ICS, Civ V style

[alpaca]

Originally Posted by atteSmythe

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.

I don't "cap" them meaning that I don't mind if they grow to size 7 or 8. I mostly let them work on trade posts, preferably ones on hills. I neither go to great lengths to grow them nor to cap their growth.

Consolidating and going for vertical growth probably makes sense when you're in the last 50 or so turns of the game so your new cities won't be able to churn out a colosseum and library quick enough to matter anymore. Before that, spam away

[boehj]

Originally Posted by alpaca

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.

Thanks alpaca. I tried again on King yesterday. I put up a funny 300 year resistance to Napoleon using artillery in forts on hills. The Pangaea was split in half by a dividing range of mountains. My half didn't have any aluminium unfortunately... My capital went up in flames four turns before the UN was built. Oh well, I'm getting closer.

Thanks for the advice re: capping. I felt that leaving these cities at size 4 seemed wrong. I'll try let them grow a little more next time.

Also, yes I definitely feel I'm playing too slowly. I let tech leads get away from me. I can't seem to break this habit, and I can't consistently win at King difficulty because of it. The comments in this forum are helping my play a lot tho' and I appreciate it.

Perhaps I'll play as Napoleon today...

[EscapedGoat]

At least in the early stages, capping ICS cities at size 2 is optimal. Why? because the goal is to maximize food/prod/gold for each point of happiness. The city square itself generates a pure surplus of 2f 2p 1g, and with meritocracy, the cost of the city is 1 unhappy.

For 1 unhappy, a "normal" citizen will give you 1 science surplus - that's it! all basic squares have a base yield of 2 food/prod combination and each citizen eats 2 food he is production neutral beyond that 1 science until an improvement is built.

When an improvement is built, it's either +1 food(farm), +1 prod(mine/other) or +2 gold (TP) (unless you have a special resource, in which case you can add +1 food/prod to the figures above in general).

So even best case, working a special resource, in a city with a library, a citizen will give 1.5 science and 2 food/prod surplus (sheep, cow etc). That's also excluding all the other benefit you get from the city - the ranged attack, control over 7 new squares, potential new luxuries (5 happy is a lot early game)...

There is no way you can use that happy better than a new city square - especially once you get maritimes, the city square is suddenly worth 4f 2p 1g... and it just gets worse the more maritimes you have.

I suppose you could make the argument that a new citizen only "costs" 22 food, 30 food, 40(?) food going from size 2-5 while a settler costs 89 hammer - but the restriction seems not to be the cost of the unit produced (settler/citizen) but the happiness.

[alpaca]

Letting them grow a bit nets more money through more profitable trade routes. I will give a try to capping them more stringently now that I found out the "avoid growth" means the city won't grow even when it has food surplus

[RedRover57]

I'm no ICS (or CiV) expert but have been playing around quite a bit with the ICS style, mostly just trying out different starting strategies with different civs on different difficulty levels. It seems to me that capping the filler cities at 2-3 pop is a good way to go early on, but it is dependent on the tiles available. If you had a city with a silver mine on a river, for example, it would probably be good to expand one more citizen to be able to work it, as it's a better tile than a new city tile. You will probably be happy you are working it if you enter a GA. But if your city is completely surrounded by grassland (or tundra or desert, etc.), then it would be best to cap it low and just work the library.

Also, it seems like you can increase your city caps after you obtain either Freedom SP or Forbidden Palace, or better yet, both. But maybe it is better to just keep spamming more size 2-3 cities?

[Zyxpsilon]

Next patch...
# Policies must be selected the turn they are earned.
Noooo more saved up for later exploit tactic.

[alpaca]

Originally Posted by Zyxpsilon

Next patch...
# Policies must be selected the turn they are earned.
Noooo more saved up for later exploit tactic.

So what? The more effective ICS method has always been coupled with expanding as quickly as possible without regard for culture.

[gaiko]

Yes please see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398966 for more depth.

Saving SPs is not an "exploit", it was obviously intended. Less obvious is a real exploit, selling all your cities to the AL to suddenly drop the SP threshold. That is really a problem with the diplo system, and not for culture/SP - the AI should be programmed to simply refuse this smelly cheese.

The above thread shows that this change makes virtually mandatory a bigger piece of cheese if you want any flexibility in SP deployment, a truly incremental ICS.

