ICS, Civ V style

Well for an earlier ICS, I'd probably go Liberty (all) ->Commerce $ part, and only build Happiness/Gold buildings outside the capital..TP spam, and Buy units in the capital. (which would also have a Barracks/Armory and be building useful Wonders)

and the mechanic IS working as intended, there is still an 'incubation time' for cities to become useful/net bonus to happiness.

I actually avoid the +1 production from Liberty. To me it's not worth the 2 policies it takes to get.

r_rolo1 said:
I must thank Firaxis for making ICS so easy in civ V ... it was so hard to mindless spam cities in civ IV ... [/sarcasm]

Probably firaxis should get back to the drawing board on this ... the happiness as the new maintenace is clearly not working as intended ... and the OP result is just a consequence of that ( without taking merit to the OP , OFC )
I've had empires like the OP as well (though mine wasn't as well thought out). It's a lot harder in Civ5 than Civ4, unless you completely ignore happiness. The policies have to be figured out from the start of the game.

In Civ4, you build the Great Lighthouse, and you never stop expanding. You are financial and you never stop expanding. You build the Pyramids and you never stop expanding. It's too easy.
 
Well for an earlier ICS, I'd probably go Liberty (all) ->Commerce $ part, and only build Happiness/Gold buildings outside the capital..TP spam, and Buy units in the capital. (which would also have a Barracks/Armory and be building useful Wonders)

and the mechanic IS working as intended, there is still an 'incubation time' for cities to become useful/net bonus to happiness.

Hmm that's not really ICS though, because you'd have to limit the number of cities you build or risk falling into unhappiness. Doing it that way, it would probably be better to conquer everything and use puppet states.

I do think that this is closer to how the game is supposed to be played, though. For the first time, I actually found some of the late game units to be useful, like stock exchanges. I even built a hydro dam in one city! And it's not like this is easy to pull off, either.
 
Hmm that's not really ICS though, because you'd have to limit the number of cities you build or risk falling into unhappiness. Doing it that way, it would probably be better to conquer everything and use puppet states.
Not if you have Colosseums

Its still ICS, but not incredibly rapid ICS
(go for Luxuries first, and keep founding cities until you hit the -10)... then as Colosseums come online, found more cities.

Use gold to maintain unit counts.
 
I've had empires like the OP as well (though mine wasn't as well thought out). It's a lot harder in Civ5 than Civ4, unless you completely ignore happiness. The policies have to be figured out from the start of the game.

In Civ4, you build the Great Lighthouse, and you never stop expanding. You are financial and you never stop expanding. You build the Pyramids and you never stop expanding. It's too easy.
Bolded for emphasis. True, ICS in civ V would be easily harder than in civ IV ( in spite that ICS in civ IV is no peach in any level above Monarch and needed careful planning as well ) if you needed to absolutely care with happiness like you have to with maintenance in civ IV. If you don't self impose the rule of caring with happiness , ICS is easy enough to look like civ III , especially when those late game SP start kicking.
 
@krikkitone: If you don't have anything to reduce city unhappiness, than a coloseum will only support a city of size 2. And without communism or merchant navy, that city won't have any extra production, so it's basically worthless. I don't think your plan will work. If you want to rely on rush buy, you're better off relying on a few, larger cities, with massive trade routes and all the gold multiplier buildings.

@r rolo1-bear in mind that you can't build settlers or settle any new cities when you're at -10 unhappy, and you also suffer -50% production. So you can't really ignore unhappiess while settling. You can ignore it by just conquering and annexing everything, but then you have to fight at -33% and use money to buy everything.
 
I know all of that, but neither is a actual stop to ICS ... BTW ICS is not the same as REX , as some people seem to think. Those measures might stop REX , but they don't stop ICS.
 
You need to explain more why these are better. In particular, why are these better than liberty and order for a game strategy designed to produce as much production as possible?
+2 happy and a 6 turn golden age is nothing, +10 culture isn't much either. police state is ok, but order gives -50% unhappy from all cities, not just captured ones.

I do agree with you though, that the freedom line is a lot weaker than I would have expected. There's so few specialists, that reducing their unhappiness and food consumption doesn't really help much.

Okay,

the explanation (for Emperor).

+2 Happy from basic Piety will help you plant the 3rd city without worked luxury resources. I noticed that on Empreror the AI will be more than happy to grab my own best city locations without second thought (and I do like to have my 3 core cities where I want them).

