ICS in AoW 3 and ways to avoid it in planetfall

[count_m4ximus]

First of all I Wanted to say hello to everyone on the forum and the developers as this is my first post !


Now that the introductions are done. I just have one question, will the ICS(insane City Spam) strategy will be discouraged in the planetfall in some way ? As in the AoW 3 there were no penalties for spamming cities and it turned out to be one of the most abused strategies both in single and multiplayer.


I really do hope that there is some mechanic which will discourage this in-game, and sectors give me hope in that regard.


But ideally there would be one of the two ways to discourage it:


1st was Capping the amount of cities one can have

Either by requiring certain specific resource or some kind of command limit


2nd way

Allowing creating new city in specific location such as: only a ruins of old cities which were there on a map or like i hope it will be in Planetfall instance some system of allowing cities only in certain sectors (hope it will be like that!)


As ICS in AoW3 was a really non fun way to play game especially in multiplayer but it was a very effective way to play it still.


PS.


Will hero unit have similar amount of equipment slots as they used to have in AoW3?(i.e head, torso,legs etc.). I saw one of the screenshots and it showed only two item slots apart from primary and secondary weapons on a hero unit, and I know it's just me one gamer but Forging new items, armor,weapons and giving them to mu heroes in AoW3 was one of the entertaining mechanics and I hope it will be retained in planet fall !

 

[Jolly Joker]

You can very easily put the city spam option to bed, because you can mod the minimum distance settlements must have from each other. The default for human players is 5(!) hexes. You can change this to any desirable number, say, 11 (or even more), making the spam impossible, because you cannot squeeze them anymore.

The downside, if you can call it that way, is that the builder-fortress is, under this rule, a settlement as well, which means those fortresses become mostly obsolete. (In single player this is actually no downside at all, mind you, since the AI cannot handle builders anyway.)

The one thing that is missing in AoW 3 is a separation of builder-built Fortresses and settlements with regard to this moddable feature.

Admittedly, being forced to "mod" something has a ring of "playing a different game", and that and other issues have been discussed with the devs already, but I think one have to accept the point, that if you have half a million and more buyers of a game, a lot of those are playing the game more casual than the hardcore gamers playing all the time and multi or PBEM, finding ways to exploit the system the majority of the players wouldn't dream of trying.

So modding seems the only reasonable way to go, especially when you count in the various options you have when setting up a game. Starting conditions, map size, richness, the amount of sites, terrain and so on, all that has an impact on how the game plays and how you can "beat" it.

 

[Gloweye]

The sectors will have huge influence for this:

- As I understood it, a sector can NEVER contain 2 cities
- Cities gain the majority of their income/useful options by linking other sectors to that city.

While ofc we dont know much about the balance yet, it could very well be that it's just simply not worth dividing up your sectors between to many cities. For example (and none of this confirmed), perhaps certain buildings could require X number of sectors, or MCU-like effects could happen in sectors.

 

[count_m4ximus]

The sectors will have huge influence for this:


— As I understood it, a sector can NEVER contain 2 cities

— Cities gain the majority of their income/useful options by linking other sectors to that city.


While ofc we don't know much about the balance yet, it could very well be that it's just simply not worth dividing up your sectors between the many cities. For example (and none of this confirmed), perhaps certain buildings could require X number of sectors, or MCU-like effects could happen in sectors.

Hope It's gonna be that way since the sector mechanics is one of the features I am looking forward too, as for the you can always mod it well technically I can but i do like it when the game has gameplay designs that disfavor certain behaviors I.e CiV 5 happiness mechanic which was a good way to balance amount of cities you could have, was it still prone to certain abusive tactics yes but it made them less viable while promoting alternative play styles (i.e 4 city playstyle) as in the AoW 3 the ICS is the most optimal one always.

 

[Gloweye]

I truly hated that Civ 5 happiness mechanic.

Im fine with it not being a good idea to build cities, but it's just stupid if all your cities suddenly rebel because you build a new one. (yeah, im aware of the slight exaggeration). It seems that with the Sectors, you'll just have a certain amount of economic potential, and you can choose if you divide it up between more or less cities, which sounds pretty great to me. And if you want more economic potential, you need more map.

 

[count_m4ximus]

I truly hated that Civ 5 happiness mechanic.

Im fine with it not being a good idea to build cities, but it's just stupid if all your cities suddenly rebel because you build a new one. (yeah, im aware of the slight exaggeration). It seems that with the Sectors, you'll just have a certain amount of economic potential, and you can choose if you divide it up between more or less cities, which sounds pretty great to me. And if you want more economic potential, you need more map.

