posted 08-18-99 02:47 AM ET        

Thus, since this might be the last concerted effort to make SMAC better, it makes sense to add an enhancement section to our efforts. As long as we are dreaming, right?

I'm hoping Shining will take over this aspect of our list, since he has lots of good ideas. Plus, he brought up the A.I. issue in the first place.

Well, post your enhancement ideas here. Odds are we will never see them put into SMAC, though they might make it into some version of SMACX. At any rate, many of our enhancement ideas here will feed directly into Civ3's development, since Civ3 will start (in programming terms) more or less where SMAC and SMACX end. Unless you want Civ3 to be SMAC with better colors, let's do our best to send a signal now that FIRAXIS can (and needs to) do better. So be as specific as possible about what you think can be improved and how.

posted 08-18-99 05:12 AM ET            

Bomber Tactics: Allocate a certain amount of Bombers to attack opponent cities, units, and terrain enhancements.

Diplomacy Tactics: Build memory/counters to track how long players have been in the "Best loved" and "most hated" SE settings.

Chop and Drop Tactics: Instruct the Opp Engine in how to use its Bombers/Choppers to eradicate defenders in a target city and then DROP TROOPS into empty city.

Re-evaluate Way Points and Staging Grounds every X turns: As it stands now, if a player intercepts the supply string/route during a build up, the troops/units already allocated at the Way Point/Staging Ground will never be reallocated. A player can infinitely keep destroying the remaining troops going to the waypoint, and never face the built up portion. If the Opponent Engine loses the cities supplying the troops for the attack, those built up units will remain in the Way Point City.

Nasty Droppings: Build Drop Probes and do nasty probe things to non-HSA possessing enemy in range. (Infilitrate, Steal Tech, etc)

Wavy Probes: Foil Probes. for use against enemy port cities.

If target cities out of range of owned cities, but in range of owned land, use a former to build an air base, or found new city. Then use new Air Base/City as base for air/drop units.

ICS Preventive: Don't give a free square worked. One Citizen = One Tile Worked. (Don't make base a freeby) This will ELIMINATE ICSing for the extra tile of production.

posted 08-18-99 08:53 PM ET            

Bronko: Brilliant. I too would love to see that. It would eliminate drone riots almost completely.

More for the list (my list?):

A.I defensive tactics: This needs to be completely rewriten. The A.I must learn to use offensive units inside cities in the same way that a player would, i.e to kill anything outside the walls (the cost/benefit of this is obvious, which shows the A.I is not weighing up options, but has a firmly set response.)

The A.I also seems completely unprepared to use offensive units if they are the least bit damaged. This is also a bad thing. Furthermore, the A.I tends to build too much of one type of defense - attack it with a rover, for instance, and when you roll through with a band of mindworms, they will be facing a legion of 1-4+-1 Silksteel ECM units. Ha ha ha.

Overall defensive tactics: Also, given the defensive disparity between attackers and defenders, cities require another early defensive struture - call this a supersensor, and make it add both 50% to city defense and double the effectiveness of nearby defensive sensors (hence wall + supersensor = +200% defend, or +100% for bunkers).

posted 08-19-99 01:15 AM ET            

ICSing would still be a tool of the conqueror. Free Support. Cost of one Colony Pod = 4 free units. That is a major foundation of early rush/mongal hordes.

But, by simply removing the free tile of work, you cut down on the rewards of ICSing by a significant portion (the bonus resources). And we were talking about enhancements great and small, right?

But thanks to the increasing count of food rows, yeah, you grow FASTER if you are smaller. I don't see that as significant though. What am I missing on that? I mean, a city that is size one is insignificant to most but Horde Conquerors, as after a certain level of expansion, you can't gather any more energy for your Faction, leading to no new research form the outer, ever expanding ring. You can't afford to build infrastructure in those cities as they can't support them. So, as I see it, the Horde Conqueror is still going to ICS for the extra support (which equals faster/more unit production). That's about it.

posted 08-19-99 04:34 AM ET            

the computer picks a target. that target becomes the third way point. the computer picks a mass way point like one or two moves away from that target, that is the second way point. then the computer picks a safe way point to assemble small goups of troops, this is the first way point. these small groups travel to mass at that second way point. if a large number of troops fall to aircraft then the computer should know to put SAM and AAA units in it's small groups.

instead of the computer just looking at what's in the build que it should also keep track of what units it units are dying to. and if it sees a pattern then build to stop it.

if the computer is using missles then it should always attack with missles first before any other units. PBs first then conventional.

make high level units (anything above the 1-1-* of a unity unit) require a specific base structure before you can build them. maybe a network node before you can build weapons, and maybe a recycling tank before you can build armor, or something.

for now that's all
korn469

posted 08-19-99 06:26 AM ET            

You build a pod, and get two size one cities. Almost immediately, you get two size two cities (lets assume a completely flat, 2 1 0 field for this example, just to really show of ICS).

