ICS, Civ V style

Optimal behavior varies. In a cultural game, you have a minimum threshold of number of cities that you need to achieve. Anything beyond that is superfluous. You need a few late game techs and not much else, those techs result directly from the standard Deity beeline anyway, and you pick up sufficient military techs along the way. So expansion is not really a priority; the marginal impact on completion time is minimal, because you don't really feel the effects of +pop -> +research all that much.

For any other victory condition, expansion to the limit of your ability to finance it (and still keep the research bar moving) is always highly desirable. Domination requires doing so. Spaceship requires keeping the Science bar moving, and appropriate expansion through conquest (no lengthy wars against hardcore unit-spammers) will always increase research speed. Diplomatic wins require votes; conquering citizens directly increases your vote count, and there are ways to game who you target to improve your diplomatic relations as needed in the process of expansion.

I can't speak to anything after vanilla, as I didn't play it. But that doesn't really matter here, since comparing Civ4 + xpacs to Civ5 is a blatantly unfair comparison. We should be comparing vanilla to vanilla.
Again, i couldn't disagree more.

The optimal way of winning by culture in civ IV ( even on vanilla ) is to become big, have lots of cottages, pluck up the slider and run artists in the cities you want as the 3 big. It may not be the faster way of winning, but it is surely the best in terems of speed/security. More cities = more money for the slider ;)

Said in other words, it is not as diferent of the other VC. People only got used to the minimalist aproach ( that is quite a gamble, you must reckon ) and thinked that culture has a diferent philosophy behind ... like if you couldn't win on any VC with only one city ( except domination in vanilla in anything above duel maps ... but , after vassals you can also win by domination with just one city up to standart maps maybe ).

BTW I'm quite convinced that we actually can win by culture with a boatload of cities in civ V as well. Probably will dedicate one game later to try to slash that sacred cow :D
 
You can probably win cultural with a big empire, but so far I've only done it with a small one, 2 or three cities. The thing is, some of the numbers scale with each other, ie, the cost of policies increases as you get more cities, but you have more cities pumping out culture. One thing that doesn't balance out, however, is the culture you get from city states. If you have the right patronage policies, you can get 24 culture a turn from each cultural CS ally. Find four of them and that's 96 a turn. That number stays the same no matter how many cities you have, so it is a more powerful tactic, and provides a higher ratio of your cultural points, if you have fewer cities, since the cost of each policy hasn't increased substantially.

When I had two cities and four cultural allies, I hit a cultural victory in the late 1800s.
 
Again, i couldn't disagree more.

The optimal way of winning by culture in civ IV ( even on vanilla ) is to become big, have lots of cottages, pluck up the slider and run artists in the cities you want as the 3 big. It may not be the faster way of winning, but it is surely the best in terems of speed/security. More cities = more money for the slider ;)

Said in other words, it is not as diferent of the other VC. People only got used to the minimalist aproach ( that is quite a gamble, you must reckon ) and thinked that culture has a diferent philosophy behind ... like if you couldn't win on any VC with only one city ( except domination in vanilla in anything above duel maps ... but , after vassals you can also win by domination with just one city up to standart maps maybe ).

BTW I'm quite convinced that we actually can win by culture with a boatload of cities in civ V as well. Probably will dedicate one game later to try to slash that sacred cow :D

Of course its yet another myth.

Lets say you have 4 cities and your cultural requirements are doubled (first city is free, three extra are 33% each). Lets say first four cities have monument + temple, ignoring the palace. That's 5 culture per city or 20 culture per turn. Lets say the next policy requirement is 100 culture points. That's 5 turns till next policy.

Now add 3 more cities for yet another 100% increase in cost, this time it's 200 culture points. But the added cities also have temple+monument and produce 15 more culture per turn. So now it's 35 culture per turn and the time to reach 200 culture is 5.7 turns.

Now lets add 3 more cities for a total of 10 and the cost is 400 culture and the production is 50 culture per turn. now it's 8 turns. It's a roughly 30% increase for adding 6 more cities.

Count in puppets that generate culture while not increasing the requirement, as well as the ability to generate lots of money for insta-buying culture buildings (saving up around 15 turns worth of culture) or cultural city states.

