ICS, Civ V style

pi-r8:

If you're finishing the game in under 250 turns on Standard Speed, then all the modern techs and units are useless to you regardless of how long or short they take to create. You're taking the game as fast as you can through war, which has always been the fast, easy way to win. Arguably, you could just Horseman rush and not bother with infrastructure at all - that should be faster, right?

I've got a bunch of diplomatic wins before 250 so it is hardly impossible to get modern techs that early. In most of those games the extend of my war has been to liberate a few CS so I can win.

Not that any of those games uses pure ICS anyway.
 
Color me unimpressed. Giant cities by 1926? Sure, but ICS gets that kind of power by 1500.

Arguably, you could just Horseman rush and not bother with infrastructure at all - that should be faster, right?
Can you stop and think about the benefit of this strategy and what it means to a strong player rather than just use one logical fallacy after another? The horseman rush can be easily balanced and cut apart. This is a different beast.

For the same reason, small city play tends to get less policies because you can't afford to put Opera Houses and Museums into every city to counter the policy penalty.
Whatever, they get monuments and theater. Besides, so what? You get higher production and teching. You won't win by culture, but all the other ones (space, score, war, diplomacy) only require 2 things, money and research. Guess what? Those things aren't effected by ICS at all. Thats because Library/Colosseum is cost for cost more effective than its later counterparts.

Production is an iffy thing. I am sure you can have 1-2 cities that are relatively huge, even, with ICS. Besides, with communism, ICS beats any other strat in production.

Consider, if it takes you 125 turns to get cities up to population 10, and it takes you just as long to get to population 20, then you'll still need turn 250 to get to pop 20.
Wrong, it takes you 125x2 (maybe 3) turns to get from 10-20. Vertical growth gets a cap really fast, much faster than horizontal ones.

Basically, you can get 3 cities to size 6 in 1/2 the time it takes you to get one city to size 24 (and with less farms).

To some extent, this has advantages, but this isn't the only way to play Civ V.
Yeah, but this is the most OPTIMAL way to play civ. If you are not using ICS, you are not playing optimally, thus you aren't taking advantage of everything in front of you, simple as that. I don't know how you can argue this.

So lets rewrite the benefit:
Helps get resources online faster.
Better population growth (much faster than yours)
Better research (much faster than yours)
Better overall production.
Better commerce (cash rushing).
Better defense.
Better roading.

etc.
Drawback:
Less social policy.

:)
 
Yeah, but this is the most OPTIMAL way to play civ. If you are not using ICS, you are not playing optimally, thus you aren't taking advantage of everything in front of you, simple as that. I don't know how you can argue this.

So lets rewrite the benefit:
Helps get resources online faster.
Better population growth (much faster than yours)
Better research (much faster than yours)
Better overall production.
Better commerce (cash rushing).
Better defense.
Better roading.

etc.
Drawback:
Less social policy.

:)

Pretty easily as you haven't proved anything just listed stuff without any numbers at all.

Helps get resources online faster. - not true how many luxuries do you have? five cities can easily connect them all up.
Better overall production.- production of what exactly the junk cities build units really slowly and you wouldn't need the extra builds if you had half the cities.
Better defense.- your cities attack for less damage and they deal so little having more hardly matters anyway.

Better roading.- this is really minor
Other stuff isn't much faster it is slightly better and the loss of the patronage polices costs you a bunch of money and research anyway.

See it is pretty easy to argue ICs isn't the only optimal way to play, you need to support your points to show it is the only option.
 
The resource is a pretty trivial point to be honest.

production of what exactly the junk cities build units really slowly and you wouldn't need the extra builds if you had half the cities.
You mean the libraries and the Colosseum? Yeah, I suppose you don't use any buildings to increase your vertical growth like Hospitals.

Better defense.- your cities attack for less damage and they deal so little having more hardly matters anyway.
Also benefits siege weapons, but I agree this is just me being a dick. :)

Other stuff isn't much faster it is slightly better
"Slightly better?" The other guys needed how many turns to have the same research power as ICS in 200 turns? And I think you are undervalueing cashrushing.

Besides that, I really want to see how a big city can match the pop growth of ICS, along with its economy. It seems to me that ICS would probably use less farms than the alternative.
 
By turn 200 I had globalization and was building the UN. This was off four cities early game plus one conquered capital mid game then two extra cities late game.

