Gauntlet 2: Step by step ICS style!

After reading about ICS(Infinite City Sprawl) here and here, I wanted to see how it would work out in this test game.
I didnt really plan on making a thread about this, but i got a nice solid start and some ideas how to handle this.
America is not the most optimal leader to pick for this and Archipelago is probably the worst maptype to pick for this also. Nevertheless it will be interresting to see how it turns out.

Ozbenno said:

In Civ IV, space was mainly about getting plenty of cities to generate plenty of beakers, rushing through the tech tree and having max production, this still the case???

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We will see!

Sofar my status is that after 46 turns i have 3 cities. My capital and 2 puppets(chinese and the CS Warsaw)
Sadly i dont have marble so wonder building will be slowed. My initial plan is to make Beijing a wonder production city later. It has marble and plently of hills/forrests.

I only found 2 ruins in the beginning but in one of them i got calendar which was quite awesome.
My buildorder was: warrior - warrior - warrior - worker - stonehenge
Maybe i should have made another warrior but i took a chance and went with only 3. Part of the reason was also that warsaw was wide open to be attacked by all 3 warriors at the same time.
Research:
My plan is to get to Acoustics ASAP. To do this i will see if i can research theology, rush a library, build GL for education and use my future GS to finish the slingshot to Acoustics.
It all resolve around this, because before i start my ICS gameplay i need to get certain policies.
Policies:
Liberty for faster settler production
Citizenship for faster worker construction
Meritocrazy, for extra happiness. Basically this policy gives the same benefits as planned economy or forbidden palace. Its a great policy for this type of game.
Freedom for extra happiness. I will have alot of specialists so i think this will be worth it.
Rationalism.
Secularism for extra science. If it goes as i hope this policy will boost my science greatly when my ICS style begins to snowball.

As for my empire, this is how it looks now:


Turn 100
Made it to Acoustics! And in just 99 turns.
I still have to wait as i need more culture and for my golden age to begin. when this happens i will pick the policies in rationalism(extra golden age)

From here on i will go for Optics to meet other AIs. To the east i already met arabia thanks to the +1 visibility america gets, and there is another border.(i think its india)
I will use my 3 warriors as scouts and if they get killed by barbarians galleys then so be it. they have fulfilled their purpose.


Turn 124
Ok my culture requirements have finally been met and i have been in a golden age for only 1 turn. Had to trade some resources to delay my golden age for a few turns.
Also i have had good luck in finding other AIs with my warriors. Met India as i suspected to the east, and further to the east is France. To the west is the ottomans and ze germans.
I know its cheesy but to gain alot of money a good tip is to trade your luxuries for gold and then declare war. I have done that quite alot and that gold will help to ally maritime CSs.

Here is a small status update:


Future thoughts
Im researching horseback riding to make the 4 horsemen of doom. With them im gonna attack arabia. Just look at their coast and all those nice luxuries. I want those!
My capital will begin making horsemen after i finish a settler more and then it will be up to the new cities to make mroe settlers. Hopefully my empire should begin to grow rapidly very soon.


Turn 142:
18 turns. that is what it took to get rid of that happiness. But atleast i have 10 cities to show for it. Also i have part of my horseman army ready to invade.


Turn 146-158:
D-Day!
Harun im coming to steal your oil!... ehh luxuries!

This is great. I'm glad you're taking the time to share your insight. Would you mind posting your starting save so we can play along? Thanks!

mushroomshirt said:

This is great. I'm glad you're taking the time to share your insight. Would you mind posting your starting save so we can play along? Thanks!

Click to expand...

EDIT: Its in the other thread now.

Turn 173:
39 turns since i started my ICS and my empire have grown quite abit althougb its going slower than what i wanted. I fear that i might have allied with too many maritime states, which makes my cities grow too fast. but for now im sticking to this strategy. To counter the growth and to increase happiness im removing population from unimproved bad tiles. Even unimployed workers gives you a decent benefit thanks to Secularism.
Each of them gives +1 hammer and +2 science. On top of that they only cause ½
All in all its a great way to balance happiness and growth.



