Fance ICS

[Jarlean]

I recently played a game as france trying to go ICS and I have a few questions. I have read the majority of the ICS threads throughout the forums but some are apparently dated with more advanced strategies and I did not know how much you have to alter your strat while playing as France.

First. Do you still want to stop producing cities at around 5 or do you never stop?
What cultural buildings do you build in your cities?
Are cultural city states worth it?
Do you trade post spam every non resource tile?
When you tech up I assume you are not actually going straight for biology (since you would have no military or trade posts) what would a more normal tech route be?
If you trade post spam is it better to go into commerce and get a discount on purchase price or freedom for quicker tech?

Thanks

 

[biohazard72]

I recently played a game as france trying to go ICS and I have a few questions. I have read the majority of the ICS threads throughout the forums but some are apparently dated with more advanced strategies and I did not know how much you have to alter your strat while playing as France.

First. Do you still want to stop producing cities at around 5 or do you never stop?
What cultural buildings do you build in your cities?
Are cultural city states worth it?
Do you trade post spam every non resource tile?
When you tech up I assume you are not actually going straight for biology (since you would have no military or trade posts) what would a more normal tech route be?
If you trade post spam is it better to go into commerce and get a discount on purchase price or freedom for quicker tech?

Thanks

There are several ways to do it (France is flexible in it's ICSing). Too many variables IMO without asking which policies you're shooting for (i.e. whether or not you're set on Order policies and whether or not you shoot for Meritocracy).

True ICS does use Meritocracy, so I'll ask: do you plan on policies beyond that? If so, will it be Freedom/Rationalism or Order? Both? Something different?

 

[Jarlean]

I currently was thinking that you would need to have order and Meritocracy to achieve the best results? Is that true or no? I was under the impression that if you tried to expand into an ICS form without both happyness would cripple you and you would lack the production to develop a strong military

 

[biohazard72]

I personally put high emphasis on Order, but others have had success focusing on Rationalism/Freedom, staying a little smaller, and teching like mad with science specialists. ICS with Order comes out ahead in the long run, but you can win faster with Rationalism/Freedom.

So I'll just tell you what I did (Deity difficulty), doing ICS that way.

1. Grab Meritocracy at 3-4 cities. Expand as far as happiness allows, prioritizing Colosseums. Settle more cities if you have Wine/Incense nearby, as Monasteries are +5 or more culture per turn. I managed to settle 11 or 12 of my own cities, but I fear I overreached a bit - try 8-10, staying on the lower side if you don't have too much Wine/Incense.
2. Build Monuments after Colosseums. Monuments should be built in your first cities immediately after you build your army (if you don't have Colo's to build). Build Monasteries wherever possible.
3. You will have a lot of money with ICS spamming (trade routes), so a cultural city state couldn't hurt. You could probably neglect some Monuments for Libraries early on.
4. Workers will be busy building roads. TP spam production tiles (you'll constantly be on production focus) for extra gold.
5. DO go straight for Biology (this beeline gets you better buildings, and the all-mighty Forbidden Palace). You can win with nothing but Horses/Knights. I conquered a continent on Standard Deity with only building 7 Horses and buying a Knight. Be cautious, save at least one promotion at all times for an instant heal (this WILL save you units!). If you're curious, by the time I stopped warring (I left a civ with 3 cities in a corner) I had 3 of the 8 Knights left.

If it's not already obvious, war to take your continent. War quickly but cautiously. Puppet your conquests. BUILD FORBIDDEN PALACE (prioritize the tech for it!). Buy maritimes. Run as many science specialists as possible.

If you follow that, you should be able to save up enough culture to finish Order up to Communism once you get it. Then it's up to you to spam cities, build Colosseums, and eventually annex your conquests. Spam Libraries and Uni's and staff them - grab Freedom if at all possible, it will be a huge happiness boost once you start to build some infrastructure. Once you get to that point your empire should snowball into a science and production powerhouse.

That was my build anyway - others might differ. It works well though, I did win (Diplo), and I finished the tech tree on turn 245, doing 2200 science per turn.

I'm thinking of skipping Citizenship and Meritocracy and going Freedom/Rationalism, staying smaller and focusing more on science then expanding once I hit Industrial for my next game

 

[Paeanblack]

I currently was thinking that you would need to have order and Meritocracy to achieve the best results? Is that true or no? I was under the impression that if you tried to expand into an ICS form without both happyness would cripple you and you would lack the production to develop a strong military

All you need is Meritocracy. Think about it this way:

Early on, you have a limited happiness budget from external sources. 1 happy = 1 citizen = 1 tile being worked.

