Deity players - can we get an ICS game?

[Bibor]

That was a nice video, MadDjinn, but why would you pick a civ and map that gets broken with each other? India with larger map sizes should be fixed, I completely agree. But that's not the problem of the happiness mechanic, but the brokenness of India as a civ. No other civ can cheat that many happiness out of a single city. A pop 8 city producing 4 unhappiness with almost no penalties for having the city itself? Lol!

I don't know how many cities you have, but considering a normal civ on a normal map I think you would've had to invest into more happiness buildings anyway, even with Theocracy.

Your GPT is hilarious But I guess any civ that controls 1/4 of the world would get comparable GPT even without ICS.

In all fairness, the biggest "ICS killer" will be the Aqueduct in the next patch, more than all other changes. Being able to grow your cities that early will make tall empires really strong.

 

[_hero_]

In my opinion they just need to get out this hapiness system. Add something better to manage the empire expansion.

I say stop trying to put restraints on empire expansion all together. Instead reward developing cities. Make all the buildings provide substantial benefits so that there's a real trade off between building a settler and building, say, a granary. Reward people equally for developing their cities and for expanding their empires. Make it so a 3 city nation with a 35 pop cities is as powerful as an ICS with 30-50 scrawny cities. They shouldn't be punishing players for doing a strategy they enjoy. They should just be making other options equally viable.

 

[Bibor]

I say stop trying to put restraints on empire expansion all together. Instead reward developing cities. Make all the buildings provide substantial benefits so that there's a real trade off between building a settler and building, say, a granary. Reward people equally for developing their cities and for expanding their empires. Make it so a 3 city nation with a 35 pop cities is as powerful as an ICS with 30-50 scrawny cities. They shouldn't be punishing players for doing a strategy they enjoy. They should just be making other options equally viable.

As long as the population numbers are the same, ICS will be just slightly (if at all) stronger than large cities. The only reason why currently ICS is an okay option because its faster to grow two cities to pop 6 than it is to grow one city to size 12. That's going to change with Aqueduct though.

 

[_hero_]

As long as the population numbers are the same, ICS will be just slightly (if at all) stronger than large cities. The only reason why currently ICS is an okay option because its faster to grow two cities to pop 6 than it is to grow one city to size 12. That's going to change with Aqueduct though.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that. Let's look at it from a military standpoint. City combat strength doesn't scale very well with size alone. Two medium cities is much harder to take than one big one. (Ignoring defensive buildings).

Now lets look at rush buying. Late game, when gold per turn gets high. Two cities allows you to rush two units/buildings per turn. One city only allows one.

Now lets look at AI. With the AI's happiness benefits, it really has no restraints to it's expansion. It truly has a manifest destiny. Every city you don't build, is one more spot for the AI to build a city. By not expanding, you are ultimately strengthening the AI.

Now let's look at tiles. Why is it that two 6 pop cities can be better than one 12 pop city, all else equal? Because not all tiles are equal. Most of the best cities have a few really good tiles and all the others are average. More territory means more strategic/luxury/bonus resource tiles. Which in turn means more output per tile than with mega-cities. This is more an issue of Rexxing than ICS though.

I think you're going to find with the new patch, that ICS is replaced by Rexxing because of the higher cap on city spacing. Oligarchy+Military Caste+Planned economy is now all it takes to eliminate the unhappiness from cities. Add in FP and/or Meritocracy, and you have a net positive in happiness from a new city. The population is limited to whatever the buildings permit you to get+the excess from luxuries. You need 8 policies to get to net-zero. 11? to get Meritocracy. If you can pull off Oracle, it's really only 10. That's not really that tough, since you can now get most of those before you really start your ICS. The ones in the Order branch will be difficult, but you can ignore them and just get Meritocracy and still be at a net-zero. Use Meritocracy on a free Great engineer and rush FP, and you're at a net positive of 1 happy per 4 cities.

In addition, the new patch nerfed the happiness gain from most of the happiness buildings, so Tall empires are going to have a slightly lower "break even" happiness threshold. This applies to Wide empires as well, but they rarely get most of their cities to that threshold.

The real question is going to be with the production of cities now. The modifiers were reduced, but base hammers were added. Now Wide empires are going to have really unproductive cities without Communism.

 

[Sullla]

Here is a direct link to MadDjinn's video, for the curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73AJNhGeYrQ

Nice video, I can't say I saw anything there that changed my opinions about global happiness.

 

[MadDjinn]

Here is a direct link to MadDjinn's video, for the curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73AJNhGeYrQ

Nice video, I can't say I saw anything there that changed my opinions about global happiness.

