ICS: Love it or hate it?

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).

It seems to me that the best way is not to beat ICS over the head but to make bigger cities a more attractive alternative. Larger cities are more efficient than smaller ones. For example, far fewer buildings are required per citizen (like one library for 20 citizens instead of five).

Start by fixing the abominable growth rule to make it more or less linear like every previous version of civ which would allow cities to grow to size 30 or 40 like they should when your "BFC" has so many more tiles. Then add more interesting buildings that only larger cities could possibly support, including a proper civ 1-4 style granary and more stuff for happiness. Dual-benefit buildings like you had in CIV4 (forge, market, etc) make for more interesting choices and add value to big cities.

ICS works because it is efficiently generates gold and beakers, which this game revolves around. Bring back food and hammers to make larger cities more valuable. What were they thinking of when they nerfed mines and farms anyway? :confused:
 
I think a change to not allow a city produce more happiness than it actually produce in unhappiness seems to be a first quick fix.

Then trade routes should scale based on population not distance and preferable a log scale so larger cities would give a much higher trade return.

Very small changes that will help a litte and give the larger cities a nice boost and lower the usefulness of small cities, without stoping the people that like to do ICS.

You dont have to destroy the system to improve it.

Also add a growth penalty factor based on total population of the empire not size of individual cities.
 
Then trade routes should scale based on population not distance and preferable a log scale so larger cities would give a much higher trade return.

Trade routes DO scale with population. You get (1.25*(number of population) - (1*road hexes)) in gold.
Which means, as soon as the destination city has more pop than road hexes you have to do, you will get a net income from it.
 
It seems to me that the best way is not to beat ICS over the head but to make bigger cities a more attractive alternative. Larger cities are more efficient than smaller ones. For example, far fewer buildings are required per citizen (like one library for 20 citizens instead of five).

Start by fixing the abominable growth rule to make it more or less linear like every previous version of civ which would allow cities to grow to size 30 or 40 like they should when your "BFC" has so many more tiles. Then add more interesting buildings that only larger cities could possibly support, including a proper civ 1-4 style granary and more stuff for happiness. Dual-benefit buildings like you had in CIV4 (forge, market, etc) make for more interesting choices and add value to big cities.

ICS works because it is efficiently generates gold and beakers, which this game revolves around. Bring back food and hammers to make larger cities more valuable. What were they thinking of when they nerfed mines and farms anyway? :confused:

This. The soft cap on city growth is the biggest asset ICS has. ICS should be a strategy, not the strategy. I'd remove one specialist from the library and add one to the university too for good measure.
 
It seems to me that the best way is not to beat ICS over the head but to make bigger cities a more attractive alternative. Larger cities are more efficient than smaller ones. For example, far fewer buildings are required per citizen (like one library for 20 citizens instead of five).

Start by fixing the abominable growth rule to make it more or less linear like every previous version of civ which would allow cities to grow to size 30 or 40 like they should when your "BFC" has so many more tiles. Then add more interesting buildings that only larger cities could possibly support, including a proper civ 1-4 style granary and more stuff for happiness. Dual-benefit buildings like you had in CIV4 (forge, market, etc) make for more interesting choices and add value to big cities.

ICS works because it is efficiently generates gold and beakers, which this game revolves around. Bring back food and hammers to make larger cities more valuable. What were they thinking of when they nerfed mines and farms anyway? :confused:

Yes you got it, this is what I was trying to get unfortunatly my post was all over the place and parts of it didn't relate as one person mentioned. You said exactpy what I was trying to get across.

I wonder how things would work out if it was made so buildings become more effective the larger the city becomes. This is something I would like to try.
Example a colloseum starts at +2 happyness when a city is small but adds .01 happyness per citizan. Libraries and Universities add a bit more science when a city becomes over size 10 and then even more over size 20. Same for banks and temples.

Anyone else have any thoughts on that?
 