The first city gets +2 food per turn (4 to feed the population, and 2 from the city square). To get to size 3, you need 30 food. That's 15 turn. Each of the smaller cities, however, needs only 20 food AND THEY COLLECT IT SIMULTAINEOUSLY.

So you have, after 15 turns (lets say the pod takes 4 turns to move and one to build), either a single size 3 city or two size two cities (which also benefit from each having their own city square, remember - 4 squares production vs. 6 squares).

Here's the real cut. Now divide each of the two new cities into pods. This will take a while, since each costs 40 minerals (each base is earning 3 minerals per turn). So it takes 14 turns to get a new pod in each base (if you don't hurry them), by which time they are each almost size 3 (28 of a required 30 food). The other base is 14 turns into its growth to a size four base (40/2 = 20 turns).

So, assuming it takes SIX turns to move the new pods, you still have a couple of size three bases and two size one bases. For a grand total of 8 population +4 city squares.

The single base, now at size 4, has 4 population +1 city square. Wait another 10 turns, and you have 10+4 vs. 4+1.

posted 08-19-99 07:49 AM ET            

Darkstar: Edit Alpha.txt to set the base square production of nutrients, minerals and energy to 0, 0, 0.

Shining1: We don't need supersensors. Alpha.txt lets us set the sensor defence bonus as high as we wish.

Likewise for base defence.

Ditto for armor. (But I'm sure you knew that!)

It also lets us cut weapons attack power down to size.

This is all very easy; it changes the game to strongly favor defence, as I witness that it then takes a major effort even for a high-tech Miriam in human hands to wrest a base from an unready lower-tech Morgan or Deirdre in AI hands.

On the actually difficult matters:

Bronko and Shining1: All we really ned to ask is that the setting for Governors to deal with Drone Riots work! By anticipation would be best, but at least they shouldn't wait until a building is burnt to the ground before acting. Grrr...

posted 08-19-99 09:25 AM ET            

I'm sure you'll agree, it isn't really practical.

And the supersensors are useful for balancing the values in the actual game, as decreed by firaxis. No matter how well made, a mod is unlikely to ever be used by more than 5% of players.

I never use governor settings, they don't fit into any kind of overall strategy.

Editing the base square is not recommended. You'll end up with a slighly militarized version of sim city, with some very slowly growing cities (improved squares giving only around 2 1 0, and often much less).

You don't want your base to starve to death at the second year, after all.

Buildings as prereqs - a major change, which sounds too difficult to impliment for SMACX.

posted 08-19-99 11:54 AM ET            

personally, i'd like to see more landmarks like the nexus manifold. you could do one for research, support, etc.

also, an idea, just for amusement, would be another level above elite for units, "legendary" or something. you'd be able to give the unit a name and whatnot. perhaps a different sheild. it should be difficult to attain, obviously, and probably, another 12.5% bonus. it wouldn't have that great of an outcome on the game, and i think would add some nice flavor to it.

posted 08-19-99 12:17 PM ET            

I would like a command to show you which tiles are in danger of going underwater when sea levels are rising (maybe part of the Show Terrain key)

The AI should NOT vote to raise sea levels repeatedly when the entire planet is already drowning (or is that some secret tactic?)

I agree with the idea of AI evalauting your history of SE choices instead of just your currrent during diplomacy.

This one might be tough but...during elections the AI should want to bribe you so that you will vote for them (with poor reputation if you take the money and don't vote their way)

posted 08-19-99 01:22 PM ET            

Yes, I realize that you'd have to initially search out base locations with Nuetrient bonuses. That makes SENSE. This people are new to Chiron, and know nothing about it. They shouldn't be able to instantly thrive ANYWHERE on the land's surface. Although, changing the Neutrient bonuses would lead to better (Civ meaning) perfectionist abilities.

The real problem of ICSing is that it puts villages and towns on the level of 10,000 to 30,000 people on a same importance level than those of towns, cities, and metropili. 5 bases of pop 3 are often better than 3 bases of pop 5. At least, for unit support and tiles worked. If this is so, what is the benefit of having people in large population clusters?

There are many things that can be done. I like the suggestion to move away from the City State design, and more towards a true national state. One where the little towns are the agriculture base, and where the large cities are the major research and manufactoring centers. But how to do that? One way is certainly to drop the current military unit support system and go to a national state... where all bases pay a portion of their energy and shields to maintain the Faction's militia. This means that a large enough military would grind everything else to a halt, due to its support weight. But that means Clean has to go away, or become something much less (1/10 the normal cost to support or something).

