Why I think ICS was deliberately designed as an option

[Gaizokubanou]

All this talk of ICS is great, but what the heck IS it? Anyone got a link? The search feature hands me squat.

Infinite City Sprawl or something like that. It's a strategy that is focused on building as many cities as you can by cramping them in together as close as possible.

 

[Bibor]

All said, ICS is a bit strong as it is now and should be toned down (but should still be an option). Reducing the trade route income from number of cities (but increasing for city size) would be a good start, as well as reducing the value of research per citizen.

 

[Horizons]

The national wonders that require a X in *every* city certainly reward having a smaller number of cities.

 

[pi-r8]

The national wonders that require a X in *every* city certainly reward having a smaller number of cities.

Yeah that's a good point. The way it is now, I don't really feel like I'm missing anything from skipping all the national wonders.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Counterbalance the loss of those national wonders with the world wonders that provide a bonus in all cities. (I recall one of those tooltips is wrong though which one I can't recall). This is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

 

[Bibor]

The national wonders that require a X in *every* city certainly reward having a smaller number of cities.

Not really. National college (library in every city) as well as National Epic (monument in every city) are going to be available, possibly even Oxford if the game drags out for that long. That leaves Ironworks (Workshop) and Heroic Epic (Barracks). Both are great and if you play Hiawatha or Catherine, you might actually get one of these.

 

[alpaca]

To be honest the National Wonders aren't that useful that they would significantly shift the balance towards small empires. When all is said and done, they provide a single city a bonus of typically 25% or 50% and something like 1 culture. That's not bad, of course, but it's simply not enough to make an impact that's anywhere near large enough to matter.

 

[ShaqFu]

ICS strategies don't hinge on policies, maritime CS or most things you guys mention. They hinge on small city growth being a huge lot faster than large city growth, happiness buildings and high trade route efficiency.

I think this nails the crux of which ICS is so much better than concentrated growth; namely, your cities functionally stop growing at a very low level*, since it starts taking obscenely long times to get new citizens. I could grow my capital by 1 pop, which takes 30 turns at max growth, and will net me at realistic most 10 science or 4 gold and generates one anger. Alternatively, in those same 30 turns, I could build/buy 5 Settlers, drop them in some marginal territory, let the super-powerful center tile push them to a happy-neutral pop, buy Libraries/Coliseums, and get ~80 science and however much gold the TPs generate.

If higher pop points gave more science (fitting, given the difficulty of it and the formula for calculating real pop), it'd help out a lot. As it stands, though, there's just no reason to grow up when growing out is so much more beneficial.

*For comparison, I never had issues with well-fed cities maxing out their 20 BFC tiles in Civ4 and beyond, but I've only cracked 15 pop in Civ5 once.

 

[Sullla]

I'm pretty sure that Infinite City Sprawl was not at all intended as an option for Civ5, unless the designers were lying through their teeth in every single interview. They had good ideas and good intentions. The problem is that they didn't understand the consequences of their own design, and this game obviously didn't get enough polishing and rigorous testing.

 

[ShaqFu]

I'm pretty sure that Infinite City Sprawl was not at all intended as an option for Civ5, unless the designers were lying through their teeth in every single interview. They had good ideas and good intentions. The problem is that they didn't understand the consequences of their own design, and this game obviously didn't get enough polishing and rigorous testing.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Jon Shafer typically played with ~3 cities. Needless to say, that's not really a good idea, the way things stand.

 

[vendur]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Jon Shafer typically played with ~3 cities. Needless to say, that's not really a good idea, the way things stand.

It is if conquer the sprawling computers cities and just have a puppet empire.

 

[The Great Apple]

ICS only works if it's your strategy (ie. you go for the wonders/SPs) and given I doubt they designed it around a single strategy, I doubt they designed it to be so powerful.

As for potential to fix it... one idea I haven't yet seen proposed is population requirements for buildings. If you, for example, make libraries require 3 pop and colosseums require 6 pop and suddenly city size becomes important. Strikes me there's no real reason not to do it for a lot of buildings. Might make for quite intersting gameplay.

 

[Biz_]

you have to first conquer the land which means dealing with unhappiness and being technologically, economically, and militarily behind

against whatever AIs you play against that may not be hard, but everything is an option vs the AI

 

[yanner39]

All this sounds good but what do you do for production? How much production can 4 hexes generate? I'm not questioning the strategy (I wasted my afternoon reading Sullla's France walkthrough - Damn you Sullla!).

But say I'm going for a space race, it takes alot of hammers to build the parts. When I won my first space victory, I had 17 cities, 8 of them were puppets. I had 3 (incl. my capital) that were my main production cities. Even with dedicated production cities, it took a nice amount of turns to build the parts.

What am I missing here?

 

[The Great Apple]

Communism gives +5 production in all cities. What's more, with this strategy you'll have loads of gold, so will be able to buy most things. If you're going for the space race you can try to have two or three big cities alongside the loads and loads of tiny cities.

 

[Paeanblack]

That's really fast! I've never gotten it anywhere near that fast. I'm surprised you were able to defend with just the city defense, actually.

