's widely usable.

In order to conclude that the game is worthless, we have to establish that every single mechanic is unbalanced and that it is impossible to have an interesting game no matter what we do, which most people who counter the reasoning have not done.

Psyringe:

Your "two reasons" are not two. They're actually one. Either "problem" is not a problem if you consider each independently. It only becomes a problem when you consider them together, therefore, it is one reason with two factors.

Let's examine them further:

1. It is a very ahistorical (and historically implausible) way to grow a civilization. Leaders of early civilizations didn't think "I have to litter the landscape with small, primitive cities to bring my empire forward". They rather thought "The hills over there would make a good position for a city overlooking the area, and the fertile lands at the river will feed its citizens", or they tried to secure resources. therefore, ICS breaks my suspension of disbelief, it makes Civ feel more like a game engine and less like a fascinating alternative history unfolding.

The stated rationale makes no sense. Leaders of early civilizations had no vision and no conception of technological innovations thousands of years into the future. At the point where you are assuming the role of an immortal Civilization leader, the game already becomes profoundly ahistorical.

If such leaders had the same insight as we do today, history would be profoundly different.

Therefore, the objection isn't that leaders would not have decided similarly or had similar considerations. It must be some other reason.

2. If the game's rules favor ICS as a superior strategy, then the player has the choice to either play the best strategy he can find (and swallow the fact that it doesn't really feel like growing a believable empire), or to consciously restrain himself from playing the best strategy in order to preserve the feeling of growing a civilization. Both choices are bad. Imho, the rules of a game like Civ can (and should) be designed in a way that "good strategy" and "historically believable growth" fall together. The player who tries to find the best strategies should not have the feeling that he has to forego his immersion for that, and the player who wants to watch a believable alternative history unfolding should not have the feeling that he must consciously stop himself from using good strategies to do so.

All Civs except 4 featured ICS, and even in Civ 4, the best strategies often involved doing things that prevented one from having a believable empire. For instance, in Civ 4, it was often necessary to adopt the religion of other Civs in order to be able to freely and perfectly manipulate the behavior of entire Civs. You plan for things like "beelines" and "tech trades" and Cavalry Rushes. We plan to get techs hundreds of years into the future, because we know they will allow us to trade technology with a lot of Civs who are somehow more scientifically adept than we are.

It's not like the cities were really that more organic. If you went for Cottage spam, you Cottaged everything, with towns dotting every single square inch for miles and miles and miles. How historical would this be? Was Medieval Europe an endless Townscape?

If you went Specialist Economy, your Civilization would work a few food tiles and virtually nothing else, not having hardly any towns whatsoever. All Modern cities remain founded on sites that were known to be beneficial for all time, and this optimal placing almost never changed.

Really, now, how is this historically immersive?

Optimal play in all Civs got you Riflemen at grossly anachronistic periods. Yeah, that's historically immersive.

The point that ICS is not historically immersive doesn't pan when we routinely have other game features (like technology) being grossly wrong and it not affecting game enjoyment one jot. It must be something else.

 

[Psyringe]

Roxlimn, honest question: what is your objective in this discussion? Are you genuinely interested in understanding how others enjoy playing Civ games, and why they may like or dislike a certain mechanism? Because if you are, I don't see it in your reply. What I do see is someone trying to tell me that the perspective from which I (and many others) enjoy Civ games for nearly 20 years now "makes no sense".

I also wonder why I get sarcastic remarks about riflemen appearing in "anachronistic periods" being "Yeah, very immersive" - when I made quite clear that I, like many others, draw my enjoyment from watching a believable alternative history unfold. In an alternative history, it is absolutely no issue if riflemen appear in 1920 or in 1715, as long as it's plausible for the alternative history that has developed.