Sure I know it was disliked by some, but even if they changed it to some different mechanic it would still be nice,

as long as it worked in a way that there were no one optimal strategy, as I said in the title in the AoW 3 the most optimal one was to spam cities as much as you can, so ideally one would want to avoid that or minimize it so that alternative play styles are also viable, Like focusing on few Big cities or something in between. The point I'm trying to make is that I hope that the sector mechanic will disfavor city spamming as the only viable strategy, it can still be there but hopefully not as successful as to be the only option worth pursuing. Which in turn will allow other play style to flourish thus making strategic decisions more diverse and in conclusion fun as no one like to be shoehorned into certain kind of play styles.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Again, this is not true. It IS true for the vanilla game with certain game settings. But there are so many ways to change that. You do not HAVE to play with settlers, for example. You can change the amount of gold you get for a city, for example, you can mod Outposts into COSTING gold, as mentioned, distance between cities - which is because a game that offers so many different general settings can't work on everyone perfectly balanced.

 

[Leon Feargus]

Just to get this off my chest. I entered the PvP tournament twice. It´s been a while so I can´t remember exactly but I think it went down like this.
First time:
- Got through the group phase only having a lot of single play experience.
- Next match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.
Second time:
- No group matches? can´t remember.
- First match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.

Kinda killed multiplay for me.

 

[Elder Fogcrow]

I still consider the way AoW1 handles cities best:
not buildable, only rebuildable if destroyed.
not growing.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Yeah, Leon Feargus, I understand that, but it's obviously not the GAME that does it to you, but the SETTINGS (and the absence of mods).. You need gold to (rush) produce settlers, and you need the right settings to get that. Same thing with XP farming and gaining at least a level for your Leader. Play necro and turn 10 you ghoul armies.

 

[Garresh]

Wait. ICS was used in Multiplayer in AOW 3? When?! I played a TON of it and cities were generally not built except on areas with good resource concentration or extremely favorable terrain for morale. The spool up time of city growth combined with the population loss of the parent city meant spam wasn't really worth it. Don't get me wrong. Cities were built. But I never saw spam as particularly effective.

I remember facing players who tried it and they just stretched themselves thin for raiding parties because they couldn't garrison their stuff sufficiently. Like a Warlord could death march past and start plundering. Ditto Rogues with stealth, Sorcerers with powerful spells. The only classes that tended towards ICS were Druids because of population bonuses, and Dreadnoughts. But even in the case of Dreads it was better to just erect tons of forts on key nodes, and only drop cities on productivity places like forges and stuff.

If you place 9 cities in an area that comfortably houses 4, then you basically put yourself in a situation where you can't defend because an enemy will have 3 cities within marching distance of a single turn and will just attack the one you aren't defending. Plus then they can just chill inside your territory with those nice walls you built for them like the gentleman you are.

Anyways, the thing that helped keep it in check was how powerful production and income hexes are, and how deadly morale penalties can be if you mismanaged your empire. Like if you lost 3 battles in a row(say because someone kept razing your poorly defended cities), your morale plummets. As well as the penalties from losing cities. Then your weaker cities on terrain not necessarily optimized for morale drop in productivity and your best cities are suffering some penalties because of your weaker cities depressing them.

I mean hell, that was basically how you took apart an ICSer lategame as a Rogue. Burn a few weak cities to start them depressed, drop ultimate, and then it starts a downward cycle that's very hard to break. And while Rogues were best at it, half the classes had good options in such a situation.

Tldr: I'm not worried.

Edit: Mind you, the Dread player in that example will often lose forts to raiding parties, but better a fort which costs only a little over a hundred gold than a city which is a fairly serious investment. I think ICS was def a thing on larger single player maps though.

 

[Garresh]

Just to get this off my chest. I entered the PvP tournament twice. It´s been a while so I can´t remember exactly but I think it went down like this.
First time:
- Got through the group phase only having a lot of single play experience.
- Next match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.
Second time:
- No group matches? can´t remember.
- First match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.

Kinda killed multiplay for me.

I guess I've been out of the scene for a while, but are you sure settlement spam was the cause? It was fairly common to clear as many places as possible, bank a bunch of gold, and buy up cities like candy for a while. That was more an issue with the ease of acquisition at the time.