Yes you got it, this is what I was trying to get unfortunatly my post was all over the place and parts of it didn't relate as one person mentioned. You said exactpy what I was trying to get across.
Thanks.

I wonder how things would work out if it was made so buildings become more effective the larger the city becomes. This is something I would like to try.
Example a colloseum starts at +2 happyness when a city is small but adds .01 happyness per citizan. Libraries and Universities add a bit more science when a city becomes over size 10 and then even more over size 20. Same for banks and temples.

Anyone else have any thoughts on that?
I don't think this is necessary ( and .01 is nothing anyway - it should be more like .5). Get production back into the game so that you produce stuff instead of buying it (that's unrealistic anyway). Then add additional buildings, especially buildings that generate happiness. Someone mentioned stadiums. What about the Civ4 wonders that gave happiness? Video arcades, anyone? Seems fitting in to put in a computer game.
 
I can do ICS style expansion and get my cities high in population super fast by paying off every single maritime CS there is, and I can easily offset this cost by doing massive trading post spam, I make one or two farms per city, than its mines\lumber mills and the rest is trading posts.

Than with the middle tree in order I get +5 hammers per city, and that helps build on the good buildings quickly. I will usually have Stock Exchanges\Public Schools in every city fairly quickly. Meanwhile my "core" cities are snatching up every single wonder in the game, and catching up on buildings because they were always producing units. I dont need no stinken miltiary because the only time you can really go in to mass city production is after taking over your continent (I dont see how you could use ICS on a Pangea map).

I literally had my 4 Longswordsman, and two Knights that I finished taking over my continent with when I won a science victory. A domination victory would have been easily possible, because even my ICS cities could have knocked out Infantry\Arty in less than 15-20 turns(some even less), combine that with some Modern Armor from my better cities, and the massive gold Im making from trade routes to upgrade the Inf\Arty, and I could easily have taken over the other continents. It would have been far too much effort though for something I knew would have eventually happened no matter what.
 
Absolutely agreee with Roxlimn's take. Cottage spam and financial in general together with the "Free..." civics & State Property, was broken. As DaveW and TMIT proved in practice. After studying TMIT's high level gameplay, I always went cottage spam and the Liberalism-> "Free.." civics beeline to Democracy & Communism for optimal results. Not much different from CivV really.

OTOH I found the Civ4 distance "fix" onerous and ultimately annoying. It basically killed long term overseas colonization except through the vassal mechanism (basically a workaround for this limitation). Ironically the best way around this limitation was ....cottage spam, to ensure your core cities could finance the gold-sink overseas cities.

polypheus:

I suppose it depends on what you think is "broken." Cottage spam and SEs seemed pretty broken to me in Civ 4, and I didn't see anyone clamoring to get those fixed in the game.

and

As a matter of fact, I was not truly satisfied with the way Civ 4 "solved" the issue. As another point of fact, Civ 5 "solves" this issue the same way - by instituting a penalty on every new city that is not imposed on growing existing cities.

The only difference between the two is that Civ 5 features multiple, documented methods of defeating the penalty, and Civ 4 only features two or three undocumented ways to defeat its ICS penalties. Now, if you want to argue that Civ 4 is less well documented than Civ 5, be my guest. I'm confident that you won't get far with that.
 
Absolutely agreee with Roxlimn's take. Cottage spam and financial in general together with the "Free..." civics & State Property, was broken. As DaveW and TMIT proved in practice. After studying TMIT's high level gameplay, I always went cottage spam and the Liberalism-> "Free.." civics beeline to Democracy & Communism for optimal results. Not much different from CivV really.