The rest of your argument hinges on telling me that other elements of a Civ game are historically implausible too and that, if I buy into all these things, I cannot reject ICS as something that breaks my immersion. Your arguments have a couple of flaws:

1. You misunderstand my preference for a "historically plausible unfolding of an alternative history" as a desire for replaying Earth history (in your "anachronistic riflemen" example)

2. You assume that I play the game in ways that I almost never do (in your "extreme cottage spam" and "extreme specialist economy" example and some others - actually, if you read my first post in this thread, you can see why these ways of playing wouldn't be very enjoyable for me)

3. You misunderstand how immersion and suspension of disbelief work. When playing a game, or watching a movie, people always buy into an illusion, and usually enter the experience with a willingness to do so. That's the very nature of perceiving any piece of fiction. However, if the game or movie breaks too many (or too important) rules of plausibility, then the recipient's suspension of disbelief will eventually break down, and he won't enjoy the story anymore. Your "immortal leaders" example fits here: Yes, it is indeed historically implausible to have one immortal character leading a civilization for thousands of years. But it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief. And it is perfectly natural that some violations of plausibility break a recipient's suspension of disbelief, while others don't, so I really don't understand why you try to find examples for other implausibilities and in which way this invalidates the fact that ICS breaks mine.

You could ask why it's easy for me to buy into immortal leaders whereas I can't buy into ICS; there are a couple of reasons for that. If you want to understand them, I'll elaborate on that, but so far I don't see desire to understand in your post.

 

[Roxlimn]

Psyringe:

If you did not perceive a desire to understand, it's my fault. I was simply pointing out logical breaks.

That is, if your desire is to play a historical game, then anachronistic tech is clearly against your preferences, which you did not say. "Alternative history" would not explain this, as optimal ways of playing Civ 4 could acquire Riflemen in the early ADs, when people would have barely discovered blast furnaces in the real world. I cannot forsee an alternative history so warped as to have Riflemen in Classical Eras (which require advanced metallurgical tech) but not Cannons.

2. You assume that I play the game in ways that I almost never do (in your "extreme cottage spam" and "extreme specialist economy" example and some others - actually, if you read my first post in this thread, you can see why these ways of playing wouldn't be very enjoyable for me)

That doesn't square with your prior reasoning. "Extreme" specialist and cottage economies are the optimal ways to play Civ 4. You choose not to play like that, and you like that better. How is this different from not choosing to play ICS?

You misunderstand how immersion and suspension of disbelief work. When playing a game, or watching a movie, people always buy into an illusion, and usually enter the experience with a willingness to do so. That's the very nature of perceiving any piece of fiction. However, if the game or movie breaks too many (or too important) rules of plausibility, then the recipient's suspension of disbelief will eventually break down, and he won't enjoy the story anymore. Your "immortal leaders" example fits here: Yes, it is indeed historically implausible to have one immortal character leading a civilization for thousands of years. But it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief. And it is perfectly natural that some violations of plausibility break a recipient's suspension of disbelief, while others don't, so I really don't understand why you try to find examples for other implausibilities and in which way this invalidates the fact that ICS breaks mine.

Alright! That is a better reason. "ICS breaks my personal suspension of disbelief" is a better, more consistent reason than "ICS is ahistorical." Don't you agree?

 

[Clement]

Could it be possible to implement some kind of way to represent villages and towns? maybe that way a large sprawl could be maintained for those who like micro-management but with only some huge cities, making for a more realistic looking map, could introduce a new factor like health or happiness to Civ series maybe, "employment".

Employment could dictate which settlements become large, and which remain towns and villages. probably too complicated though.

 

[polypheus]

Psyringe:

If you did not perceive a desire to understand, it's my fault. I was simply pointing out logical breaks.

That is, if your desire is to play a historical game, then anachronistic tech is clearly against your preferences, which you did not say. "Alternative history" would not explain this, as optimal ways of playing Civ 4 could acquire Riflemen in the early ADs, when people would have barely discovered blast furnaces in the real world. I cannot forsee an alternative history so warped as to have Riflemen in Classical Eras (which require advanced metallurgical tech) but not Cannons.

The history of a Civ game on an alternate random-map world has no real relation to real Earth history. When Psyringe and I and talk about "historical immersion" it is based on alternative history unfolding and Civs developing and interacting in a broadly plausible way based on human culture and interaction. We are not talking about a "historical game" in the sense that the world unfolds and develops just like Earth history in terms of details like that.

As long as rifleman tech occurs, even in 1200AD, due to a broadly plausible path that makes sense, it is fine in that alternate history world. Broadly speaking, it is not that hard to accept that such a thing could happen in a different world under circumstances that accelerated tech development. And thus that is not an issue as far as "historical immersion" is concerned because we are again talking about creating alternate history under its own unique conditions with random maps, random Civs and a totally different historical development in that Civ game.

