Infinite city spam - a civ history & civ 6

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Civilization VI do encourage you to build a large empire but not necessarily self founded cities as conquest tend to be superior in terms of cost and effectivness.

It is worth to mention that warcart spam is probably superior in every way to settler spam

 

[Big J Money]

It's more complex than this post makes it out to be.

Just one more factor: ICS over time.

At some point in your tech and civic progression, new cities will be far enough behind on hammers (because costs are so high) that they will be ineffective cities. This is similar to Civ I - III; instead of the hammer tax being applied directly to the city's production, it is applied to the cost of the unit to be produced. This actually means it affects ALL cities, even your core cities. So any of those which are not good producers (maybe they are culture/science focuses) will also be hit hard. And that's not really ICS, I agree. But the effect it has on new cities can't be ignored for a thread about ICS. Of course, this is can be avoided as optimally as possible by REX and keeping science/culture down as long as possible until you mass build those producers in your wide empire in the late game.

So this doesn't prevent ICS, but it certainly is impactful enough, I think, to alter how the ICS strategies will play out.

 

[Cuneiform]

You don't get any additional amenities for having multiple copies of a resource, so if you endlessly spam cities and neglect entertainment districts you'll definitely have happiness problems.

Exactly right, and also if I'm facing a player with more cities than myself then that is an opportunity for more pillaging, which would hurt a wider empire more than a smaller focused one that could concentrate it's defense better.

It's early days yet, but I think there's good scope for both wide and tall empires in Civ6. Almost certainly a few things will need fine tuning to balance that a bit more, and also the AI needs to better handle both human strategies. But it's definitely an improvement on Civ5 with it's 4 city "sweet spot" mechanisms.

 

[LDiCesare]

Thank you for the recommendation for how I should spend my evening. I agree, playing the game would be most enjoyable.

You're welcome. Of course I wouldn't have dared recommend anythings hadn't you begun yourself.

- Yes, they did used to have a cost, but in this instance what we're talking about is the cumulative effect of doing this repeatedly, with the increasing cost of each settler, there is a break here.
- You need to specialise your cities to get the most out of them in this version. Simply spamming city on city is meaningless if they're not doing a lot, and investment in them early generally requires the work that's going into spamming more, either through settlers or through military.
- I may be mistaken as I've not dived too far into the maintenance mechanics, but there is a maintenance cost from cities from what I could tell. Equally, whilst you can get the occasional settler off your opponent, you'd be struggling to infinite city spam just on that.
- Being able to defend a large one is only easier if you have the military to do so.
- Except they do get annoyed at you for having a large number of cities, particularly building near them or quickly. Whilst I don't think the balance is tipped that way now, being dog piled while you've not specialised your cities could be devastating.

Yes they had exactly the same cost in civ 1 and 2 as in civ6. So putting it forth as something different is meanignless as it is not different.
I don't know what you're talking about regarding specialising cities. The bigger the city, the less specialised as it gets more districts which do different things. Any city can build one distrit and be specialised.
There is no per city maintenance.
Spamming cities means pushing back the fog of war means less barbarians means easier to defend. Having lots of cities means more production centers, and you can rush with gold anywhere anyway.
The AI does not get annoyed for your large number of cities. Trajan even likes you for that. Just don't build them near them, there is a lot space available usually until very late in the game.

- A sewer comes quite a bit later in the game, when the world is likely filled up, not sure why you're bringing it up here.

Because ICS is about spamming cities even late in the game. The remark regarding sewers is even more valid if you replace that word by aqueduct (which eats spaceon the map for something better).

Regarding amenities. That is not a problem if you build your cities in places where they won't grow. No access to water, size 2 city, just use it to mine a strategic resource or luxury and forget about it. It'snot goingto be very helpful in itself, but it can help rush buy units where you want them.

 

[Manifold]

In the moment nothing speaks against an ICS strategy and that is not so good. But the way Civ5 takes was even worst!

Huge empires should have some problems with corruption (UDSSR), inflation (Roman Empire), piracy (Spanish world ruling) banditry (Achaemenid Empire, China)...

That should represent the difficulty to rule and to hold control over the huge empire. I remember weakly that in Civ 1 and 4 it was acceptable solved and depends on government and distance to the capital.

