Undead Zombie ICS Rises From the Grave?

[Gato Loco]

I'm still waiting for my copy, so I may be completely off the mark, but something just occurred to me when I was thinking about the much-heralded death of ICS. We all know about city upkeep, but what about unit upkeep? In civ3, the biggest immediate benefit of founding a new city in 3000 BC under despotism was the 4gpt in free unit upkeep. If civ4 still has a per-city free unit upkeep, and the free unit support of a new city under primitive civics outweighs the city maintenence,, then someone doing an early primitive-unit rush will still want to ICS to build up their unit support. In addition, the new settler building system allows civs who start in food-poor starts to effectively "launder" hammers into food, since each settler is essentially another populaton point once it founds a new city, so a civ in the middle of the desert will be able to grow horizontally by building settlers even though it never produces surplus food. This won't be as good as growing vertically in the grassland, but it's better than sitting on one's rear end and never growing at all.

This could lead to a revival of ICS - a civ stuck without surplus food can still get ahead by spamming settlers, ICSing in the middle of the desert/hills/tundra/steppe, and using all those little "war camp" citties to build a big enough army to take over the big, rich cities of an OCP-minded neighbor whose army is kepy small by lack of free unit maintenence. Once you've taken a bunch of rich cities, exorted all the available techs, and filled your coffers with loot, you disband/sell all the ICS cities to save maintenence, disband any excess units, and settle down as a more convnetional civilized nation. This is pretty much the path taken by various real-life barbarian hordes that have migrated out of central Asia, beaten up anyone in their path, and then settled down for good.

Now of course all this is speculative, but it pretty much parallels the capitol abandonment strategy from civ3. If there's no unit maintenence, or the city maintenence is too high, ICS will really be dead.

[Krikkitone]

Well I remember hearing that supposedly the free unit support is per empire Unless you have Vassalage Civics. So only if you go Feudal will a city give you free unit support (and that is fairly advanced)

Also even if there is free unit support, that means a city gives you X free gold in unit support, but cost an incsreasing amount (so a limited ICS may happen but with a Limit)... but when those cities get better, you'll want to spread them out more.

[quarthinos]

While vassalage does indeed give extra free units (I'm not sure exactly how many 'cause I only have the manual with me, and it's not extremely detailed), it is also a high upkeep civic. But new units get two xp when built, so it kinda balances. In fact, add Theocracy (a medium upkeep civic) for two more xp and a barracks for four, and you'll start with 8 xp. Add an aggressive leader to get the combat 1 promotion (+10% combat value) for free to all melee and gunpowder units, and you're looking at a early to mid-game rusher of fair power.

[Khaim]

Does aggressive only give combat 1, or is it any free promotion?

This does sound like an interesting strategy, though. And you're absolutely right about it mirroring real life barbarians, so that should quiet the people who claim it's unrealistic.

[warpstorm]

Originally Posted by Gato Loco

...so a civ in the middle of the desert will be able to grow horizontally by building settlers even though it never produces surplus food.

A desert produces no hammers either. It is a total waste.

[lordqarlyn]

My early experience with the game I found that by getting commerce techs early, particularly cottages, you will generate enough commerce that you can move the slider 10% to gold, and still have a strong research rate, and easily pay for city maintenance, and still have a surplus of gold. If you find a religion, build that religion's shrine, then you get gold for all cities, even other players', that have that religion. This alone could offset maintenance and you could still leave research at a 100%.

You can build a big empire, but it takes more planning.

Don

[Gato Loco]

Originally Posted by warpstorm

A desert produces no hammers either. It is a total waste.

Ouch! Does this mean that deserts will go unclaimed for thousands of years and keep spawning barbarians the whole time? I was thinking of making a civ3 mod in which deserts and jungles were impassible to pre-modern non-barbarian units to create more or less this effect but never got around to it.

[Raziaar]

Deserts can have some use. I think they produce one food or something? I cant remember...

but anyways, vassalage gives +8 free units support cost.

[Smirk]

The jury is still out I suspect, but another piece of evidence (although nothing all that deep design wise) is that you cannot settle within 2 spaces of another city.
So they've halved the maximum density, albiet, in a very simplistic and braindead manner. This seems quite arbitrary and unfortunately only creates mechanical problems trying to get fresh water or coastal access (this is how I found out about the rule and I was forced to walk many leagues to find a suitable spot).