Edit: Am I the only one who thinks ICS is kinda easy to counter and suboptimal in AOW 3? lol

 

[The Mentat]

I'm not really experienced in multiplayer but at least in PBEM matches city spam doesn't seem to be a problem. IIRC the only thing hiliadans balance mod changes in this regard is reducing racial governance bonuses for settling.

 

[Gloweye]

Wait. ICS was used in Multiplayer in AOW 3? When?! I played a TON of it and cities were generally not built except on areas with good resource concentration or extremely favorable terrain for morale. The spool up time of city growth combined with the population loss of the parent city meant spam wasn't really worth it. Don't get me wrong. Cities were built. But I never saw spam as particularly effective.

I remember facing players who tried it and they just stretched themselves thin for raiding parties because they couldn't garrison their stuff sufficiently. Like a Warlord could death march past and start plundering. Ditto Rogues with stealth, Sorcerers with powerful spells. The only classes that tended towards ICS were Druids because of population bonuses, and Dreadnoughts. But even in the case of Dreads it was better to just erect tons of forts on key nodes, and only drop cities on productivity places like forges and stuff.

If you place 9 cities in an area that comfortably houses 4, then you basically put yourself in a situation where you can't defend because an enemy will have 3 cities within marching distance of a single turn and will just attack the one you aren't defending. Plus then they can just chill inside your territory with those nice walls you built for them like the gentleman you are.

Anyways, the thing that helped keep it in check was how powerful production and income hexes are, and how deadly morale penalties can be if you mismanaged your empire. Like if you lost 3 battles in a row(say because someone kept razing your poorly defended cities), your morale plummets. As well as the penalties from losing cities. Then your weaker cities on terrain not necessarily optimized for morale drop in productivity and your best cities are suffering some penalties because of your weaker cities depressing them.

I mean hell, that was basically how you took apart an ICSer lategame as a Rogue. Burn a few weak cities to start them depressed, drop ultimate, and then it starts a downward cycle that's very hard to break. And while Rogues were best at it, half the classes had good options in such a situation.

Tldr: I'm not worried.

Edit: Mind you, the Dread player in that example will often lose forts to raiding parties, but better a fort which costs only a little over a hundred gold than a city which is a fairly serious investment. I think ICS was def a thing on larger single player maps though.

Happines penalties were reduced to accomodate new SP players. It got rather trivial to not be wrecked by them.

Also, the MP scene changed a bit after you were gone. But I think you're perhaps one with a really good chance to still take out people like that. Your play style doesn't really exist currently AFAIK.

Good to have you back, though.

 

[Garresh]

Happines penalties were reduced to accomodate new SP players. It got rather trivial to not be wrecked by them.

Also, the MP scene changed a bit after you were gone. But I think you're perhaps one with a really good chance to still take out people like that. Your play style doesn't really exist currently AFAIK.

Good to have you back, though.

What changed? I still followed the patch notes and played Single Player after I kinda burned out on multiplayer. Heh. 900 hours of gameplay in about a year(while working full time) will do that to you. But nothing I saw necessarily seemed to block it. Plus I mean my strategy wasn't exactly that popular to begin with since it relied on some high risk and unorthodox tactics. Surprisingly, not many players are willing to raze half their cities including their throne to kill their enemies via attrition.

Edit: To clarify, (un)happiness rolling wasn't a requirement of the opportunist raider playstyle. It just made it a lot stronger. It was still a good trade in general to pick off settlements if spammed. I'll go look up the happiness changes I missed. But I assume lategame rolling was still an option via Age of Deception and the like?

 

[Gloweye]

What changed? I still followed the patch notes and played Single Player after I kinda burned out on multiplayer. Heh. 900 hours of gameplay in about a year(while working full time) will do that to you. But nothing I saw necessarily seemed to block it. Plus I mean my strategy wasn't exactly that popular to begin with since it relied on some high risk and unorthodox tactics. Surprisingly, not many players are willing to raze half their cities including their throne to kill their enemies via attrition.

Edit: To clarify, (un)happiness rolling wasn't a requirement of the opportunist raider playstyle. It just made it a lot stronger. It was still a good trade in general to pick off settlements if spammed. I'll go look up the happiness changes I missed. But I assume lategame rolling was still an option via Age of Deception and the like?

Im not playing that much of MP myself, but lategame seems a pretty rare occurence. Generally, turn 40 would be pretty late for most people. Age of Deception escaped the nerfs, but you get penalized a lot less for losing battles or cities, IIRC. Experienced players in SP don't notice because we don't lose cities.

