Dido, archipelago, ICS

[elniallo]

I play random maps and civs on immortal difficulty and this time I rolled Dido on an archipelago map. Went full liberty and then went into exploration. Dido's free harbors + liberty's plus 1 happiness from city connection + exploration plus 1 for lighthouse/harbour/seaport meant that each city I founded was only causing 2 unhappiness. I ended up self founding about 8 cities and then rushed first to submarines (for defence) and then to battleships. Was actually planning on going for a science victory, but a lack of warmongers on the map forced my hand and I swept the map with my range 4 logistics battleships and then added air repair logistics bombers to it.
It was a fun game.

 

[Illianor123]

8 cities is not ICS, it's a normal Liberty start. But yes, Dido is very good on archipelago maps for going wide.

 

[elniallo]

Yeah it wasn't because I got bored of making cities and focused on taking others instead. Happiness would have allowed me to though.

 

[HeliosDisciple]

I'm actually trying the same idea. Did you bother going for a religion? Messenger of the Gods seemed to go hand-in-hand, but I dunno how much it helped.

 

[Sclb]

MotG is the best pantheon for Dido assuming you can still get enough faith to found religion elsewhere.

 

[elniallo]

I went for a religion but missed out on the last one by a few turns. However, it worked out quite well as my cities kept getting converted from religion to religion and so I was able to buy monsteries, mosques, and pagodas in most of them due to various different religions. I chose god of the sea as my pantheon to take advantage of the sea resources I had nearby. The problem with ICS in BNW is that by the time you get to the later game, a city has to make a hell of a lot of science just to overcome that 5% penalty. When I stopped founding cities I was making about 250bpt so a new city needed to grow to about size 7 with a library before it stopped being a burden. That added to the culture penalty for founding new cities it kind of stops being worth it unless the city is going to be in a prime location.

 

[sixty4half]

What's an ICS?

 

[elniallo]

What's an ICS?

Infinite City Sprawl, basically founding cities on every piece of land available.

 

[beetle]

MotG is the best pantheon for Dido assuming you can still get enough faith to found religion elsewhere.

MotG is excellent for Dido, and only Dido (because of the free Harbors), and not being able to found hardly changes that. The extra science by bpt is only relevant in the early part of the game. But that extra early science is quite significant!

I went for a religion but missed out on the last one by a few turns... I chose god of the sea as my pantheon to take advantage of the sea resources I had nearby.

It is hard to pass of GotS, it is very good too, but not as game-changing as MotG.

 

[joncnunn]

What's an ICS?

Infinite City Sprawl, basically founding cities on every piece of land available.

In Civ V context, it indeed means that. Including mid and late game. Consequently it's normally only seen by the AI post balance patches to Civ V Vanilla.

Back in Civ IV days (and earlier) ICS just meant that you founded cities as closely together as the rules allowed, but it was a given that you'd eventually place a city just about anywhere.

 

[Redaxe]

I went for a religion but missed out on the last one by a few turns. However, it worked out quite well as my cities kept getting converted from religion to religion and so I was able to buy monsteries, mosques, and pagodas in most of them due to various different religions. I chose god of the sea as my pantheon to take advantage of the sea resources I had nearby. The problem with ICS in BNW is that by the time you get to the later game, a city has to make a hell of a lot of science just to overcome that 5% penalty. When I stopped founding cities I was making about 250bpt so a new city needed to grow to about size 7 with a library before it stopped being a burden. That added to the culture penalty for founding new cities it kind of stops being worth it unless the city is going to be in a prime location.

Your strategy can actually overcome the burden of late cities quite well. If you have Republic + Maritime Infrastructure that is +4 production per city.
Also sending a cargo ship for production gets new cities going very quickly. Its a very good catch,up mechanism added to BNW

 

[claudiupb]

Sending food cargo ships is better, you can assign your citizens to work high hammer tiles and get even more hammers out of it. 8 food means you can assign 4 citizens to work mines, that is 12 production instead of the 8 you would normally get with the production cargo ship. Only if you don't have enough high hammer tiles a production cargo ship is worth it

 

[Redaxe]

Good point - hadn't thought about it that way before. I'm usually so capped on happiness I tend to value hammers more but yes you're right in every way

 

[Sclb]

You can usually start sending hammer cargo once all the hammer tiles and engineer slots are worked. Only as freedom where you can just continue sending food to work all slots.