The problem with Civ5 style ICS has nothing to do so much with historical accuracy of Earth history per se. It has to do with the fact that it makes no sense that a nation with a couple of core cities and lots of purposefully kept small cities is a lot more powerful than several fully developed large cities. That kind of development makes no sense historically, it makes no sense period and most importantly it is bad for gameplay when you have all those buildings and tiles that never get built or developed simply because Civ5 gameplay mechanics say not to do it and instead build more cities with only circuses and trading post spam.

Also the thing with ICS is that this problem, in the opinion of many, was largely solved with Civ4 mechanics. If the last Civ was instead Civ3 then perhaps it is fair to say that well previous Civ had it too (since Civ5's model is more or less Civ3 model of city expansion and costs which of course is why ICS is back). But as many people did not like ICS favoring mechanics, it was largely solved in Civ4, and it is being brought back due to scrapping Civ4 anti-ICS mechanics and restoring Civ3 ICS-favoring mechanics, people will be disappointed.

 

[Bandit17]

I don't see ICS as a problem since it is optional and I have rarely seen the ai use this tactic. But, if you wanted to restrain it all it would take is a simple added maintainance/happiness penalty that can be added for each new city over a limit that can be dictated by the era your in. In era X you get x number of normal free cities. You go over limit you receive something like an extra -3 happiness per extra city settled or puppeted. Next era your city limit goes up and so on and so on. A pregame advanced option can be implamented so you can adjust this limit yourself or keep it at the current default pro-ICS settings. These settings would also apply to the ai as well. With this solution everyone can be happy and you can play the game the way that suites you. What you would get as a result would probably be more razings during war. Another idea is to not apply puppets to this new city limit rule. Just brainstorming...

 

[Eberon]

No it wouldn't. The culture and research have different mechanics. Maximizing culture relies on wonders and city states. There are limited numbers of them, and they don't scale by empire size. Thus once your empire is big enough to build wonders and to bribe CSs needed, you don't need any new city. Research instead is a function of population - expanding would still benefit it, it just wouldn't be so straightforward and easy.

In fact, the expansion restriction mechanism in Civ4, which worked quite nicely, was largely based on fact that mindless expansion would destroy your science. The actual mechanism was different, but the point was the same.

If you are going to penalize sci based on number of cities then you are going to need to make it pretty severe... else you will accomplish nothing. If having 40 size 6 cities make any science or even break even then ICS will still continue. Science isnt the only force driving ICS.

Civ4 didnt have all that harsh restrictions on expansion either. After getting over a hump in the early game it was generaly desirable to expand as fast as possible. It didnt hurt science at all. Once past the hump you could grow population fast enough to make the new cities viable very quickly. I always filled every square possible with a city.

 

[Roxlimn]

The history of a Civ game on an alternate random-map world has no real relation to real Earth history. When Psyringe and I and talk about "historical immersion" it is based on alternative history unfolding and Civs developing and interacting in a broadly plausible way based on human culture and interaction. We are not talking about a "historical game" in the sense that the world unfolds and develops just like Earth history in terms of details like that.

As long as rifleman tech occurs, even in 1200AD, due to a broadly plausible path that makes sense, it is fine in that alternate history world. Broadly speaking, it is not that hard to accept that such a thing could happen in a different world under circumstances that accelerated tech development. And thus that is not an issue as far as "historical immersion" is concerned because we are again talking about creating alternate history under its own unique conditions with random maps, random Civs and a totally different historical development in that Civ game.

The problem with Civ5 style ICS has nothing to do so much with historical accuracy of Earth history per se. It has to do with the fact that it makes no sense that a nation with a couple of core cities and lots of purposefully kept small cities is a lot more powerful than several fully developed large cities. That kind of development makes no sense historically, it makes no sense period and most importantly it is bad for gameplay when you have all those buildings and tiles that never get built or developed simply because Civ5 gameplay mechanics say not to do it and instead build more cities with only circuses and trading post spam.

Also the thing with ICS is that this problem, in the opinion of many, was largely solved with Civ4 mechanics. If the last Civ was instead Civ3 then perhaps it is fair to say that well previous Civ had it too (since Civ5's model is more or less Civ3 model of city expansion and costs which of course is why ICS is back). But as many people did not like ICS favoring mechanics, it was largely solved in Civ4, and it is being brought back due to scrapping Civ4 anti-ICS mechanics and restoring Civ3 ICS-favoring mechanics, people will be disappointed.

