ICS: A list of factors that contribute to its success

[Bandobras Took]

And is therefore not costing you one gold/turn for the privilege.

Here's another thought on encouraging high population:

Instead of linking tile gain to culture, simple link it to population growth. A city gets the six tiles around it free.

As soon as the city gains population after size six, you can choose a tile for that population to claim and work, adjacent to tiles already claim. You can also keep the purchase mechanic to set aside land for future population.

That would solve the problem of tile expansion; as your city grows, the tiles become available.

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandobras Took:

I don't know how that would work. ICS doesn't require more than the six tiles to begin with, so it doesn't really impact ICS.

 

[Bandobras Took]

There are two possible ways to deal with ICS issue:

1) Smack it down; or
2) Improve the viability of big, far-apart, large cities.

I don't think 1) is the answer. A game where you can't do things is no fun.

Solving border expansion doesn't hit ICS at all. It just removes one of the stumbling blocks towards larger cities becoming more viable.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Rebalancing the buildings could go a long way towards improving the competitiveness of playing with a few large cities.

As mentioned elsewhere, the fact that higher tier happiness buildings are less cost effective than colliseums encourages ICS. Make Theaters generate 5 happiness for 3 gpt, and make Stadiums even better still. Then you don't need a slum of small cities to keep your core of large cities happy.

Also, many of the existing buildings are of dubious value - forges, perhaps workshops, etc. Increase the bonuses from workshops, waterwheels, and so on. That way, it becomes worthwhile to have cities large enough to support more buildings. Currently the penalty for having large cities (unhappiness) overrides the benefit (increased wealth, production, science).

Finally, change the maritime bonus from a fixed rate to a percentage increase. Then founding a city in the arctic wasteland is not as good as in a lush river valley.

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandobras Took:

I think it says something that the way CivFanatics were able to beat Deity so far hinges on War and ICS. War is a forgone thing - it's always been in the player's favor and there's no reason to think it would be otherwise in Civ V, but ICS is a different thing.

I've been playing with large cities and it feels a lot better to me in terms of how the factors line up and how it feels when playing. I truly believe this is how the game was meant to be played. Therefore, it makes more sense to power down the unintended ICS technique.

Creepy Old Man:

I can say from personal experience and from seeing a Space Ship launch at turn 200 that making happiness buildings better as they're more advanced won't solve ICS whatsoever. It will only make an equally ridiculous number of large cities possible, whereas now, ICSers are constrained to keeping the cities small.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Irgy, you've explained the situation very well IMO. Thanks for the thread.


One comment I would add about trade routes...
Now that trade routes are just 1+1.25*citysize, that 1 at the start of the equation is effectively a per city bonus now. Small infrastructureless cities (apart from a colloseum and perhaps a theatre) turn both a gold and happiness profit very easily. The 1.25 you get per population point is cheaper in smaller cities than it is in larger cities because it takes less food to grow to small populations.

 

[bobbyboy29]

* Growth at high populations is painfully slow. Partly because the new "granary" is so far up the tech tree, but mostly because the food costs of growth rise so rapidly. This means that to get more population it costs much less to just settle a new city than to grow an existing one. It's also another reason that the dream of mega-cities, with well developed infrastructure and working many tiles to get the most out of their % bonuses is very hard to realise.

This is the main one for me. I was struggling to realise why no matter what i did, no matter how many farms I put in one city and trading posts in another, almost all my cities were the same size (even my cap). And then I realized that due to global hapiness, every time I had spare happiness for a city to grow, it would be a smaller, newer city, the bigger cities simply never get the chance.

It's a bit silly that even though it's over twice as hard to grow one city to size 10 than it is to grow 2 cities to size 5, the 2 size five cities bring in more tradfde route commerce!
Your point about coliseum being the best happy building is also spot on as well.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I can say from personal experience and from seeing a Space Ship launch at turn 200 that making happiness buildings better as they're more advanced won't solve ICS whatsoever. It will only make an equally ridiculous number of large cities possible, whereas now, ICSers are constrained to keeping the cities small.