Having a day to think about it, yeah, it was fast. Not optimum, but I have a hunch that nobody will shave more than ~30 turns off of that target.

A few things I got lucky with:
--Choosing my lattice structure. I went with a 1-tile CW offset from the grid. There are three choices available for the lattice, all of which are equally valid on open ground. When you encounter impurities in the crystal (mountains, CSs, capitals), they will remove 1-3 potential city placements. Most of the time, they only cost me one city site. A different lattice would have slowed me down.
--Timing. My early settlers were coming in chunks, because I'd settle a city, queue a warrior until size 2, and then switch to a settler. Without really paying much attention, a few of my policies were available right before I was about to plop a few more settlements. I never waited with a settler on hand...the timing was just clicking.
--Map. It was a good layout in many regards. Pangaea was cut in half with an isthmus, and I got one more maritime and one less opponent on my half than I was due. Discovering 2 natural wonders before turn 50 didn't hurt. The resources were meh...only 2 luxuries in my first 4 cities.
--War. Sully and Monty were my closest neighbors. Sully is a pushover, and Monty never got out of the gate. Sully never even made a strong push with more than 3 units on offense. He took a city a few times, only to lose it right back. I never went on the attack until about turn 90 or so. Four War Elephants and 2 Archers shredded Monty and freed up a ton of open land. He was really just dicking around the whole time.

The city defense in ICS really is brutal, especially if the AI doesn't hit you early. Every tile inside my territory could be bombarded by 3 cities. As long as the AI isn't attacking a corner of my empire, once they take a city on the edge and try to push in, that brings at least 4, usually 5 of my cities into play. Also, it doesn't seem like the -33% unhappiness combat penalty affects city bombardments. Some careful counting of the XP you think the AI units have will also help. Sometimes it's better to spread the bombards around so no unit gets an instant heal and then focus fire on the next few turns to kill them on the same turn they'd get a promotion.

I was playing the game as a lark, mostly just laughing about how obscene ICS could become. It was only about turn 150ish that I realized I might be able to Space Race in less than 200 turns.
After that, I started with some heavy city micro and beaker micro to not waste any overflow research. The research path through the whole game was: worker techs for luxuries in my borders->beeline Colosseum->beelined the next Era->beelined Rocketry->Rocket techs & Railroad. I built the Apollo project in my capital, which took freakin' forever. While that built, I prepped 4 other cities for maximum production (taking control of hills, building mines/lumber), bought Granary/Factory/Hydro/whatnot. My capital built two Boosters. I also got lucky at the very end with Uranium appearing where an allied CS already had a mine. I rushed a Nuclear Plant in the capital to shave the 1 crucial turn I needed off the last part to hit my <200 turns mark.

 

[Paeanblack]

But say I'm going for a space race, it takes alot of hammers to build the parts. When I won my first space victory, I had 17 cities, 8 of them were puppets. I had 3 (incl. my capital) that were my main production cities. Even with dedicated production cities, it took a nice amount of turns to build the parts.

What am I missing here?

By the time you are ready to build the rocket, you just pick a few cities with good potential and have them take control of all the good tiles in their range. Then rushbuy whatever production buildings you need and go nuts. Just because a city has been working only 6 farms all game doesn't mean it can't reach out to work 10 mines/lumbermills at the very end. With Hydro/Factory/SS Factory and Solar/Nuke/whatever else is an option, a random ICS city in the middle of the grid can easily hit 100-120 hammers/turn at the end. Who cares if it is starving?

 

[Slowpoke]

All said, ICS is a bit strong as it is now and should be toned down (but should still be an option). Reducing the trade route income from number of cities (but increasing for city size) would be a good start, as well as reducing the value of research per citizen.

This is probably the best way to shunt ICS. Rather than trade routes be 1.25 times city size, have them be something like (citysize/2)*(1.1)^(city size/2). Okay that was probably more complicated a formula than it needed to be.

Btw I've attempted to try ICS in deity/immortal and it doesn't really seem to work. Spending all that time building nothing but collosseums, settlers, and workers pretty much destroys any hope of getting enough military.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The general principle in Civ 4, and in Civ 5 is

Undeveloped city=drag on your empire
Developed city=benefit to your empire

I imagine they will keep this concept. So ICS will always be a strategy, it will just be slowed a it takes time for the cities to develop.

The best way to shunt ICS would be to give techs a cost increase similar to social policies. +30% for each additional city (maybe only 10%)

 

[Monadenia]

This is probably the best way to shunt ICS. Rather than trade routes be 1.25 times city size, have them be something like (citysize/2)*(1.1)^(city size/2). Okay that was probably more complicated a formula than it needed to be.

Btw I've attempted to try ICS in deity/immortal and it doesn't really seem to work. Spending all that time building nothing but collosseums, settlers, and workers pretty much destroys any hope of getting enough military.

I think you have the right idea in that some formulas should be non-linear. The big one, I think, should be city unhappiness. Making it grow just a little faster than 2*n would actually be a big strike against ICS (but make the superlinear part scale properly with mapsize!)

Same with trade route yield growing faster than linear.

Edit: if we're going crazy here, make SP cost increases multiplicative instead of additive, perhaps?