Which reminds me... the higher a units tech, the more it takes to keep that unit supplied and supported. It takes over 10K to 12K support personel to maintain one army unit NOW. It takes over 35K to support one Air Wing (Not SQUAD, but the smallest org clustering). That's 1 base of 1 pop for a single Scout unit in SMAC. 4 bases of 1 Pop to support a Needle Jet with low attack power. Wow. And higher tech's support cost in people to maintain grows, not shrinks. I realize that SMAC's SE: Support is meant to represent the bureacratic and logistical skills possessed by a Faction, but if this is true for us, what truly be likely in its settings?

What are other ways to go beyond the City State? It seems that we are in agreement that we want growth and expansion to be the KEY to winning in the game. But how to balance the paths of taking those bases by force, and making them yourself? Or to close the gap, somewhat, as it's harder to build something, than just take it.

posted 08-19-99 01:47 PM ET         

Also, there are STATES and COUTIES in every country, as well as a national capitol. In some expansion, I think it would be a good idea to utilize this. Instead of a national army (or possibly in addition, depending on social engeneering) there should be state armies. States could also have their own rate of corruption, taxes ect. Do you think that this could be of use in SMACX, or would it be too much micromanagement?

posted 08-20-99 12:21 PM ET            

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I KNOW how many cities benefit the Conqueror (Support of Hordes, Production of cheap units adding to the Hordes, etc). I have even mentioned that, I believe. It's the Peaceful Builder benefits I am missing.

I disagree with your "While 4 size 2 cities may not research any faster than 2 size 3s, they're unlikely to be slower." On average, Yes they will. Due to Inefficency. The further one gets from the HQ, the worse the lose of energy, as we all know. 8 size 2 cities will be worse at researching than 4 size 5 cities on average. Why? The implication that you ARE ICSing, which involves spreading quickly. That means that you will get past acceptable returns from energy collect quickly. The Peaceful Builder concentrating on Core Perfection along with slowly expanding will have serious energy income and serious research generated. An ICSer will typically only have a couple of Core cities that are capable of middle to large projects. The rest are too small to contemplate serious projects, be they network nodes or secret projects.

If it wasn't for Inefficency, which limits the usefulness of Peaceful Builder ICSing, I'd agree with you. But it does. Outpost cities (cities beyond All Energy Loss (14 to 24 tiles out from HQ) are good only for unit support, unit production, and minerals to energy orders. 2 of the 3 ingredients in the Conqueror Horde's recipe for World Domination.

When ICSing, close base placement allows the player to get around the efficency issue somewhat. But even then, not for long in a Builder's POV. Long enough from a Conqueror's POV. Which is another reason many Conquerors live by ICSing, but its just a limited trick in the Builder's lineup.

Shining1 seems to think that something more is needed than merely SMAC's current Efficency system as the Peaceful Builder's limitter to ICS. And I have to wonder why... Population Booms are much more powerful tool to the builder than ICS.

posted 08-20-99 02:08 PM ET            

Efficiency loss also dictates the number of natural drones a city produces. After a certain number of cities are built, drone riots increase; they increase to the point that the very first citizen is a drone. This is more evident at the higher levels of play; it is one of the things that makes the higher levels of play more difficult.

ICS is not a new tactic. It was developed within weeks of the release of Civ1. If I remember correctly, a few students at Carnagie Mellon University applied the same theories that led to OS micro-kernals and RISC processing. They were able to win games of Civ by "infinitely" building cities, remaining at despotism, and building nothing but settlers and military units. Sid repsonded to this by implementing rules where "drones" would increase with the number of cities built; in Civ the "drone" problem was also more evident at despotism. I beleive that Brian extended these rules in Civ2 to include wastage and "double drones".

It seems that these rules were rolled into the efficiency calculations in SMAC, but SMAC gives you the ability to alter efficiency with the SE choices. Therefore, it is possible that with an efficiency of 5+, drone riots don't carry enough weight to deter ICS even with a builder strategy.

posted 08-21-99 04:43 AM ET            

Also, while inefficiency cuts into energy, it doesn't hurt production much. If you want to win, you need a large mineral intake (for both builders and conquerors, all that changes is what is done with it).

My model was precise, and simply showed how, though failing to sleaze, you could lose out bigtime in the population stakes. 10+4 squares vs. 4+1 means that you energy intake is likely to be massively bigger, even if the single city has better facilities and makes for more convienent production. If you rush the colony pods, you get an even better lead. The simple problem being that big cities are extremely difficult to achieve, and by spreading out, you can have a legion of cities that are almost as big and effective. The difference between a size 8 and a size 9 city is 90 nutrients. The difference between a size 1 and a size 2 city is 20. Yet both of these get exactly the SAME upgrade for being built (i.e one extra square production).