You've still got to feed and grow those large cities. ICSers would likely keep the cities small and just get more golden ages, because it's still rabidly inefficient to grow cities past a certain point.

Encouraging large cities will make the game more fun by providing more options. Just giving the axe to ICS while still making growing cities the slog it is will make the game less fun by removing options.

 

[spfun]

spfun:

Should be possible to win with Science, Culture, or Diplomacy with 5 cities. The AI doesn't pursue the Win Conditions well enough for you to lose.

Doesn't mean that ICS still isn't better, but it should be possible to win with 5 cities.

Too, you can't actually win easily with Culture using just 3 cities in Civ 4, since you need 3 Legendary Cities, and you would need 3 more cities for each such Legendary City for the Cathedral requirements. It's probably easier to win 1-city Culture in Civ 5.

i think your confused with what i said, in civ4 i just did core city builder games for a space victory with maybe a few smallscale wars in the mix, almost exclusively thats what i enjoy mainly.

In civ5 i play similar settings mainly standard or large pangea standard speed games, (because the AI can never handle water maps very well). ive tried a few core cities several times (i still win by tech for most part) & ICS. ICS I win MUCH faster, MUCH eaiser almost guarentees it no point in a few core cities for any victory other than culture. I guess i don't feel very satisfied as a builder in this game because everything for most of the game takes so long to build & ICS makes the game so easy. Some games i'm making 1000 gold every turn diplo is just far to easy. Science is insanely fast im spitting out GS left right & center too, I have massive points & can easily buy an entire army in 1 turn if the situation comes where i need to. Don't need patronage & still ally with every CS.

I agree with you about the AI not knowing how to win. perfect example been a OCC immortal archipelago game culture victory. 2 nations had every tech but didn't build apollo program.

If you're getting problems with war, it's because you're not handling the diplomacy properly.

Don't have problems with war it isn't really that big a deal, i still trade/sell luxuries fine i still get nations to declare war on others etc.. diplomacy does what i want with it, though in saying that its going to be good to see what the improvements are in later patches.

I really think some things need to be rebalanced to make growing up a bunch of core cities more viable option. Maritimes need a major nerf/or reworking pronto. Free techs also need a major nerf imo, though that isn't per say a ICS issue. ( though you do get a hell of alot more with ICS ) Numerous other things need to be looked at. I don't want to have to play ICS to have fun in Civ5.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I think it says something that the way CivFanatics were able to beat Deity so far hinges on War and ICS. War is a forgone thing - it's always been in the player's favor and there's no reason to think it would be otherwise in Civ V, but ICS is a different thing.

The basic problem here is that the AI's production advantages mean that your Hammers are best spent kicking the AI in the teeth and taking its lunch money, at least early on. I'll say this for Civ 5 - the puppet/annex mechanics keep this in check somewhat, especially after the puppet nerf to Science.

If you're unhappy with ICS, try alternative approaches. Pure ICS isn't the "best" way to play, but there is no question that it's the best way to handle the first eighty turns. The disincentives to city spamming are not sufficiently large in the early game. City tiles are very strong, and the only reason not to run -9 happiness is to time GAs for when you need them.

 

[Biz_]

ICS isn't overpowered. it's just that AIs are too dumb to attack you properly or go for the maritime city states

what is overpowered is going down honor because it has the fewest viable counter-strategies

 

[Irgy]

Some collected responses below.

First one general point: I'm mostly talking about single player here, although some of it may apply to multiplayer also. At least in multiplayer everyone can use the same tactics, and there's fun to be had in doing it better than your competitors.

I completed disagree on the national wonders issue, I through they were much too powerful in Civ 4. BUt other than that I agree with a lot of this.

Remember I'm not saying whether each individual thing is good or bad, there's a lot of factors involved and ICS is just one. I quite enjoy national wonders in civ4 myself, but I agree they can dominate things and that might not be for everyone. The developers might have just decided we could use a change from a strong national wonder focus.

