ICS best of the best!

[Slowpoke]

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. ICS empires don't break size 5 until forbidden palace or theocracy, then i's 6 and 7. By the time you get 7+ size you've already won anyways.

 

[PieceOfMind]

So this is a DLL mod, right?

 

[Dale]

So this is a DLL mod, right?

No Lua. I hook into Event.OnTopBarDirty to call out and recalculate happiness.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Oh, that's good news.

Can I please get a copy of the mod?

 

[Dale]

Why not make it public?

I'm not delving into why - it might be the fundamental idea or simply the numbers used. You might just have to tweak it. But this idea will not work in its present state. Thinking through a game should tell you that most of the time you're going to see more happiness than less in all stages. Firstly when you add colosseums to your cities with more than 8 population, and secondly of how those city's excess population over 8 will make up for lost happiness in any city with less than 8 population. I'm only touching the portion of the game that I think this change would have the least effect - late game unhappiness would be completely covered by policies and buildings.

ICS in its current state isn't a bunch of size 2 or size 4 cities. It's "when I have the opportunity, I build a new city. I will buy a colosseum immediately as I have 15 other cities all producing tonnes of cash, and it will skyrocket to size 5+ in very short order, and 10+ shortly after". ICS empires don't even really have cities with less population than a small "Tradition" empire, in fact due to more gold inflow and more "we love the king" days, I'd argue that someone going for ICS actually has more population in the core cities, and will benefit more than small empires from this change.

What you are describing is not ICS. ICS is the unfettered spamming of cities. Building a city "when I have the opportunity" is managed growth. The goal is to kill the power of the TRUE ICS'er, the person who has 30+ cities by turn 200. ICS power comes into its own mid-game, not late-game as you are talking about. Setting up ICS is the first 200-250 turns. That what defines ICS.

Besides, your theory needs some maths and further explanation. 20 cities of size 10 generates 200 unhappiness. Cols in each city cover half that, how you covering the other 100?

 

[Dale]

Oh, that's good news.

Can I please get a copy of the mod?

Sure, I'll add you to the list.

 

[Valkrionn]

I would be more than happy to give this a try (and possibly my own tweaks), but then, you already know this.

 

[pi-r8]

Doesn't really change much. A pure ICS strategy will already get 10+ cities before coloseums come online, just from luxuries and liberty. The nerfed coloseums would delay the second wave a bit, but as soon as you unlock freedom (which is very early if you're playing France) you can once again expand almost without limit. With liberty and 3 freedom specialists, a size 4 city is only 3 unhappiness. With 10 luxuries, default happiness, and a few natural wonders you can support 20 of those cities without any coloseums at all. With your nerfed coloseums, each size 4 city would add only 1 unhappiness, and with the forbidden palace that drops to zero.

 

[vranasm]

well I would try it too, but I am no big expert on ICS, just trying to do it a lot

 

[alpaca]

Quite true. My own ICS method doesn't utilise the Banking / FP slingshot, but the Acoustics / TP science slingshot. My aim is to keep ICS as a viable strategy, but not the over-powered strategy.



The amount of happiness gained from those buildings is directly proportional to the local population of the city. It always bugged me how a colosseum in a tiny city would give more happiness than the actual population in the city.

This isn't exactly what I would call "local" happiness but ok. It means you typically run cities at a happiness loss.

Doesn't really change much. A pure ICS strategy will already get 10+ cities before coloseums come online, just from luxuries and liberty. The nerfed coloseums would delay the second wave a bit, but as soon as you unlock freedom (which is very early if you're playing France) you can once again expand almost without limit. With liberty and 3 freedom specialists, a size 4 city is only 3 unhappiness. With 10 luxuries, default happiness, and a few natural wonders you can support 20 of those cities without any coloseums at all. With your nerfed coloseums, each size 4 city would add only 1 unhappiness, and with the forbidden palace that drops to zero.

I tend to agree with this. My strategy would be to go for Meritocracy and Freedom and build the FP. This will yield +3 or +4 happiness per city, which with a colosseum is now enough for 2 or 4 citizens. I think the mod changes the build order, though: You now want a library first to run a single scientist, then a Col, then finish it up with the University.

Siam looks like the best candidate due to extra culture and ability to go Wat first instead of library, which might be worth investigating.

 

[LordTC]

I agree that this will solve the problem of ICS, and more so than other posters seem to indicate. True ICS strategies tend to intentionally cap growth in their main cities to keep happiness under control because maritimes easily solve any food problems so its about keeping happiness managable to keep growing and to keep the military stable. If you're getting up to a bunch of size 8 cities early on all over the map its probably because you aren't winning fast enough (see some of the 200ish turn wins on Deity).