Flexibility in SP deployment is one of the more interesting cviV features. It was fun to play Aztecs, spend a couple SPs in Honor for flanking, save the rest of the SPs and great scientists for the moment you could bulb dynamite, then drop the saved SPs into Autocracy. Monty and Autocracy were meant to go together, it seems to me.

In fact, given the Aztec UA, this SP change rather nerfs them, or else Monty must always push ICS.

[alpaca]

Originally Posted by gaiko

Yes please see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398966 for more depth.

Saving SPs is not an "exploit", it was obviously intended. Less obvious is a real exploit, selling all your cities to the AL to suddenly drop the SP threshold. That is really a problem with the diplo system, and not for culture/SP - the AI should be programmed to simply refuse this smelly cheese.

The above thread shows that this change makes virtually mandatory a bigger piece of cheese if you want any flexibility in SP deployment, a truly incremental ICS.

Flexibility in SP deployment is one of the more interesting cviV features. It was fun to play Aztecs, spend a couple SPs in Honor for flanking, save the rest of the SPs and great scientists for the moment you could bulb dynamite, then drop the saved SPs into Autocracy. Monty and Autocracy were meant to go together, it seems to me.

In fact, given the Aztec UA, this SP change rather nerfs them, or else Monty must always push ICS.

To be honest I would like to see an amount of culture being removed from your account when you lose a city that is proportional to 1/number of cities. I would also like a big happiness penalty for each city you give away. This would mostly fix these exploits because if you sell all your cities you also lose most of your culture. Maybe something like that could be modded using Lua.

[Lokken]

Greetings all.

Made a dedicated comeback to Civ 5, as I have been a a great follower of the Civ series. I would like to ask some questions so please bear with me - I tend to ellaborate

First things first, I tackle Emperor level game play with considerable success, without resorting to ICS tactics (pure or hybrid, although one may argue that a certain amount of ICSing is always involved if one undergoes an intensive city-spamming period). At any rate, I did not population-cap any of my cities.

Time to try out the famous (infamous?) ICS in truest form! Wanted to see if it is indeed as potent as claimed.

Decided to seek tips on Civfanatics fora and true to call, I happened upon some excellent input by Sulla, Pi-r8 and Alpaca (to name a few). I came to realise the potency of ICS and wanted to give it a try.

As I am a builder at heart, I opted to go the create 5 hub cities by turn 100 way, then consolidate by bulding them up, and at the same time rushed the Songkai and the Greeks, who shared the continet with me. Note, I played as China @ Huge map, Continents, 5 AIs & standard game speed. The rushing succeeded mainly due to a scout that luckily got upgaded to a rifleman through ruins mind you .

Anyway, once I was the sole master of my land mass, I eagerly went ahead with my own understanding of ICS. Already had Meritocracy and proceeded to cover the whole continent with my cities - gradually at first, then at explosive pace once I aquired Communism + pre-reqs. It worked and I was amazed by the returns I was seeing. Huge income, research and GS spawning very regularly.

To cut a long story short, I invaded the other continent and achieved a Dom victory at ~ 1860. Own cities exceeded 120, plus 50-odd puppets of the vanquished. Research over 3k and a final score of 5670!

I came to appeciate the power of the Paper Maker, Wu's fantastic generals and the usefulness of the CKN.

Thereafter I decided to tackle Immortal difficulty. Huge mess. Got handed my imperial behind on a platter in spectacular fashion - either out-teched, out-armied and/or rushed by trigger-happy AIs, too many to mention.

Enter Mongolia. And the Keshik/Khan combo. No ICS involved, purely Mongol terror. Domination victory by the 1600's and a game I thoroughly enjoyed as much as my China one - if not even more. And my first Immortal win!

Again, apologies for the long read. To my current predicament;

I am playing on Immortal level, huge map, small continents (I like large land masses coupled with an Archipelago feel), 8 AIs, 16 CS, as either France or the Ottomans - like the Jannissaries abilty. Both endeavours have gone awry.

Reasons: I play at epic game speed and as such, I am unfamiliar with timing benchmarks. As I pursue an ICS strategy, should I plop 5 cities by turn 150? Or should I go non-stop citying once I have meritocracy and forego the Order policies? Research is painfully slow as is production. It takes my best cities 20-30 rounds to construct Coloseums..

Money is also tight and the two Library specialists although vital for the strategy , stymie the growth/production of the cities although I let a city grow to at least 5 before engaging them.

