Exploring the potential for ICS in civ6

[alpaca]

*angrily demands updated math thread*

It seems fairly obvious that once again ICS is going to be optimal on lower difficulties (sub-Deity surely, and possibly sub-Immortal, have zero time in on that level) until we get some balancing patches.

The reasoning boils down to this: districts generally don't yield enough extra yields relative to the investment cost, so you're better off going wide and pushing pop. It also doesn't hurt that you can push Cogs via Factories in an ICS setup in order to actually build districts despite increased build costs. So long as you can settle your own empire, you're better off relying on the geometric progression that we've known and loved since Yang.

How this works at Immortal/Deity is less clear. It seems evident that building an early military is more efficient than settling things. It's less clear how we should handle conquest, or to be more precise just how much of the AI's inefficient decisions we should live with and how many we should tear down.

The problem on Deity is it's always about exploiting the AI rather than doing anything on your own. I think it's likely that on that level, you will simply continue spamming units and killing AIs, leaving them one city so that you can farm for gold (by selling surplus luxuries, which they will still buy) and settlers. In fact, this is probably already true on Emperor.

As for whether ICS is optimal, this really depends on what victory condition you go for. Boosting pop seems the go-to strategy for getting scientific and civic progress, and new cities will do that for you. I think it's possible to build at least one or two additional districts in those small cities, especially if you leverage chopping and harvesting (combine with overflow bug if that is your cup of tea), and then you get a situation that is very similar to the initial CivV build where you only created cities to get a library and university so you can spam great scientists. While the latter aren't that useful anymore, population and possibly building campus and theatre is still the best way to get science, and we should not forget that you get two free pop that don't need amenities or additional housing in every city. Of course science in itself is only really useful if you go for the rocket.

 

[genyl]

I personally don't like ICS being back (which I agree it is a good strategy now)

it requires a lot of micromanagement and not a lot of thinking.

I think some balancing issues have been found. Hammers were king but now they are god. Science/culture is too easy too produce

. I hope they balance correctly. Increasing the science/civics costs per city founded maybe could help. Meanwhile increasing district cost by civics is mental

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

IF atleast the size of the landmass and the placements of mountains would allow it i likely would. City's can get more housing trough infrasructure and tile improvements and while this would require more hammers the added factory's would also provide it and over the longer term. Settling according to fresh water needs will likely drop the amount of city's a factory can serve even below 10 and drop the total amount of city's you have. The result you have could be pretty big due to multiplication of the 2 factors, you have a lower amount of city's on the same area receiving a lower amount of hammers. Say 8 city's on the same area receiving the yield of 8 factory's versus 12 city's receiving the ields of 12 factory's, 8x8x4=256 and 12*12*4= 576, and a warmonger might not need the housing.

You'd probably have to be Germany for this to work.

For anyone else, the cities would be limited to size 4 (2 base + granaries), and thus 2 districts, for a long time. Neighborhoods and sewers are near the end of the civics tree.

(Farms might be a solution but there's not a lot of land to be building 6 farms per city.)

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

I personally don't like ICS being back (which I agree it is a good strategy now)

it requires a lot of micromanagement and not a lot of thinking.

I think some balancing issues have been found. Hammers were king but now they are god. Science/culture is too easy too produce

. I hope they balance correctly. Increasing the science/civics costs per city founded maybe could help. Meanwhile increasing district cost by civics is mental

Yeah I don't like it either. With 15 cities to micromanage (and needing to reassign projects and spies every few turns), space victories are micro hell and far too tedious to finish.

 

[Seven05]

I like it, it makes for fun games when I just want to crush the world under a massive army that is 5x larger than it needs to be.

What they do need to adjust is the projects. If anything needs to scale by number of cities, it's those.

In my last game as Japan (huge fractal, epic speed) where I was messing around with abusing industrial overlap I literally just built settlers in my capital every time it reached size 4 until Industrialization, I filled in "growth turns" with units so I could "encourage" other civs to give me the room I needed to expand. Post-industrialization I was popping out projects, 1-2 turns in my core cities (about 12 cities), 4 turns in my worst, back woods size 3 city. With the constant project spam I had so much gold I no longer produced units, I bought them, I had so much science I didn't care about boosting techs (granted I was messing around and not really trying for a specific victory) and I could get a new great person almost every turn. I only had three campus districts and three theatre districts in 32 cities but every city had an industrial district and a commercial district and about half had harbors.