I would agree that in the longer term ICS will gives the most but if that long term occurs after the game has finished it is hardly useful. So no I don't build hospitals because by the game I can build them the game is about to end.
 
Helps get resources online faster. - not true how many luxuries do you have? five cities can easily connect them all up.

This one is very simple to prove. Say there's a resource 4 hexes away from my city. I can either:

1) build an evenly-spaced city that will have room to get huge six+ tiles away from my original city. I then need to either buy the resource tile, or wait until my city expands to it.

2) build a crappy ICS city right next to the resource, or even right on top of it, 3-4 hexes away. Get it instantly.

Better overall production.- production of what exactly the junk cities build units really slowly and you wouldn't need the extra builds if you had half the cities.

The most badass size 20 production city in Civ5 won't be able to build any current-era units in less than 6 or 7 turns. Compare to five size four cities, which might take 20 turns to build the same unit. In 20 turns, you have gotten five 2-3 units from the big city, versus 5 units from the smaller ones. Don't need the extra two units? Sell them for way more money than you get from building wealth.

Bigger cities are better for wonders, but most ICS strats call for an early "primary" city to be a wonder-builder.

Better defense.- your cities attack for less damage and they deal so little having more hardly matters anyway.

City defense and bombardment strength doesn't seem to scale upwards much with size, seems to have a lot more to do with the era you're in. Still, if you're being invaded, each city is a significant speedbump for the invader. It might take 10 attacks to bring down your size 20 city, but it will unquestionably take a LOT more than ten attacks (spread across a lot more turns) to take out five size four cities.

Better roading.- this is really minor

ICS versus more optimal city placement saves you at least 1/3 of your road maintenance costs, since each city is a free road. If you expand over a large continent or a big chunk of Pangaea, this can be several dozen GPT. Not a massive difference, but definitely a significant perk.

Other stuff isn't much faster it is slightly better and the loss of the patronage polices costs you a bunch of money and research anyway.

I tried a patronage-centric build with both Alex and the Siamese, and the research you get, even if you are allied with 6-7 city states, is pretty pathetic. Definitely not more than a handful of ICS junk cities with two science specialists.

See it is pretty easy to argue ICs isn't the only optimal way to play, you need to support your points to show it is the only option.

I played through the GOTM2 here twice, once trying a peaceful mega-city build, once with ICS. I eventually won with my mega-cities, but war was always very harrowing and I needed to do a lot of city micro to make the most of my research and keep my happiness/budget in the black. I won 150 turns earlier with ICS, and never had a war that wasn't a snoozefest. The economy you can put together with ICS is just totally absurd.
 
So what you are saying is that you tried with fewer bigger cites and it didn't work so it can't possibly work?

I'm not struggling with my fewer bigger cites and the fact you won 150 turns earlier just shows me you are doing something seriously wrong in the first place. It is perfectly possible to win by t250 without ICS and if you are winning by T100 then you are horse rushing which is a very different issue.

Again saying patronage gives a tiny boost is pretty confusing to me I've had over +100 beakers off CS before with a normal civ, which makes me wonder what you are doing.
 
chauncymo:

The issue is timeliness. You don't need 5 units 20 turns into the future, when you have better techs. You want them now. You either rush-buy with Gold Economy, or you produce with a more balanced one.

A size 20 production city should be able to produce a Modern unit in 6-7 turns. You ideally should have 3 such cities, so you get your three Modern units in about 7-8 turns allowing for discrepancies in production capacity. Then you use them.

Getting three times as many units when you have better units to build isn't useful unless you're fishing for the upgrade path.

Bigger cities are better for production of all manners of things. Wonders are the only ones you can't Rush-Buy, but they produce units for cheaper, too, since you don't have to pay the Gold premium for rushbuys.

Bandobras Took:

Unfortunately, I'm neither very good nor aware of how to post pics on the 'net without an account. Do you really want to see my crappy, normal-looking Civs?

lossofmercy:

lossofmercy said:
Color me unimpressed. Giant cities by 1926? Sure, but ICS gets that kind of power by 1500.

That really depends on what you want out of the game. Do you want to win with a Spaceship in an anachronistic time period or do you want to see big cities?

lossofmercy said:
Can you stop and think about the benefit of this strategy and what it means to a strong player rather than just use one logical fallacy after another? The horseman rush can be easily balanced and cut apart. This is a different beast.

