Cities that lose no shields to corruption

[Dragon2]

A city far from your capital loses all but one shield to corruption. So don't worry about tiles that produce shields -- settle for the one that to can't lose. Pack cities as tightly as you can, on a grid 2 or 3 squares apart. A spacing of 3 lets every city control 9 tiles of territory, while a spacing of 2 (4 tiles per city) maximizes production. Don't build improvements that cost maintenance.

With luck, you will get a great leader. Then plop down the Forbidden Palace in the middle of this urban sprawl and disband most of the cities by producing settlers and workers until they are depopulated. You end up with a second center of low-corruption cities, spaced 4 or 5 tiles apart, that can grow to size 20.


I have seen little evidence that having lots of cities hurts overall corruption very much.

Another possibility (I haven't tried this) is to rush-build temples and libraries in a network of tightly-packed cities and use them to increase your culture score. As I understand it, a temple in a city that can only work 4 tiles contributes as much to culture as one in your capital. Of course, with this approach you don't disband the cities. This would be the thing to do if you already have the forbidden palace somewhere else and are building a third population center that is doomed to permanent corruption.

I assume (though I haven't tried it) that if you sell a city that is totally surrounded by your cities with temples, it will revert to you pretty quickly. Then you can sell it again. The AI is a sucker for these tactics.

The settlers that you need for this strategy come from your size 6 or 12 cities that cannot grow yet.

Who said ICS is dead in Civ3?

[eyrei]

Finally, someone who is learning to play within the confines of corruption instead of whining about it cramping their playing style.

Remember. THIS IS NOT CIVII!

[curmudgeon42]

I agree eyrie. I have only picked up the civ series with civ3, and therefore don't know of a world without corruption (how depressing ::grin:. It doesn't seem that bad if it is something you are forced to accept and deal with.

[Kikimalaka]

Hmmm, I think I need to try this. I have always played the ICS strategy. I love having a nice core group of size 25+ cities. But if you build your cities 2 squares apart
--- There is no wasted space
--- You don't care if a city gets bigger than size 8 (No Hospital needed)
--- Maybe reduce corruption because cities are closer?
--- Easier to defend because more compact
--- Are a lot of small cities better than fewer BIG cities?
--- Never have a REALLY good city that can crank out a wonder in 5 turns

This sounds like a fun strategy. As soon as my 150 Tanks kill all of the Aztec Pikeman I will give it a try.

[Cyrik]

many small ones are as good as few big ones, the only point is you can´t have all things you want to have everywhere. normaly i build every upgrade in very city. with this strat the citys simply can´t build as fast as you get new buildings.
about the wonders: you can still build them as fast as you can in your normal big towns, just pick one city that has a rather good performance and let it begin building the palace over and over and always swithch to the wonder you want to compleate.
hmm when i think about it another downside on this strat is you actualy get more coruption becouse of the ideal limit of citys you can support on every map. the max number on small maps is 8 and 32 on huge. the rest is in between. hmm sucks

[Ruffin]

Where does it say how many cities can be supported on each map? I've heard that mentioned but never seen it.

[Cyrik]

somewhere in the world editor

[costanza]

Funny how in this game the city with no/very little corruption is the capital.......then contrast that to our own nation in real life.

(our nation meant for those the US, though it probably applies everywhere)

[Jonathunder]

Forgive my ignorance, please:

what is ICS?

[Bugg]

ICS is winning by overpopulating. Go to the CivII site and there us a lot of good information about ICS and OCC(one city challange).

[Agni Neres]

Originally posted by Jonathunder
Forgive my ignorance, please:

what is ICS?

Infinite City Sprawl.

[Fierro1816]

Good point costanza. It´s an issue to consider when modifing the game. maybe with more culture/education the corruption should go down (courthouses to )