I definitely wasn't trying to change opinions on it.

I think the system can work, but it needs a few last steps to end the easy ICS.

 

[MadDjinn]

That was a nice video, MadDjinn, but why would you pick a civ and map that gets broken with each other? India with larger map sizes should be fixed, I completely agree. But that's not the problem of the happiness mechanic, but the brokenness of India as a civ. No other civ can cheat that many happiness out of a single city. A pop 8 city producing 4 unhappiness with almost no penalties for having the city itself? Lol!

I don't know how many cities you have, but considering a normal civ on a normal map I think you would've had to invest into more happiness buildings anyway, even with Theocracy.

Your GPT is hilarious But I guess any civ that controls 1/4 of the world would get comparable GPT even without ICS.

In all fairness, the biggest "ICS killer" will be the Aqueduct in the next patch, more than all other changes. Being able to grow your cities that early will make tall empires really strong.

Actually, any civ can cheat out happiness from the cities. It's just that the Indians make it more obvious. Yes, normal civs would need to invest more into happiness buildings. But that's the catch, see: happiness buildings work on pop; not adjusted unhappiness. Since normal civs only have 2 unhappiness from cities to deal with, a 10 pop city with 10 happiness buildings gives 2.5 happiness when theocracy is involved. That's enough to cover the city itself + a minor boost.

and that's without the actual ICS enabling social policies.

Aqueducts may help grow cities, but that won't 'kill' ICS. It'll still be very easdy to do, but the question becomes 'do you want to' or more appropriately 'when can I start?'

 

[Bibor]

I don't know. I mean, I'm going insane here. This is like a really bad dream or joke or both. ICS, Horseman rush, broken tech agreements etc. every definition is bent to fit the hate. From ignoring the patches to rigging the games, everything goes.

Turn 262 of your "ICS sample" is the only true sample you have. Your research is not that impressive, production times aren't probably either (per city) and the only thing that stands out is the GPT, which is obviously higher since cities can grow to pop 6 even when working grassland TPs. Oh and at least 1/3rd of your cities are puppets.

ICS has nothing to do with happiness. ICS has nothing to do with total # of cities. ICS has nothing to do with total population.

The only thing that ICS has to do with is if having double or triple amount of cities per same total population and land is a superior strategy. Or, in mathematical terms:

that 1+1+1+1 is stronger than 2+2 and stronger than 4

No napkin math I made so far proves this being the case.

For example, trade routes you mention. How many money you get out of them. Well fine, lets do the same two pop 4 cities vs one pop 8 city.

2x pop 4 city trade routes = 2*(1+(4*1,25)) = 12
1x pop 8 city trade routes = 1*(1+(8*1,25)) = 11

Huge difference!

Now lets show an example of happiness gains:

2x pop 4 city happiness gains with one colosseum and Theocracy:
-4 base -8 pop for a total of -12.
+4 from colosseums +2 from Theocracy for +6.
Difference -6.

1x pop 8 city happiness gains with a colosseum and Theocracy:
-2 base -8 pop for a total of -10.
+4 from colosseum +2 from theocracy.
Difference -4.

Not to mention, that the saves from are 100% for a single city.
Instead of 2 libraries you need 1.
Instead of 2 universities you need 1.
etc.

 

[Martin Alvito]

This is the game you were looking for, Bibor:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412674

Enjoy.

 

[Bibor]

This is the game you were looking for, Bibor:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412674

Enjoy.

No, that's not the game I was looking for. I bothered to count the city placements I would do, without ICS. They are almost the same as yours. Maybe I'd dump two city-spots. There isn't a grid of interconnected 2-tile gap cities covering all avaliable workable land. In this regard, MadDjinn's game is much closer to a true ICS game.

Low investment into infrastructure with UB and UU abuse is not ICS. In my Pachacuti game I also had a lot of smaller cities with minimal infrastructure and won a UN rather fast (even without RA abuse).

 

[ShadeSlider]

MadDjinn, I don't get it. I really don't. You were testing ICS & Happiness with the only nation that has UA regarding it, and now you say the whole system is broken?

What is wrong with cities generating more happiness than unhappiness when you have both UA and SPs for that? What is the reason for those UA and SP then? To save some gold/hammers for happy building?

At the end of your video you have 534 pop which generates only 190 unhappiness. You have 66 positive happiness. If you were playing any civ but India you would have another -267 happines, which would cause you global happiness to be around -200.

Now you say any civ can do the same?


