Does anyone else think that this strategy (and the "President's day sale" in general) is unbalancing to the game?

quote: Originally posted by Father Beast on 04-10-2001 03:09 PM I can set a city with high production to cranking out settlers/engineers with the city in permanent WLTCD and as soon as the settler founds a city, I get my citizen back. repeated endlessly.

"WLTCD" Huh?

What do you mean by "get my citizen back"?

Then a 2-pop settler founds a new city, these 2-pops stays in that newly founded city, and the old city must regenerate its lost pop-points the hard way. Thats the whole point.

quote: Originally posted by markusf on 04-12-2001 04:08 PM This whole thing is stupid. I play with the best of the best civ2 multiplayer gamers. I have yet to just ONCE see this strat being effective. I have honestly never ever seen a single person using end game ics and get any kind of tangible results. Anyone who uses that strat as a end game strat really doesn't know how to play... Now icsing at 2000 bc is another story.

let's see, you've never seen anyone use a "president's day sale" to boost their pop and overall production in an MP game? Why do I find that hard to believe?

quote: Originally posted by Nemo on 04-12-2001 03:03 PM in order to curb late game ICS what if the settler, when created, takes 2 pop (as it stands now), but when it makes a city, the city starts at 1 pop? at this point in time i have not seen anything saying that a newly found city is goind to start with 2 pop or 1 pop. but by starting it at 1 pop, it would make you reconsider your ICS'ing. and in reality the population loss could be constituted by disease, famine, or barbarians that plucked a few of teh settlers off enroute.

Nemo,

That's the way I have read it and believe they are going to make settlers founding new cities in Civ III.

quote: Originally posted by Simpson II on 04-15-2001 11:44 PM WLTXD is not unbalancing, it's an important balancing component. Without it there would be absolutely *no* alternative to all-out expansion and warfare. If it's not included then Civ3 will be more of an ICS fest than Civ2, even with the 2-pop settler! The point in balancing a game is not to take away all powerful strategies, it's to make sure there are diverse powerful routes to victory.

AHHhh..., but Fundamentalism, the unstoppable war machine is out, so shouldn't they get rid of it's counterpart?

Wait a minute! are you saying that there should be SEVERAL game breaking absurd strategies to take?!? (never mind for the moment that the AI probably won't know how to use them)

What's the idea behind the pop increase, anyway. happy people (bleep) more?

If there are several very - but still equally - powerful strategies then they are, by definition, not game-breakers; a gamebreaker is something which leaves no other viable choices. Powerful strategies provide choices, plus they help to cover up the unexpected killer-strats which the game-testers didn't think of.
True WLTXD can build an empire very quickly, but can it do it before an elephant rush takes your empire away? Or will it succeed only to be taken out immediately by knights/dragoons/spies? Will the map turn out to be more favourable to do early trade, then boom later? Maybe this game it's more beneficial to spend more turns expanding to cover your opponents specials; maybe not. These sorts of choices are why we play strategy games.
An early WLTXD doesn't give you overwhelming superiority until relatively late-game, after you've survived the rush. If builder-strats don't get a massive upper hand in the late game then they aren't worth doing, since you have every chance of loosing quickly; the compensation comes only when you avoid this. Hopefully there wil be points between the extremes, too, as in Smac (not that that was a paragon of game-balance!)