I guess firaxis will do something against ICS in the future because I still miss the Courthouse building!

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The thing is that you can invest the production into other stuff then cities.

 

[Stalker0]

Part of the issue is also there are very few percentage bonuses in the game, so new cities pay for themselves as well as your older cities do. Gold wise for example, its far easier to build a city in a gold heavy area and just let it grow and take the gold spots than to build infrastructure in existing cities. In older versions of civ, when the capital might have a +150% bonus to gold, than investing more effort in that capital makes a lot of sense.

Right now I think its the case where yes there is theoretically infinite ICS, though because of hammer costs your new cities will develop very slowly. Right now the best option seems to be founding a new city, slamming it with all of your internal trade routes to let it grow faster and build its key structures, then found a new city when the routes expire.

 

[The Carp]

...

Civ 5

Introduced global happiness. This sort of turned the civ world upside down. Before, even on 4, the goal was generally to get as many cities as you possibly could. 4 threw road blocks down to try and slow you down (or even stop you), whereas 1-3 merely dis-incentivised you to perpetually grow. Civ 5 encouraged you to stay small, but grow big. So health was removed, and the “ideal” number of cities, particularly in the early to mid game, was pegged at 4.

...

That's wrong.
Most of my Civ 5 games were ICS style games except for when I would go for either a Culture (max 4) or Science victory (5-6).
You just had to manage your cities to make sure they wouldn't grow bigger than what local happiness they could generate.
The number of cities was only really limited to twice the number of luxuries you had access to.

 

[lamaros]

If cities suffered more penalties due to lack or amenieties or housing than they currently do then ICS might see a bit of a hit - though wide would still work if you plan it. As it is though amenity and housing penalties are almost entirely ignorable.

 

[UWHabs]

In the moment nothing speaks against an ICS strategy and that is not so good. But the way Civ5 takes was even worst!

Huge empires should have some problems with corruption (UDSSR), inflation (Roman Empire), piracy (Spanish world ruling) banditry (Achaemenid Empire, China)...

That should represent the difficulty to rule and to hold control over the huge empire. I remember weakly that in Civ 1 and 4 it was acceptable solved and depends on government and distance to the capital.

I guess firaxis will do something against ICS in the future because I still miss the Courthouse building!

That will probably come in the first expansion. I can imagine:
Districts will have a maintenance cost that's based on a distance to your capital. Cities will also have negative amenities based on distance to cap
Add a new district: Government district.
Buildings: Town Hall, Courthouse, Jail
Town Hall cuts in half the district maintenance cost for all districts within 6 tiles of the town hall.
Courthouse cuts the amenities penalty for all cities within the area
Jail - I dunno what purpose it would have in civ, but can be used for something. Maybe captured spies go to the jail, and you get science per turn from them (stealing intelligence?)

 

[Zenstrive]

Just a side note: In around turn 200, if you build a city surrounded by rainforest, if you harvest those rainforest it will easily go to 9 pop city no time. It virtually will not grow beyond that and may haven't finished it's first district even though it has 9 pop.

 

[Danzo_87]

you are encourage to go wide, but doesn't mean you go wide solely through settlers alone as your pop will suffer (your settler producing city wont be able to grow), and the districts cost that were mentioned, you could however go wide through wars which is virtually guaranteed WILL happen in higher difficulties, that way, you get cities that are already set up with the districts without going through the pain of insanely high build cost because you've progress so deep into the tech/civic tree, then again if you war too much, there's the warmonger penalty to content with as well

the caveat of all these is on paper theory crafting, in practical its not as easy to implement in the game

 

[Zuizgond]

I like the way they opened the possibility for large expansion however still limited by amenities. So you need to rush those luxuries and think about entertainment district to be within 6 tiles of a maximum of cities. But also if you spam settlers you have no army to defend.

This part of the game is well thought imo.

 

[sherbz]

That's wrong.
Most of my Civ 5 games were ICS style games except for when I would go for either a Culture (max 4) or Science victory (5-6).
You just had to manage your cities to make sure they wouldn't grow bigger than what local happiness they could generate.
The number of cities was only really limited to twice the number of luxuries you had access to.