So if you're wasting nutrient intake within your borders on a big city, you're losing bigtime on the effectiveness stakes. This is the invisible problem with ICS, and it kills the builder game outright - because, for equal size of territory, an ICING player gets much, much faster expansion than a big city player. Which of course means being greeted by an infinte number of recon rovers 30 turns into the game (and I'm sure that YOU know this tactic better than anything else).

Moreover, SMAC hampers the big city player even further, by requiring them to waste minerals and population on happiness improvements, hab facilties, perimeter defenses, etc.

And if you're at all worried about losing efficiency, forget it. The sheer TOTAL of energy being produced is so much greater than the big city player that this hardly matters. You won't get to zero intake before you max out your territory in a series of 3*3 square girds (you rare need to go above size 8, as you just waste time building hab complexes). Build a Children's Creche and go Demo or green if you have to (+4 effic = paradigm economy, for no loss whatsoever). Or play as the Gaians .

Population boom is the best thing to finish this on. The discovery that, not only has your opponent wasted ages getting his cities to size 15, but that you can match this in less than 20 turns (taking all infrastructure into account) to have ALL of your cities at full population, that's really the killer. Population Booms are the equivilent of tech stealing.

posted 08-22-99 01:55 AM ET            

We are in agreement on many things.

ICS is NOT a new tactic. When Empire Building games let players choose to build new bases/cities/colonies, in any game (Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Galatic Conquest, Civ Series, etc), it INSTANTLY became a key strategy for optimizing growth/production/research/military machine. The sooner the seeds are planted, the better. It's a key point of the system, by nature of the design. And it will NEVER be removed, so long as population is in any way related to ANY capability (research, money, production, resource harvesting/converting, military strength/prowess).

Now, I agree that the thought that 10K people can work the same proportions of land area as say, 50K and it yields the same results is the best example of where the system is flawed. Obviously, for maximizing efficency, you'd want to split that 50K into 5 parts, sending 4 parts out to found new resource harvesting/processing bases. And that is what ICS is allowing you to do, to a certain degree. Maximize effiecency of your population resource. And since that resource GROWS, you can continue to split it off and yeild great results.

ICS is a permanent feature of the game. It's due to design decision to use city states, and that small towns need to be on the same scale as large towns and cities. This is reinforced by the fact each city can only work one thing at a time, and that only one thing can be being worked in a city a turn.

There are several things that can be done to reduce ICS effects, but until the base design is changed in very significant ways, ICS is still going to be a keystone to maximizing expansion and growing population.

The real question isn't what can be done to reduce some of the effects of ICS, but rather, how to design a different system that doesn't use a model that would automatically feature ICS. Any ideas?

-Darkstar

posted 08-22-99 05:17 AM ET            

1) Size one cities only get the city square's production. This is best done by adding a permanent worker (e.g a grey citizen, for instance) to the civilian list.

2) Change the growth of cities model so that the growth values are more equitible. With CivIII probably having a growth system similar to that in SMAC (e.g SocEng for +2 growth), this still makes quick growth of early cities a possibility. I would, in fact, favour a set number for all growth, no matter the size of a city, so that the only problems with large cities are happiness and the need to build hab complex type developments.

3) Increase the direct benefits for having large cities - say increase the base trade of a city by +2 for every citizen, in addition to what actually gets produced by those same citizens when they go to work. In this way, a player gets some reward for the vast expense of terraforming, temple building, etc.

4) Make drone control a more intuitive process. Right now, you only react when a city goes into disorder (unless you are absolutely anal about checking the citizen screen). Making it easier for the player to keep their big cities under control is important.

5) Revolutions. Make the drone problems for far flung empires heinous. Make drone problems in nearby cities almost unheard of. Not only does this help the builder, it also makes conquering a much more difficult and interesting process.

6) Builder interests. These need to be addressed in order to make big cities truly useful. Making it difficult to steal technology from an advanced opponent is a start, or at least the cost of that action must justify it. If you run your military down to bare minimum in order to maximize your tech, having a well armed opponent come along and steal that tech for a piecemeal sum is not fair. But neither is making a player who has the tech lead invincible. So you need a fine balance between the Americans and the Mongol horde.

posted 08-23-99 01:29 PM ET            

Shining1, when a Base square gets 3/2/2 with just one additional facility, how are you going to stop ICS? That turns a sloping flat arid tile (non-legal borehole) into a HIGHLY productive overall square. If I could put bases adjacent to each other, I'd SPRAWL the hell out of all those ugly useless spots. Tag in Supply Crawler/Probe building, and I'm going to kill the game. All due to it's base model of independant city states of Empire. Give me Support that allows for Hording, and look out.

As long as you can get ahead by building a new base, there will be ICS. You get ahead in growth by your so well stated example of the difference in rows needed to grow. You get ahead in bases for military strength support. You get ahead in production in extra tile/extra resourse (shield, food, energy) worked. Any place a NEW base makes you get ahead, is one more bonus for ICS.