Turn 188 - 200:
Chitchen Itza have finally been completed in washington and i can start a golden age with a artist warshaw made for me <3



Turn 211-220:
From here on i dont think the game will be that interresting. It will be much the same. Trying to handle happiness while building and growing cities. But the snowball effect is rolling and it just seem to go faster and faster.

Nice, I haven't tried this game yet, was thinking of ICS as well, maybe not as extreme as this though!!

I've already tried this game twice, and that ICS strat is probably very dependent on your start position: huge tracts of land with lots of lux's and some forests/hills for production. I always seem to get neither, because I ended up all alone on my island (with only one maritime CS, so I'm hard-pressed to wipe them out).

Anway, how do you connect trade routes all the way back to your capital? Build a harbor on the capital, then build a harbor in a coastal city then connect all other cities by road to the puppet?

Turn 240

Im hitting myself for not following my own advice. Instead of just settling new cities i tried to grow my current cities... Big mistake!
The reason is that i only have 2.5 manufacturing capitals and none of them are really that good(below 80 hammers). I want to have 4 by the time i will begin to make spaceship parts. Therefore i tried to see if i could grow them bigger, but ofc with a ICS game that wont work. The small newly founded cities will grow rapidly and eat all your happiness, and your big cities will maybe grow one or two times. I have wasted quite some turns sofar.
As it is now im really behind i feel, and will finish some 40 turns after ssjos.
Its time to make a crapload of settlers, and see if i can change this.
To control happiness i will begin to pull off every citizens in the new cities so that they will only consume ½



Turn 250
Its beginning to move again. Lots of new settlers is being spewed.
Maybe its not too late.



Turn 260
Its looking much better now. I have made alot of new cities and plenty of settlers are still moving to their city position. My workers are doing overtime just to tradeconnect all my new cities.

As for my science the goal is to reach 1843 This way i can complete the remaining techs in 3 turns and be done around 302 turns. Hopefully this will be enough to beat sjoss's time.

Syntax Error said:

I've already tried this game twice, and that ICS strat is probably very dependent on your start position: huge tracts of land with lots of lux's and some forests/hills for production.

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4 or 5 different luxuries is enough. the rest you have to either colonize to get or go to war for.

Syntax Error said:

Anway, how do you connect trade routes all the way back to your capital? Build a harbor on the capital, then build a harbor in a coastal city then connect all other cities by road to the puppet?

Click to expand...

I try to settle on the big islands first. Then i have a harbor in my capital and one on each island. the other cities will be connected by roads. If i have a manufacturing capita, illl make a harbor instead of building a railroad to them. Its faster and cheaper.

pagh80 said:

4 or 5 different luxuries is enough. the rest you have to either colonize to get or go to war for.

I try to settle on the big islands first. Then i have a harbor in my capital and one on each island. the other cities will be connected by roads. If i have a manufacturing capita, illl make a harbor instead of building a railroad to them. Its faster and cheaper.

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I see. Thanks. A question for railroads: How is the hammer bonus applied to the cities? Also, do you need the whole patch of connecting roads to be rails or just the one entering the city?

EDIT:
Another question: did you start in a relatively large island?

Interesting game. I'm impressed on your income. Are you building much infrastructure in your cities, or do you leave them bare?

Syntax Error said:

I see. Thanks. A question for railroads: How is the hammer bonus applied to the cities? Also, do you need the whole patch of connecting roads to be rails or just the one entering the city?

EDIT:
Another question: did you start in a relatively large island?

Click to expand...

The hammer bonus is applied like a factory i believe. And yeah i started on a fairly large island. But i had set the game to low sea level. By doing that you have a pretty good chance in getting a large island.

Methos said:

Interesting game. I'm impressed on your income. Are you building much infrastructure in your cities, or do you leave them bare?

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Basically i build: Colosseum - Library - University - market - Research

As for settlers then it depends. Usually i build them when a new city reaches size 2.
But if i need some extra they have first priority over the other buildings.