I'm not sure how much money every city-state needs to keep as an ally at all times, but lets say it's 300 gold per 30 turns. 5 extra cities can easily support 5 cultural city-states by that count, and still generate money for other stuff. That breaks the exponentiality of culture generation, since every city after 4th would have an attached 20-culture city state.

Obviously this won't work in all scenarios but still. Extra cash and research influx can also generate a lot of culture since you also reseach faster (and you get faster to museums, broadcast towers etc.)
 
Of course its yet another myth.

Lets say you have 4 cities and your cultural requirements are doubled (first city is free, three extra are 33% each). Lets say first four cities have monument + temple, ignoring the palace. That's 5 culture per city or 20 culture per turn. Lets say the next policy requirement is 100 culture points. That's 5 turns till next policy.

Now add 3 more cities for yet another 100% increase in cost, this time it's 200 culture points. But the added cities also have temple+monument and produce 15 more culture per turn. So now it's 35 culture per turn and the time to reach 200 culture is 5.7 turns.

Now lets add 3 more cities for a total of 10 and the cost is 400 culture and the production is 50 culture per turn. now it's 8 turns. It's a roughly 30% increase for adding 6 more cities.

Count in puppets that generate culture while not increasing the requirement, as well as the ability to generate lots of money for insta-buying culture buildings (saving up around 15 turns worth of culture) or cultural city states.

I'm not sure how much money every city-state needs to keep as an ally at all times, but lets say it's 300 gold per 30 turns. 5 extra cities can easily support 5 cultural city-states by that count, and still generate money for other stuff. That breaks the exponentiality of culture generation, since every city after 4th would have an attached 20-culture city state.

Obviously this won't work in all scenarios but still. Extra cash and research influx can also generate a lot of culture since you also reseach faster (and you get faster to museums, broadcast towers etc.)
You're calculating it wrong.

1 city = 100% culture cost, 2 = 133%, 3 = 167%, 4 = 200%, and so on. You started with 5 cities, announced a base culture cost, and then claimed it doubled with 3 more.

If each city makes 5 culture and it's 100 culture to the next policy, here's how many turns it takes to get it for each number of cities:
1 20
2 13.33333333
3 11.11111111
4 10
5 9.333333333
6 8.888888889
7 8.571428571
8 8.333333333
9 8.148148148
10 8

It's a constantly decreasing function.

The reason that we say that less cities is better is for 3-fold:
1) Culture city states are independent from this
2) Puppet city states are independent from this
3) When you build a new city, it takes a long time for it to get the culture going to match your other cities. And no new city will match the culture output of one of your original giants.

These factors are strong enough to make 1 city empires the fastest culture win.

If culture city states and puppets were changed/removed, I would say that the culture win would be more close to the domination/science in terms of empire looks. People would build extra cities if they were in good spots, and for no other reason.
 
The math for culture wins is dominated by two central multipliers:

1) There is a building (Hermitage) which doubles all culture production in one city
2) There is a social policy which doubles all culture production in any city with a wonder.

So you want to stack monuments, etc. in one place, typically the capital, and you also benefit the most from passive wonder culture there. You can therefore get about 300-400 culture from a capital, pretty much independent of the rest of the empire.

Any other cities with Wonders can get 60-80.

Any other cities will top out around 30-40

Costs rise by 30% per city.

The net result is that you lose slowly as long as you add cities with wonders and you lose fast when you add cities without them.

E.g. look at the following scalings

300 culture/ 1 cost = 300
360 culture /1.3 cost = 277
420 culture/1.6 cost = 263
480 culture/1.9 cost = 253
540 culture/2.2 cost = 245
600 culture/2.5 cost = 240

You can do it, but it's slower - and the special buildings require things like 1 museum in each city which gets slower as you are bigger.

Without wonders the scaling is ugly.

300 culture /1 cost = 300
330 culture/ 1.3 cost = 254
360 culture/ 1.6 cost = 225
390 culture/ 1.9 cost = 205
420 culture/2.2 cost = 191
450 culture/2.5 cost = 180
It asymptotes out to about 110 on this scale, implying that if you put the full set of culture buildings in all cities you'll end up gaining policies at about 1/3 of the one city rate.
 
You're racing the AI to your win condition. If it isn't culture, your win condition on a sufficiently large Deity map involves advanced tech. Either you're going to win in the UN, or you're going to build a spaceship, or you're going to drop a bunch of GDRs (or similar massive military disparity) on the AI, or you're going to nuke the snot out of it.

