TheDuckOfFlanders
the fish collecter
First to give a short introduction to what ICS means in a civilization context: it stands for "infinite city sprawl" and it's basicly about a tactic that you persue where every city that you'd settle extra would only make you stronger.
There are points where this could have seemed interresting in certain civ games and reasons why it wasn't really in Civ5. I will want to cover these considerations in the context of civ 6 and issue's that civ6 presents itself in regards to this strat.
- no increased tech cost per new founded city
One of the main reasons why ICS seemed uninterresting in Civ5 was because tech costs increased per settle'd city, furthermore settling more city's could delay you from important buildings like National college. These issue's are not present in civ6, because tech costs don't increase per city there seems to be compelling reason to go "wider".
- "happyness" is less of an issue whereas housing is
Another crucial matter for ICS is that the strategy really depended on how much hapyness you could get. Having watched a number of games played by Filthyrobot it appears to me that he is much more limited in any case by housing that hapyness which shows by the fact that he practicly never builds hapyness districts or buildings.
Considering being strapped by housing ICS actually offers a sollution to that in that any new settled city comes with some "free housing" of itself. i wondred if the fact that filthy hadn't been compelled to build hapyness buildings constituted a missed opportunity by him, namely that he could have supported more people had he build those hapyness buildings in combination with settling more city's rather than being housing strapped when not strapped by hapyness.
- Costs of buildings and units can scale by the amount already build
This is a limitation introduced by civ6 that would seem to work agaisnt the idea of ICS, as there are some deminishing returns to settling more city's if this leads to a significantly larger/crippling investment in settlers and builders. Furthermore ICS might leave city's with less tiles to work and ultimatly less maximum production per city. HOWEVER:
-The amount of production adding caravans or production adding districts one can have depends on the amount of city's and associated districts the player has.
Which means that while adding more city's will up the hammer costs of districts and units, that more city's also allows to have more production districts to alleviate that. this seems especially true for Japan who can build factory's within industrial districts that have an AOE of 6 tiles. Indeed that district is only becomming more potent with more city's in it's AOE and the amount of such AOE fatory's you can stack depend on the number of city's.
So it appears to me that while some potential issue's exist for ICS in civ6 with increasing distict/unit costs, that the lack of techcost increase stimmulate's towards more city's and so does the potential of caravans and production increasing districts potentially so much that they might easily payback the increasing costs.
It appears to me that Jappan could be a particulary good civ for this tactic.
Afcourse i might have overlooked more potential issue's, or opportunity's for that matter. Further input be it about what might help the strat or potentially kill it would be appreciated.
There are points where this could have seemed interresting in certain civ games and reasons why it wasn't really in Civ5. I will want to cover these considerations in the context of civ 6 and issue's that civ6 presents itself in regards to this strat.
- no increased tech cost per new founded city
One of the main reasons why ICS seemed uninterresting in Civ5 was because tech costs increased per settle'd city, furthermore settling more city's could delay you from important buildings like National college. These issue's are not present in civ6, because tech costs don't increase per city there seems to be compelling reason to go "wider".
- "happyness" is less of an issue whereas housing is
Another crucial matter for ICS is that the strategy really depended on how much hapyness you could get. Having watched a number of games played by Filthyrobot it appears to me that he is much more limited in any case by housing that hapyness which shows by the fact that he practicly never builds hapyness districts or buildings.
Considering being strapped by housing ICS actually offers a sollution to that in that any new settled city comes with some "free housing" of itself. i wondred if the fact that filthy hadn't been compelled to build hapyness buildings constituted a missed opportunity by him, namely that he could have supported more people had he build those hapyness buildings in combination with settling more city's rather than being housing strapped when not strapped by hapyness.
- Costs of buildings and units can scale by the amount already build
This is a limitation introduced by civ6 that would seem to work agaisnt the idea of ICS, as there are some deminishing returns to settling more city's if this leads to a significantly larger/crippling investment in settlers and builders. Furthermore ICS might leave city's with less tiles to work and ultimatly less maximum production per city. HOWEVER:
-The amount of production adding caravans or production adding districts one can have depends on the amount of city's and associated districts the player has.
Which means that while adding more city's will up the hammer costs of districts and units, that more city's also allows to have more production districts to alleviate that. this seems especially true for Japan who can build factory's within industrial districts that have an AOE of 6 tiles. Indeed that district is only becomming more potent with more city's in it's AOE and the amount of such AOE fatory's you can stack depend on the number of city's.
So it appears to me that while some potential issue's exist for ICS in civ6 with increasing distict/unit costs, that the lack of techcost increase stimmulate's towards more city's and so does the potential of caravans and production increasing districts potentially so much that they might easily payback the increasing costs.
It appears to me that Jappan could be a particulary good civ for this tactic.
Afcourse i might have overlooked more potential issue's, or opportunity's for that matter. Further input be it about what might help the strat or potentially kill it would be appreciated.