ICS: Love it or hate it?

[Jharii]

just use my massive ICS cash to buy the new building. /shrug

Exactly how much cash do you have when the Renaissance era hits?

Also, now that you just burned through all that gold that was supposed to be used for funding everything else that ICS exploits, now what?

 

[Eberon]

Exactly how much cash do you have when the Renaissance era hits?

Also, now that you just burned through all that gold that was supposed to be used for funding everything else that ICS exploits, now what?

Once I hit renaissance I pick up freedom sp. I often save SP point just for this. After that I start running 30-80 happy depending on if I am at war and how many puppet states I currently have. I often dont even buy the colosseums anymore at this point. I am not sure exactly how much cash I have around this time. Next game I will pay attention. Its pretty lucrative by this time though.

 

[Eberon]

A possible path to explore is that colliseums (and circuses) become less effective, or even obsolete, at a specified age. This would then require the more advanced buildings to be built, which would become less effective, or even obsolete, at another specified age.

The newer aged buildings are more costly to build than their older cousins, thus spamming small cities would be difficult to maintain as your age progresses.

This would also add some of that realism that people are concerned about, as it would be representative of your civilization maturing and evolving, requiring more sophistication as the ages progress.

Colosseums became obsolete in time. Circuses are still around, but are hardly the source of entertainment they once were. Both could become obsolete (or change to a +1 or +2 gold producer so the building is not wasted) when you are able to build...

Theaters (as implemented in the game) are present today, but are considered more of a source of culture than happiness. Maybe this would be its next progression (similar to how the above change to gold) when you are ready to build...

Stadiums are flourishing today.

To me, it all fits together nicely. It makes historical "sense" and thwarts ICS as an exploit. Those that wish to pursue ICS need to accommodate their population's new needs as they evolve.

How would you even do this? You are tooling along with your empire and all of a suddon you hit the renaissance era and all of your colosseums stop working? So then you have to tech up somehow to the new happy building and wait for them to build all the while you are suffering massive unhappiness?

After rereading the post it sounds like you might have them slowly lose effectivness. Could you avoid this by avoiding certain techs? Could you seriously gimp yourself if you accidently tech rushed around the new happy building to the following era?

Genuine questions. I dont understand how it would work. Not trying to be sarcastic.

If you are running a 10 city empire and for whatever reason you are for whatever reason running 0 happiness and you accidently tech up to whatever causes the colosseum to lose 1 happiness... then you are all of a sudden at 10 unhappy and your units start getting slaughtered. Its going to take you 10 turns to correct your mistake and build the theater or whatever happy building and by the time that happens your army is decimated and you may have even lost some cities... which would increase your happiness I guess and maybe get you out of your jam.

 

[Jharii]

Once I hit renaissance I pick up freedom sp. I often save SP point just for this. After that I start running 30-80 happy depending on if I am at war and how many puppet states I currently have. I often dont even buy the colosseums anymore at this point. I am not sure exactly how much cash I have around this time. Next game I will pay attention. Its pretty lucrative by this time though.

Freedom addresses unhappiness from specialists, not unhappiness from the number of cities. Unless something has changed. I am at work, so I am using the manual as reference.

Just so you know (not saying that you think I am), I am not trying to refute or argue. Just looking for a bona fide "solution."

 

[Eberon]

Freedom addresses unhappiness from specialists, not unhappiness from the number of cities. Unless something has changed. I am at work, so I am using the manual as reference.

Just so you know (not saying that you think I am), I am not trying to refute or argue. Just looking for a bona fide "solution."

You are right. Happiness from number of cities is kind of inconsequential by this time though. Maybe if you added an extra -1 happy per city to each era and then adjusted happy buildings to compensate that might be a little effective. But honestly by this time I start letting my cities grow a bit and think I could counter that with small strategy changes.

I really think its not possible to just tweak existing elements of the game to fix ICS. New elements will need to be added. Health, corruption, polution, or changing core features like happiness being global. Everything else just makes it slightly less effecient. If you want it to be more effecient to work large cities then core changes or additions are needed.