My question still is: what is so broken with happiness system that you want to make it even harder to manage? I already find it quite annoying to keep +happy (not hard, but annoying) and see no reason to make it even more annoying.


My math can be wrong, I my might be not able to see smth obvious, but really don't get your point.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Maddjinn's reason for picking the India was to play an ICS with a Civ that gets penalty for the amount of cities. True, it was mitigated by playing Huge map, but at the same time it allowed to have bazillion cities, so the accumulated.

Any other civ would have twice as many from the amount of cities, what maddjin wanted to show that even India would be better off going for ICS, not to mention other nations.

 

[ShadeSlider]

Maddjinn's reason for picking the India was to play an ICS with a Civ that gets penalty for the amount of cities. True, it was mitigated by playing Huge map, but at the same time it allowed to have bazillion cities, so the accumulated.

Any other civ would have twice as many from the amount of cities, what maddjin wanted to show that even India would be better off going for ICS, not to mention other nations.

And again, I don't get your point. Even when using ICS the main source of unhappiness is pop, not number of cities.

Regarding India's UA a new city gives you 4+0.5 = 4.5 , when normaly you have 2+1 = 3 . But when city is 4 pop the amount of is equal: 4 + 2 = 6, 2 + 4 = 6. Any city above 4 pop will generate LESS with India than with any other civ.

So, I still can't understand how India would be a good choice for such a test.

 

[MadDjinn]

I don't know. I mean, I'm going insane here. This is like a really bad dream or joke or both. ICS, Horseman rush, broken tech agreements etc. every definition is bent to fit the hate. From ignoring the patches to rigging the games, everything goes.

Turn 262 of your "ICS sample" is the only true sample you have. Your research is not that impressive, production times aren't probably either (per city) and the only thing that stands out is the GPT, which is obviously higher since cities can grow to pop 6 even when working grassland TPs. Oh and at least 1/3rd of your cities are puppets.

ICS has nothing to do with happiness. ICS has nothing to do with total # of cities. ICS has nothing to do with total population.

The only thing that ICS has to do with is if having double or triple amount of cities per same total population and land is a superior strategy. Or, in mathematical terms:

that 1+1+1+1 is stronger than 2+2 and stronger than 4

No napkin math I made so far proves this being the case.

For example, trade routes you mention. How many money you get out of them. Well fine, lets do the same two pop 4 cities vs one pop 8 city.

2x pop 4 city trade routes = 2*(1+(4*1,25)) = 12
1x pop 8 city trade routes = 1*(1+(8*1,25)) = 11

Huge difference!

Now lets show an example of happiness gains:

2x pop 4 city happiness gains with one colosseum and Theocracy:
-4 base -8 pop for a total of -12.
+4 from colosseums +2 from Theocracy for +6.
Difference -6.

1x pop 8 city happiness gains with a colosseum and Theocracy:
-2 base -8 pop for a total of -10.
+4 from colosseum +2 from theocracy.
Difference -4.

Not to mention, that the saves from are 100% for a single city.
Instead of 2 libraries you need 1.
Instead of 2 universities you need 1.
etc.

Ok, let's define ICS then since that's somewhat important to the discussion. Infinite City Sprawl, to me, means being able to drop cities into every single location on the map and have them functional, thereby gaining 'more'. (definition of 'more' can change depending on what you wanted)

So if we had an infinite sized map, we'd be able to fill it entirely, and doing that would be 'better' than having fewer cities.

(as per the game, I did say I'm not as good at ICS as everyone else - but tried to spam as many cities as possible in there - way more than I would in a normal game)

In the case of Civ 5, there is a happiness mechanic which is supposed to be used to limit the ability to do this just by tossing out cities. It uses happiness for both number of cities and population per city.

What I'm trying to show, maybe not in the best way, is that while we have modifiers on a population basis, they should not be able to 'overflow' into the per city basis.

This is what allows you to spam cities everywhere without using the games own ICS enabler system. I'm fine with the AI/MP opponent being able to spam cities; provided they use the ICS enablers first. (there's a list that, when combined, more than makes up for the 2 'normal' civ or 4 Indian civ per city unhappiness - Ie, you only need a few)

As per Theocracy/Indian UA, my thought line is that they wanted to have 'tall' cities with the Indians. Ie, don't spread everywhere (double the unhappiness there) but do get massive pops (1/2 the pop unhappiness). So what should be happening is that I can put a colosseum/Theatre (9 happiness) into a city and be able to have 18+ pop there; add Theocracy and the pop limit goes up even further. To me, that was the intent of the Indian UA - populations twice as high as anyone else; but with fewer cities. Hence why I used India.