6-turn golden age. After the inevitable AI attack (on your diff. level I think it's after 2nd city, on mine it's after 3rd) I usually deny peace (except if I got ganbanged like in my last game) and finish off the attacking AI. When that's done (I raze most of the cities, but can't raze them all. At this moment I use the 6-turn golden age to:
a. build courthouses in their capital and maybe another city.
b. boost my finances
c. to negate the unhappy from new cities (not loosing points towards happy GA)
d. build colliseums and/or circuses since the war production is over
These 6 turns just tremendously help me do all this.

From my experience, bordering AIs won't give you fair deals until you beat them at least once (i.e. they sue for peace). It's not unusual for me to have 15-30 extra happy from trades and initial conquests for 100 or more turns. I use this time to take 50% of excess happines added to culture, as well as 25% reduction in golden age happy requirements. The "natural" golden ages last two or three times as long as great person ones, and I usually get two before the continental conquest. That's 30 turns of super-production and gold.

The -20% unhappiness in your own cities is great because in the initial expansion I usually take 1 or 2 enemy cities and re-populate the rest. I do like to have 6-7 of my own cities through the game, even if it means extra culture for policies. That means I'm looking at 12-28 happy from this trait alone. Works great with Mandate of Heaven and Organized Religion.

2 free policies means I can go whatever path I want to, and I can get it now, for free, not increasing the number of culture needed for the next one (works well with high number of own cities). I usually put these two into either:
a. Honor (for a free, usually 3rd great general == another golden age) and putting myself just 1 policy till double exp for those oh-so-awesome siege engines.
b. Patronage and Philantrophy, if that's the way I want to go
c. Commerce (+25% gold in capital) and save up the last one for initial Order or Autocracy.

Basically, what Piety does is to grant you 4 policies for the price of 3. And all 3 can be used well, presumably better than liberty and freedom combined. And that's because:
a. I like to burn my great artists, excess generals and merchants on golden ages and at least some of the puppet cities seem to like working specialists a lot (and I can't do much about it).
b. I like to work my tiles and usually I have specialists working only in my great engineer/scientist GP Farm (basically a farms/hammers city).
c. I'll never have enough culture to fill out both Freedom and Liberty to get the max benefit out of them, because by the time I do I have order and autocracy available.
d. Only +1 culture and +1 happy per city are interesting in Liberty. Workers you capture (at least 4 per conquered civ) and I don't want my puppets to have extra production (and my core cities can very well live without it). Even with this, Mandate of Heaven and Theocracy give better results.
 
I know all of that, but neither is a actual stop to ICS ... BTW ICS is not the same as REX , as some people seem to think. Those measures might stop REX , but they don't stop ICS.

Yeah that's true. By ICS you just mean packing cities as tightly as possible, right? That's certainly what I was doing in this game, and I think as long as you have maritime city-state allies there's a strong incentive to do that. Every city tile is worth 7 food, 2 hammers, and 1 gold. The fact that the basic buildings give a much better return than the advanced buildings is another good reason. But it's the communism policy that really makes this insane, and that policy is not easy to get. You really have to plan for it right from the beginning.
 
Okay,

the explanation (for Emperor).

+2 Happy from basic Piety will help you plant the 3rd city without worked happy tiles. I noticed that on Empreror the AI will be more than happy to grab my own best city locations without second thought (and I do like to have my 3 core cities where I want them).

6-turn golden age. After the inevitable AI attack (on your diff. level I think it's after 2nd city, on mine it's after 3rd) I usually deny peace (except if I got ganbanged like in my last game) and finish off the attacking AI. When that's done (I raze most of the cities, but can't raze them all. At this moment I use the 6-turn golden age to:
a. build courthouses in their capital and maybe another city.
b. boost my finances
c. to negate the unhappy from new cities (not loosing points towards happy GA)
d. build colliseums and/or circuses since the war production is over
These 6 turns just tremendously help me do all this.

From my experience, bordering AIs won't give you fair deals until you beat them at least once (i.e. they sue for peace). It's not unusual for me to have 15-30 extra happy from trades and initial conquests for 100 or more turns. I use this time to take 50% of excess happines added to culture, as well as 25% reduction in golden age happy requirements. The "natural" golden ages last twice or three times as long as great person ones, and I usually get two before the continental conquest. That's 30 turns of super-production and gold.

The -20% unhappiness in your own cities is great because in the initial expansion I usually take 1 or 2 enemy cities and re-populate the rest. I do like to have 6-7 of my own cities through the game, even if it means extra culture for policies. That means I'm looking at 12-28 happy from this trait alone.

2 free policies means I can go whatever path I want to, and I can get it now, for free, not increasing the number of culture needed for the next one (works well with high number of own cities). I usually put these two into either:
a. Honor (for a free, usually 3rd great general == another golden age) and putting myself just 1 policy till double exp.
b. Patronage and Aesthetics, if that's the way I want to go
c. Commerce (+25% gold in capital) and save up the last one for initial Order or Autocracy.