Hence I would appreciate any feedback on how to best proceed. I seem to like epic speed for it allows a larger time window to enjoy certain units before they become outdated/obsolete.

Thanks for reading and for your replies.

PS.- This is not an ICS-for or anti post. I merely would like to fully explore its potential @ Immortal level, epic speed, pre-patch.

[cman2010]

Originally Posted by Zyxpsilon

Next patch...
# Policies must be selected the turn they are earned.
Noooo more saved up for later exploit tactic.

If this is an exploit then why did they program the option into the game? and why in the heck are they taking it out?

[Lokken]

Perhaps I have been too generic in my queries, so let me condense into this:

Once libraries are built and provided that no Maritime CS boni are available as yet, is it advisable to allot specialist(s) to them? Seems the dent to the city growth & production are crippling. The boost in science beakers is immense, granted of course.

Should I wait till a certain pop size before assigning them? Or just keep a couple of production cities specialist-free for the time being?

Thanks

Edit: Forgot to put the most crucial question; in epic game speed, the advent of Industrial age comes considerably later. Since my strategy relies heavily on obtaining the Order middle line (to see production flourish mainly), could it be that it is not advisable to play on such speed and revert back to normal?

[fed1943]

I play normal, cannot speak about epic.
I try and keep 2 cities for production, at least.
And I like about 4 pop in each city until much later; so what's the food situation? Can I still have
some production?
If yes, 1 or 2 scientists, of course; if not, wait for Maritimes or later.

[Nilzor]

Is this strategy still doable after the latest patch(es?) which changed a lot of the policies and building effects? Can one still acheive 100% reduction of unhapppiness for city count?

[Krikkitone]

Originally Posted by Nilzor

Is this strategy still doable after the latest patch(es?) which changed a lot of the policies and building effects? Can one still acheive 100% reduction of unhapppiness for city count?

Yes, Several ways.

1. Warrior Caste(Honor)... 1 per city with a Garrison, Combine with Oligarchy(Tradition) to make the Garrison free

2. Meritocracy(Liberty)... 0.5 per city connected (cost = road cost.. so it balances out at about pop 3-5 depending on Capital population)

3. Theocracy (Piety)... 0.25 extra per population (so 0.75 with a pop 3 Colluseum, 1.25 with pop 5 Colluseum and Circus, 1.75 with pop 7 Colluseum and Theatre)

4. Forbidden Palace ... 0.5 per City

5. Freedom... 0.5 per Specialist

6. Planned Economy(Order)... 1 per city



However there have been several things that make it less effective.
1. Minimum distance of 3 tiles Between cities (city on 4th tile away)
2. City tile produces only 1 hammer + 0 gold
3. No Specialists with Library
4. Reduced Trade Route yield (unless Capital is 13 pop higher than the city)
5. Reduced Happiness from Colluseum

Big cities have been made more effective with
1. Aqueducts for early growth
2. Buildings that boost tile output

[AznWarlord]

I doubt you'll get close to the amount of production per city pre-patch, but again, with a ton of cities, it doesn't really matter.

[GfxJG]

Originally Posted by Krikkitone

Yes, Several ways.

1. Warrior Caste(Honor)... 1 per city with a Garrison, Combine with Oligarchy(Tradition) to make the Garrison free

2. Meritocracy(Liberty)... 0.5 per city connected (cost = road cost.. so it balances out at about pop 3-5 depending on Capital population)

3. Theocracy (Piety)... 0.25 extra per population (so 0.75 with a pop 3 Colluseum, 1.25 with pop 5 Colluseum and Circus, 1.75 with pop 7 Colluseum and Theatre)

4. Forbidden Palace ... 0.5 per City

5. Freedom... 0.5 per Specialist

6. Planned Economy(Order)... 1 per city



However there have been several things that make it less effective.
1. Minimum distance of 3 tiles Between cities (city on 4th tile away)
2. City tile produces only 1 hammer + 0 gold
3. No Specialists with Library
4. Reduced Trade Route yield (unless Capital is 13 pop higher than the city)
5. Reduced Happiness from Colluseum

Big cities have been made more effective with
1. Aqueducts for early growth
2. Buildings that boost tile output

Just tried a variant of this with Denmark on an Earth game, Prince, Standard speed. I had the entire North American continent to myself, and since mountains blocked Alexander in SA access... I went with 1 city for like ½ the game. Then I settled like 3 cities, then 5 turns later 3 more, and then a final one later for coal. From then on.... Steamroll