[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Why does ICS work?

[Arien Malec <arien_malec@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- "Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It is also the case that "We Love the President Day" growing at one
> citizen per turn in every city, TOTALLY wipes out any exponential
> growth curve from pure food growth/rollover.
> 
> Getting to Republic with a defensible core of size 3 cities and an
> appropriate balance of luxury and pacifier improvements is *THE*
> major growth strategy. If you can do that before the ICS-types
> find you and overrun you, or you can hold them off until you
> hit critical mass, they are dead meat.

Right -- I thought about Rapture as the exponential growth equivalent
for vertical growth, but the problem is that, relative to ICS-type
horizontal growth, you have to do an awful lot of preparation. To make
Rapture pay off, you have to have a significant number of cities at
size 3 & you have to make the requisite investments in infrastructure
(Marketplaces, Banks, Aquaducts, etc.). By the time you have all of
that, the ICS player has already made exponential growth work... It is
also fairly easy for the ICS player to grow cities from 1->3, across a
much larger base of cities, easily equalling the vertical growth
through Rapture. Late in the game, a player who gets past the
sanitation barrier has real significant advantages from growth through
Rapture, but early, the game favors exponential horizontal growth.
Perhaps, then, methods of slowing down horizontal growth, like making
settlers more expensive, spreading out cities, or increasing settler
pop-cost (which has the dual benefit of eliminating the free worker
loophole and slows down horizontal growth) are the right ways of
increasing balance, since they give the vertical-growth oriented player
the time to get that sustainable core of size-3 cities to grow through
Rapture.

Arien

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