Food, at least recovers for tile working over base working, thanks to 2 level farming enhancements. Mines on rocky land and boreholes jumps its yeild ahead. As well as the right combination to raise energy yields. But that all takes time the ICSlimer can be spreading his bases... and behind the growing line of ICSlimed frontier, Formers can be making those improvements to the ICSlimer's land.

SMAC encourages ICSliming even FURTHER than previous games with its addition of Satellite Benies. Previously, the total maximum of resources in depended on what could be harvested by the city workers from tiles worked. Now, cities/bases can go beyond that ICS Penalty of less then maximum tile's available. So not even long range Builders have a reason NOT TO ICS. The only limits to a city is how much work/time the human player wants to put into it, and program limits.

I do like your suggestions. But there is just no reason NOT to ICS as things stand. Short or long term, except in that it can over-extend your forces in defensibility. Which is easily solved by attacking, in SP.

posted 08-24-99 08:12 AM ET            

Our ICING list so far:

1. City square production - both as the key advantage for a new city and in the amount of resources gained compared to the alternative for that square*.

2. City growth model - small cities growing much faster than big ones.

3. Infrastructure requirements - and ICSleazer can forgo tech research due to cheap catchup means.

4. Support model - support is based on a per city model instead of a per population model. This saves minerals when using lots of small cities.

5. Per city benefits - structures, etc, that add a discrete benefit to ALL cities, regardless of number.

6. Population Boom - An ideal catchup for players with large numbers of small cities to max out their production.

Have I forgotten anything so far?

posted 08-24-99 08:16 AM ET            

Having a build queue is was a great improvement over Civ2 IMHO, but I think it was poorly implemented. Right now, you have two separate lists to select your production from, one for the current build, and one for the queue. If you uses queues like I do, you quite often need to tweak them, and that means swapping back and forth between these two screens. Very annoying and time-consuming.

I believe it would be much better if we had only one set of commands to manipulate production, with the item currently built being at the top of the list. This way, one selection screen would be enough, and we could even have nice little buttons to reorganize the queue (move up/down) in addition to the current add/insert/delete.

posted 08-25-99 11:23 AM ET            

Sorry, I don't have time to elaborate. However, take a peek at www.webmap.com/stars/ and download the demo. Regardless of whether you like or want to play the game, check out the build queue.

It is fast, simple, flexible and even allows for item by item vs automated production. Since this game is almost 10 years old, there should be a number of good ways to incorporate an even better system.

adios

posted 08-25-99 01:06 PM ET            

IIRC, you can't build more than one of the same satellite in a queue in SMAC (at least I never can). Sometimes I would like to crank out tons of the same type. There-that's an enhcancement.

posted 08-25-99 01:16 PM ET            

Frankly people, the issue of building a good Production screen with an integrated queue has been done well in many places, in many games. It's obviously wasn't a concern to the UI design in SMAC. The Production Queue of SMAC comes across as a kludge, something that was just stuck in to appease those potential customers that refuse to try an empire game without one, rather than an integrated part of the production UI.

UI is always worth putting emphasis on. It's the code that your customers CONSTANTLY use, so they will notice discrepencies (bugs or irritations, to them) in it quickly. They will notice the extra steps required when things could have been simplified.

SMAC has several UI improvements from its "predecessors" (such as listing what a city is building on the main display), but the production queue isn't one of them.

posted 08-25-99 01:23 PM ET            

Option: Displaying the number of turns until production of current build completed.
IE

The Hive
(Colony Pod - 8)

Option: For bases that have a Governor set, place an Icon showing the particular settings on the display. Possibly icons to get you started: Sword for Conquest, Eye for Explore, Hammer for Build, and Beaker for Discover. No Icons = balanced Governor. This would allow those that use Governors to quickly look over the main map and rearrange priorities for those Governors without having to actually go into the city. It would also allow them to see Cities with multiple Governor settings, unlike the city reports.

posted 08-26-99 02:47 AM ET            

Notice those four icons on the top of the screen. I never use them. But they would be a great place to store custom build lists, instead of depending on the useless A.I to do things.

Setup:
Click BUILD
Message: No build list currently available. Create Build list YES/NO?
Click Yes
Select x number of items from the units/buildings menu for the custom build queue. Click Okay.
Message: Build list saved.

The next time you click this button, you get the option of replacing current production with the list, or adding the list to the end of the current production queue.

Hence each player gets 4 custom production queues. For the governor, you can extend this idea to include firaxis default ideas for each build list, which, while not ideal, will probably be better than using the A.I to do it.

Also, you need to have a main window option to access a build list and edit it, and to change the governor for a city to a certain build list.

