[Freeciv-Dev] Civ II player puzzled by ICS strategy (long)

[aliaga <aliaga@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

Sorry if this may raise again some already buried too-long thread, but:

I've been reading this list for quite a time, and meaning to play Freeciv
(or even code something), but free time always slips away...    :-(

I've not tried SMAC and I don't know if "Age of Empires" can be of any use
here... However I did play both Civs often, every conceivable strategy,
scenario, cheat, whatever...

Admitedly, those AIs weren't very smart, and maybe I missed something
important, but my "foolproof sure-winning strategy" in civII was as close as
ICS as I could manage, yet I was never able to win by "smallpox" alone. And
I tried a lot.     ;-)

Let me explain this, as it may uncover some subtle way in which Freeciv is
different from CivII.

I played large, growth-friendly maps, and built only settlers, and expanded
and settled as fast and as tight as I could. I remember cities couldn't be
placed adjacent, and anyways I tried not to settle them too close. I even
built roads on the sole purpose of speeding those settlers faster and farther...

Then the "number-of-cities threshold" was reached (wether it was 12 or 16
cities didn't made much difference) and every city got a citizen unhappy.
That meant new cities where unhappy from start, and contributed nothing to
trade or production. I had to create Elvises to just keep them going with
the city center tile. This often meant the city would not grow, but at least
contributed some to science. So my "ICS" kept going.

Older cities could keep up the settling effort until the smaller ones grew
to size 2 and could build/buy a settler. Some fortunate city sites allowed a
small city to become happy sooner and thus aid to the expansion and to
trade. Some carefully placed roads allowed increased trade. Some military
units allowed martial law to restore productivity. Expanding, expanding...

But, just as distances traveled by settlers grew, the time needed to let
taxes build up to the point of being able to buy new settlers in the smaller
cities seemed to be always longer. I built no improvements in order to save
expenses. Only very good new city sites allowed for continued expansion. And
only very productive old cities would get a Granary o Marketplace so new
settlers would flow at top speed from them.

Even so, my "ICS" reached a point of absolute stall when corruption hit.
Every city a bit far from my palace would get a bit of its trade and shields
vanish. When I had around 30 cities, new ones always seemed to get no net
trade and no net production, no matter where I put them. Worse, the second
"number-of-cities threshold" was reached and every city got a "very unhappy
citizen", so new cities would never get productive even if I made them all
elvises. Those cities needed to grow to size 3 to get productive, or put
into martial law by more military units brougth from the core cities, thus
lowering their productivity. Luxury rate didn't help. End of "ICS"!?

So I was forced to get Monarchy to help reduce corruption and boost trade.
But expenses increased. So buying settlers was harder. So expansion would
get slower. Even so, I managed often to get 50+ cities and become a Republic
and continue growing somehow.

Then older cities would start celebrating, aqueducts would be needed,
barbarians would start pestering... So I needed a bunch of big cities just
to keep my borders expanding and defended. Improving terrain, too, boosting
trade, building WoWs. Never mind war, too expensive!

So I ended up with a fair amount of cities, and yes indeed, coastal cities
would need defense against those damn English Ironclads... That could be why
I built few cities on the coast. Economy made conquest more profitable than
settling at this stage. So yes, thus ended every "ICS" I tried. Railroad by
100 AD was my usual benchmark on Deity level.

Even if corruption where lessened, I'd reach the point where Diplomats would
be far more useful than Settlers. That happened when I switched to Democracy
or Communism. Or even Fundamentalism. And only big cities gave me the money
needed.

Anyway, it was not the large numbers of small cities which made my science
skyrocket, but the medium-sized ones which would start celebrating and
growing. I found little trouble stalling my attackers until I could build
the advanced stuff.

Some of the AIs seemed keen on doing ICS, too, but never got too far, my
tech being at least as good as theirs. On some mostly-islands maps there was
an AI who always managed to literally infest most of them with low-level
cities, defending with good ships and even attempting to blockade me. Only I
was always able to let cities grow and get good tech and go bash 'em...

One key point may be that the biggest map on CivII didn't allow too many
cities to be build for ICS to make a real impact on science.

Another point may be that I increased corruption by slightly lowering the
distances involved. Thus Communism would get some corruption, after all.
Thus Anarchy/Despotism and even Monarchy would get too high losses to
corruption. Thus even a Republic would become stalled. Thus only Democracy,
Communism or Fundies (barely) would be desirable for late stages. Thus even
the AIs would favor growing over expanding, even English and Zulus.

I upped a bit the population level attainable before Acqueducts or Sewers
were needed, so that the AIs could build bigger "targets" <grin> and found
that ironclads worked well against coastal cities, but an inland 18+ size
AI-city was guaranteed to need several howitzers just to take it and heavy
units to defend it. And the Fundamentalistic Russians just made it very hard
once for me to take even a single one of their cities with ironclads... Try
to crunch 20+ of those cheap units every turn...

I'm not sure how all this is handled in Freeciv. I believe ICS to be nearly
impossible in civII unless there's some very basic and simple things that
could be done to avoid the stalls. I'm not really sure if it was the "Very
Unhappy" thing or the massive trade loss to corruption which caused the
ugliest stalls in my aggresive-expansionistic approach to empire-building.

From what I've gathered here, maybe it's the "steamroller" nature of massive
ironclad attacks which works so well in a near-realtime game of Freeciv,
leaving too little time to the defender to deploy the adequate tactics needed.

I think the rulesets should suffice to fine-tune things until ICS was less
"surefire" or at least defending cities became easier (I seem to remember
many people complained about how warfare favored defenders). Thus fast
growth would become less vital. I believe the "no-city-center" approach to
be too big a change. After all, they put a food bonus for it in CivII,
together with bigger maps which allowed more "smallpox" than CivI.

But then, maybe I'm just wrong...

I've made it too long, I'm afraid. To those who have endured me thus far, my
sincerest congratulations for this game!


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