For my spaceship cities i just buy every hammer building needed. And if i have extra gold i often buy libraries or colloseums also.
My income isnt too impressive though. Try to play as Ghandi on a pangaea map and you will be able to easily reach +1000 gold per turn.

Phew i finally completed it!
It was a real struggle, and mostly because my game kept crashing. My computer just cant handle the game with this many cities. Basically the last 50 or so turns i have saved each turn just incase it would crash. I was also forced to give away a few cities to the AI otherwise i would not be able to get to the next turn so that sucks abit. Hopefully it will become more stable with future patches.


Turn 280
Not much interesting left in this game. Now its time for the big stretch home
Its much the same im doing. Building alot of settlers, connect your cities to you trade network asap(i had like 20 workers for this)
Try to settle the big islands first. One harbor per island.
As for me i stopped expanding more cause my computer cant handle it. If your computer can, then just keep making those cities!
Actually i disbanded 10 settlers.

Around turn 270 I also began to figure out which cities that should build my spaceships(abit late but ohh well) and making sure to improve their land with mines and lumber mills. I ended up with annexing Warshaw and Istanbul. Houston became my last one. All in all 5 cities. Washington would make 2 parts as it has the most hammers.




Turn 312 - 1460 AD
The uss enterprise blasted off into space, 1460 In the Year of our Lord.
May it find new wonders in the wastness of space.

You really have to be careful about your timing when it comes to building the spaceship parts. It can save you many turns in the end. I managed it reasonable but with a smarter approach i could have saved 3 turns. Had to wait 6 turns for the last part.
Also i saved up some great people. I had 2 GS to invent the last two techs needed immediately, and 2 more for a 10 turns golden age, for extra hammers.


Ill post my game in the other thread for those that want to check it out. The savefile is large though. Im not sure why it has become so large but maybe its cause im saving soo much.

If you have more questions feel free to ask.

Excellent write up and looking forward to checking out the save.

Methos said:

Excellent write up and looking forward to checking out the save.

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Thank you.
About the savegame then no tiles are being worked as i just tried to maximize science in the last turn to see how much i could get. Thats also why i got a extra 100 happiness in the screenshot.

It was pretty fun to see how powerful ICS is in this game. Even with the mistakes i did, even with the bad maptype for this type of play, even with a supoptimal civ, its still extremely effective.

It seems maybe too powerful, but an easy fix could be to change some of the policies so they dont scale as well.
For example Meritocrazy could apply to only the top 10 largest cities.
Unlocking the freedom tree could apply only to artists, scientists and engineers.
Those two bonuses would eat up alot of the bonus happiness you get, and happiness is what allows you to do this ICS play in the first place.

Great writeup, thanks for providing the details!

Great job!

By the way i sense ridicilous amount of time you have spent on each turn. Especially when you got to manage like 50 cities. Is it true?

Syntax Error said:

I see. Thanks. A question for railroads: How is the hammer bonus applied to the cities? Also, do you need the whole patch of connecting roads to be rails or just the one entering the city?

EDIT:
Another question: did you start in a relatively large island?

Click to expand...

What hammer bonus? Nothing in the civilopedia for railroads suggests a hammer bonus...

avl8 said:

Great job!

By the way i sense ridicilous amount of time you have spent on each turn. Especially when you got to manage like 50 cities. Is it true?

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I dont really have the patience to micro to that extend. I did micro abit to keep below -10 happiness and to get the science i wanted. But i didnt check every city each turn. Not by a long shot.

I also made a big mistake during the game wehere i stopped expanding for many turns. At that point i thought i had lost the game, but ICS is very powerful, and i was back on track extremely fast.

Alraun said:

What hammer bonus? Nothing in the civilopedia for railroads suggests a hammer bonus...

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I may be remembering wrong, but check the tooltip on your worker when railroads become available (I'm at work right now. Can't check).

Great writeup, haven't tried ICS yet, but I will.