Well, you are in the significant minority here then. ICS was not a winning strategy in civ 5. That’s not to say you couldn’t do it. But it was never the optimal strategy, and required a significant amount of micro management, which is probably also why it was never a popular strategy either. Tall was considered best largely because science output was based upon population. And your capital benefitted from being large with wonders like the academy. And local happiness? There was no such thing in civ 5! Unless you are referring to each city being happy neutral (as each city could not contribute more happiness than the sum of its population). So I disagree with your comment.

 

[sherbz]

you are encourage to go wide, but doesn't mean you go wide solely through settlers alone as your pop will suffer (your settler producing city wont be able to grow), and the districts cost that were mentioned, you could however go wide through wars which is virtually guaranteed WILL happen in higher difficulties, that way, you get cities that are already set up with the districts without going through the pain of insanely high build cost because you've progress so deep into the tech/civic tree, then again if you war too much, there's the warmonger penalty to content with as well

the caveat of all these is on paper theory crafting, in practical its not as easy to implement in the game

Its true that your settler producing city will suffer. But now that science is not so heavily dependent on population I do not actually think this is so much of a problem. Also, the removal of the academy wonder means that your capital is likely the best candidate to pump out all those settlers as stunting its growth is not really much of a drawback. Its true that you can also wage war. But wars are costly and rely a lot on geography. Its no fun marching through jungle or hills, after all. That said, technically theres nothing to stop you from pursuing a total war policy right off the bat. As each conquest is a net gain.

 

[Staal]

At this point I'd highly recommend playing more games and letting things turnover before trying to predict if the ultimate strategy is infinite city spam.

If you haven't noticed, some people find it really enjoyable to start threads about certain click-bait topics; 1UPT, ICS, UI etc regardless of whether those topics really deserve the discussion. They are more interested to be one of the first to "spot a problem" than actually play the game.

The fact is, people, Civ VI is meant to be about Empire building. This was stated during one of the dev videos. They are deliberately making it beneficial to grow. I've always found it stupid that a 4 city "Empire" can win against a globe spanning one.

There should be drawbacks to out of control growth but a bigger, well organised and developed Empire should always be better than a smaller one. That however has nothing to do with ICS which is not a problem.

 

[Staal]

I am not saying that civ6 does not need some balance tweaks. But overall, I like that the game strongly encourages wide play. I know some players are so used to civ5 but please let's not try to make civ6 into civ5.

Exactly. Encouraging wide play is a stated design goal for Civ 6.

To anyone else: that does not prove ICS.

 

[Staal]

My suggestion would be that rather than nerf the current wide play bias, they should look to buff tall play.

It makes no logical sense why a smaller empire should be able to have larger cities. Larger empire (given proper management and controlled, logical expansion) should always be better than a smaller empire (given the same level of said management). No victory condition should be made easier by staying smaller deliberately.

Encouraging wide play does not mean ICS should be or is an effective strategy. Minor balancing tweaks aside. And as was also mentioned in this thread, ICS is only an issue if it becomes the go-to strategy by being vastly superior/easier than anything else.

 

[The Carp]

Well, you are in the significant minority here then. ICS was not a winning strategy in civ 5. That’s not to say you couldn’t do it. But it was never the optimal strategy, and required a significant amount of micro management, which is probably also why it was never a popular strategy either. Tall was considered best largely because science output was based upon population. And your capital benefitted from being large with wonders like the academy. And local happiness? There was no such thing in civ 5! Unless you are referring to each city being happy neutral (as each city could not contribute more happiness than the sum of its population). So I disagree with your comment.

Yes ICS is micro intensive but, disagree all you want, it is very viable in Civ 5.
Like I said except for Science or Cultural were you need to avoid the penalties.
For a Domination or Diplomatic victory it's way better to go wide than tall.
You can produce and support a larger army a lot faster.

Local happiness IS a thing in Civ 5.
That's what you described and what this community has been calling it.
It's referred as such since it can only counter balance the unhappiness generated locally by the city's own population.

 

[killmeplease]

i like expansion not being punished but looking after 2 dozen cities is a pain
i wish cities could be combined into something like provinces just like units form corps, to reduce micro at the later stages of the game