OTOH I found the Civ4 distance "fix" onerous and ultimately annoying. It basically killed long term overseas colonization except through the vassal mechanism (basically a workaround for this limitation). Ironically the best way around this limitation was ....cottage spam, to ensure your core cities could finance the gold-sink overseas cities.
and

There is a huge difference betwen Civ4 and Civ5 style expansion not withstanding cottage spam issues and such (which is much worse in Civ5's form as trading post spam IMO). The crux of the issue is this: Civ5 rewards purposefully kept small cities due to cost/benefit factor of big cities vs small cities and the Shafer Factor (otherwise known as global "happiness") scheme. Civ4 does not. It encourages more balanced growth and tilt towards more highly developed cities. And you can do overseas colonization but only during more modern times as your economy supported it exactly as it should be.
 
What about changing the way the coliseum works? Instead of +4 happiness for every coliseum, make it +10 (or whatever) for having just one coliseum, and it is expensive to build. Almost more like a wonder than a building.
 
What about changing the way the coliseum works? Instead of +4 happiness for every coliseum, make it +10 (or whatever) for having just one coliseum, and it is expensive to build. Almost more like a wonder than a building.

I think this would make the ICS issue worse, since if you're going ICS, you're not going to have a gigantic happy issue, except if you can't keep up with your food supply from Maritime CS.

Also, everything is expensive to build in CiV.
 
I want to start a thread about the ICS strategy and whether or not it's good for the game. In my opinion, adjustments need to be made to make the strategy a non-starter as with city maintenance in IV.

I don't think it should be a good or viable strategy to expand, expand, expand creating dozens of carbon copy cities that you don't give a hoot about on literally any land available. Played in this way Civ resembles a game of Go where you just put your markers down over and over again trying to control more of the board than your opponent.

I don't blame players for playing this way, but can you really claim that doing so is rewarding or fun? Your cities should mean something to you, the land that you decide to settle on should get you excited and you should have to make serious decisions about the balance of expansion/economy/military.

There should be multiple ways to victory which are equally good, and when one strategy is so obviously the best way to win it takes the fun out of experimenting with the other possibilities, for me at least.

So who out there wants ICS to be shown the door, and who wants it to stay?
And if you are anti-ICS then how would you go about modifying the game to make it impractical?

i dont use this strategy at all. never did never will. simple as that. i dont understand your point ? If you dont like the strategy dont use it. Simple as that. or are you guys talking about multiplayer ?
 
There is a huge difference betwen Civ4 and Civ5 style expansion not withstanding cottage spam issues and such (which is much worse in Civ5's form as trading post spam IMO). The crux of the issue is this: Civ5 rewards purposefully kept small cities due to cost/benefit factor of big cities vs small cities and the Shafer Factor (otherwise known as global "happiness") scheme. Civ4 does not. It encourages more balanced growth and tilt towards more highly developed cities. And you can do overseas colonization but only during more modern times as your economy supported it exactly as it should be.

Cottage spam is so strong and so effective that DaveW would successfully cottage over Civ4's substantially stronger special tile outputs and would still come out ahead. Production wasn't even substantially impacted, whereas you really pay for it in Civ 5 in lost hammers.

Your take on the issue doesn't address the core issues and doesn't acknowledge the core similarities. The difference isn't huge - the games are actually quite similar in several respects.

Civ 4 does NOT encourage balanced growth. You either grew upward fast, or you REX'd fast, or your War'd fast. Sometimes, you REX'd fast, then grew fast. Balanced growth was not rewarded as far as I recall.

The tilt towards cities with lots of buildings was to reduce maintenance - the one factor discussed commonly in Civ 4 different from Civ 5 that actually promoted large cities.

Here are the other two factors:

Megatiles
Linear-ish growth
 
In general cottage spam was not the favored method for civ4 Deity players. Most players went with lots of farms and only cottage spam in specialized cities, often the capital.

I agree that Civ4 doesn't encourage balanced growth, often a rex to 6+ cities or an early war followed by stabilization is done. But ICS or very early unlimited expansion is not profitable in Civ4.

