ICS, Civ V style

[gaiko]

Interesting. I'm ignorant of the mechanics of tile acquisition by culture. I just have let it happen automatically in the past. So this costs culture points that could otherwise be accumulated towards SP?

Another "soft" bonus one shouldn't underestimate (you kind of mention it but I think it should be pointed out explicitly) is tile claiming. ICS will mean you won't have to spend a single culture point on tile grabbing in the inside of your empire because cities will fully occupy all land with their first ring of tiles.

 

[alpaca]

Interesting. I'm ignorant of the mechanics of tile acquisition by culture. I just have let it happen automatically in the past. So this costs culture points that could otherwise be accumulated towards SP?

No it doesn't cost culture points as such, each culture point goes towards border expansion and towards policies. What I meant to say is that tile claiming normally takes a long time. Each city gives you six tiles "for free" that would have otherwise needed a lot of turns to unlock.

If you're willing to forego getting social policies completely, you never need to build any culture buildings with ICS, and this is most likely not a bad strategy.

 

[Martin Alvito]

This were you're wrong, every city you add will make a culture win easier in civ IV as long as it pays the maintenance ( and that is not that hard most of the times ), because you have the slider. As long as the city pays it self, it will make the win easier, because the slider permits to transform the excess cash in that city in culture ( partly in the 3 bigs ).

You are neglecting to account for the costs of acquisition and bringing the city online. Hammers invested in units built for conquest and defunct units requiring replacement, unit upkeep on additional military units and Workers used to build Commerce improvements, and the foregone opportunities that you could have used the Hammers on (rather than the units that took the cities) all must be recouped before the game ends for you to show a profit on the venture.

I reiterate: it's not that you cannot win on Culture with a large civ, or even that it isn't sometimes desirable to expand in a Cultural game. It's that, as compared to the other win conditions, the value of expansion is underwhelming once you hit the minimum threshold.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, even if it is like that, the situation is the exact same for every other win except domination. Sometimes you don't gain much by expanding more, and this even if we are talking of conquest

 

[gaiko]

Flash: Upcoming patch info at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=391028

Of relevance to this thread:

* Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.

Effect on ICS unknown.

* Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).

Good ICS or REX synergy: Sell off former frontier walls, etc. Can respond more flexibly to financial crises by reducing maintenance. Can keep puppets for longer, sell garbage later. Hopefully can't be abused for gold.

* Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

Might set up an alternative to communism on maps with a lot of coastline, production buildings + Merchant Navy SP

* City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected

Helps automanage ICS pop caps when you want to do this.

Nothing yet about the runaway horsies, maritime pig-food, scout-sell abuse, almighty scientist GP and happiness utopia.

 

[jshelr]

Awesome strat. Far better than the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse strat in that this requires a lot more thought.

Quite true However, if you are born with three other civs on your continent, this stat appears to be just the thing to do right after you exercise your four horses of the apocalypse. Planning to give it a try this evening.

 

[vmxa]

No more free tech from research agreement upon DOW, yeah.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Ok, even if it is like that, the situation is the exact same for every other win except domination. Sometimes you don't gain much by expanding more, and this even if we are talking of conquest

You can order it as follows:

- Domination (strictly necessary up to a certain point)
- Diplomacy (conquests -> more vote share for you)
- Science (you need Hammers in the endgame, not now, so big production sites are always worth the investment in acquiring them)
- Culture (expand if and only if doing so causes you to make more GPT empire-wide than you give up)

The net result is that expansion is just a lot more valuable when pursuing the other win conditions.

 

[r_rolo1]

I never said otherwise ( btw I think that space should be under culture ... I can make a good space race run with 8 cities in a standart map, where 9 cities would be the good count for cultural ).

But then you are retractint of the point I was criticising in the beginning , your stance that the cultural win was diferent in kind of the others, because it had a diferent paradigm. If you say to me that Culture is near the oposite side of the ladder than domination I can surely agree... but saying that it is something of other league...

 

[alpaca]

Flash: Upcoming patch info at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=391028

Of relevance to this thread:

* Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.

Effect on ICS unknown.

* Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).

Good ICS or REX synergy: Sell off former frontier walls, etc. Can respond more flexibly to financial crises by reducing maintenance. Can keep puppets for longer, sell garbage later. Hopefully can't be abused for gold.

* Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

Might set up an alternative to communism on maps with a lot of coastline, production buildings + Merchant Navy SP

* City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected

Helps automanage ICS pop caps when you want to do this.

Nothing yet about the runaway horsies, maritime pig-food, scout-sell abuse, almighty scientist GP and happiness utopia.

Awesome, +1 hammer for engineers makes workshops and such a lot better. An engineer should now be a very viable alternative to working a hill, especially if you have Freedom or Secularism

 

[Roxlimn]

Wow. Same food, same unhappiness, Freedom Engineers = 4 hammers + 6 Great Engineer points. I'm feeling like I'm going to be seeing a LOT more Workshops and Great Engineers in my games.