Reversing the point value of happiness buildings doesn't solve ICS, if we viewed ICS as a problem. It would simply reward a lot of big cities rather than an equal amount of small cities.

I defined a lot of big cities as something different from ICS. As Louis XXIV said it's harder to acheive. As a result it doesn't feel so degenerate. Opinions vary though, and not every alternative is considered better by everyone. Nor is every factor a difference between ICS and every alternative.

All buildings are single focus, and the only differentiating feature most of the time is increased cost & maintenance. There's no complexity or sense of dynamic to it.

It's a little off topic, but it made me think. Almost every single building in civ4 did at least two different things. I just had a look at the list, and there are very few exceptions. There's almost no buildings in civ5 which do two things other than wonders, and even then all you usually get is a measly 1 culture and 1 great person point per turn. Specialist slots are an exception still at least. It's a subtle way in which infrastructure is weaker, in that you get nothing for free. In civ4 you might want gold, and you could choose between market and grocer depending on whether health or happiness was more important. In civ5 if you want happiness you choose between circus and colliseum, both of which are identical except one gives more happiness for the same cost. The side effects gave a nice dynamic, and I can't see why they'd want to take it out, it just smacks of design laziness to be honest.

This is actually fine.
At the beginning of the game you need some extra happiness at times but economy is a lot weaker due to no banks/civics and so on than in later game.

I might be misreading this, but my point was not that the buildings are cheaper, because they need to be. My point was that they were not just cheaper but better as well.

The problem isn't with per-city bonus, it's with the flat per-city bonus.

Fair enough. I wasn't comparing to the % based alternative, because it's an alternative solution not a real comparison point. I've added the word "flat" though to make it clearer.

ICS might be the thing do to, but I don't see why players who enjoy having large empires should be penalised.

I agree. I think there's a difference between genuinely large empires and ICS though. Some changes might penalise large empires though and the developers need to keep that in mind. Other changes might help large empires and cost ICS - making making growth at high population faster and the later happiness buildings better for example.

One comment I would add about trade routes...
Now that trade routes are just 1+1.25*citysize, that 1 at the start of the equation is effectively a per city bonus now. Small infrastructureless cities (apart from a colloseum and perhaps a theatre) turn both a gold and happiness profit very easily. The 1.25 you get per population point is cheaper in smaller cities than it is in larger cities because it takes less food to grow to small populations.

Great point, I've added it to the first post as another factor.


And finally, thanks to all who've made positive comments

 

[Lightzy]

The solutions for ICS is simple.

1)INFLATION.
2)REHAUL OF TILE VALUES (As soren johnson said, "civ is a game about tiles". get the tiles wrong, everything else comes out wrong..)

That's it.


Then have a mechanic that forces a player with large empire to deal with inflation, so that large empires are feasible and even rewarding, just hard to maintain.
My idea is to base this inflation around the availability of strategic resources like coal and oil, the less you have, the worse inflation is. etc.

but there can be others

 

[Johnpecan]

Brilliant, well constructed!

 

[Zogar]

Zogar:

The only rule I need to put into the game to stop ICS would be:

"Players cannot control more than 15 cities."

That would stop ICS pretty darned cold, did not require a serious rebalancing of the game, and does not affect how I personally play the game right now whatsoever.

Arguing how the game is a complete failure can be constructive when you're making another game. That is outside the realm of Civ V, and discussing how Civ V is a complete failure can never be constructive in a Civ V forum, especially when other players are enjoying the game just fine.

Sullla points out a lot of problems. Not all of them are valid observations. Since he is influential, he tends to gravitate a lot of opinions about him. The only thing positive about what he's doing is that he's not more influential than he already is. We don't need more players talking problems that are nonexistent.

This thread is about factors that allow ICS to do well. LegioCorvus complaining about building design for Banks is totally off-topic and his negativity is off-putting.

You know, limiting the number of cities to 15 would make Civ5 different. You're breaking a core design of civ 5. I would rather increase the minimum distance between cities, as problematic as it could be, than put a hard cap to city number.