As a matter of fact, I was not truly satisfied with the way Civ 4 "solved" the issue. As another point of fact, Civ 5 "solves" this issue the same way - by instituting a penalty on every new city that is not imposed on growing existing cities.

The only difference between the two is that Civ 5 features multiple, documented methods of defeating the penalty, and Civ 4 only features two or three undocumented ways to defeat its ICS penalties. Now, if you want to argue that Civ 4 is less well documented than Civ 5, be my guest. I'm confident that you won't get far with that.


As for it being ahistorical, I don't see a problem with nations sponsoring a lot of intentionally small, supposedly independent city entities. It requires a little suspension of disbelief, but no more than Civs having Riflemen at 500 AD, with no knowledge of how to make technologically simpler Cannon.

It is equally hard for me to accept ICS as it is for me to accept that a militarily focused Civ that drafts Riflemen would fail to utilize the same technology to create technologically simpler weapons. You don't spontaneously develop the ability to make swords without knowing how to make knives. How that can be historically plausible is mind-boggling.

In fact, the same criticism is levied at Civ 5 allowing Infantry without Rifling.

 

[polypheus]

I don't see ICS as a problem since it is optional and I have rarely seen the ai use this tactic. But, if you wanted to restrain it all it would take is a simple added maintainance/happiness penalty that can be added for each new city over a limit that can be dictated by the era your in. In era X you get x number of normal free cities. You go over limit you receive something like an extra -3 happiness per extra city settled or puppeted. Next era your city limit goes up and so on and so on. A pregame advanced option can be implamented so you can adjust this limit yourself or keep it at the current default pro-ICS settings. These settings would also apply to the ai as well. With this solution everyone can be happy and you can play the game the way that suites you. What you would get as a result would probably be more razings during war. Another idea is to not apply puppets to this new city limit rule. Just brainstorming...

Well first of all the AI does in fact use it on higher difficulty levels. And a lot of people play on those levels simply because it is no challenge to play at lower levels.

But the second issue isn't whether it is optional or not. It is rather an issue of game mechanics and game balance. For instance a lot of people say horseman and instant heal is very overpowered. You could take the approach that using such things is "optional" and just don't use these aspects. But it makes much more sense to say that perhaps horseman and insta-heal abilities should be fixed and re-balanced don't you think then to simply say that using broken unbalanced mechanics is "optional"?

 

[Roxlimn]

polypheus:

I suppose it depends on what you think is "broken." Cottage spam and SEs seemed pretty broken to me in Civ 4, and I didn't see anyone clamoring to get those fixed in the game.

 

[flyingbunnys]

I've stopped playing Civilization 5 for now because of ICS. ICS breaks the game, and I'll tell you why I say this.

First: You can build a city anywhere on the map, it doesn't have to be close to your boarder. This is a problem because a city far away from my boarders would be hard to manage and the citizans would eventually become angry and difficult to control; example England's colonies.

Solution: Increase unhappness for cities that are not culturally connected to the main culture mass of your civilization.

Second: You can build a city anywhere even if the land is uninhabital. Yet is still benifits you because you can throw up a colliseum. To me this doesn't make since because if there are no people in the city to benifit from the colliseum why should it increase happyness. Its like building stadium in a city with a population of 20 people and it expecting it to cause 40 people to be happy.

Solution: Ditch global happyness, or make happyness building less effective in small cities. Make each cities cause more unhappyness, and decresing unhappyness caused by population.

Third: Spamming some small cities buying a collisium setting them to produce commerse is just plan stupid. The goal is the be involved and develope your cities.

Solution: Make each cities cause more unhappyness, and decresing unhappyness caused by population.

I have found that if you do not want to use ICS you are basically restricted to playing on smaller maps, or using ghandi as someone mentioned earlier.

I personally think that the best thing to do would be to make unhappyness for population 1 unhappiness for every 2 population and 2 or 3 unhappness per city you build. I would also like to see some penalty for building cities far away from your main civilization. I might try to make a mod that does this and see how it works, but as it is now I hate playing becuase of ICS.