Complete.Org: Mailing Lists: Archives: freeciv: February 2001:
[Freeciv] ICS : Are map resources part of the problem?
Home

[Freeciv] ICS : Are map resources part of the problem?

[Top] [All Lists]

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index] [Thread Index]
To: freeciv@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Freeciv] ICS : Are map resources part of the problem?
From: "R. Miller" <richere@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 12:43:32 -0500

Hello,

ICS. I'm new to FreeCiv and have played a number of games over the past month.
I have noticed a lively discussion concerning ICS. It took me a while to find out what it is so, for the benefit of other "newbies" reading this, I will state here that ICS stands for Infinite City Sprawl (a.k.a. Smallpox) and is a strategy in which
players attept to win by creating enormous numbers of small cities.

Maps. I just reinstalled Civ2 because I suspected that the maps generated by FreeCiv's
generator 2 setting might be contributing to making ICS a viable strategy.
I compared maps generated by Civ2 to those generated by FreeCiv.

Resources. I estimate that FreeCiv's maps make possibly twice as many resources
available to cities than do Civ2's maps, especially whales and combinations of whales and fish. It is not unusual for a city in FreeCiv to have 2 or 3 whales; this I found was
rare in Civ2.

Coastal cities. I suspect that this is why players seem to build more cities on the coasts; I'm sure there are also strategic reaons for this, but I'm sure the lure of whale bonuses that allow the production of large quantities of settlers is irresistible to ICS-players.

Location. From memory, I recall that locating a city in Civ2 was a challenge; finding the right site with the right combination of resources to assure sustained growth was difficult. In FreeCiv, I find that I can plop a settler almost anywhere, build a city, and it will survive. This leads me to believe that ICS is favoured by FreeCiv's overly-bountiful maps.

Golf courses. One more thing. From memory, I recall that Civ2 produced what we nicknamed "golf courses", relatively large grassy areas with few other resources; I have not seen this in FreeCiv's maps. FreeCiv appears to produced completely random distributions of square types, with little or no concentrations of single types of squares - deserts, "golf courses", etc.

Randomness. I expect that this randomness would also favour ICS; concentrations of land types would favour the growth of certain cities and hinder the growth of others - ergo, more variety in
the city populations and production capacities.

Summary.
My point is that ICS is not only a symptom of city proliferation, it is a symptom of randomness, which ensures that all cities can develop nearly equally, or just enough, and an over- abundance of resources, which makes it too easy to produce large quantities of settlers.

I am looking forward to your reactions to these thoughts.

Robaire




[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]