 

[count_m4ximus]

Just to get this off my chest. I entered the PvP tournament twice. It´s been a while so I can´t remember exactly but I think it went down like this.
First time:
- Got through the group phase only having a lot of single play experience.
- Next match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.
Second time:
- No group matches? can´t remember.
- First match against Dwarf player.
- Turn 10 message: Your opponent has 8+ settlements, 3 Firstborn coming your way.
- Never seen any class units of the opponent.
- Defeat.

Kinda killed multiplay for me.

Hopefully they will Implement some solution in order to rmedy that as the only viable one !

I think the best one would be some sort of system for allowing you to decide on how to treat the neighbouring sectors,

you either as the devs said themselves add the sector and its potential to the existing city thus increasing it's output or you can use the sector as a base for a new one which would be a handy way to push out the ICS as the only viable startegy.

 

[Fluksen]

[...]Am I the only one who thinks ICS is kinda easy to counter and suboptimal in AOW 3? lol

The heyday of city spam:

(much too long, just skim through it).
Basically the RG that made settlers less expensive + the stuff that gives +x gold/city and +x growth/city (looking at you greyguard) + this builder spec that gives you +15% city growth made for an economic boom that comes faster than you can even say "Stalker". And you grind through the racial gouvernance with incredible speed which gives you even more boni. Not even counting what happens if you turn on empire quests (+100 happiness, 3 T3 units for free). Fortunately all of this has been nerfed quite a bit, so nowadays the predominant live-MP is T3 "rush" (but that might be "old news" don't have much time lately). But of course, as Jolly Joker pointed out it depends pretty much on the map/mod setting whats a viable strat.

Also, the MP scene changed a bit after you were gone. But I think you're perhaps one with a really good chance to still take out people like that. Your play style doesn't really exist currently AFAIK.
Good to have you back, though.

That would be nice if you'd be coming back to live mp! this is where they all meet nowadays. And theres a tournament starting soon. @Leon Feargus iirc empire quests are off so no one will come steamrolling you with dwarven firstborn, at least not with ones they get from an empire quest, so why don't you give it a try too?

PBEM is different, I think city spam was never as much an issue there because evolve, seduce and a "clearing economy" play a bigger role there, but what do I know I keep losing my leader in PBEM

 

[Garresh]

The heyday of city spam:

(much too long, just skim through it).
Basically the RG that made settlers less expensive + the stuff that gives +x gold/city and +x growth/city (looking at you greyguard) + this builder spec that gives you +15% city growth made for an economic boom that comes faster than you can even say "Stalker". And you grind through the racial gouvernance with incredible speed which gives you even more boni. Not even counting what happens if you turn on empire quests (+100 happiness, 3 T3 units for free). Fortunately all of this has been nerfed quite a bit, so nowadays the predominant live-MP is T3 "rush" (but that might be "old news" don't have much time lately). But of course, as Jolly Joker pointed out it depends pretty much on the map/mod setting whats a viable strat.


That would be nice if you'd be coming back to live mp! this is where they all meet nowadays. And theres a tournament starting soon. @Leon Feargus iirc empire quests are off so no one will come steamrolling you with dwarven firstborn, at least not with ones they get from an empire quest, so why don't you give it a try too?

PBEM is different, I think city spam was never as much an issue there because evolve, seduce and a "clearing economy" play a bigger role there, but what do I know I keep losing my leader in PBEM

Interesting. I can't watch this now but that combination of factors wasn't used in that way when I played. At least it hadn't been optimized to that degree. I stand corrected.

I'll hop on the Discord server, though I don't know if I'll really dive back in. Life has a tendency to limit my time and(more importantly) energy for games as involved as AOW in MP.

 

[sikbok]

First of all I Wanted to say hello to everyone on the forum and the developers as this is my first post !

Hi, hope you'll have fun here!

Now that the introductions are done. I just have one question, will the ICS(insane City Spam) strategy will be discouraged in the planetfall in some way ? As in the AoW 3 there were no penalties for spamming cities and it turned out to be one of the most abused strategies both in single and multiplayer.

It's very much on our radar.

You can very easily put the city spam option to bed

I truly hated that Civ 5 happiness mechanic.

Agreed. Its very easy to fix.
Question is if the fix is fun and fits the game.​

The sectors will have huge influence for this

That's the big take-away here.
Given we have sectors now, there's some tricks we can pull to prevent ICS without doing so explicitly - a city cap - or via some gamified system - like Civ 5 happiness. That would be our preferred method. We'll still need to see if our tricks will work out though.