If I didn't have those projects to abuse in that extreme I would have needed to spend more of those hammers on campus/theatre districts which also adds upkeep. They're production filler, which we need, but they're way to cheap for what they add and they were the single most "broken" aspect of my world swallowing empire.

I expected trade routes to feel broken when you have 50+ but in reality with an empire that size you have limited international trade routes available and compared to project and factory income the internal trade routes are almost insignificant once you get rolling. What they became most useful for was food for my cities with limited land and production for newly placed cities on other landmasses.

One very important shortcoming of ICS in Civ6 is that it relies very heavily on clustering your cities, in 4 and 5 particularly you could have one tile islands in the middle of nowhere that became powerhouse cities but you don't get that in 6 if they end up outside of your 6 (or 9) tile radius of the factories. Once you spread onto a new continent you need to start all over again or accept the fact that you'll have a bunch of low production cities that serve no real purpose beyond a couple GPT/CPT/BPT (that you really don't need). Even with the insanity of overlapping factories it's still an order of magnitude less potent that it was in Civ 5 on any map that disrupts your ideal pattern of city spam. In practice, anything beyond that 10 or so cities you'll need to maximize factory overlap on your map is very little gain for the effort. Unless, of course, you just enjoy occupying the entire world.

 

[Martin Alvito]

As for whether ICS is optimal, this really depends on what victory condition you go for. Boosting pop seems the go-to strategy for getting scientific and civic progress, and new cities will do that for you. I think it's possible to build at least one or two additional districts in those small cities, especially if you leverage chopping and harvesting (combine with overflow bug if that is your cup of tea), and then you get a situation that is very similar to the initial CivV build where you only created cities to get a library and university so you can spam great scientists. While the latter aren't that useful anymore, population and possibly building campus and theatre is still the best way to get science, and we should not forget that you get two free pop that don't need amenities or additional housing in every city. Of course science in itself is only really useful if you go for the rocket.

I suspect that you'll want beakers in order to get the cogs to build Tourism things as well. But you'll want a lot less of them than you want if you're going for the rocket. You'll want even less if you go for the win with fire and blood unless the map is enormous.

It's somewhat ironic that the GS (and RAs) actually was a limiter on pure ICS in the initial builds of vanilla CiV by virtue of diluting the necessity of raw beakers. Wouldn't mind the two Scientist slots back in a Library though, not gonna lie

The good news is that all of this is very fixable. The right combination of decreased district cost, non-linear district cost ramp-up and improved yields would make an empire (settled by the player) of moderate size optimal without actively penalizing conquest. It's probably also necessary that the Industrial district ramp up on a different function than other districts unless the devs choose to rebalance the Factory.

 

[alpaca]

The good news is that all of this is very fixable. The right combination of decreased district cost, non-linear district cost ramp-up and improved yields would make an empire (settled by the player) of moderate size optimal without actively penalizing conquest. It's probably also necessary that the Industrial district ramp up on a different function than other districts unless the devs choose to rebalance the Factory.

I would like to see district cost increase depending on the number of other districts of the same type you already own/have built, similar to builders and settlers. The AoE, as interesting as it is, probably also needs to go or be reduced to something like three tiles. Also, percentage modifiers instead of some of the flat bonuses, as well as deeper specialization trees (for example, why not have district buildings that require a certain other district) to incentivize tall play a little more. One could even experiment with buildings that provide bonuses depending on the number of citizens in the city (taxes, or whatever)

 

[Huaojozumakurwa]

Make a Factory -2 (or -3) amenity. Realistic due to polution and a nice deterrent.

As it is, I really don't like it. One game I went for a conquest + ICS spam. Killed Greece, destroyed 3 city states, filled the rest of my small continent with cities. By 0 AD I had 25 cities and upwards of 70/50 science/culture per turn.

Next game I went with a peaceful game focused on growing tall in a core of three cities - all were at a nice location, ready to grow into high 20s. By 0 AD I only had around 20/15 science/culture per turn; and it was obvious that the scissors would only open further from there as my ICS game didn't even have any districts by that time in any cities.

Right now, the best way to play seems to be to quickly kill your neighbor with 1-2 Warriors and 4-5 Archers, then ICS as much as you can. The rest of the game becomes a micromanagement hell and I can never bring myself to finish it.