MadDjinn, I don't get it. I really don't. You were testing ICS & Happiness with the only nation that has UA regarding it, and now you say the whole system is broken?

What is wrong with cities generating more happiness than unhappiness when you have both UA and SPs for that? What is the reason for those UA and SP then? To save some gold/hammers for happy building?

At the end of your video you have 534 pop which generates only 190 unhappiness. You have 66 positive happiness. If you were playing any civ but India you would have another -267 happines, which would cause you global happiness to be around -200.

Now you say any civ can do the same?

My question still is: what is so broken with happiness system that you want to make it even harder to manage? I already find it quite annoying to keep +happy (not hard, but annoying) and see no reason to make it even more annoying.

Yes, I used the extreme case to make a point. It's a small and simple fix to be done for the system, that's all I'm saying. The adjusted unhappiness is the only thing that the happiness buildings should be applied to; not the pop total.

My assumption for Theocracy/Indian UA is stated above. Allow you to have massive pop cities without the unhappiness hit. In Civ 5, there's only a few happiness buildings, and they're getting nerfed more in the patch. Circus/colosseum/theatre/stadium. That's all you have to combat population unhappiness per city. Everything else is global to use where ever it is needed. So the ability to have cities twice or more higher than anyone else makes SPs and buildings like Monarchy and libraries/Research labs much better for a city with 30 pop vs. 3 10 pop cities.

Don't forget, that if I was playing any other civ, I'd have ~83 less unhappiness from number of cities. I would have also needed more happiness buildings in my cities. (So yes it's harder for them to do, but still possible due to 10 happy - 7.5 unhappy = 2.5 happy) But then if you add the actual ICS enablers, the per city unhappiness would be countered.

Maddjinn's reason for picking the India was to play an ICS with a Civ that gets penalty for the amount of cities. True, it was mitigated by playing Huge map, but at the same time it allowed to have bazillion cities, so the accumulated.

Any other civ would have twice as many from the amount of cities, what maddjin wanted to show that even India would be better off going for ICS, not to mention other nations.

And again, I don't get your point. Even when using ICS the main source of unhappiness is pop, not number of cities.

Regarding India's UA a new city gives you 4+0.5 = 4.5 , when normaly you have 2+1 = 3 . But when city is 4 pop the amount of is equal: 4 + 2 = 6, 2 + 4 = 6. Any city above 4 pop will generate LESS with India than with any other civ.

So, I still can't understand how India would be a good choice for such a test.

Given that 71 cities were producing almost as much unhappiness as the pop at the end, I'm not sure about pop being the main source of unhappiness for ICS (eidt: mainly indians). I still had the ability to buy happiness buildings in those cities; didn't have the ability to get the SPs (instantly) or get the Forbidden Palace.


what this all comes down to is that I don't believe population modifiers should be used to generate happiness to combat per city unhappiness/GAs.

If that is changed, then you'll see larger cities (for India) and more use of the ICS enablers within the current system before ICS is used.

 

[Martin Alvito]

No, that's not the game I was looking for. I bothered to count the city placements I would do, without ICS. They are almost the same as yours. Maybe I'd dump two city-spots. There isn't a grid of interconnected 2-tile gap cities covering all avaliable workable land. In this regard, MadDjinn's game is much closer to a true ICS game.

Pure ICS is suboptimal on standard Deity settings; it was before the patch as well. You have to drop the difficulty level to get sufficient space to make pure ICS worthwhile.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. A truncated ICS approach is the Science optimizer for non-Huge Deity maps. A set of game mechanics that changes that may exist, but I can't easily see it.

 

[ShadeSlider]

...

I see your point now. I don't agree with it, but at least I see it.

I've read many times than India's UA is designed for 'tall' empires, but since I've made those simple calculations (in my post above) it became clear to me, that in fact this UA benefits 'wide' empires way more than 'tall' ones.

So, I decided that what I read about India was wrong and it's designed for 'wide' empires. But from your point of view India was designed for 'tall' empires, but is in fact broken, right?

And about pop being the main source of : it always is. The amount of from both sources is equal only if all your cities are 2 (8 for India) pop. In any other case pop generates much more than number of cities.

 

[MadDjinn]

I see your point now. I don't agree with it, but at least I see it.

I've read many times than India's UA is designed for 'tall' empires, but since I've made those simple calculations (in my post above) it became clear to me, that in fact this UA benefits 'wide' empires way more than 'tall' ones.