 

[UWHabs]

If you want to get rid of ICS, 3 things you can do:
1. Kill it (the whole "15 cities max" thing, increase space between allowable cities). Problem: arbitrary controls are bad design
2. Nerf it (give a penalty for cities that are "too close", give a penalty for cities that are "too far from cap", eliminate some of the per city bonuses, etc...) Problem: hard to identify one issue.
3. Make another strategy competitive (improve bigger cities, rebalance happy buildings) Problem: needs balance testing

I like some of 2 and 3 best. To me, I'd "solve" the issue by giving a happy penalty to cities that overlap. Say, something like 0.1 happy for each overlapping tile. So if you have a perfectly spaced grid of cities with no overlap (ie. you have space to grow each city to 36 or whatever), then plop a city down with every tile overlapping, you end up with an extra 3 or 4 unhappy for that city. Doesn't solve the issues, but it would definitely make you more likely to space cities out a bit more instead of cramming a city in everywhere. Then, do some rebalancing of larger cities. So either make the bigger cities happy-neutral at larger sizes (ie. have 3 levels of happy buildings, each one gives 1 happy per 3 citizens. So you build all 3, you completely eliminate "happiness from citizens" in a city), or give them bonuses (instead of 2 science per pop, add in the pop size. So a size 1 city will give 1 beaker, a size 2 city gives 3, a size 3 city gives 6, etc...). Obviously you'd need to rebalance some tech costs and other things, as this could get out of control quickly, but doing something like these would certainly make larger cities competitive with the smaller ones.

 

[Grubsnik]

As have already been mentioned, the reason ICS works out so well, it not due to a single feature, but rather a stacking of unfortunate parametres. If you want to counter that, it doesn't require you to wave the big nerf-stick, but rather just tweak a few factors all around to make sure that stuff doesn't stack up so much in favor of ICS.

Quick fixes that will nerf ICS:
-Capping food output from Maritime CS.
-Changing the unhappiness formula from 2 per city and + 1 per pop to something like 4-5 per city and +½ per pop (make it 0.25 for specialist with the right civics).
-Possibly add a "sprawling empire happiness penalty" (depending on mapsize)
-Keep a running tally of culture, and cause civics to deactivate if you go too far into the negative.
-Cause traderoutes to yield less gold if you have other friendly cities too close.

 

[Lightzy]

the problem for ICS shouldn't be happiness or civics.

It should be economy.

The only reason ICS is so great is because it gives you a ridiculous economic boost.

And to repeat again, in truth, every time in history when an empire wanted to strengthen its economic base it somehow forced immigration from rural countriside to core cities


1)Make inflation tie to the number of cities a player owns. the more cities, the bigger inflation.

2)Now make that number completely crippling for large empires (so that the trade routes generated by many small cities CANNOT overcome that inflation).

3) make inflation resource dependant:
The less oil/coal you have, the worse your inflation. the larger your empire, the more coal/oil you need to maintain a reasonable economy



please, enough lame gamey solutions like 'cap cities at 15'.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

-Capping food output from Maritime CS.

I think this is one of the biggest problems. It doesn't even make sense: How is, say, some little fishing village going to feed, say, the whole Soviet Union? This needs to be fixed.

 

[PieceOfMind]

please, enough lame gamey solutions like 'cap cities at 15'.

Just briefly wanted to mention, when that was mentioned it was not as a serious suggestion of a solution. It was only an attempt to state there can be a way to solve it but that it would be somewhere lower than that extreme.

The idea I'm working with at the moment, and am trying to figure out how to mod, is to change the trade route formula (which I wrote about above).

My idea at the moment is to replace (1+1.25*P) with (1.25*P + 0.025*(P^2)) where P is the population.

With this formula, the trade route income for cities of size 6 or smaller is actually lower than the standard game, but trade routes for cities 7 or larger is more. It also removes the constant 1 so that cities don't get such good traderoutes at only size 1 to 3.