It's true that I just threw a $LARGESUM for maintenance cost of a mid-advanced scientific building. But let me try to argue this approach:
First of all, don't put words in my mouth. I never said population is worthless for science!! It does produce science, and is, in fact, the SOURCE of it - but by itself, without libraries, universities, biomed labs and observatories, it is feeble. This feeble scientific output is OK for the initial technologies and discoveries. But when you want serious scientific output, you will need a multiplier - a library could multiply by 2 the scientific output of that city's population. It could cost, say 10 GP/turn. Already this would encourage one to have a size 10 city rather than three size 5 cities. Then when you need the even beefier technologies and discoveries, you find that only a university, with it's further multiplier of 5, will suffice. But it will cost you, so you will only build it in the largest cities, where there is enough population to begin with (so that there is the initial scientific output to multiply with). So, as you see, population is crucial for science either way - but if you want much science, then you want to concentrate the scientific research in fewer, larger centers.
The production of wealth could be, likewise, concentrated with some institutions/buildings acting as multipliers of the initial wealth that the population of the city where the institutions/buildings are constructed. These would, again, cost a lot, so you are not going to put them in small rinky-dink cities, because they would cost more money then they would provide by multiplying the base wealth output.
These would encourage larger cities with vaster supporting surroundings.
Said all this, one could still go for the ICS, if she so choses: it could be a viable initial strategy when you are surrounded by numerous other civilizations - so you could go for ICS to have enough military units in the ring around your block of cities, and overrun a few other civs. Then perhaps you can switch to general growth mode.
Said all that, I personally hate a game that allows ICS, but to each her own.
Are you serious? It doesn't seem like you've played this game at all to sugest something like that. No offense meant.
Balance is a very delicate thing, your sugestions have no balance argument so far, nor have you thought about the impact of your sugested changes in all strategies. Balance is to make your game viable for as many strategies as possible.
Once more, your sugestions doesn't fix the ICS problem, but encourages it. If you make population whorthless when it comes to science, but depend solely on buildings that cost much, then you will depend on gold. And the fact that you make tons of gold without getting a decent per city maintenance cost with ICS is another thing that encourages it.
ICS has many attractive positives and that's why it's considered a problem right now, not only science and gold. You should look for posts that discuss it to look at the big picture and realize that no single drastic change will counter ICS, but many are needed.