 

[Jharii]

How would you even do this? You are tooling along with your empire and all of a suddon you hit the renaissance era and all of your colosseums stop working? So then you have to tech up somehow to the new happy building and wait for them to build all the while you are suffering massive unhappiness?

After rereading the post it sounds like you might have them slowly lose effectivness. Could you avoid this by avoiding certain techs? Could you seriously gimp yourself if you accidently tech rushed around the new happy building to the following era?

Genuine questions. I dont understand how it would work. Not trying to be sarcastic.

If you are running a 10 city empire and for whatever reason you are for whatever reason running 0 happiness and you accidently tech up to whatever causes the colosseum to lose 1 happiness... then you are all of a sudden at 10 unhappy and your units start getting slaughtered. Its going to take you 10 turns to correct your mistake and build the theater or whatever happy building and by the time that happens your army is decimated and you may have even lost some cities... which would increase your happiness I guess and maybe get you out of your jam.

Maybe they do degrade or maybe there is a transitional period (countdown) before they are completely obsolete. But that type of implementation would completely defeat the purpose for the suggested mechanic. ICS would still be used in the same fashion. Buying the buildings would get you out of the hole as well.

I am sure that a strategy can be determined. That's what strategy games are, after all.

This may also help prevent other exploits, too, like slingshotting eras using GS's.

But yeah, that's why this discussion exists, anyhow, to try to find a legitamite solution. I think this is could be part of it, the details just need to be worked out. So far, it seems like it could be a logical direction to go. Just need to work out the logistics. I don't have all the answers. Just exploring.

 

[PawelS]

I really think its not possible to just tweak existing elements of the game to fix ICS. New elements will need to be added. Health, corruption, polution, or changing core features like happiness being global. Everything else just makes it slightly less effecient. If you want it to be more effecient to work large cities then core changes or additions are needed.

I set the unhappiness to 0.5 per population and 10 per city in my mod (wonders and policies decrease it only by 1, not by half), and I assure you, ICS is not possible I made some other changes to the happiness system too, you get less from buildings and luxuries, but you get +4 per social policy that you have adopted. So in the early game you can have only a small number of cities, but later you can have more.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Exactly how much cash do you have when the Renaissance era hits?

Also, now that you just burned through all that gold that was supposed to be used for funding everything else that ICS exploits, now what?

An ICS size four city gets 6 gpt from working river TPs, plus the base tile gpt. The trade rout is worth 6.5 (?) gpt. A colliseum is -3 gpt, a library is -1, and a road is around -1.8. That's +9 gpt per city. (Anyone wanna double check this?)

So, to rush theatres in all your cities when your colliseums go obsolete will require around 60 turns income on regular speed.

Of course, if we assume the colliseum diminishes from +3 happiness to +2, then you don't need nearly as many theatres. I could see an ICS recovering from colliseum decay using 10 turns income or less.

 

[Eberon]

I set the unhappiness to 0.5 per population and 10 per city in my mod (wonders and policies decrease it only by 1, not by half), and I assure you, ICS is not possible I made some other changes to the happiness system too, you get less from buildings and luxuries, but you get +4 per social policy that you have adopted. So in the early game you can have only a small number of cities, but later you can have more.

Heh, you didnt just kill ICS. You killed all expansive empires. When I said I didnt think you could significantly hinder ICS with given mechanics I meant without drasticaly restricting other forms of play.

 

[Jharii]

An ICS size four city gets 6 gpt from working river TPs, plus the base tile gpt. The trade rout is worth 6.5 (?) gpt. A colliseum is -3 gpt, a library is -1, and a road is around -1.8. That's +9 gpt per city. (Anyone wanna double check this?)

So, to rush theatres in all your cities when your colliseums go obsolete will require around 60 turns income on regular speed.

Of course, if we assume the colliseum diminishes from +3 happiness to +2, then you don't need nearly as many theatres. I could see an ICS recovering from colliseum decay using 10 turns income or less.