Also the whole ICS breaking thing was demonstrated with the mod that removed the min distance for cities and then covered pretty much a whole continent with cities (all specialists and grew the cities off maritimes).

My bigger issue is does this idea feel forced and artificial (much like a lot of the happiness system currently). I don't know why they went to empire wide happiness at all.. it might involve slightly less micro, but they could have easily had the city name + info shot on the map include a happy or sad face with a number indicating happiness status, and the empire wide happiness feels fake even with clever workarounds like this.

I think part of the problem is playing games like this I feel like I'm fighting against some artificial mechanism designed solely to control player growth which the AI can't possibly cope with and so just ignores. I mean does anyone really feel like they're playing against the AI civs rather than against the rules of the game?

 

[Dale]

I know I said I'd get this out tonight, but the weather was fantastic so we had fish 'n chips on the beach.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I know I said I'd get this out tonight, but the weather was fantastic so we had fish 'n chips on the beach.

Smart move, considering the rains are coming again.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Interesting idea for a mod. This seems like it'll be useful for fixing the problem. Can anyone tell me if the early game plays out similarly or is it a dramatic change in other areas?

 

[Ahriman]

Its certainly an interesting idea.
I'm nervous about the concept of a Colosseum having as large an impact as theater + stadium combined, and about late-game being able to remove all unhappiness in cities for any population, no matter how large.

I'm also worried that this is a net increase in overall happiness. Suppose that you don't play an ICS strat with tiny cities; this change is an overall increase in happiness. That has a lot of game consequences. It reduces the value of social policies and wonders that provide happiness, and reduces the relative value of luxury goods. It severely nerfs the value of the Indian special ability.

So, I think this is an interesting test, but I don't think its the right fix.
I think a better fix is to change the marginal unhappiness from extra cities, so that it isn't a flat 2 per city, but some kind of increasing function where each extra city costs slightly more - much like how city maintenance works in Civ4.

*edit*
I'd also add, that at below size 16 you're weakening Theaters and Stadia, while you're boosting Colosseums above population 8.
Do we really believe that in vanilla Theaters and Stadia are too cost-efficient relative to Colosseums?

 

[puwen]

Please put me on the list, bear in mind though that I'll try abit different things, mostly what Ahriman points out. How it will work out when going non ics but still lots of cities.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Personally, I like the idea of eliminating happiness concerns late (or at least substantially minimizing them). Think about previous Civ games. Late stuff always eliminated the real pain in the ass problems so you could focus on other important stuff. Railroads were a good example (worked well with pollution by letting you instantly fix it). It's a concession that there are other, more pressing concerns (such as winning the game before others do) to worry about.

 

[Celevin]

What you are describing is not ICS. ICS is the unfettered spamming of cities. Building a city "when I have the opportunity" is managed growth. The goal is to kill the power of the TRUE ICS'er, the person who has 30+ cities by turn 200. ICS power comes into its own mid-game, not late-game as you are talking about. Setting up ICS is the first 200-250 turns. That what defines ICS.

Besides, your theory needs some maths and further explanation. 20 cities of size 10 generates 200 unhappiness. Cols in each city cover half that, how you covering the other 100?

It is true ICS in the present game. ICS has nothing to do with city sizes, but instead structuring your economy and policies towards making sure that each new city is a net benefit in short order. Buying a colosseum in a new city and getting Liberty / Freedom accomplishes this by mid-game. The huge cities is merely a by-product of having lots of Maritime city states at your disposal, which pretty much every ICS empire has.

ICS means "infinite city sprawl". It doesn't mean purposely keeping your city population low so you can have more cities. When I say "when I have the opportunity", that means the only thing in my way of sprawling up to my happiness limit is opportunity cost. I need to a) build a settler, b) move the settler to an open spot, and c) build a colosseum/library.

The reason we see ICS is more than just "it's possible". It's also because growing anything over size 12 is a pain in the ass, and marginal costs start ramping up beyond that number (by having to specifically build farms over trading posts and mines). If 2 size 6 cities are not better and not easier to obtain than a size 12 city, maybe we'd see ICS getting hit hard. A huge portion of this problem is food growth requirements.

Again I haven't went into the actual underlying mechanic of your idea - happiness based on %population. I recommended the same thing a few weeks back. But I couldn't balance the numbers. With your numbers given, an ICS empire actually has more happiness instead of less. I'm interested in the idea and am playing around with the values, so don't think I'm being overly negative.

