Ics?
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TheMarshmallowBear
Benelovent Chieftain of the Ursu Kingdom
Wow... what? what's ICC and what's NC?
TheMarshmallowBear
Benelovent Chieftain of the Ursu Kingdom
I know what National College is -.- no need to tell me that
And why on earth would you spam Settlers, you know you're gonna get "You're building cities too aggresively" which will lead into a war eventually.
apocalypse105
Deity
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- May 17, 2011
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4 cities or 5 with 4 population have the same science rate as a national college or maybe a little less but still effective if everything has library ..
The problem with infinite city spam is the early rushes you get from the AI because you are taking land they want I thinx babylon is the best ICC at higher diffuclties defending the early rushes with the bowman
It is olso not so smart if you are on a continent with only 3 people at least 2 of them will be less friendly and you don't get the maximum out of trade
The_Quasar
King
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2010
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- 862
ICS is almost impossible at high levels because of happiness problems, so we tend to stick to 3-7 cities depending on what sort of a plant we have.
At lower levels it's possible to have much larger numbers of cities, as it's much easier to manage the happiness.
At lower levels it's possible to have much larger numbers of cities, as it's much easier to manage the happiness.
I'm really not a fan of ICS. It might work out in the long run sometimes for you, but building up a whole lot of new cities isn't all that much fun. You hit the production penalties pretty fast, and have a lot of territory to defend. Building roads to make this easier can be a very costly exercise.
Speaking in a more realistic viewpoint to the rather black and white way this is being looked at, ICS is still a good strategy but is in many ways harder and requires more thought than staying small.
As others have mentioned the fact of large borders and an early strain on happiness is a major sticking point but if you plan ahead i never really find this much of an issue. I tend to run out of spaces to plant cities in worthwhile spots more than i find i don't plant a new city due to happiness. I usually play a huge map with 19 civs including me and all CS's, on a medium sea level and on immortal (game composition matters when referencing how many cities you build) and i tend to plant 10-15 cities depending on my start location and what land is around me as well as how close my neighbours are. I stop building cities when i run out of places to put them.
The key for an ICS style strategy is to grab as many luxuries and strategic resourses as you can during the initial expansion phase in particular as luxuries will help greatly with happiness and any extra can be sold to buy units for defense and rapid expansion.
Grabbing strategic resourses also alows you to have personal access to resources to build a well equipped army and often plenty extra to sell on to again help buy more units for defense and rapid expansion.
Early DoW's from neighbours can be a problem but again as long as you plan for them then they can be an advantage. Concentrate on building an adequet army to fight at least two wars at the same time with a general rule i follow of having at least one archer and one warrior per border city. Early on i tend to go two warriors and one archer, with the archer obviously stationed in the city but as i grow and connect up cities with roads i tend to aim more for a 1-1 ratio as nearby units can deploy to an attacked area quickly to help defend rather than each city having to hold out by itself for quite a while.
As you grow, horse units become more useful due to their high movement points and thus ability to quickly reinforce areas under attack.
As long as you have a decent army any DoW is actually a blessing as it allows you to train your troops as well as often push for a favourable peace deal or even take some of their cities to further expand.
Unless they have a particularly juicy city i tend to just push for a favourable piece deal in early wars where i can milk then for gold and resources to help fuel my expansion.
The gold is most important as it is yours, the resources should be seen as no more than a stop gap as they are pretty much guaranteed to DoW you again once they rebuild their army and this is why i am usually not so rushed to take their cities as i know they will DoW me again in the future and i can take their cities when i have stopped building my own cities due to running out of spots to place them.
These early wars are often a source of free workers also which help you to more rapidly connect and develop all your cities.
As i mentioned at the start though this should be looked at realistically rather than in a black and white sense. Building a new city ever 4 tiles no matter what is not a good idea in most cases as you will often find yourself in pointless areas like the middle of a dessert or a mountain range and also you can often move a city 1 or 2 tiles away and have a vastly superior city location.
It is much more a case of grabbing as much land and resources as possible to give yourself a huge base to work up from. Your creating a large gold producing empire with large cashflow from all your trade networks and from selling all the excess resources you have available to you.
Plant cities in prime locations and locations with resources, then back fill as necissary to join up your empire.
Again looking realistically, Camikaze mentioned the production penalty, which i assume is meant from high unhappiness. Spamming blindly is just like placing a city every 4 tiles whatever the location is like. You need to use a bit of common sense and flexibility and you should aim to keep happiness at a managable level rather than spamming your way to crippling unhapiness.
As others have mentioned the fact of large borders and an early strain on happiness is a major sticking point but if you plan ahead i never really find this much of an issue. I tend to run out of spaces to plant cities in worthwhile spots more than i find i don't plant a new city due to happiness. I usually play a huge map with 19 civs including me and all CS's, on a medium sea level and on immortal (game composition matters when referencing how many cities you build) and i tend to plant 10-15 cities depending on my start location and what land is around me as well as how close my neighbours are. I stop building cities when i run out of places to put them.
