SP question for nonFrench ICS

[tibbles]

I've been trying out the ICS style a few times as nonFrench civs and I've been having some issues getting SPs fast enough to support my pop. My last try I had to stall a bit before finally getting Planned Economy, then Communism was really delayed by the next expansion wave. And I even had 3 cultural city states too, just the city quantity hit was so high.

What I noticed was the Freedom tree unlock actually gave more +happiness than Meritocracy. Every city ran 2-4 specialists so it was always better or equal to a flat +1 happiness per city. Given the approach imvolves beelining to the Industrial era anyways, what do you think about skipping 2 of the Liberty policies and saving for Freedom and Order?

It seems a solid culture savings, but then costs you the happiness of 1-2 expansions before Renaissance.

Or maybe my issues was just I combined too many maritimes with a mostly grassland start. All my filler cities were pop 10 and not self supporting in happiness

 

[S.K. Ren]

Something to keep in mind is that Meritocracy=Planned Economy in effectiveness. You can also build Settlers faster and your workers work faster in the process from Liberty and Citizenship.

 

[gaiko]

Alpaca says you can do without SP, although it is not clear if this excludes the first three Liberty SPs, which I assume since any civ will get these almost by default early on with monuments, or a one time injection of a stream of culture from a CS. Beyond that you can just ignore the SP game with ICS, one reason why ICS indicates game broken in this regard.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Gaiko:
Alot of SPs are necessary for managing a large empire, particularly ICS. Granted if you take it slow and cap your cities at 2 , work TPps and only build a Colosseum yeah every city you place only give you a boost and no drawbacks... except in production. While you don't need the 25 for a cultural victory, you should aim to have around 10 SPs. Which ones you need depend on how you want to build your empire. For ICS the Liberty, Patronage and Order have some very essential SPs. For standard REX however Commerce, Freedom and Order have a better selection.

 

[alpaca]

Gaiko:
Alot of SPs are necessary for managing a large empire, particularly ICS. Granted if you take it slow and cap your cities at 2 , work TPps and only build a Colosseum yeah every city you place only give you a boost and no drawbacks... except in production. While you don't need the 25 for a cultural victory, you should aim to have around 10 SPs. Which ones you need depend on how you want to build your empire. For ICS the Liberty, Patronage and Order have some very essential SPs. For standard REX however Commerce, Freedom and Order have a better selection.

You can still play an ICS without ever choosing a SP, if you want to. I'm not sure about deity but up to Immortal I could work it, and I think a number of other players play a better game than me (Paeanblack for instance).

You don't actually lose so much, by the way, because you can skip all those culture buildings you would need otherwise

 

[S.K. Ren]

I always skip culture buildings actually. I prefer building Libraries and Colosseums first. And while yes you can play without taking a single SP, why would you?

 

[tibbles]

Right, I get that meritocracy = planned economy. And here I'm adding that merit=planned=freedom as every city runs 2+ specialists. But merit requires the very meh worker sp first, while planned economy has better prereqs and freedom is the first tier.

So I'm wondering if the fact Meritocracy comes early (before you've settled too many cities) makes up for the fact that you're basically buying 2 policies for 1 bonus.

I just finished a game trying it...decent results. Sometimes it's a shame civ isn't the kind of game you can just replay a map with a different policy and directly compare. I had a few turns of unhappiness early that I wouldn't have with Meritocracy. And by the time I bought Freedom I was paying a cost for 6 cities. But even going Liberty > Freedom > Order to Communism, I still ended up like 15 turns short of Communism after hitting the Industrial Age. I left like 8 settlers on sleep until I finished up Communism, so that ended up being effectively my last policy. Still worked decently, but I finished 20 turns slower than the game I went Meritocracy like usual. Not sure how much was map and how much was strat.
edit: To clarify, while I had a few more turns of unhappiness in the beginning pre Renaissance that slowed me, Freedom was definitely nicer than Merit. The fact I could just move workers on and off tiles meant I never ran unhappy after that.

 

[S.K. Ren]

You're forgetting the fact that opening Liberty speeds up Settler production. Unless you are being slow and methodical or buying your settlers, this is a great benefit. You're also not giving that 25% boost to worker construction rate the credit it deserves. If you are doing a rapid expansion, the faster your workers work, the more useful your new cities become. And once they are done you can disband them and not have pay upkeep for them that much sooner. My personal preference is so save up a bunch of settlers, around 5-7 then settle them all at once really early.

If you are planning to bloom later in the game, then Order is better. If you want to expand early, Liberty is better.

 

[tibbles]

I took Liberty for the settler bonus, I skipped the 2 SPs in that tree.

 

[MkLh]

Liberty tree policies are suboptimal for ICS. All you need to do is to unlock the tree itself, for cheap settlers. No need to go further on the tree.

 

[MkLh]

You're forgetting the fact that opening Liberty speeds up Settler production. Unless you are being slow and methodical or buying your settlers, this is a great benefit. You're also not giving that 25% boost to worker construction rate the credit it deserves. If you are doing a rapid expansion, the faster your workers work, the more useful your new cities become. And once they are done you can disband them and not have pay upkeep for them that much sooner. My personal preference is so save up a bunch of settlers, around 5-7 then settle them all at once really early.

An optimal ICS is all about specialists. With right policies, they consume only 1 food and produce half of unhappiness. This means you can have a size of 8 specialist city with a cost of size of 4 tile-working city. Basically specialist cities are more than twice more powerful than tile-working cities, and you can put them anywhere no matter how crappy spots.

When you are working mostly with specs, you don't need much terrain improvements.

 

[S.K. Ren]

I prefer to start early with a gold focused ICS and once I get 8 Pop I put 2 Specs into a Library and thats it. he sooner I get my TPs up the better for me. Now if you are going for a ICS where 1/7 cities is a major city and the others only work specialists, then go ahead and skip Liberty.