JuicyCivNewbie
Greatest civ player ever!
I wrote up all this for a thread in the general forums... but it's so long I think it deserves it's own thread. It outlines my basic super-fast expansion strategy, and might help some of you achieve the same kind of results some of the massive-expansion-with-ICS people achieve. The basic expansion idea was taken from the 'Expansionist Chariot Gambit with ICS Topping' thread by Aeson, which is a good read. I've just focused on the ICS part in this thread 
Anyway, here goes:
Well... getting tons of cities is more difficult that it might first appear. It's not all about just building as many settlers as you can. Other factors like city positioning, when to not bother defending cities, where to build terrain improvements (and not to bother generally with city improvements BTW) all factor in.
Settings
The easiest setting to try this on is huge pangea, 60% water, but it works on all map settings. On this setting you can expand fastest though.
The General Goal
Basically, you need to time each city's production to be pumping out settlers as often as possible, whilst trying to fit in warriors/scouts to explore and to keep the cities out of disorder. You also want your settlers to be building cities on the same turn as they are built, or the turn after whenever possible. Later on you want to be producing chariots to upgrade to horsemen/knights/cavalry. If you can't get access to horses, that's still OK, and you can get iron instead, in which case you should build more warriors to upgrade, and then go capture some horses. But you need to get horses ASAP. And remember, highly corrupt cities will not be able to produce units, and should focus on settlers only, unless you have enough luxuries to do some pop-rushing (depending on the difficulty level you want one or two luxuries per pop rush, and you may pop rush every 20 turns, so for example a city with 4 luxuries on deity can pop rush twice in 20 turns, a city with 6 luxuries can pop rush 3 times on deity every 20 turns). Remember though, despotism is not so good that you should avoid switching to republic/monarchy for an extended period of time.
City placement
In despotism, each city should at least have two squares producing 2 food and 1 shield each (shielded grassland, irrigated plains, etc). The actual city site should be placed on poor food terrain such as jungles, hills, tundra, etc, because you automatically get 2 food and 1 shield for building on this land. If there is no poor food terrain then put the city on unshielded grassland if possible. Try to get bonus special squares like cattle and wheat used early on too, at least in your productive cities as this will help your expansion no end. Aim to expand in the 'sweetest' direction first. You can really hinder your expansion if you head off into a desert before filling up a nice patch of grassland with cattle. As for the city spacing, that varies with terrain, but generally you want cities early on to be close together. I have no problem spacing cities one space apart, and generally one or two spaced cities are what you aim for.
Workers
Balancing out worker production with settler production is a tough one. Ideally, you want to be producing as few workers as possible and buying as many as you can off of the AI. You need to get a feel as to the number of workers you need, and that is hard to show in writing. You need workers for several things, especially irrigating plains or mining grasslands. But what you really want your workers to be doing is building roads. Lots of roads. Build roads to hook up luxuries primarily. Build roads to hook up resources (you can sell off excess resources and luxuries for a big profit, but beware who you sell resources to). Build roads to speed up settler movement (road up potential new city sites so you can get your settlers there in one or two turns, although don't bother roading hills unless there are resources/luxuries there). Eventually, you will want all you productive cities to have mined grassland/irrigated plains with roads, but that can wait.
City Improvements
You don't want to build many city improvements in general, but there are a few exceptions. You may want to build barracks, especially if you are militaristic and want to engage in early war. You may want culture improvements if you want a cultural victory, and when you have enough units a temple here or there can prove helpful if you are a religious civ. You also may wish to start building improvements in cities which will eventually become production powerhouses (see late middle ages/industrial era). Make sure you don't build worthless improvements though, it is up to your own judgement as to weather an improvement will be worth it or not, or weather a settler, worker, or unit may be more beneficial to you.
The Late Middle Ages/Industrial Era
OK, all those small cities may be very powerful in the ancient age, but what about later in the game when units begin to cost a bomb? Well, initially you can solve that problem by saving up your cash and upgrading lots of your chariots/horsemen to knights/cavalry. But after that, you may find yourself in difficulty. One strategy I like for early industrial conquest, is to beeline for replaceable parts, and then nationalism. Get railroads everywhere, and mass-produce infantry/artillery. Go wartime mobilization too, to get golden age level unit production in all of your cities. This works very well if you can conquer the world or achieve a domination victory before tanks and other more advanced units become the standard. If you can't, or you want another victory type, then you can go for a more long-term strategy. First, select a few of the best placed cities in your productive core. Try to give each of them 21 squares each. Now, disband the surrounding cities by building workers and either add them to the productive cities or send them out to do terrain improvements elsewhere (you can also use the 'abandon city' option, but I don't like it as it wastes some population). Rush buy city improvements/disband military in the productive cities to develop them up. Use your discretion as to picking the improvements to build and in what order. You'll quickly be able to develop up big, productive cities useful for making expensive units, wonders, or spaceship parts!