Moreover, it would be useful to be able to tell a city governor to optimise the choice of tile according to either minerals, food, energy, or all. And to have a warning one turn BEFORE drone riots take place.

I also favour having only around 25 unit types available at any one time. 64 is far too many to look after, especially for upgrades.

posted 08-26-99 11:53 PM ET            

F**k off.

I have done more editing of alpha.txt than anyone else. And you can't improve the A.I via Alpha.txt, or I would have.

Realism has not been mentioned in this thread to date. Nor will it.

Your response was arrogant and ill informed. Since you have no idea who you are talking to or what you are talking about, please shut up.

posted 08-27-99 01:34 AM ET            

I'm always amazed at people who say: "Stop trying to improve the game! It's a game, and games should suck!" Usually, those people have no idea how the game has progressed (or hasn't) and who has done what (or hasn't) to try to improve on things that could obviously be better.

posted 08-27-99 02:20 AM ET            

But let us have our shot at improving the game. I dare say that it is demanding gamers like Shiny and others who drive Firaxis to do better. This, of course, with the assumption that the average gamer will play any average game shoved at him (the industry's dream, for sure, but shouldn't some companies do better than average?).

posted 08-27-99 03:26 AM ET            

Great one Yin. And yes, that IS what you people are saying, when paraphrased.

Shining1 has editted and customized SMAC more than any other person KNOWN to this and other SMAC places. His modification is hailed as a master-piece by many sectors of the fan base. If Shining1 cannot balance the game any further for his taste, it's his right to vent and suggest how here. Best respect that, Zakky boy.

And leave us "51 percenters" to pursue a better game that is worth $20+ to us. Thanks.

posted 08-27-99 08:45 AM ET            

http://apolyton.net/smac/

posted 08-27-99 02:00 PM ET         

Thanks for the link. SMAC has been dormant on my PC for some time (Right now, JA2 is my time hog), but I remember your suggested SNAC mods some time ago and forgot to copy them at that very time. Hopefully I'll give your mods a shot soon.

Regards,

posted 08-29-99 12:00 PM ET            

Note : I'm using the x10 system. Apolytoners who read my posts should know what I mean.

1. Some want to eliminate the city square production to 0-0-0. I should increase it.
When using the Civ2 population system (size one city = 10000 people, size 2 30000, size 3 60000) instead of the SMAC lineair one (1 = 10000, 2 = 20000), and when there's a divided production system between labor and resources in Civ3, the following is realistic.
Instead of a lineair increase in Labor, have it simultaneously increase with the city size. So a city size 1 produces 10 labor, size 2 30 and size 3 60...
So large cities always produce more.
And if that isn't enough, you could give a similar increase in trade to the city square.
So a size one city produces no extra trade besides the one the terrain produces.
Then size 2 coold give a +10 trade bonus. Size 3 another +15, together +25...
So point 1 of Shining1's list of August 24, 08:12 is solved.

2. Actually, population growth should get faster the larger your city gets since changing from size two to three (doubling population) is easier then changing from size one to two (tripling population).
And of course population growth shouldn't be related to food production.

3. What do you mean with infrastructure requirements? Do you mean that certain units should need a specific building first to be built? I totally disagree with that. I wouldn't want to build eg Stables in all my cities (very boring and also expensive due to the upkeep cost + more micromanagement) just to build a simple Horsemen.

4. You should read my Military SE factor in the SE thread. The Military (includes Support) factor doesn't give you a number of free units as in all previous CivX games. No, it decreases the cost for unit support with one resource per +Military. Easy to do with x10. Support is now totally unrelated to # cities. So 10 size 1 cities allowing thirty free units when 1 size 10 city allows three free units is impossible.

5. Are you referring to SMAC satellites? Because Civ3 probably won't go far in the future, there will be no satellites anyway.
Although I would like colonizing Mars and getting extra resources from there. But that wouldn't be an added bonus to every city.

6. Indeed. Population boom is certainly as serious a problem as ICS. I in my SE model made it impossible to get pop boom. +4 Growth the maximum. And the effects I gave to Golden Age don't include a Growth bonus.
So if Firaxis doesn't give a Granary a Growth bonus, pop boom should be impossible early in the game. Perhaps late in the game a Hospital city improvement should make it possible.
BTW, if the growth of large cities (see 2.) gets easier, pop boom won't be necessary to achieve large cities.

posted 08-30-99 01:37 AM ET            

I agree with your analysis of growth for cities. More people = more children. This would definitely serve to help stop ICS, but may go too far, if a well fed early city cannot grow quickly.

Also, population pressures tend to stop growth. So you need a balance between the two - new cities need to grow quickly if there is enough food.

3)No, cities need infrastructure is needed to enable growth. Temples to eliminate the drones (usually, 3 drones equals a stagnated city, because of food intake), and hab complex type additions also cost minerals.