 

[Martin Alvito]

But then you are retractint of the point I was criticising in the beginning , your stance that the cultural win was diferent in kind of the others, because it had a diferent paradigm. If you say to me that Culture is near the oposite side of the ladder than domination I can surely agree... but saying that it is something of other league...

In practice, you (should) play the games very differently after securing your initial empire. You can make a Space run with eight cities, but it is almost never the optimal play for a game. Any reasonably sized civ will be a player in a Space race, so flipping AIs' hammers to your side strengthens you and weakens them. This is similar to a Diplomatic game, which is also a relative contest.

The Cultural game is another animal entirely because the available set of profitable expansion opportunities is so much smaller. Your military should look different, it gets used differently, and your cities are manufacturing completely different outputs after 1 AD. If that isn't a different paradigm, I don't know what is.

 

[r_rolo1]

Then you don't know what it is You are focusing in the minimalist aproach to the cultural win, where that is only on the extreme of the possible ways of winning by culture. Picking up your example of Space , you can win culture with a reasonably sized civ, but so can everyone by pure slider force + culture build ( the fact that the AI doesn't do that so often is not relevant for the argument ), having more land on you side ( besides helping you ( as I already posted above ) ) makes the competition relatively weaker... even better if you go through the culture win methods that benefit far more of empire size that the x-paks brought ( corps , espionage , ... )

By the way, if the civ IV cultural win is diferent in kind of the other wins , is in the other way around Culture is the only civ IV victory that requires a minimum number of cities , thus making it the only kind of win you can't acheive at all in a OCC

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Then you don't know what it is You are focusing in the minimalist aproach to the cultural win, where that is only on the extreme of the possible ways of winning by culture. Picking up your example of Space , you can win culture with a reasonably sized civ, but so can everyone by pure slider force + culture build ( the fact that the AI doesn't do that so often is not relevant for the argument ), having more land on you side ( besides helping you ( as I already posted above ) ) makes the competition relatively weaker... even better if you go through the culture win methods that benefit far more of empire size that the x-paks brought ( corps , espionage , ... )

By the way, if the civ IV cultural win is diferent in kind of the other wins , is in the other way around Culture is the only civ IV victory that requires a minimum number of cities , thus making it the only kind of win you can't acheive at all in a OCC

Well you also can't achieve a Domination in an OCC... you have to settle for Conquest.

 

[Jiago]

A result of this is that I rarely even get order, though. I think Freedom is more useful. The 1/2 happy face per specialist easily beats what you get from Planned Economy because by that time a lot of your cities are able to run four or five specialists (more if you pick up Civil Society). The big thing with order is +5 hammers per city, of course

I'm starting to think industrial policies are quite useless because when they could help the game is probably won, expecially on deity.

I think freedom is really strong with ICS, maybe even better than the +1 happiness from liberty. And of course that's very funny when you read the freedom description as a policy best suited for small empires...

 

[ccubed]

Discarding UAs/UBs, what is the most optimal Social Policy progression? Liberty, Piety, Freedom and Order all have things you really want in ICS. I'm just not sure when to take the SPs, especially since it's tempting to hold off while smaller to make your initial picks. In an ideal world you could wait until Freedom, but you'll probably be behind at that point and it'll be harder to get the ICS ball rolling. The terrible carrot of Communism in Order really makes me stingy with picks because I want to get that ASAP.

This might be a better post in the Number Crunching thread, now that I think about it...

 

[alpaca]

I'm starting to think industrial policies are quite useless because when they could help the game is probably won, expecially on deity.

I think freedom is really strong with ICS, maybe even better than the +1 happiness from liberty. And of course that's very funny when you read the freedom description as a policy best suited for small empires...

Yeah that description was exactly what kept me for a while from properly looking at it for an ICS strategy. I only started doing so toward the end of my Rome game and it's really awesome. The bonus is on par with Theocracy after the Renaissance but requires no prerequisites

Discarding UAs/UBs, what is the most optimal Social Policy progression? Liberty, Piety, Freedom and Order all have things you really want in ICS. I'm just not sure when to take the SPs, especially since it's tempting to hold off while smaller to make your initial picks. In an ideal world you could wait until Freedom, but you'll probably be behind at that point and it'll be harder to get the ICS ball rolling. The terrible carrot of Communism in Order really makes me stingy with picks because I want to get that ASAP.

This might be a better post in the Number Crunching thread, now that I think about it...

This is pretty hard to assess. Order is quite good as it yields +25% building production and +1 happiness per city (2.5 for annexed), too. It depends on a lot of variables and you can only analyse it with a lot of assumptions. I might give it a shot, though - so far I don't think Order comes early enough to warrant skipping Freedom for it, at least not the base policy, unless it'll only take you like 5 turns to get it. Let me stress this: Freedom is easily the best happiness policy for an ICS empire, hands down beating any other, including Theocracy. It is also a flexible source of happiness that can be used to buffer conquest unhappiness or get to a happy golden age.