The key for an ICS style strategy is to grab as many luxuries and strategic resourses as you can during the initial expansion phase in particular as luxuries will help greatly with happiness and any extra can be sold to buy units for defense and rapid expansion.
Grabbing strategic resourses also alows you to have personal access to resources to build a well equipped army and often plenty extra to sell on to again help buy more units for defense and rapid expansion.
Early DoW's from neighbours can be a problem but again as long as you plan for them then they can be an advantage. Concentrate on building an adequet army to fight at least two wars at the same time with a general rule i follow of having at least one archer and one warrior per border city. Early on i tend to go two warriors and one archer, with the archer obviously stationed in the city but as i grow and connect up cities with roads i tend to aim more for a 1-1 ratio as nearby units can deploy to an attacked area quickly to help defend rather than each city having to hold out by itself for quite a while.
As you grow, horse units become more useful due to their high movement points and thus ability to quickly reinforce areas under attack.
As long as you have a decent army any DoW is actually a blessing as it allows you to train your troops as well as often push for a favourable peace deal or even take some of their cities to further expand.
Unless they have a particularly juicy city i tend to just push for a favourable piece deal in early wars where i can milk then for gold and resources to help fuel my expansion.
The gold is most important as it is yours, the resources should be seen as no more than a stop gap as they are pretty much guaranteed to DoW you again once they rebuild their army and this is why i am usually not so rushed to take their cities as i know they will DoW me again in the future and i can take their cities when i have stopped building my own cities due to running out of spots to place them.
These early wars are often a source of free workers also which help you to more rapidly connect and develop all your cities.
As i mentioned at the start though this should be looked at realistically rather than in a black and white sense. Building a new city ever 4 tiles no matter what is not a good idea in most cases as you will often find yourself in pointless areas like the middle of a dessert or a mountain range and also you can often move a city 1 or 2 tiles away and have a vastly superior city location.
It is much more a case of grabbing as much land and resources as possible to give yourself a huge base to work up from. Your creating a large gold producing empire with large cashflow from all your trade networks and from selling all the excess resources you have available to you.
Plant cities in prime locations and locations with resources, then back fill as necissary to join up your empire.
Again looking realistically, Camikaze mentioned the production penalty, which i assume is meant from high unhappiness. Spamming blindly is just like placing a city every 4 tiles whatever the location is like. You need to use a bit of common sense and flexibility and you should aim to keep happiness at a managable level rather than spamming your way to crippling unhapiness.
FeiLing
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2012
- Messages
- 2,087
That doesn't sound all that bad to me! /scnr
I don't know about making 10-15 cities... aren't you struggling a lot at diving into a second social policy tree before the modern era? That would pretty much force you to win a domination victory which again doesn't really benefit from having many (non-puppet) cities.
It depends on the situation. If your concerned about SP's then France is an obvious choice, the Aztecs are also useful due to the fact you will be having many wars. Siam and Greece are also good to help with gaining culture from CS's although this is never going to be a good strategy if your looking for a cultural victory.
For a domination victory you get a lot of benefit from the fact you generate a lot of gold which is used to buy and maintain a large army. After the first few units i predominantly buy all my units with the large amounts of gold gererated through trade routes, cities and selling excess resources.
By around a 1/3 of the way through the game i usually have a big enough army to be fight two or more offensive wars at once which means i can conquer faster.
Due to your size you get a lot of DoW also which helps with diplomacy as you rarely need to decalre war which means you have a larger window to sell goods before the whole world hates you.
The large gold generation obviously makes a cheesy diplomacy victory reasonably easy and i don't find i fall behind in science as i can afford to fund many RA's, even if it involves giving the gold to a civ to pay for it and you can generate a large pool of base science from pure population so by the time of rifles i am usually in first place or moving into first place in techs.
For a domination victory you get a lot of benefit from the fact you generate a lot of gold which is used to buy and maintain a large army. After the first few units i predominantly buy all my units with the large amounts of gold gererated through trade routes, cities and selling excess resources.
By around a 1/3 of the way through the game i usually have a big enough army to be fight two or more offensive wars at once which means i can conquer faster.
Due to your size you get a lot of DoW also which helps with diplomacy as you rarely need to decalre war which means you have a larger window to sell goods before the whole world hates you.
The large gold generation obviously makes a cheesy diplomacy victory reasonably easy and i don't find i fall behind in science as i can afford to fund many RA's, even if it involves giving the gold to a civ to pay for it and you can generate a large pool of base science from pure population so by the time of rifles i am usually in first place or moving into first place in techs.
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