Ok, so ICS usually means building a lot of cities three hexes apart as fast as possible. With the right combination of policies, beliefs, and/or UA/UB you can mitigate the per-city penalties to happiness while getting a boost to science and economy. The trade-off is really slow policy acquisition and few cities powerful cities capable of building wonders. Also, it might be hard/impossible to defend your empire unless you either spend most of your cities' production on units or have your back covered by mountains or allied CS.
What I'm thinking is that it should be possible to get the benefits without some of the bad stuff by building a massive puppet empire based on the same principles.
In ICS, trade routes and per-city happiness beliefs such as ceremonial burial and asceticism are used to expand rapidly. The same mechanics work just as well for conquered cities. Social policies that help ICS like patronage and commerce will be quicker and later ones like order that are normally out of the question will be viable.
General strategy would be something like this:
Pick a good early warmonger civilization, preferably one with some religion bonus.
Go liberty.
Build workers. Sell luxuries. Buy settlers. You know, the usual.
Grow two-three cities and grow them tall while getting a pantheon. Messenger of the Gods maybe?
Wait for AI to expand all over the place while building an army and then kill everyone in the world.
Celtia would do well at this I think, as would Egypt with their burial tombs and war chariots. Other candidates, for various reasons would be Ethiopia (for religion), Germany (for cheap army) and Songhai (for pillaged gold and mud pyramid mosque).
What do you think, can religion/trade-routes/policies/UA/UB counter the happiness hit for puppets on a scale where each new puppet will pay for itself?
What I'm thinking is that it should be possible to get the benefits without some of the bad stuff by building a massive puppet empire based on the same principles.
In ICS, trade routes and per-city happiness beliefs such as ceremonial burial and asceticism are used to expand rapidly. The same mechanics work just as well for conquered cities. Social policies that help ICS like patronage and commerce will be quicker and later ones like order that are normally out of the question will be viable.
General strategy would be something like this:
Pick a good early warmonger civilization, preferably one with some religion bonus.
Go liberty.
Build workers. Sell luxuries. Buy settlers. You know, the usual.
Grow two-three cities and grow them tall while getting a pantheon. Messenger of the Gods maybe?
Wait for AI to expand all over the place while building an army and then kill everyone in the world.
Celtia would do well at this I think, as would Egypt with their burial tombs and war chariots. Other candidates, for various reasons would be Ethiopia (for religion), Germany (for cheap army) and Songhai (for pillaged gold and mud pyramid mosque).
What do you think, can religion/trade-routes/policies/UA/UB counter the happiness hit for puppets on a scale where each new puppet will pay for itself?
to rush buy everything needed. Science isn't affected but some anarchists can be annoying. They never conquer cities at least(that would be way too cheesy...)