 

[Ulti_mecia]

While I really like a SE, I can't say I use/need it in an ICS game. With Theocracy going I hardly ever run into happiness problems (+ Forbidden Palace, Collosea and Meritocracy) so I feel I don't need:
- the happiness Freedom gives you
- the science specialists give you (already having a tech pace of 4-5 turns)

While I agree there are more than just scientists, their effects are so marginal I can't generally be bothered to spend 4 SP's on them (Freedom-Civil Service-Rationalism-Secularism). Even more so, I generally feel unsecularismed specialists aren't worth it.
The thing that mostly stops me is the giant loss of hammers (before SoL) and gold when running specialists in ICS. Generally these cities are low populated and moving TP/Hill working citizens into specialist slots makes you lose out on a lot of production/gold. I can see cities overcoming this later when the population is 10-ish in a 6 workable tile city, but during the middle game - where pretty much you have boom and overtake the AI - it doesn't work yet, imho.

Also, I feel the wait till Rennaissance is too large (I know you can slingshot yourself there in 1500BC if you wanted) so I prefer Piety over Rationalism. This implies no Freedom/Secularism, and as such I don't like running specialists without those at all.

That said in every game I'll always have at least one National Epic-Garden city to get GP out. I guess it comes down to playstyle and preference in the end


Edit: It goes without question Order is insanely good and you should always get it asap (beeline Steam Power (after banking) or Dynamite (after Gunpowder-Rifling ). You have to remember those 5 Communism hammers are worth 15 after Rome UA, railroad connection, Factory, Order bonus (and post patch probably Workshop as well )

 

[pi-r8]

While I really like a SE, I can't say I use/need it in an ICS game. With Theocracy going I hardly ever run into happiness problems (+ Forbidden Palace, Collosea and Meritocracy) so I feel I don't need:
- the happiness Freedom gives you
- the science specialists give you (already having a tech pace of 4-5 turns)

While I agree there are more than just scientists, their effects are so marginal I can't generally be bothered to spend 4 SP's on them (Freedom-Civil Service-Rationalism-Secularism). Even more so, I generally feel unsecularismed specialists aren't worth it.

Also, I feel the wait till Rennaissance is too large (I know you can slingshot yourself there in 1500BC if you wanted) so I prefer Piety over Rationalism. this implies no Secularism, and as such I don't like running specialists without it.

That said in every game I'll always have at least one National Epic-Garden city to get GP out. I guess it comes down to playstyle and preference in the end


Edit: It goes without question Order is insanely good and you should always get it asap (beeline Steam Power (after banking) or Dynamite (after Gunpowder-Rifling ). You have to remember those 5 Communism hammers are worth 15 after Rome UA, railroad connection, Factory, Order bonus.

well freedom is just 1 pick, which is probably worth 1.5 happy/city. That's a really good deal. Theocracy is about the same, but it costs 3 picks, and the first 2 don't do much for you. Meritoracy is only 1 happy/city, but the 2 policies before it (cheaper settlers, better workers) are also good.

As for specialists- they are extremely good, even without any boosts from policies. For one thing you can run them anywhere, even in the middle of a snowy wasteland. But also, let's do the math on scientists. A scientist produces 3 gpp, and it takes 100gpp to produce the first great scientist. So after 34 turns it produces a great scientist. If that scientist bulbs a tech worth 1000 beakers (a rennaisance era tech) then that scientist specialist was worth 29.4 beakers/turn! More than that even, when you consider that a lot of normal beakers are wasted in overflow. The 3 beakers he gets normally are almost irrelevant. Boosting his regular output from 3 beakers to 5 doesn't really matter much does it? Or the food bonus- food is free from maritime states.

As the great people get more expensive, techs also get more expensive, so the specialists are still amazing. You can also boost them with a garden. Let's say it takes 600gpp for a great scientist, and you've got a garden. So 600/4 = 150 turns for a great scientist, which can bulb a modern era tech worth 2500 or more. 2500/150 = 16.7 beakers/turn. They also produce 3/turn normally, so that's a total of 19.7. Secularism just boosts that to 21.7 per turn, which is a pretty small increase. That's why I run max scientists almost everywhere, even without any policies to boost them. I've never tried babylon, but I'm sure their science rate is just insane. Part of the reason this ICS strategy is so powerful is that scientists are so powerful, and you're mostly limited to just 2 or 3 scientists per city, no matter how big the city is.

 

[MkLh]

An ICS combined to specialist economy would be quite powerful if you would build Forgotten Palace and the Statue of Liberty, unlock Liberty tree and Socialism, Planned Economy and communism from the Order tree, Civil Society from the Freedom tree, and Secularism from the Rationalism tree.

Now you have a civilization that has no unhappiness from the number of cities while every specialist consumes only 1 food, produces half of unhappiness and has bonuses of +2 science and +1 hammer. You can have a specialist city of size of 8 (3-4 scientists, 3 merchants, 1-2 engineer, feed by CSs) with an unhappiness cost of a size 4 city working with tiles, and a specialist in that point is stronger than just about any tile in this game.

It's of course tricky to unlock all those social policies, but it's definitely possible. The trick is to stay small until policies are there and then explode.