ICS Happiness

[Talamare]

How do I maintain my Happiness up while ICSing, I already reduce my unhappy from number of cities to 0, all the unhappiness are coming strictly from population

I make happiness buildings in every city and I have every lux-res and my people still become unhappy

Any tips?

 

[Monthar]

1) Limit the population in the cities.
2) Try to get any SP that boosts happiness, such as the + 1 happy per city connected to the capital via trade routes. The one in commerce that gives + 1 happy per luxury. There's also the one that reduces unhappiness in each city you have a unit garrisoned in.
3) Find all the natural wonders.
4) Try to build or capture the wonders that boost happiness.

 

[Irgy]

If I understand ICS correctly, it's supposed to scale infinitely (hence the 'I'), so bonuses which don't scale, from resources, wonders and difficulty, are strictly useful as a happiness buffer and not a long term source of the required happiness.

If you have no unhappiness from number of cities, 4 population per city, and a colliseum in every city, then you should clearly not have unhappiness problems. You say you have happiness buildings in every city, so you have the colliseum, which only leaves too much population as the culprit. So, work less food and more specialists would be my advice.

 

[Nunya]

Get Freedom. then cycle through each of your cities and assign specialists. In my ICS game I went from 0 hapiness to 30 hapiness like that.

 

[tballz]

Can someone point me to a thread explaining the theory of ICS? Thanks

 

[atteSmythe]

Can someone point me to a thread explaining the theory of ICS? Thanks

Just a few posts down: Thoughts on REX + ICS

I also enjoy reading Sullla's 'Liberte et Ordre' playthrough: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/liberteordre.html

There's a lot more scattered around, but those should get you started.

 

[Celevin]

Can someone point me to a thread explaining the theory of ICS? Thanks

The idea is that if there's always a marginal gain in building a new city, you have an ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) situation. That is to say the best thing you can do is have as many cities as possible. Sometimes if the bonus for the new city is high enough and settlers are cheap enough, you have people REXing (Rapid Expansion). You'll see this especially in games where a Liberty player has some extra gold to spend on colloseums, monuments, and the like.

An example of an ICS situation in Civ5 is if you aren't too concerned with policies, and each new city at least breaks even on happiness, for example if you can afford a colloseum, or if you have +2 or +3 happiness per city. Or if you think the bonus production/gold/trade from the new city is better than the lost happiness/policy gain.

 

[alpaca]

Well, you need to limit the growth of your cities. Set them to production preference and remove and 2f tile workers to make them unemployed specialists (which produce one hammer). This allows you to get libraries and colosseums running faster, and if you have Freedom will add some happiness. You might want to try not to have too many cities which cost more happiness than they bring until you hit the industrial age. Once you're there, your techs should come in < 4 turns typically so you can stop growing horizontally and focus on getting your cities a bit larger if you like to (as the gains of another city will be invalidated by the game ending in 70 turns or so)