The more you can accelerate the time to reaching your win condition, the less opportunity the AI has to do anything about it. Rationalism increases the efficiency of your Science specialists by 67%, which is substantial. It also triples the Science productivity of any pop unit working a Trading Post.

Clearly you like to build things; your ICS approach demonstrates that. But when you can end the game right after turn 200 and stay a full tech level ahead of even a juggernaut AI, there really isn't any reason to build a lot of stuff. If the juggernaut is on another continent, it will never have time to reach you. If you share a continent with it, early Artillery will make anything it throws at you look just silly.
First of all I have to point out that rationalism only gives +1 science/trading post, not +2 like it says. Have you actually used this much before?

Second I point out that rationalism increases only your beakers/turn, and does nothing to boost your gpp or research aggreements, which are all equally important.

Third, I point out that any victory condition requires not only science, but also production. Science victory requires multiple expensive parts, while culture and diplo require an expensive wonder. And most importantly, for conquest it's not enough to research the units, you have to build them also. Especially the modern units, most of which can't be upgraded from early units.

Artillery is a bit of an exception since you can upgrade it from earlier units, and just 1 or 2 artillery early on is godlike in war. The GDR also has that power, so if you have the gold to rush buy it you can immediately win with it. However, most military units won't do anythign if you have just a few (what's 2 or 3 rifles against a sea of longswordsman?), and without a lot of production you can't build more than a few. It's even more so with buildings- what's the point of unlocking research labs if most cities are still struggling to build a university? That's why I focus so heavily on production in this game, and almost ignore tech.

You're talking extreme late game, and you're stacking the deck by discussing a Civic that requires significant investment to exploit. Most Civics don't work that way. You would prefer to run many of them for brief periods, but not always. Anarchy is indeed a significant cost that precludes brief swaps for non-Spiritual leaders; a Spiritual game plays quite differently. Some Civic choices are obvious (Hereditary Rule, Slavery on acquisition); others are much less so.

There are just a lot more opportunities for meaningful choice along the way under the Civics system. With the Social Policy system, optimal play always requires determining your endgame early and selecting policies accordingly. If you want to win by Domination, you need to build a lot of stuff in a lot of cities. If you want to win by Diplomacy or Science, you need a small number of big Hammer producers and a lot of Science output. Culture is its own SP animal; the proper approach is fairly obvious.
Early on with the civics you don't have much choice. The only big choice is slavery vs. caste system- with spiritual, you want to switch back and forth, which would work great with social policies that let you run both. The other choice I guess is religion, but that just depends on diplomacy. Otherwise, things are pretty simple early on.

Later on things do get more complex, but you still have to plan in advance. It's not like you can suddenly change your mind and switch from a culture victory to world domination, or make everyone instantly like you for a diplo victory. Likewise, you can't make towns grow instantly, or make any improvement instantly in fact. Especially if your civics depend on wonders like the Kremlin. It takes long-term planning.
 
ohioastronomy said:
It asymptotes out to about 110 on this scale, implying that if you put the full set of culture buildings in all cities you'll end up gaining policies at about 1/3 of the one city rate.
If you want to be exact, it approaches 30/.3 = 100 :)

You're right in that wonders and policies greatly skew it as well. My argument is that puppets and culture city states skew it for the greatest amount.

I'd take out the policy cost benefit puppets have, and I'd make culture city states give x culture to the capitol, and .3x culture (depending on map size) to each other city. Then culture city states give the same benefit to all empire sizes.
 
Continuing my China game, I won't play like this again. It's completely overwhelming. There's just too much micromanagement needed to run an empire like this! It wouldn't be so bad if my cities were spaced far apart, but having them close together is just harsh. They are at about size 10 each, with only about 8 workable spaces (sometimes more due to ocean).

For example, consider a city in the centre of a landmass. It has marble, and lots of forests, and no other resources. Luckily due to maritime city states it's size 12 and perfect for wonders. Well, when I need to build a wonder I go to it, and toggle over a LOT of tiles so it has more production to work.

Now consider having to do that for every city that's building something halfway important. I can toggle a crazy crazy number of tiles. One city builds a theatre, then I switch the production tiles to the next city so it can build the theatre, then the next city, and so on. The cities are just TOO compact compared to how far out they work that it's driving me insane.