If you found a new city, that costs 3 happy, but it works 2 tiles. One of those tiles is a really kickass 2/2/1 tile...it effectively converts any tile into a Farmed Riverside Hill...no worker needed.

With Meritocracy, that equation changes so a new city costs 2 happy and works 2 tiles. So, just with Meritocracy, you are breaking even on tiles_worked/happiness, and getting better tiles, more gold, and more production. The downside is that you are losing 1 science per extra city, because the phantom citizen that works the city tile doesn't produce science.

However, if you are producing settlers, there is zero penalty for an unhappy empire. You can push the happiness down to -9, which means 9 extra pop = 9 extra science. As long as you are pushing the Happiness envelope to edge of anger, you aren't even seeing the hit to science.


All the other benefits of ICS (faster pop growth, cheaper happiness infrastructure, more specialist slots, huge trade route income) are just gravy. Adding MCS bonuses on top of that just breaks the game, with people researching Future Tech in the 1400s

 

[wurstburst]

I currently was thinking that you would need to have order and Meritocracy to achieve the best results? Is that true or no? I was under the impression that if you tried to expand into an ICS form without both happyness would cripple you and you would lack the production to develop a strong military

If you are doing ICS, you build cities and never stop. There's an alternative, that a lot of people call ICS, but isn't. In the alternative, you build only a few cities, tech to industrial to get order/communism and then do ICS city spam. If you do that, you can get 8 or so SP before spamming cities. After that, you'll get at most 1 or 2 for the rest of the game. With communism, you can easily build enough happy buildings to keep your empire rolling along, regardless of how many cities you build. But it's a long slog to that, even bee-lining.

If you do ICS from the start, even with France, you'll only end up with a few social policies and these are best spent on the early branches that boost happiness per city.

Very different animals.

 

[biohazard72]

Very different animals.

I sort of disagree. I settled as many cities as happiness allowed and still had enough policies saved up for Order. Perhaps I focused on culture more (and was a superior warmonger, netting more puppets which kept my happiness capped), but I do feel it was an ICS because I built as many cities as possible. I guess you could consider the less than 10 turns I delayed my second wave of cities until post-Order to be "not in the ICS spirit," but for all intents and purposes it was ICS. To call it otherwise would be citing a small technicality. Perhaps this strategy should be renamed slightly: something like Order ICS.

Now I do agree that settling 4-5 cities and waiting until Order isn't ICS. It's just saving policies for Order. Perhaps call it "Order pseudo-ICS" or something of the like.

So:

Pure ICS = spam cities to happiness cap, ignore culture beyond Meritocracy. Achievable by many.
Order ICS = spam cities, focus on culture to make sure Order is affordable when it comes. Only achievable by France.
Order pseudo-ICS = play normally with few cities, spam cities at Order. Achievable by many.

Meh, it's all semantics so I don't care. People will continue to bring up the difference if there's no terminology difference though.

I should also mention that I believe Pure ICS to not be the best build. It would be better if it also nabbed Freedom (and possibly Rationalism and Secularism). And even then, I think the best build will end up being an Order pseudo-ICS with France, where Citizenship and Meritocracy aren't used. Staying small (6 settled cities?), getting Freedom, Rationalism, and Secularism, as well as Order (8 policies total). Freedom would be the happiness engine that allows cities to be spammed (it is much stronger than Meritocracy, once you set up a bit). I think it represents the optimum balance between science Order ICS (which techs slow until Order) and Pure ICS (which techs a bit quicker than saving for Order, but lacks the production power and can't utilize Freedom as well, because it needs to work more tiles for production).

But anyway, that's my spiel. I gave good advice on "ICS" using Order, so I've done my part.

 

[pi-r8]

You should first figure out what your goals are. Do you want to win as fast as possible/best possible score? Do you want to play very cautiously, so that you can be almost guaranteed a win on deity? Or do you want to set up for the strongest possible situation in the end game?

My thinking right now is that, for the fastest possible wins, you'll want to settle about 10-15 cities, skip liberty, and go straight for rationalism. Freedom too if you have enough culture. However, To minimize your chances of losing, get liberty and just keep expanding nonstop, with a large army. Again pick up freedom if possible. Or just use honor and conquer everything, that works too.

If you want to play around with a late game empire that's just overwhelmingly powerful, then you should experiment with delaying cities until after you get order. Nothing can compare to the massive production you get from a large empire running communism- except for one which also has merchant navy lol. Big ben + mercantilism works too. It's kind of fun to do this, but there's not much point to it, since the game is designed in such a way that a huge army is kind of useless.