I don't see any fundamental difference. If you just want to win and do it faster, then using Conquest is the fastest way.

lossofmercy said:
Whatever, they get monuments and theater. Besides, so what? You get higher production and teching. You won't win by culture, but all the other ones (space, score, war, diplomacy) only require 2 things, money and research. Guess what? Those things aren't effected by ICS at all. Thats because Library/Colosseum is cost for cost more effective than its later counterparts.

Production is an iffy thing. I am sure you can have 1-2 cities that are relatively huge, even, with ICS. Besides, with communism, ICS beats any other strat in production.

If you have large cities working large tiles, that is no longer ICS. That is simple a large Civ, and large Civs have always been stronger in Civ games. There is no exception to this, not even Civ IV.

Late game policies make large Civs even better, but this has always been true of Civs, again. Civ IV's Corporations meant that the only limit you should put on making Cities was how close you could put them together on the map. They won't actually need to work tiles or anything.

lossofmercy said:
Wrong, it takes you 125x2 (maybe 3) turns to get from 10-20. Vertical growth gets a cap really fast, much faster than horizontal ones.

Basically, you can get 3 cities to size 6 in 1/2 the time it takes you to get one city to size 24 (and with less farms).

I'd be more interested in facts and reproducible results rather than showing which of us has a bigger epeen. If that interests you, I can tell you you're a better player right now, or whatever the heck it is you want to prove.

It does not take 250 turns to grow a city to size 20, since I can grow a city to size 20 in 260 turns, and that involves playing in distinctly non-optimized manners. I'm sure stii could achieve it sooner.

I'm talking about Standard Speed of course. If you are interested in the specifics, I could look at my save files and tell you how I did it.
 
The entire tech tree can be researched in less than 200 turns without research agreements...this has already been demonstrated.

That changes the importance of modern techs and units in a domination game that takes 250 turns.

I'm not sure I understand. In an ICS that gets that far advanced, wouldn't you just rush-buy the units and then upgrade them incrementally as the techs came in? How does this change the importance of those units?
 
I'm not great at Civ but it seems like if you wait forever with your settler wave then the AI could expand into your territory. Does this strategy work on Pangea or a continent map where there is more than just you on the Continent? What happens if they decide to attack you in your 6 city phase?
 
OK, so I finally got an ICS explosion to gel yesterday. Yes, it does grab you ~beakers/turn towards the end, and yes, it's almost impossible for the AI to break into the lattice.

But... it's so incredibly boring to play.

Now it seems the two most effective ways to win Civ V (horse rushing and ICS, or a mix of both) are just too boring for me to play as they're far too easy.

It feels like ICS must be the wrong way to play. But the numbers would indicate otherwise.

It has to be fixed.
 
boehj:

Actually, the grossly mismatching numbers in terms of science, money, and hammer relationships suggest to me that this style really isn't what the devs had in mind when they were designing Civ V - it appears to have just slipped through playtesting.
 
I agree with that, especially since they said they were trying to design it so that lots of little cities wouldn't happen. ;)
 
It is the idea of creating city as packed as possible to abuse trade route and cheap buildings like library(1 gold maintance) and boosting gold and science.

There are many ICS thread around, searching it will help explain everything.
 
The way I did it/do it, is to more or less clear my continent, all the while building settlers. So when I have Planned Economy and the Forbidden Palace I can just dump a whole heap down in one massive hit. The advantage here of course is that getting that deep into the Social Policy tree is fairly easy when you only have, say, two of your own cities for a very long time (and a few puppet Caps). You can also focus one of the cities on production duties which is handy.

My big problem is as this strategy is really boring to play, to somewhat counter this I will no doubt take the left hand side of the Honor tree which slows me down getting to the very powerful middle Order policies. But there's nothing quite like having 3-5 range 4 logistics artillery to put in your border cities to pick off anyone that would be so bold as to try penetrate the lattice. You really don't need much more military than that late game. Perhaps about 8-10 infantry - which will also be highly levelled by this time - should do the trick. Note that I can only get the ICS explosion to work on Prince difficulty. I've tried a few times on King but the early warring seems to slow me a lot more. I'll try again today and see how I go at King.

China is an awesome civ for this, not so much for their UA or UU (both of which are exceptionally good) but for their Paper Maker. I have been capping my ICS cities at size four as I read somewhere (Sulla's site I think) that this is a good idea. Now that I think about it tho' I'm not sure why this should be the case. Anyway, two specialists go into each Paper Maker and one goes into the Market. One citizen is working the powerful centre tile. Very soon you'll be seeing huge science from this honeycomb of cities. And they all pay for themselves. And you don't have to build any improvements whatsoever around these cities, just interconnecting roads. (Remember that the conquered civs will have spammed some Trading Posts which are just the icing on the cake, should you wish to grow your ICS cities a little or get some gold.)