Another note is the grow speeds. My capitol, with good food and being around the entire game, is only size 12. I just put up a new city and with no policies to help, it skyrocketted to size 3 in 4 turns. I check back in another 20 turns and it's size 7! With maritime city states, the way global happiness works, and how much food is required for big city sizes, all of your cities cap off very very fast. Before my capitol can grow another city size, a smaller town quickly grows and gobbles up the excess happiness. I don't like it.

Um... you're doing it wrong! You shouldn't have any cities above size 10 except for a few core cities. Size 4 is all you need. Then you don't have to build things like theaters. Coluseams, markets, libraries, and monuments are all you need.
 
Um... you're doing it wrong! You shouldn't have any cities above size 10 except for a few core cities. Size 4 is all you need. Then you don't have to build things like theaters. Coluseams, markets, libraries, and monuments are all you need.
It's a much stronger empire with the additional population. Gobs of specialists.
 
with freedom I think the cap for small cities is higher then size 4... you can always build library and put 2 scientists and market 2 merchants
 
First of all I have to point out that rationalism only gives +1 science/trading post, not +2 like it says. Have you actually used this much before?

Second I point out that rationalism increases only your beakers/turn, and does nothing to boost your gpp or research aggreements, which are all equally important.

Each pop gives 0.5, therefore working a trading post gives 1.5 before multipliers. Not quite true as library gives a bonus independant so it is 0.75 vs 1.75 I guess not it is probably where the numbers came from.

It is pretty funny that people are saying there are no options when you two both want different polices and I'd rather have patronage over either.
 
It's a much stronger empire with the additional population. Gobs of specialists.

but all of that additional population could have gone into additional cities instead, which give extra happiness which then leads to even more cities.
 
but all of that additional population could have gone into additional cities instead, which give extra happiness which then leads to even more cities.

Oh believe me, I expand too. The only thing that stops me is the opportunity cost :)

I have zero happiness problems. I build a new city, and it's immediately helping itself. It's just my current cities also grow like nuts.
 
The optimal way of winning by culture in civ IV ( even on vanilla ) is to become big, have lots of cottages, pluck up the slider and run artists in the cities you want as the 3 big. It may not be the faster way of winning, but it is surely the best in terems of speed/security. More cities = more money for the slider ;)

But those cities have an upkeep cost...

The argument I'm making isn't that you can't win on culture in Civ 4 without a boatload of cities. It's that the marginal value of expansion is sharply diminished when playing Culture, as opposed to any other win condition. As a result, the optimal line of play varies. Vertical growth pays a lot better when you're going for Culture, and your Hammers always have an opportunity cost.

It is pretty funny that people are saying there are no options when you two both want different polices and I'd rather have patronage over either.

It is easy to prove that, given the current setup of the game, one of the advocated approaches is theoretically optimal for whatever you are trying to maximize. It follows that we must be maximizing different functions, and that this is why we advocate different approaches.

I understand why you like the Science shot in the arm from Patronage at the third policy. I used to use it extensively. However, the problem with that bonus is that it does not scale nearly as well over time as the Rationalism boosts do.

First of all I have to point out that rationalism only gives +1 science/trading post, not +2 like it says. Have you actually used this much before?

Just about every game...

As noted, pop is 0.5 per point, pop working a TP is 1.5. Big difference. And again, note that all those specialists you have working are also considerably more effective. You feel it, and turns matter a great deal at this phase.

It is not difficult to conquer your way to an empire sufficient to fuel maximum research agreements in the first hundred turns. As long as you have sufficient luxuries for resale, you're good (at least on Deity). What Rationalism does for you is enable you to get more valuable techs with those research agreements during Renaissance, since you are plowing through the tech tree faster. You are neglecting to account for the fact that the same research agreements effectively yield additional science on top of the direct boost to research per turn.

To maximize Science in the relevant period (Renaissance), you want your growth to land in midsize, conquered cities where you already have maximum Science buildings and Trading Posts set up. Small cities that require further turn investment (and extra Workers with ghastly associated maintenance costs) to develop are suboptimal. The flaw in your argument is that while you are correct that in the limit ICS will outperform other approaches, the time horizon of a Civ 5 game is surprisingly finite.
 