5)Anything that gives a + to multiple cities instead of population. So the Hoover dam counts, because you get +50% production in all cities, regardless of number. This aids ICS.

6) Pop boom should be possible if you are a builder, as in CivII. SMAC gives it an unnatural feel, with demo/planned/creche automaticially putting a city into boom mode.

The theory in point 2 works well with this. New surplus food (for farms, say) in a big city will lead to a quick and massive boost in growth.

Perhaps keep growth constant up to size 8, and give the Aquiduct a +2 growth bonus, as well as allowing the city to grow past size 8. Do the same for the sewer, and add a hospital, which is not needed for increased size, but also adds +2 growth (and requires an aquiduct AND a sewer). A very conservative approach, but it seems to fit.

posted 08-30-99 08:18 AM ET            

????????
Food has nothing to do with growth. Do you think that people will have more children when there's 10 surplus food instead of 2?

"Also, population pressures tend to stop growth."

In almost all the thirth world cities/countries there is population pressure. Does that mean people stop migrating to the city? Does that mean people stop having children? No.

Yes, you're right about the Temple.
I proposed to let cities grow further even if they haven't built an aquaduct. The drawback would be very unhappy (as in Civ2 there should be unhappy and very unhappy citizens, I call them Revolutionaries) citizens and a lot of disease points.

Yes, I also found it unrealistic that a Hoover Dam had the same effect on eg ten cities then on sixty cities.
How would you solve that? Just say it can affect maximum eg 20 cities?

Yea, just say that every city (even the very small ones) need as much food in the food storage box to grow as large ones.
BTW in reality small cities don't have to grow fast. Population growth was very small until the Industrial Revolution.

posted 08-30-99 03:23 PM ET            

2. I scanned the thread and didn't see this mentioned, so let me add it: I -hate- the way the F4 city list keeps resetting to the beginning when you jump back to it from the city you visited from it. If you have a large number of cities and are trying to rush build, for instance, this results in an endless series of page-downs just to keep returning to where you were.

3. Information is sometimes written in yellow text to the main window for a few seconds, at which time it is invariably covered up by 15 windows that pop up over and over until the message fades, unread. Some of these messages show up in the event list for that turn, but some don't. So...make it so -all- of this info gets to the event list.

4. The 4.0 patch made it so we can see the SE choices of the other factions, I'd like it to go one step further and go ahead and show us the 'E' SE screen for the other factions in the format that we see our own.

5. A preferences setting that would let the computer auto-fix drone riots by pulling a citizen of its choice off a square currently being worked.

6. The current 'rush project' cost is the cost required to bring the project to zero turns to complete (i.e. the cost to buy every single mineral the project needs). However, 99 of 100 times what I really want to do is buy just enough minerals to make it one turn to complete. The way it is now, I have to do the math in my head for almost every rush project, would be nice if there were two rush buttons, 'rush to 0 turns' and 'rush to 1 turn' or something. (BTW, if anyone out there hasn't tried this, you can save an amazing amount of money over time by only rush building to 1 turn instead of the default 0 turns).

7. Almost -all- the popup confirmation windows have the wrong default highlighted. By this I mean they have the default highlighted that is the opposite of the action selected (if you select to attack, the default in the popup is to not attack, etc.). Since almost every single time I choose an action it's with the intent to actually do it, this means that almost every single time I have to micromanage the popup window to get it done. Solution: make the defaults synonymous with the original intent, make the non-default choices the 'abort action' ones.

8. An option somewhere to 'Rush all current projects'. It's annoying to have to sift through your giant city list to manually rush 20 projects.

9. A preferences setting that would cause a popup window for a city that was causing eco-damage. Possibly have the value be manually set, so for instance you could have it where a popup window would come up if any city had 10 eco damage or higher.

10. Most of what I've written has been about UI enhancements, here is my big wish for AI enhancement: the AIs desperately need to build more infrastructure in their cities. I've seen games when in the year 2490 (on Librarian setting) the computer factions would have almost no research/economy structures built. Yang in this game had almost 30 cities, 5 of which had research nodes. Without building better infrastructure the computer is almost totally helpless if the game lasts more than 100 turns.

11. The computer AI needs to be made more aware of energy loss from inefficiency. I've seen computer AI empires that had astounding losses in energy because of bad SE choices in this area. This sort of leads into the area of SE choices in general, the AI should be able to approach this area more intelligently than it does, as this area is one that involves hard numbers and should be a strong suit of the AI.

***************

posted 08-30-99 04:34 PM ET            

People are more willing to have children... children and their providers are BETTER FED = Healthier (mind you), and lots of food makes food cheaper making it easier to feed more.