You can build these cities out in the snow or in the middle of the desert and it doesn't make the slightest difference. It's quite ridiculous really when you think about it. All the food is coming from a maritime CS or two.

But having reflected on this a bit, what was the advantage in my building Monuments in the ICS cities? Once I've bought into the ICS style, it's realistically going to take me quite some time for my next SP to come along... and I don't need any more help by then. You're in a position where you are unbeatable already. With this in mind, I think my next try will involve building the Paper Maker first, then a Market and then that's it. Perhaps build a bank or two. Colosseums are bought as needed.
 
The way I did it/do it, is to more or less clear my continent, all the while building settlers. So when I have Planned Economy and the Forbidden Palace I can just dump a whole heap down in one massive hit. The advantage here of course is that getting that deep into the Social Policy tree is fairly easy when you only have, say, two of your own cities for a very long time (and a few puppet Caps). You can also focus one of the cities on production duties which is handy.

My big problem is as this strategy is really boring to play, to somewhat counter this I will no doubt take the left hand side of the Honor tree which slows me down getting to the very powerful middle Order policies. But there's nothing quite like having 3-5 range 4 logistics artillery to put in your border cities to pick off anyone that would be so bold as to try penetrate the lattice. You really don't need much more military than that late game. Perhaps about 8-10 infantry - which will also be highly levelled by this time - should do the trick. Note that I can only get the ICS explosion to work on Prince difficulty. I've tried a few times on King but the early warring seems to slow me a lot more. I'll try again today and see how I go at King.

China is an awesome civ for this, not so much for their UA or UU (both of which are exceptionally good) but for their Paper Maker. I have been capping my ICS cities at size four as I read somewhere (Sulla's site I think) that this is a good idea. Now that I think about it tho' I'm not sure why this should be the case. Anyway, two specialists go into each Paper Maker and one goes into the Market. One citizen is working the powerful centre tile. Very soon you'll be seeing huge science from this honeycomb of cities. And they all pay for themselves. And you don't have to build any improvements whatsoever around these cities, just interconnecting roads. (Remember that the conquered civs will have spammed some Trading Posts which are just the icing on the cake, should you wish to grow your ICS cities a little or get some gold.)

You can build these cities out in the snow or in the middle of the desert and it doesn't make the slightest difference. It's quite ridiculous really when you think about it. All the food is coming from a maritime CS or two.

But having reflected on this a bit, what was the advantage in my building Monuments in the ICS cities? Once I've bought into the ICS style, it's realistically going to take me quite some time for my next SP to come along... and I don't need any more help by then. You're in a position where you are unbeatable already. With this in mind, I think my next try will involve building the Paper Maker first, then a Market and then that's it. Perhaps build a bank or two. Colosseums are bought as needed.

It doesn't make sense to build monuments (even though I thought so at the start) when doing ICS. You just go with what SP you get. Capping at 4 is neither necessary nor optimal, just trade post spam and let your people work them for money. This idea came, I think, from the misconception that a happiness-neutral city somehow makes a qualitative difference to a city that costs a few points when this is only true in the really infinite case - which you will stay far away from in any normal game.

Also, waiting for order isn't a good idea. If you want to play as fast as possible, expand as quickly as possible and buy things with gold.
 
It's been a while since I looked over this whole thread, but why are large, super-productive cities and ICS being treated as exclusive? Filler cities are running all/mostly specialists anyways, so they don't need to work the land. Pick a city with particularly good terrain around it, and leave it uncapped. Give it mines and farms, and let it go. I've had 100+ :c5production: cities (post bonuses, of course) with my cities in a strict, crystalline lattice.

alpaca, you don't cap your ICS city size now? I find I have to maintain happiness neutrality in most of my fillers, since while they're working specialists I'll have neither the hammers nor gold to keep putting happiness buildings in them at the rate that those relatively small cities will grow.

Though, at some point, my builder's instincts always kick in, and I find myself 'consolidating' instead of relentlessly pushing towards victory. Perhaps they couldn't grow large enough to be a significant problem if I was pushing for a <300-turn game.
 
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