Not to mention that on top of what has already been mentioned, the settler is the only indirect fire unit before dynamite (except perhaps English longbows, a special). Therefore it (in the form of a city obviously) is the best ranged defender in rough terrain.

In fact these military advantages are the best argument for a pure ICS versus an aggressive REX based on ICS principles (i.e., the ICS SPs). I've got to try this with my next trial game as America on Emperor. I want to try this with no economic, cultural or military advantages (other than the advanced LOS and American UUs, the hex buying discount is almost completely negated by ICS).

Yes, I pointed out the defensiveness somewhere else some while ago but forgot to mention it in the Rome thread. It's quite interesting that if a unit marches into your land, there will inevitably be at least two cities that can fire on it.

The second reason is that city tiles have a zone of control so with close-packed city placement, the opponent has no good chance to go around your cities and surround them. So you can safely station units behind the city front-line without the enemy being able to attack them.

The third reason is that cities are excellent at keeping ranged units protected from enemy attack. Not only the city itself can fire upon the enemy sieging your other city, but the unit stationed inside of it will, too! Without the opponent being able to damage or kill it like he could in field battles.
 
Not to mention that on top of what has already been mentioned, the settler is the only indirect fire unit before dynamite (except perhaps English longbows, a special). Therefore it (in the form of a city obviously) is the best ranged defender in rough terrain.

In fact these military advantages are the best argument for a pure ICS versus an aggressive REX based on ICS principles (i.e., the ICS SPs). I've got to try this with my next trial game as America on Emperor. I want to try this with no economic, cultural or military advantages (other than the advanced LOS and American UUs, the hex buying discount is almost completely negated by ICS).

Another "soft" bonus one shouldn't underestimate (you kind of mention it but I think it should be pointed out explicitly) is tile claiming. ICS will mean you won't have to spend a single culture point on tile grabbing in the inside of your empire because cities will fully occupy all land with their first ring of tiles.
 
But those cities have an upkeep cost...

The argument I'm making isn't that you can't win on culture in Civ 4 without a boatload of cities. It's that the marginal value of expansion is sharply diminished when playing Culture, as opposed to any other win condition. As a result, the optimal line of play varies. Vertical growth pays a lot better when you're going for Culture, and your Hammers always have an opportunity cost.
This were you're wrong, every city you add will make a culture win easier in civ IV as long as it pays the maintenance ( and that is not that hard most of the times ), because you have the slider. As long as the city pays it self, it will make the win easier, because the slider permits to transform the excess cash in that city in culture ( partly in the 3 bigs ).

That is what I've been pointing : Culture wins in civ Iv are not diferent of the others in a ny sense of this issue.
 
This were you're wrong, every city you add will make a culture win easier in civ IV as long as it pays the maintenance ( and that is not that hard most of the times ), because you have the slider. As long as the city pays it self, it will make the win easier, because the slider permits to transform the excess cash in that city in culture ( partly in the 3 bigs ).

That is what I've been pointing : Culture wins in civ Iv are not diferent of the others in a ny sense of this issue.

Isn't culture in Civ4 base commerce in this city * slider setting * modifier in this city? So it doesn't have anything to do with what other cities contribute? I don't think culturally, additional cities boost the culture in your three relevant cities. They allow you to add more cathedrals and the like, though.
 
alpaca:

Additional cities are necessary to Culture Wins in Civ IV. In fact, far from being small being a necessity, there is a minimum empire size you must attain in Civ IV for Culture to even be a consideration.

Beyond that, additional cities get you more gold, more science, more everything, so they make Culture Wins indirectly easier, though investing resources towards getting a self-sufficient periphery inevitably makes the win slower.

gaiko:

English Longbowmen do not get Indirect Fire as a free promotion. They get Range.
 
Isn't culture in Civ4 base commerce in this city * slider setting * modifier in this city? So it doesn't have anything to do with what other cities contribute? I don't think culturally, additional cities boost the culture in your three relevant cities. They allow you to add more cathedrals and the like, though.
That is only true if you keep the sliders without move. If you bank money and they plock the culture slider to the 100% ( aka binary spending ), the money banked by the whole empire serves to put the culture up everywhere ... as the 3 bigs will most likely not doing a lot of cash ( they're running artists ;) ), this means that there is a net conversion of cash collected in the empire to culture in the big 3.
 
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