To sum up why I don't think it will work: 8 population is way too low of a breaking point between this being a net improvement in a new city. Bring it up and we might see ICS being slowed down, but I think this will if anything speed it up. I made the recommendation of 0.25*population+1 awhile back, which would make the breaking point 12.

 

[alpaca]

Its certainly an interesting idea.
I'm nervous about the concept of a Colosseum having as large an impact as theater + stadium combined, and about late-game being able to remove all unhappiness in cities for any population, no matter how large.

I'm also worried that this is a net increase in overall happiness. Suppose that you don't play an ICS strat with tiny cities; this change is an overall increase in happiness. That has a lot of game consequences. It reduces the value of social policies and wonders that provide happiness, and reduces the relative value of luxury goods. It severely nerfs the value of the Indian special ability.

So, I think this is an interesting test, but I don't think its the right fix.
I think a better fix is to change the marginal unhappiness from extra cities, so that it isn't a flat 2 per city, but some kind of increasing function where each extra city costs slightly more - much like how city maintenance works in Civ4.

*edit*
I'd also add, that at below size 16 you're weakening Theaters and Stadia, while you're boosting Colosseums above population 8.
Do we really believe that in vanilla Theaters and Stadia are too cost-efficient relative to Colosseums?

I don't see this to be very wrong because as it is, you have big happiness troubles if you want large cities. I would do things a bit differently, too. I think the idea of a function for unhappiness from no. of cities that is more than linear is interesting, maybe 2*n^1.3 or 2*n^1.5 or so would make sense. At 10 cities this would put you at something like 40 unhappiness from number of cities.

What I would do, in fact, is to implement your proposition and to make happiness buildings work kind of like the proposed system: Colosseum +0.15/pop, Theatre +0.15/pop, Stadium +0.2/pop (total of 0.5). Then I would add +1 or +2 to Temple, Museum, Broadcast Tower, Walls and Castle so you have some flat happiness sources and some that simply increase the amount of pop you can have in the city. Freedom specialists would be unhappiness-free but I would replace Civil Society with some other bonus so they keep eating 2 food.

India would need a new unique ability but I don't see that as a huge problem, really. In fact, you can just give them a food bonus instead, like +25% food in each city.

I would also reduce the increase in the food bucket to a linear relationship and reduce culture spread cost to linear. Lastly, I would add an unsellable building to each new city (government representation) that costs 10 upkeep or something. This would mean cities aren't immediately profitable but need some minimal amount of citizens to become so. I feel like immediately profitable cities are the base culprit for ICS: In Civ4, you normally didn't have immediately-profitable cities, so ICS wasn't the dominant strategy. If you got the Great Lighthouse, however, and each coastal city became immediately profitable, you just spammed away. Of course, in Civ4 the happiness relation was inverted to that of Civ5: Luxuries provided happiness in all cities while buildings boosted it in some cities where you needed it; in Civ5, buildings provide happiness in all cities while luxuries allow you to boost a couple of them somewhat more.

 

[blind biker]

It is true ICS in the present game. ICS has nothing to do with city sizes, but instead structuring your economy and policies towards making sure that each new city is a net benefit in short order. Buying a colosseum in a new city and getting Liberty / Freedom accomplishes this by mid-game. The huge cities is merely a by-product of having lots of Maritime city states at your disposal, which pretty much every ICS empire has.

ICS means "infinite city sprawl". It doesn't mean purposely keeping your city population low so you can have more cities. When I say "when I have the opportunity", that means the only thing in my way of sprawling up to my happiness limit is opportunity cost. I need to a) build a settler, b) move the settler to an open spot, and c) build a colosseum/library.

The reason we see ICS is more than just "it's possible". It's also because growing anything over size 12 is a pain in the ass, and marginal costs start ramping up beyond that number (by having to specifically build farms over trading posts and mines). If 2 size 6 cities are not better and not easier to obtain than a size 12 city, maybe we'd see ICS getting hit hard. A huge portion of this problem is food growth requirements.

Again I haven't went into the actual underlying mechanic of your idea - happiness based on %population. I recommended the same thing a few weeks back. But I couldn't balance the numbers. With your numbers given, an ICS empire actually has more happiness instead of less. I'm interested in the idea and am playing around with the values, so don't think I'm being overly negative.

To sum up why I don't think it will work: 8 population is way too low of a breaking point between this being a net improvement in a new city. Bring it up and we might see ICS being slowed down, but I think this will if anything speed it up. I made the recommendation of 0.25*population+1 awhile back, which would make the breaking point 12.

A single experiment is better than a thousand arguments.