ICS or Well Knitted?

[exorcist]

So my question to all of yall is which way you are playing the game. I didn't make a poll because I want you to justify your views. The obvious advantage of ICS is you take up lots of space but the down side is your corruption reflects monica lewinsky's abilities. Having a well knitt empire will keep corruption down and save hours upon hours of stupid micro managing but you dont take up near the space and you feel small.

Personally I am trying both, surprisingly, my ten city empire now is keeping up if not ahead of a little, of my last 30 city empire. They were played completely different but it seems like my sceince and tax output are very competitive. I dunno, what have yall seen?

 

[ironfang]

Personally, I am a victim of nesecity. If the AI attacks, you need to attack them back if you ever want peace. But the AI doesnt take you seriously unless you get near their cities (or the war wages out for a really long time).

On the counter offensive, I end up with enemy cities. Now you have to choices. Burn them or take them. Burning them leaves space Available for colonization, and occupation expands your empire, giving you rail advantages, takes away rail advantages, gives you city +% for protection, but costs in defensive units etc..

I tried to stay small, but I had no choice. I wanted to make my empire 20 cities max, ended up with over 80. Go figure.

ironfang

 

[exorcist]

Thanks ironfang. I have got a similair thing happening to me. I sit there with my peaceful democracy and just leach out and take cities with culture but then someone will get demanding and demand things for peace and I tell them to blow me so of course we go to war. Then when I start capturing all of these cities, I either have to raize them or use them. Raizing would be much simpler and require much less effort but if I raize a city, sueing for peace doesn't yield as much and well, I didnt really get a visible foot hold in my enemies territory.

My peaceful democracy was having a blast with 15 cities and within twenty, 15 became 35 and now its at about 50... and I only wanted 20 or so cities.

I feel like the victim here, not those poor civs that are no longer around...

 

[Ferd]

> Then when I start capturing all of these cities, I either have to raize them or use them. Raizing would be much simpler and require much less effort but if I raize a city, sueing for peace doesn't yield as much and well, I didnt really get a visible foot hold in my enemies territory.

Just hold them until the war ends, then sell them back. You might be able to make off like a bandit. Or, you could just GIVE them back, and maybe he'll be so impressed he'll hold off with the ridiculous demands for a while.

 

[eyrei]

I almost always build a medium sized (about 15-20 cities) civ targetting democracy as my eventual government. I am willing to fight wars up until the point where I switch to democracy to gain resources or satisfaction for an insult, or in self defence. Once I become a democracy though, I will take drastic steps to insure the peaceful dominance of my country in commerce and technology. Since a small democracy usually has extra cash, I offer small gold/turn gifts to my neighbors before they decide to threaten me. Sometimes I even offer a spare resource or luxury as a gift, though I usually try to get at least a minor tech for this. AI civs do not seem to want to break these agreements, since they are not shelling anything out, and gain gold or resources. As the game progresses, I get further and further ahead, and begin offering slightly larger gifts. The diplomatic effect is that everyone loves me, and beyond simple emotions, they have only to gain by keeping me on their side. On the off chance that someone does declare war on me, I immediately approach all of the other relevant civs, and ask what they need for a military alliance against the transgressor. If I can provide what they want without severely damaging my own economy, I agree. At the end of the turn, nearly the entire world has united against me, and my enemy suddenly has to spend all of his resources defending his own country, and has no time to **** with me. As soon as any one of my allies signs a peace treaty with our common enemy, I sign one as well (assuming the bastard doesn't expect reparations - I do have some pride). By the time the last peace treaty is signed, I have gained a 10+ turn lead in science because the rest of the world was fighting my war for me. This strategy works on Monarch level, but I have not had a chance to try it on emperor.