Summary
Generally, using this strategy, you should be able to get 100 cities or more by 10 AD (I don't have any exact figures as I've only once played a huge pangea game up to that stage). Although this is only a small fraction of my game, it should give you a good idea as to how to get a huge number of cities by an early date, and how to super-expand. The more cities you get, the faster you can expand, and this is roughly the strategy used by all the huge expanders. Once you get used to it, the sky's the limit. Have fun!
Anyway, here goes:Well... getting tons of cities is more difficult that it might first appear. It's not all about just building as many settlers as you can. Other factors like city positioning, when to not bother defending cities, where to build terrain improvements (and not to bother generally with city improvements BTW) all factor in.
Settings
The easiest setting to try this on is huge pangea, 60% water, but it works on all map settings. On this setting you can expand fastest though.
The General Goal
Basically, you need to time each city's production to be pumping out settlers as often as possible, whilst trying to fit in warriors/scouts to explore and to keep the cities out of disorder. You also want your settlers to be building cities on the same turn as they are built, or the turn after whenever possible. Later on you want to be producing chariots to upgrade to horsemen/knights/cavalry. If you can't get access to horses, that's still OK, and you can get iron instead, in which case you should build more warriors to upgrade, and then go capture some horses. But you need to get horses ASAP. And remember, highly corrupt cities will not be able to produce units, and should focus on settlers only, unless you have enough luxuries to do some pop-rushing (depending on the difficulty level you want one or two luxuries per pop rush, and you may pop rush every 20 turns, so for example a city with 4 luxuries on deity can pop rush twice in 20 turns, a city with 6 luxuries can pop rush 3 times on deity every 20 turns). Remember though, despotism is not so good that you should avoid switching to republic/monarchy for an extended period of time.
City placement
In despotism, each city should at least have two squares producing 2 food and 1 shield each (shielded grassland, irrigated plains, etc). The actual city site should be placed on poor food terrain such as jungles, hills, tundra, etc, because you automatically get 2 food and 1 shield for building on this land. If there is no poor food terrain then put the city on unshielded grassland if possible. Try to get bonus special squares like cattle and wheat used early on too, at least in your productive cities as this will help your expansion no end. Aim to expand in the 'sweetest' direction first. You can really hinder your expansion if you head off into a desert before filling up a nice patch of grassland with cattle. As for the city spacing, that varies with terrain, but generally you want cities early on to be close together. I have no problem spacing cities one space apart, and generally one or two spaced cities are what you aim for.
Workers
Balancing out worker production with settler production is a tough one. Ideally, you want to be producing as few workers as possible and buying as many as you can off of the AI. You need to get a feel as to the number of workers you need, and that is hard to show in writing. You need workers for several things, especially irrigating plains or mining grasslands. But what you really want your workers to be doing is building roads. Lots of roads. Build roads to hook up luxuries primarily. Build roads to hook up resources (you can sell off excess resources and luxuries for a big profit, but beware who you sell resources to). Build roads to speed up settler movement (road up potential new city sites so you can get your settlers there in one or two turns, although don't bother roading hills unless there are resources/luxuries there). Eventually, you will want all you productive cities to have mined grassland/irrigated plains with roads, but that can wait.
City Improvements
You don't want to build many city improvements in general, but there are a few exceptions. You may want to build barracks, especially if you are militaristic and want to engage in early war. You may want culture improvements if you want a cultural victory, and when you have enough units a temple here or there can prove helpful if you are a religious civ. You also may wish to start building improvements in cities which will eventually become production powerhouses (see late middle ages/industrial era). Make sure you don't build worthless improvements though, it is up to your own judgement as to weather an improvement will be worth it or not, or weather a settler, worker, or unit may be more beneficial to you.
The Late Middle Ages/Industrial Era
OK, all those small cities may be very powerful in the ancient age, but what about later in the game when units begin to cost a bomb? Well, initially you can solve that problem by saving up your cash and upgrading lots of your chariots/horsemen to knights/cavalry. But after that, you may find yourself in difficulty. One strategy I like for early industrial conquest, is to beeline for replaceable parts, and then nationalism. Get railroads everywhere, and mass-produce infantry/artillery. Go wartime mobilization too, to get golden age level unit production in all of your cities. This works very well if you can conquer the world or achieve a domination victory before tanks and other more advanced units become the standard. If you can't, or you want another victory type, then you can go for a more long-term strategy. First, select a few of the best placed cities in your productive core. Try to give each of them 21 squares each. Now, disband the surrounding cities by building workers and either add them to the productive cities or send them out to do terrain improvements elsewhere (you can also use the 'abandon city' option, but I don't like it as it wastes some population). Rush buy city improvements/disband military in the productive cities to develop them up. Use your discretion as to picking the improvements to build and in what order. You'll quickly be able to develop up big, productive cities useful for making expensive units, wonders, or spaceship parts!
Summary
Generally, using this strategy, you should be able to get 100 cities or more by 10 AD (I don't have any exact figures as I've only once played a huge pangea game up to that stage). Although this is only a small fraction of my game, it should give you a good idea as to how to get a huge number of cities by an early date, and how to super-expand. The more cities you get, the faster you can expand, and this is roughly the strategy used by all the huge expanders. Once you get used to it, the sky's the limit. Have fun!