60 turns seems to harsh. 10 turns seems not nearly harsh enough (do you agree/disagree?). What about going from +3 to +1 on colosseums and +3 to +2 on circuses? Circuses do outlast colosseums as far as their usefulness.

About 30 turns?

FYI, colosseums are in the manual as +4 happiness. Is this the same value as in the game now? I seem to recall that it is. How does this alter the math?

 

[Danei]

Currently, my city grows by one, and suddenly my entire empire suffers. Solution? Build a colliseum. I already have a colliseum here? Well, then, found a new "garbage" city and build a colliseum in it. That's why ICS is successfull, and that's why ICS unsatisfying.

This. I couldn't have said it better. I almost think they should have had per-city health and global happiness, the former mostly being affected by city population, and the latter being affected by number of cities/other factors. Of course, that would require extensive balancing.

 

[PawelS]

Heh, you didnt just kill ICS. You killed all expansive empires. When I said I didnt think you could significantly hinder ICS with given mechanics I meant without drasticaly restricting other forms of play.

What's the difference between ICS and other "expansive empires"?

 

[Eberon]

What's the difference between ICS and other "expansive empires"?

There are several threads that explain really well what ICS is. I highly recommend them. There is some really good dialogue going on.

 

[PawelS]

There are several threads that explain really well what ICS is. I highly recommend them. There is some really good dialogue going on.

I know what ICS is. But I don't know what you mean by "expansive empires". Cities being bigger and farther away? I don't think the game should encourage big empires with large number of big cities, because it leads to the "snowball effect" - if you have lots of big cities, and you don't suffer a happiness penalty for it, you can found or conquer even more of them...

 

[ohioastronomy]

I know what ICS is. But I don't know what you mean by "expansive empires". Cities being bigger and farther away? I don't think the game should encourage big empires with large number of big cities, because it leads to the "snowball effect" - if you have lots of big cities, and you don't suffer a happiness penalty for it, you can found or conquer even more of them...

I think the point is that your solution functionally makes empires with more than a handful of cities utterly impossible; if you captured 10 cities with an average population of 4 during the course of a war, youd' have 120 unhappiness, and you could at most mitigate 60 (eventually) with puppets all deciding to build coliseums and 2/city in social policies. You'd never recover from that triumph, let alone the disaster of annexing.

 

[Eberon]

I know what ICS is. But I don't know what you mean by "expansive empires". Cities being bigger and farther away? I don't think the game should encourage big empires with large number of big cities, because it leads to the "snowball effect" - if you have lots of big cities, and you don't suffer a happiness penalty for it, you can found or conquer even more of them...

Ah, see a glorious empire spanning the globe is what Civilization is to me. You want to take away my playstyle completely. Currently in the game the incentive is to not build and not grow. Thats what we are trying to fix. Its not the number of cities thats the problem.

 

[lschnarch]

I disagree. ICS does make you skimp on military. You're spending your Capital production on Settlers, and your new (non-optimal) cities are building Colosseums to make up for the happiness hit.

The capital just starts the process (obviously) by building the first, maybe even the second settler.
The rest is done by the newly founded cities, may they be planned as "core" cities or just as science/gold factories.
With Liberty you get +50% when producing a settler, making it possible to train them even in small cities.

Opportunity costs:

Each Settler cost 89 hammers/food. Each Warrior cost 40 hammers, each Spearman cost 50 hammers, for example. So, each Settler has deprived you of one Warrior and one Spearman. Opportunity cost.

And how many of these would you need? One horseman easily replaces quite some of them. Granted, the horseman comes later and costs more, but I've found that warriors and scouts are rarely worth the production spend on them.

If you're running Liberty you're not running Honor. Opportunity cost.

At the moment, honor is not really needed. With the AI being so weak, to have Honor is nice, but in no way decisive or needed. The cultur is much better spent on Patronage.