So, I decided that what I read about India was wrong and it's designed for 'wide' empires. But from your point of view India was designed for 'tall' empires, but is in fact broken, right?

And about pop being the main source of : it always is. The amount of from both sources is equal only if all your cities are 2 (8 for India) pop. In any other case pop generates much more than number of cities.

basically, yes. In my view, tall was the plan for India, not wide.

ok, yeah on the pop, but you can easily mitigate those unhappy with buildings. It's not as easy to mitigate the per city part. (for india)

though, new patch maybe not. Oligarchy + Military caste = free happy/city.

 

[Bibor]

Pure ICS is suboptimal on standard Deity settings; it was before the patch as well. You have to drop the difficulty level to get sufficient space to make pure ICS worthwhile.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. A truncated ICS approach is the Science optimizer for non-Huge Deity maps. A set of game mechanics that changes that may exist, but I can't easily see it.

I honestly don't see any other civ but Siam pulling this off. 4 extra base science per city from Wat, more GSs to bulb and 2 per city state per city. That's the only way I see ICS working with small 4-6 pop towns working non-farm tiles (which means they are as productive as pop 6-8 non-siam cities).

Granted, ICS with Siam with a powerful strategy. But so was ICS with Yang in SMAC. One leader for it is okay. I don't see it for other leaders though. Maybe Arabia by substituting gold lost from working farms with income from Bazaars.

Building costs become so prohibitive (starting with Theatre) that I really don't see 6-pop cities making them in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[gunnthra]

Wow. I am overly underwhelmed by your ICS example MaDjinn. There is absolutely nothing impressive about the results of this strategy. There is nothing broken here. Your BeakersPerTurn on turn 262 is 263(!!), and you are in THE RENAISSANCE! I regularly launch spaceships around that turn.

How is it you are not getting roflstomped by the AI? I play immortal and the AI in my games are fielding mech infantry well before turn 250 and in your game Caesar has musketmans and a lone cannon around his borders... And Rome is size 12! I've seen AI capitals at size 12 by turn 100!

Bibor, you have every right to be frustrated. ICS is supposed to be this planetstomping strategy that reveals some inherent flaw in the design of the happiness system. And this myth is being used to fuel the arguments of the droves of civ5 haters that like to spam the boards. But this example by Madjinn shows that this strategy is really really bad. And hes using a map setting and civilization that completely distorts the game mechanic that ICS is supposed to abuse.

Listen, I'm not claiming to be an elite player. But I regularly play immortal games on standard maps where my bpt is triple to quadruple Mad's and my gpt matches his around turn 250. I also am not claiming that Civ5 is perfect. I think this game has a lot of problems, and some of them are out right egregious. But this supposed flaw in the happiness mechanic, or gpt from traderoutes or watever it is that ICS is supposed to utilize, is just non existent.

 

[MadDjinn]

Wow. I am overly underwhelmed by your ICS example MaDjinn. There is absolutely nothing impressive about the results of this strategy. There is nothing broken here. Your BeakersPerTurn on turn 262 is 263(!!), and you are in THE RENAISSANCE! I regularly launch spaceships around that turn.

How is it you are not getting roflstomped by the AI? I play immortal and the AI in my games are fielding mech infantry well before turn 250 and in your game Caesar has musketmans and a lone cannon around his borders... And Rome is size 12! I've seen AI capitals at size 12 by turn 100!

Bibor, you have every right to be frustrated. ICS is supposed to be this planetstomping strategy that reveals some inherent flaw in the design of the happiness system. And this myth is being used to fuel the arguments of the droves of civ5 haters that like to spam the boards. But this example by Madjinn shows that this strategy is really really bad. And hes using a map setting and civilization that completely distorts the game mechanic that ICS is supposed to abuse.

Listen, I'm not claiming to be an elite player. But I regularly play immortal games on standard maps where my bpt is triple to quadruple Mad's and my gpt matches his around turn 250. I also am not claiming that Civ5 is perfect. I think this game has a lot of problems, and some of them are out right egregious. But this supposed flaw in the happiness mechanic, or gpt from traderoutes or watever it is that ICS is supposed to utilize, is just non existent.

Like I said, not good at ICS and started it fairly late. my issue is with the happiness system being about one step away from working to manage ICS, not the overall outcome of using so many cities. As per the issue of the AIs - look at the mini map. they were all intermixed and fighting: mostly over the former greek cities (for the close ones) I did say I added everyone + CSs to test my system, not necessarily that it was a normal game.