It's a basic behaviour. More food equal faster growth, overall. Civ does have that modelled well, but the fact that each level of size makes the needed food surplus grow as well hides the true surplus growth factor until Supermarkets come along...

posted 08-30-99 05:52 PM ET            

So I hope you agree food production is only a small part of pop growth.

posted 08-31-99 02:34 AM ET            

If you haven't noticed, the last 100 years of improved farming techniques and clean water have doubled or trebled the worlds population almost overnight.

When settlers from England and Ireland moved to the U.S, they turned a couple of a couple of million at best into one with almost 300 million people.

Africa has all the space in world, and the worst farming techniques imaginable. They have lots of people, but not compared to China, where farming has been properly developed over 6000 years. China has enough food to support 1.2 Billion people. India is rapidly catching up.

Surplus food is about the only factor involved in population growth. A lack of space is not really any big deal, but is still relevant, as health issues will affect the food supply. In the west, populations have stalled only because it is uneconomic to grow anymore food than we currently do to support the number of people we have. Likewise in China and India, where famine, while not an everpresent threat, is more than a minor concern.

Food supply is the main factor. What limits food supply are technology and economics. Technology (or infrastructure, for this example) limits the maximum amount of food you can grow on any square meter of land. Economics limits the amount of land used to grow food - if resources are better used elsewhere, they go elsewhere. This is why no-one is trying to farm the Sahara, even though it might be technically possible.

posted 08-31-99 04:44 AM ET            

Pop growth is determined by many things, and no simplistic model is going to accurately model that. But we want a game that only takes a second to do it's record keeping and opponent decisions in between OUR turns, so certain sacrifices get made...

posted 09-02-99 06:42 PM ET            

And I think you're understating the role of preventative medicine, i.e., sanitation, in population growth. It wasn't just efficient farming that got China to its current high population. Chinese cities were also far better organized for providing clean water and handling sewage. IIRC, polluting the central reservoir was a capital crime there in the 15th century.

posted 09-03-99 01:27 PM ET            

Shining1 o you actually believe that?!? Well, you're completely wrong. I have nothing more to say.

Zero :

It's completely true what you say.

Akathisia :

"Even in Civ, in early historic times, I think many tribes would want as many children as possible to help work the land and to protect the tribe. I think that's even true today in some circles."

posted 09-04-99 05:20 AM ET            

The issue with ICS is that you get benefits based on the number of CITIES you own, not per head of population. So to maximise those benefits, you need to build cities.

The benefit of early expansion should be an increased area of territory, and thus an increased population base in the later part of the game, when you have maxed out the useful production in each city.

Limiting cities like you suggest would result in a tech race for the expansion techs, and many games would often progress in fits of expansion and consolidation as a result, unless the fundamental ICS issues are resolved.

Zero: It's a chicken and egg scenario. I think I mentioned that food output was limited by economics anyway, so this is just part of that - as food costs increase, you have a tougher time feeding a larger family, and so (if you have the choice) you don't have so many children. Or the poor ones die, ala africa.

Naturally, you can turn my arguement on it's head and say that economic output determines food output, and that economics is the relevant factor, not food output (like Japan, which imports 25% of its rice from overseas, because it can afford to). And I would accept that.

posted 09-05-99 04:40 AM ET            

I'd proprose that your efficency, morale, and certain tech advances would limit the overall size of safe growth, expansion. Go beyond that, and the further the people are out from your capital, the greater the chance they go independant (forming a new faction, or an old one). THAT would make it risky to be too big... and even if you CONQUER a people, they will just turn around and rebel again, as they still see themselves as a seperate people from yours.

That only leaves cold hearted capture and obliteration of captured/plundered cities for early game rush... slowing the rush from reaching critical mass and conquering the world too quickly.

Econonics does not limit the family size of the poor or extremely affluent in the USoA. If you have 12 siblings, you PROBABLY come from the econonic bottom or top... only the middle and affluent can't afford many children, and hence, economics limits the amount brought into the family. Health care (medical knowledge and availability and general preventive tech), and of course, food availability, are 2 of the largest factors.

posted 09-05-99 12:50 PM ET         

Do you want ICS to be risky, but not forbidden? Maybe Darkstar's propsed modifications are more to your taste. In the same way (and at the same time) that the computer checks for ecological disater (or mind worm onslaughts) because of too much production, the computer could check for rebellions or simple population loss (this includes size 1 cities disappearing) because of too many cities. The probability would increase with distance for the capital, and decrease with city improvements.

Darkstar -- I think that the conquerer rush is a different problem. Even with ICS, isn't it better to conquer someone else's cities than to build your own?

posted 09-06-99 01:08 AM ET            

The idea is not to kill the tactic outright (difficult anyway), but to limit it so that you don't always have to use it if you want to win. Removing rules that use number of cities instead of number of citizens is a good way to start.