I like this strategy, and I think it will work very well in a lot of situations. However, it's totally different from what I was trying to do. Yours seems like a strategy for a fast start that leads to a fairly balanced game. Mine is designed for a somewhat slow start, but completely ridiculous production later in the game- a slingshot. You can't really compare the two strategies very easily.
 
I strongly disagree on taking other policies as the ones posted by the OP.

This thread is about a production per small city focussed strat.

So there is really no point in taking other policies than those that focus on this goal.

Liberty +1 hammers per city, Commerce +3 hammers per coastal and Order + 5 hammers per

If you skip say Commerce it would mean +5 hammers (with bonus) less per coastal in the first screen nearly 3/4 of the cities are coastal. And those would all have initial - 1/3 total hammers.

So it is against the spirit of this strat.


Of course you can take other policies after communism and starting the city spam.
 
I strongly disagree on taking other policies as the ones posted by the OP.

This thread is about a production per small city focussed strat.

So there is really no point in taking other policies than those that focus on this goal.

Liberty +1 hammers per city, Commerce +3 hammers per coastal and Order + 5 hammers per

If you skip say Commerce it would mean +5 hammers (with bonus) less per coastal in the first screen nearly 3/4 of the cities are coastal. And those would all have initial - 1/3 total hammers.

So it is against the spirit of this strat.

Liberty's is not worth it. It's 2 policies for +1 production per city.

I'd rather take those, and jet for -20% happiness per city. It's one of the most powerful for this strat.
 
1 hammer per city must be the worst policy ever. Its as powerful as a sideffect of a riverside plains trade post.
 
So I'm not the only one playing like this. In fact, you can space cities even more closely if you use a regular pattern and connect cities with less than 2 road tiles on average. I originally devised the strategy to make the best use of the Arabian unique ability but I was too lazy to post about it.

I like to do it from the start and go for the Forbidden Palace ASAP. Good factions are Egypt (due to the Burial Tomb), China (Paper Maker), France, Arabia, Persia (golden ages are great) and the Songhai (Mud Pyramid). My personal favourite is China because the paper maker will have you rolling in money and science.

Some tips when playing this strategy: Spend your money on colosseums. Macchu Picchu is great. Buildings are often not very useful due to the small size of your cities. Choose the liberty tree but only the right-hand side (+1 culture and +1 happy face per city). The +1 production is not worth the very weak policy before it. Your biggest drawback is social policy speed. Cultural city states are near worthless so don't spend much money on them.

Happiness is not a huge issue in my opinion. Most of your cities will be size 6 or less so a colosseum and theatre easily caters for this.
 
Yeah that's true. By ICS you just mean packing cities as tightly as possible, right? That's certainly what I was doing in this game, and I think as long as you have maritime city-state allies there's a strong incentive to do that. Every city tile is worth 7 food, 2 hammers, and 1 gold. The fact that the basic buildings give a much better return than the advanced buildings is another good reason. But it's the communism policy that really makes this insane, and that policy is not easy to get. You really have to plan for it right from the beginning.

You need to take into consideration non-isolated starts, because this strategy needs to be fine-tuned for agressive AI neighbours. Even one can drastically lower your ability to build, two will most certainly have you war-locked well into the middle ages. Middle age units cost double (in hammers) compared to their classical counterparts, and even if you are able to produce a good enough qunatity, these units will have no combat bonuses whatsoever (no barracks, no heroic epic, no Discipline policy). Wars also mean less happy resources to trade for (equaling lower population in cities), which also means fewer golden ages and no production ability to grab wonders (except if a non-frontline city happens to have marble).
The Japanese (need to kill off every unit completely) and the Greeks (AI loves to build spearmen) come to mind as especially dangerous opponents, as well as Elizabeth as soon as she gets Lonbowmen (archers are the only unit type the AI knows how to handle semi-properly).
 
The AI is not always as aggressive as people seem to think. I finished an immortal game where I didn't expand towards the AI and they never attacked. Build 3 cities and get enough culture to start the patronage tree then ICS in a small area still away from the AI, you won't be able to produce loads of units likk the OP but you will have tech still as they will grow to size 8 very fast.

I have no clue how often this will work but it is certainly possible to avoid wars and build up for a diplomatic victory with building a huge army either.
 
