Infinite City Sleaze

[Vengeance]

Well I've read a brief overview of what this is but in what way does it work to an advantage? Furthermore I've noticed that in GOTM18 certain people were placing their cities right next to each other. Why do this? Does'nt it impeed city growth? Or is it some sort of way of maximizing resource coverage? I don't know...do you? By the way hows your mother?

 

[Old n Slow]

My mother is fine, thank you for asking.

Infinite City Sleaze is a thrust for speed (I think Smash is one of our experts), a strategy that I have yet to embrace. The rationale has value -- and in my current GOTM 19 I see where some of the ICS principles could have made a diference. I built my third city in a good location, but it was about 6 moves beyond where my 5th (a forever small city anyway) city ended up. Had I switched the locations, I would have started receiving arrows sooner, probably enough to switch to Monarchy 4 years ahead of when I actually made the switch.

A second aspect is again speed -- a settler walking is a settler not producing -- and the best production is...founding a city. Consider that a road adds an arrow, but a city adds two foods, a shield and an arrow for the city space AND another three-four foods/shields/arrows as well. Why not plant the settler ASAP, recoup those gains (and build another settler) and continue?

A third aspect of ICS is small cities, which is less of a happiness problem on a deity level.

Another aspect is that small and even normal sized maps don't have enough room for the maximum number of cities, so why be concerned about placing them closer together?

But as for me, I tend to build a road, build a road, and too late build a city -- wanting too much glorious development for the cities already in place.

 

[Vengeance]

Im quite taken by the concept as managing 100+ cities is such a headache for me and detracts from the fun of the game. I would appreciate any additional input from people that have adapted this strategy into their games.

 

[Smash]

I'm not a true sleazer.I build mainly to suit the terrain and specials.Sometimes I miss a whale offshore due to the "black" or something.Down goes a city.A city need not be size 28 to be productive.

The idea is quantity over quality.True sleazers build 1 square apart in a checkerboard regardless of terrain.

The "advantage" of having lots of small cities is a size 1 city gives you 2 workers.So 1 size 2 city gives 3 workers while 2 size 1 cities would give 4 workers.Get the idea?

Cities build basically nothing but units.Settlers,caravans and/or military units if wanted.No improvements whatsoever.Tech priority is for Democracy and SoL for a switch to Communism.
Wonder priority is definitely The Gardens first and SoL.Then whatever else you want/can get.Great Wall is nice for ICS.So is War Academy.

You can develop a city(SSC) or several by using food caravans early.DaveV(Apolyton) is an ICS wiz and its quite amazing what he can accomplish.I can remember him building 75 cities in 10 turns in a deity level succession game

 

[Vengeance]

It seems like a valid tactic to me. Does not seem any more sleazy than ship chaining or manipulating the AI (research). Its an intresting way of using cities, something im going to look into in greater detail. One other thing, is there a maximum number of cities that a player can build?

 

[Smash]

Its not sleazy per say.That is just a name that someone came up.I prefer Infinite City Strategy

Its a completely legit technique.

I beleive the city limit for any 1 civ is 255 cities.

 

[starlifter]

Aha! Now I see why the Terms & Definitions thread suddenly had a couple posts lately! People were commenting about ICS there.

I always knew it as Infinite City Sleaze, but it can also mean I C S______ . It is a valid Civ 2 strategy, like any other. In it's "sleaze" aspect, there is more to it than just placing cities close together and being happy with the worked tiles to citizens ratio. You need Hanging Gardens and a strong understanding of level/civ size/city size computation. In a nutshell, ICS lets you have dozens of size 2 cities without unhappiness... if you have Hanging Gardens and no military defenders in your Monarchy cities, for instance. It is not limited to size 2; the effect works for other size cities... they key is to bust thru the threshhold to get the black dudes. This is where Sleaze earned it's name, I assume .

It's not intuitive to fully understand... you need to work at it if you want to use it. But in the end, for SP, it is not the best strategy, overall... at least IMHO. However, I'm not a real ICS expert, since I don't play it.

It seems like a valid tactic to me. Does not seem any more sleazy than ship chaining or manipulating the AI (research).

It is a valid tactic. Certain games, like MP, tend to lend themselves better to ICS, from what I understand. Someone may want to research the background of the ICS term, with S as Sleaze... I assume it is rather old, but don't know it's origin. Maybe someone might try Apolyton, or search by the dude Smash referenced.

I beleive the city limit for any 1 civ is 255 cities.

The limit for the grand total of all cities in Civ 2 is limited by an unsigned integer byte, which works out to:

2^8-1=255.

You cannot build the 255th city if you let a single AI city survive as the pet. If you can trap a respawned AI settler (restart on) and prevent them building, you can have 255 cities. You cannot build the 256th in that case.

 

[SunTzu]

Ok so basically you just build nothing but cities close together....no city improvements and not many wonders..hmmmm i can see how it could be good, well i'm off to play SP and be a sleaze lol

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

I may be one of the ones you saw in GOTM 18. I am not usually a "sleazer" because I have trouble managing 30 cities, let alone 100. I'm not very good at it because I lose focus, and stop micromanaging production. My settlers have developed bad habits in my other games, so they sometimes forget about ICSing and start doing silly things like irrigation.

However the technique is extremely powerful even in single player. Learning how HG and the Double Unhappy Black dudes work is rather cool. And once you have the numbers advantage in cities, it is just a matter of time before you can roll over the AI civs.

But the reason I did it to some extent in GOTM 18 was because of the special circumstances of that game - we were given Fundamentalism (and forced to stay in it). The ICS techniques weren't necessary for handling unhappiness (and I didn't need HG). I did it to take advantage of the tithes in fundamentalism. With happiness wonders, every city generates tithes, so the more cities I had, the more tithes I was going to produce.

Actually for anyone still learning the game or trying to play at deity, I recommend reading up on both ICS and OCC and playing several games each way. They are extreme opposite approaches but both are effective and lessons learned from both can be applied in other situations.

 

[MajorGeneral2]

I see nothing wrong with this strategy. It's simply taking advantage of game features. If advantage=sleaze, history would have a lot of "sleaze" in it. Besides, with this AI, ALL'S FAIR!

 

[GaryNemo]

The logic above seems an excellent summary of the idea. I believe what I and others actually play is something you might call a checkerboard strategy.

I build lots of small close cities to get going. But I'm planning for the future. A small city between two eventually Large cities. And it's also fun to plan for SDI, having a small city within 3 squares of the large cities.

Of course terrain is a factor, the optimal is rarely ideal. But I can have plant small close cities, and then grow from these quite a few huge cities. HG Hanging Gardens is definitely first. With Michelangelo's Chapel, add many Harbors & Markets.

On the subject of managing many cities, I use the Rename command to add a suffix to the name, which shows on all reports. Common ones BC=Settler to move to frontier and build a city, M= build a Market, W= Settler is a worker, T= build a Temple, R= city needs a Road, whatever helps me remember the plan.

 

[ferenginar]

Just what I was looking for, another opportunity to show my ignorance.

What is the story with these black dudes?

ferenginar 64

 

[ferenginar]

Ok, now I have read the Black people thread and the Apolyton link. When I finish Gotm 20, i'm going to try some ICS.

ferenginar 63