On top of all the other problems with Civ5 the return of ICS is an extremely bad thing.
Out of disappointment with Civ5 I went back to playing Alpha centauri for some time. But also here unbridled expansion ICS or not is almost always the best tactic and easily winning on highest level. Civ4 solved 90% of this problem in a rather elegant way(maintenance) just as Civ3 did in a very inelegant way(100% corruption). Lots of work to be done for the Civ5 team.
 
Dirk1302:

I think it depends on what you're talking about. ICS can be profitable in Civ4, and early nearly unlimited expansion likewise. Just have to know how to do it.
 
I view ICS the same as the 'God-mode'-cheatcode in Doom (or similar games). There are people who love to use a cheat and win so let them! This is a SP so if people want to win by using cheats what does it bother me?

I don't understand those people that use this cheat and then whine about 'the game being too easy'


i dont use this strategy at all. never did never will. simple as that. i dont understand your point ? If you dont like the strategy dont use it. Simple as that. or are you guys talking about multiplayer ?

QFE
 
I view ICS the same as the 'God-mode'-cheatcode in Doom (or similar games). There are people who love to use a cheat and win so let them! This is a SP so if people want to win by using cheats what does it bother me?

I don't understand those people that use this cheat and then whine about 'the game being too easy'
QFE

A cheat and a tactic that is allowed by broken game mechanics are totally different things. An equivalent for the Doom cheat would be going to world builder and giving yourself a Giant Death Robot in turn 1.
 
Do Civ5 AIs all have the same settling pattern, or some like spaced empires better?
 
I view ICS the same as the 'God-mode'-cheatcode in Doom (or similar games). There are people who love to use a cheat and win so let them! This is a SP so if people want to win by using cheats what does it bother me?

I don't understand those people that use this cheat and then whine about 'the game being too easy'
But it's not like ICS is some thing that you can just turn on and off. I've always been an expansionist player. If I choose not to ICS for some challenge, well, where's the line? Do you limit yourself to only creating cities that have a negative happiness load, and make up the difference in luxuries? Tell yourself you'll always leave an extra tile between cities, just because? Shut off city-states?

The problem with ICS is that it's an attractive local minimum for expansionists. The first time you look at a non-specialist city and realize it's not working (m)any of its tiles, you think, "Huh. Could've moved that closer to that bigger city over there without hurting anything, and then I could've fit another city on this continent."

Then you look at your capital and think, "Gee, it's size 15, and it's not producing anything because all my idiots are working food tiles, and the city still won't grow for another 30 turns. I could double my hammers by switching to production!" So now even your big, specialist cities aren't working a full second ring, and your non-specialist cities can move even closer.

And then you look at your minimap, and see all these holes in your territory. You go to move a worker to add a mine for your city to use, and you realize that it's a 1-hex hole in your territory that'll cost 300g to fill. You do some quick math and think, "Man, I've spent a couple thousand gold just on buying tiles. If I put my cities closer together, I won't have to buy so many tiles, AND my trade routes will cost less."

The first time you do this, your happiness drops through the floor. Whoops! So you do some more quick math. -2 happiness for a city, -1 for each pop, +4 for a colosseum, and a bunch of social policies that also reduce unhappiness. Looks like size 2 is the optimum size until you get those policies and wonders.

Then you look back over your empire, and realize you've just recreated ICS. There are just so many reasons to plop your cities down as close to each other as possible. Choosing not to starts to feel like holding one arm behind your back, or trying to play a sport with one eye closed.
 
I view ICS the same as the 'God-mode'-cheatcode in Doom (or similar games). There are people who love to use a cheat and win so let them! This is a SP so if people want to win by using cheats what does it bother me?

I don't understand those people that use this cheat and then whine about 'the game being too easy'

QFE

For the 100000th time, you can't avoid the use of ICS. Or more precisely, you can try to not use it, BUT the AI uses it, so you're only hitting your own feet in the end if you avoid it. Have fun against a 30+city AI with your 5-10 cities in emperor difficulty or higher (actually it is still possible to win due to horrible AI...).
 
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