How does the ICS strategy work?

[kamex]

I hear it mentioned a lot recently. Is it basically the same as REXing in Civ4? Because I initialy heard that was a bad tactic due to the happy cap.

So which Civs are best at ICS, and how do you counter the unhappiness?

 

[alpaca]

Lots of threads about this. You build colosseums in every city and keep them small, at size 2 or a little above. Build a lib, too, and run scientists, which will mean the city produces 9 science. Choose according SPs, like Meritocracy, and build the Forbidden Palace.

As for civs, we had such a thread a day or two ago so have a look.

 

[kamex]

I doubt with size two cities you'd ever be able to produce anything? Is everything bought with gold?

 

[milk steak]

When you first start expanding, Colosseums offer +4 happiness. You get +2 unhappiness from the city itself, and +1 per pop, so from the get-go, you can only have 2 citizens per city while remaining happiness-neutral.

Once you unlock Meritocracy (+1 happiness per trade route, effectively +1 happiness per city), you can increase the pop cap to 3.

Then, with Freedom (+1 happiness per 2 specialists), you can further increase the pop cap by 1 and assign 1 specialist (it rounds up; 1 specialists gives the same happiness boost as 2; 3 the same as 4). Now you're at 4.

If you get the Forbidden Palace, you can increase it by another 1 pop. This will allow you to grow to pop 5.

Finally, with Planned Economy, you get an additional +1 happiness per city, allowing you to grow to pop 6.

You can do plenty of things with 6 pop. Run a bunch of specialists if you're chasing a tech win, otherwise the standard practice is trading posts.

What makes this powerful is that you can have an unlimited number of 6 pop cities. All the happiness modifiers scale, hence the name Infinite City Spam/Sprawl/Strategy.


Edit- Since you'll also have happiness resources, if you follow the outline above, you'll have excess happiness. What I usually do is grow 2-3 production cities past the cap with any excess happiness I have. These will work on important wonders and stuff.

Even if your cities take, say, 20 turns to produce infantry, if you have 20 cities producing nothing but, you'll get 1 per turn.

 

[kamex]

Thanks. Will have an attempt as, France I think, and Babylon once I've bought them!

 

[milk steak]

China's a good Civ too since you effectively get +4 gold per city through Paper Maker.

 

[RedRover57]

That was a very helpful explanation. What I'm wondering though is how you get Planned Economy. When I tried ICS strategy with China (Immortal difficulty) I realized I probably would never get another SP after Freedom. In the beginning I built some monuments and allied with a cultural CS, so obtaining enough culture for Meritocracy and eventually Freedom wasn't an issue. But later on my city expansion got to the point where I just decided to stop building monuments and I sold off all of the ones I had built previously since my culture output was so small anyway. I guess if you limit your expansion until after you hit Industrial you could obtain Order policies, but why bother?

Personally I find the whole strategy pretty tedious though, even if it is really good.

 

[Merovinge]

+5 prod per city is ridiculous if you slingshot for it and store policies. It's almost certainly not always the optimal route, but if you pull it off, its great.

 

[milk steak]

That was a very helpful explanation. What I'm wondering though is how you get Planned Economy. When I tried ICS strategy with China (Immortal difficulty) I realized I probably would never get another SP after Freedom. In the beginning I built some monuments and allied with a cultural CS, so obtaining enough culture for Meritocracy and eventually Freedom wasn't an issue. But later on my city expansion got to the point where I just decided to stop building monuments and I sold off all of the ones I had built previously since my culture output was so small anyway. I guess if you limit your expansion until after you hit Industrial you could obtain Order policies, but why bother?

Personally I find the whole strategy pretty tedious though, even if it is really good.

I generally don't bother with Planned Economy unless I happen to get enough culture. I generally just get Freedom, Meritocracy, and FP (especially since the AI hardly ever goes for it).

 

[atteSmythe]

I doubt with size two cities you'd ever be able to produce anything? Is everything bought with gold?

Don't keep all your cities at size two, just the ones in bad locations. You can tell any city to take over tiles from another city in the citizen management panel. If you have a site that looks like it'd be excellent for hammers or gold production, just don't cap its growth. You should have enough of a happiness buffer after you get a few good social policies that reduce unhappiness, you can grow some cities to normal size, and take full advantage of all the usual multipliers. There's no reason not to have a few cities with 45+ hammers, even when you're ICSing.

Once everything is up and running in your small cities, and you have enough maritime allies to provide 6-8 food for all your cities, you can run your fillers on 100% specialist duty, and let your 'real' cities work the tiles. After a while, the filler cities just become mega tile improvements.

 

[DaveMcW]

FP (especially since the AI hardly ever goes for it)

FP is a National Wonder, every civ gets one.

 

[boehj]

Paenblack did some crazy ICSing with, paradoxically, India. It seems in fact that India in the long run is the strongest civ to ICS with.

Personally, I find France and China to suit me best.

 

[Ulti_mecia]

FP is a National Wonder, every civ gets one.

I was wondering why I was always first to that, even though I'm very slow to get it. Thanks for that

 

[Nunya]

FP is a National Wonder, every civ gets one.

Wrong. It was a national wonder in Civ 4, but in Civ 5 it's a world wonder.

 

[kamex]

Wrong. It was a national wonder in Civ 4, but in Civ 5 it's a world wonder.

That's what I thought!

 

[Monthar]

Lately I've been skipping the Meritocracy route and just going strait for Freedom and Rationalism.

 

[EscapedGoat]

Lately I've been skipping the Meritocracy route and just going strait for Freedom and Rationalism.

How's that working out for you? been debating on doing this myself since I usually can only get meritocracy and freedom in a meaningful timeframe, and I know that the left side rationalism would kick ass with all the specialists and trading posts I use.

 

[Monthar]

So far it's working fairly well. Granted I haven't completed a space win in the first 200 turns. However, yesterday I did get a space win on Emperor on turn 289 as Suleiman.

As I learn more I think I can shave some turns off somewhere.

 

[Rittmeyer]

I believe meritocracy to be very important not only because of the happiness bonus, but also because the production bonus from the previous two social policies is just very important. Production is very important in this game because you get few of it, and early production is even better.

This is why I`m not sold out on waiting for freedom to get happiness bonus. I also see no way to get to meritocracy and still get freedom and go all the way to planned economy. That`s just too heavy on culture for a pure ICS approach.

I did a non-pure ICS game recently in which I got a lot of policies due to running piety for theocracy and mandate of heaven, and holding on a bit before the final expansion. Also, it was ICS but it didn`t meant I had thaat many cities, because my land was kinda limited.

Another nice strategy could be waiting to expand the first three policies on the commerce line for the +3 hammers bonus on coastal cities, since they are usually a majority (I play small maps due to hardware limitations, so it may be that this is more efficient to me then to most people)

So, a lot of ways are available, but I believe Meritocracy -> Freedom is optimal.

 

[alpaca]

How's that working out for you? been debating on doing this myself since I usually can only get meritocracy and freedom in a meaningful timeframe, and I know that the left side rationalism would kick ass with all the specialists and trading posts I use.

I'm experimenting with this lately, too. It depends on what aim you have in mind, if you want to push science as hard as possible I think it's good. You will cap your cities at happy neutral anyways so the science might outweight the happiness.

On the other hand, happiness can lead to even more science by allowing you new cities. At the moment, I'm unable to tell which is better, which probably means its up to your preference.

I usually take the base liberty policy, anyways. Waiting for the Renaissance for your first pick seems quite long and that production bonus is pretty useful. Maybe skipping the whole liberty tree is interesting, too.