Yeah that's true. By ICS you just mean packing cities as tightly as possible, right? That's certainly what I was doing in this game, and I think as long as you have maritime city-state allies there's a strong incentive to do that. Every city tile is worth 7 food, 2 hammers, and 1 gold. The fact that the basic buildings give a much better return than the advanced buildings is another good reason. But it's the communism policy that really makes this insane, and that policy is not easy to get. You really have to plan for it right from the beginning.
ICS - Infinite City Sprawl ( from our trusty Commonly Used Acronyms in the Civ Community page ). Basically what you said: give every city just the first ring and pack the rest as tightly as possible. This has little to do with REX , that is rapid expansion, in spite of both being used together in previous versions of the game ( like civ III, where there was both incentive to spit the max settlers out as soon as possible and the fact you couldn't grow any city above 6 without a a aqueduct , that needed maths ( IIRC ), that made moot to care about the second ring before you had one of those in the city ). You can REX without ICS ( most of the civ IV REX games are not ICS ), and you can ICS without REX.
 
ICS - Infinite City Sprawl ( from our trusty Commonly Used Acronyms in the Civ Community page ). Basically what you said: give every city just the first ring and pack the rest as tightly as possible. This has little to do with REX , that is rapid expansion, in spite of both being used together in previous versions of the game ( like civ III, where there was both incentive to spit the max settlers out as soon as possible and the fact you couldn't grow any city above 6 without a a aqueduct , that needed maths ( IIRC ), that made moot to care about the second ring before you had one of those in the city ). You can REX without ICS ( most of the civ IV REX games are not ICS ), and you can ICS without REX.

A good example for ICS is also Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang of the Human Hive (SMAC), with no happiness penalties for Police State.
 
You need to take into consideration non-isolated starts, because this strategy needs to be fine-tuned for agressive AI neighbours. Even one can drastically lower your ability to build, two will most certainly have you war-locked well into the middle ages. Middle age units cost double (in hammers) compared to their classical counterparts, and even if you are able to produce a good enough qunatity, these units will have no combat bonuses whatsoever (no barracks, no heroic epic, no Discipline policy). Wars also mean less happy resources to trade for (equaling lower population in cities), which also means fewer golden ages and no production ability to grab wonders (except if a non-frontline city happens to have marble).
The Japanese (need to kill off every unit completely) and the Greeks (AI loves to build spearmen) come to mind as especially dangerous opponents, as well as Elizabeth as soon as she gets Lonbowmen (archers are the only unit type the AI knows how to handle semi-properly).

I also tried doing this with China on a pangaea/deity map. My plan was to conquer my nearest neighbors and use puppet states to generate enough culture to take the order policies, while defending against the rest of the AIs. The plan worked great at first- I easily conquered 2 civs on one side, and I set up a choke point on the other side with a citadel and CKNs which was invincible. Unfortunately, one AI ran away in tech and attacked me with artillery when I was still setting up, so I had no counter to that. Anything less than artillery is not a threat, though.

I think there's some truth in what stii said. The AI is more like a human player in this game- if you settle towards it aggressively, they will attack you. In fact if you do anything that annoys them, they'll attack you. But if you're extremely nice to them, and never break your word to anyone, you can keep the peace for a while.
 
I think there's some truth in what stii said. The AI is more like a human player in this game- if you settle towards it aggressively, they will attack you. In fact if you do anything that annoys them, they'll attack you. But if you're extremely nice to them, and never break your word to anyone, you can keep the peace for a while.

That's not the only reason they attack, I'm sure of it. Two things I noticed: distance of your borders to AI borders, number of your cities (compared to theirs).

Sometimes (often, actually) the spawn points of two civs are just generated in close proximity to each other and you can do nothing about it.

Also, in my last game, My capital was in the middle of the continent: Augustus and Oda to the north, Hiawatha to the East and Catherine to the south. My 3 cities were basically bordering Catherine and Hiawatha, yet Oda and Augustus attacked me simultaneously first (they shared a large border btw), 30 turns later Catherine did the same (I was still closer to Hiawatha). Now, I'd take Hiawatha for a peacemonger, if not for my previous experiences.

Or in other words, throughout most of the game what you say is true. "Be nice to everyone, stay true to your word" -- this works. But the initial wars seem to have some special AI coding (i.e. lets take out human player ASAP).

EDIT: The same thing happened to me in my one attempt at Immortal (as China). As soon as I planted my second city (4 hexes from my capital, had no other place to put it) both Japan and France declared simultaneously. I rush-bought two archers even, but even with a Great General I couldn't keep Japan away. The Japanese and and French borders were simply too close, and I spawned were I spawned - nothing I could do about it.
 
Sees like some starts are just impossible while other you can have peace for ages. I had a deity game where no-one decalred on me until 1400AD, which was rather unfortunate as although I could defend myself all the CS got killed leaving my empire starving :(
 
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