I know what ICS is. But I don't know what you mean by "expansive empires". Cities being bigger and farther away? I don't think the game should encourage big empires with large number of big cities, because it leads to the "snowball effect" - if you have lots of big cities, and you don't suffer a happiness penalty for it, you can found or conquer even more of them...

You know, you have your playstyle, and your mod fits it. Which is completely ok, but your mod doesn't help as a general hindrance to ICS.

Running a big empire is not bad per se, but is made literally impossible via your mod.
What people don't like about ICS is that it is based on intentionally limiting the "factory cities", thus avoiding their growth. Nevertheless, placing a many of these cities as possible is the way to go in all cases, except for a planned cultural victory.

 

[PawelS]

Ah, see a glorious empire spanning the globe is what Civilization is to me. You want to take away my playstyle completely. Currently in the game the incentive is to not build and not grow. Thats what we are trying to fix. Its not the number of cities thats the problem.

Well, I think with fine-tuning the unhappiness from number of cities and happiness from social policies (I also wanted to add happiness from the number of technologies that you have researched, but it doesn't seem to be possible with XML editing), you can have "a glorious empire spanning the globe" in the late game.

If you want it in early game but eliminate ICS, I don't see a reasonable way to do it. Maybe positive happiness from population?

Edit: I have another idea: happiness buildings should have a minimum city size (doesn't seem to be possible with the current XML tags either).

Btw Courthouse reduces unhappiness from the city (not the population) to 0 (at least it did before I removed it from my mod, maybe it was changed in the patch), so it makes conquered cities "better" than those that you founded. So increasing unhappiness from number of cities, and leaving the Courthouse in the game, can help those who like to conquer the entire world, while eliminating the ICS problem. But it can lead to some strange behavior, like waiting for another civ to found a city in a desired place, and then declaring war and capturing it.

 

[atteSmythe]

The fix (if one is needed) needs to correct the fact that in CiV, unlike previous versions, city growth is bad. And for that, I think the problem lies in
(a) global happiness,
(b) no entertainers.

Currently, my city grows by one, and suddenly my entire empire suffers. Solution? Build a colliseum. I already have a colliseum here? Well, then, found a new "garbage" city and build a colliseum in it. That's why ICS is successfull, and that's why ICS unsatisfying.

Local happiness ensures that one productive city cannot be supported by a sprawl of meaningless size two cities. And entertainer specialists ensure that if a city grows, the worst that'll happen is the new citizen is an entertainer, with no net effect. (ie growth is no longer bad).

This!

I played a couple games of Civ V before reading up on ICS here, and it was really unsatisfying. You'd be going along fine with a buffer of a couple happiness, and then without any real warning BAM - into the red, because a few cities all decided to grow this turn. And it was a self-sustaining pattern - with no pollution, your cities will continue growing, however slowly, with any food surplus. And, so long as they're growing, the default governor is obsessed with food production. So the only way to get any production out of your cities without microing them every turn is to hit unhappiness, which forces the governor back into production mode...but also halts your expansion.

So you fix the happiness to hopefully start expanding again, but unless you time it just right, your old cities just grow and take up that new happiness buffer. I had a handful of cities and was going bankrupt trying to maintain them.

ICS lets me grow a few cities like I normally would, while maintaining a few 'mega improvements' on the landscape. We don't have cottages any more, so I view 'filler cities' as my new towns. Being able to steal even first-ring tiles from them means that their impact on 'real' cities is minimal, at least.

In retrospect, it's right there in the game design: To grow, you must have cities that produce more happiness than they consume. And the smaller the city, the more the net gain. And the smaller the city, the fewer tiles it will work, so the closer together you can put them.

 

[Abegweit]

Freedom addresses unhappiness from specialists, not unhappiness from the number of cities. Unless something has changed. I am at work, so I am using the manual as reference.

Just so you know (not saying that you think I am), I am not trying to refute or argue. Just looking for a bona fide "solution."

Right but since the typical ICS junk city is running two scientists, this does have the effect of increasing your happiness.