Is ICS a viable strategy?

[kwidem]

.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

The title basically says it all. I'm abroad, and have been since launch, so haven't had a chance to play test it yet. Is infinite city spamming feasible like in Civ V Vanilla and G&K? If so, any tips, or specific buildings that need to be built everywhere?

For those who don't know, ICS is a strategy whereby the player places a lage number of cities in the tightest lattice formation possible, while not letting them grow above about size 5 (maybe 8 or 9 for capital), which in Civ V often led to lage science leads (before the BNW science penalty per city).

I would read the posts here ... yes, something ICS-ish is extremely feasible and arguably is the quickest path to victory, because of trade route cheating.

 

[kirbdog]

The title basically says it all. I'm abroad, and have been since launch, so haven't had a chance to play test it yet. Is infinite city spamming feasible like in Civ V Vanilla and G&K? If so, any tips, or specific buildings that need to be built everywhere?

For those who don't know, ICS is a strategy whereby the player places a lage number of cities in the tightest lattice formation possible, while not letting them grow above about size 5 (maybe 8 or 9 for capital), which in Civ V often led to lage science leads (before the BNW science penalty per city).

The game rewards you for going wide and not worrying about height one way or another. Most bonuses are based around number of cities. Especially trade routes, which will push you to make at least 7 cities for the powerful internal trade routes (3 per city going out, 3 per city coming in).

Against tall empires, there are few power multipliers (like +50% science - try 5% lategame), and the food needed to grow prevents you from competing VS the player who just constantly spams size 10-15 cities.

A single tech (biowells) solves every ailment. If that doesn't work, just ignore health.

 

[bhavv]

In my last game I continuously built cities everywhere, down to -40 health, and nothing seemed negative about it.

Managing the trade routes is a nightmare though.

 

[Agent_TBC]

ICS was the only viable tactic in vanilla Civ V too. I'm guessing they'll nerf it just like they always end up doing.

It would be nice if just one time the game wasn't released with ICS being absolutely dominant! You'd think after they got bit a couple times in a row the first question they would ask once they have a proposed economy is "Will this make ICS the only way to go"?

 

[mnf]

If you look in the game files, there is a setting that says at X unhealthy you won't be allowed to build colonists anymore. I guess they just didn't use it because if you can't build, then you let others build it and you rob them of the fruits of their labor.

 

[alpaca]

Well, let's see. A colonist costs 640 energy, depot 270. The two trade routes (for which you build the trader in one of your first three cities) will add something like 15 energy + 15 science for a crappy 1 pop city. To recoup the 900 energy, evaluating science at 2 energy per beaker, you need 20 turns. So, unless you don't need the science anymore to win, and you have land available (doesn't matter if it's crappy desert or even snow), this seems to be the fastest return of investment in the game.

That said, the fastest victory seems to be shuffling around capitals with Coups d'États.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I would read the posts here ... yes, something ICS-ish is extremely feasible and arguably is the quickest path to victory, because of trade route cheating.

Cheating? No application of trade routes fits the definition of cheating, sorry. They're too good right now, but it is not cheating to utilize basic gameplay elements.

 

[Hail]

classical ICS is feasable, not it is optimal due to way the internal trade routes work.
an internal trade route grants resources based on the difference in yields' outputs between connected cities. imo it is more optimal to have some food/prod powerhouses.

 

[ahawk]

Yeah, TRs are not an exploit, just a little imbalanced currently.

As for ICS, I think ICS is way more feasible this time around. Way more. I mean, you get to pick a starting bonus of extra yield per city, plus the health system doesn't penalize nearly as badly for going into the negative as compared to happiness in Civ V. And beyond all that, you can spam biowells for extra health and food yield on any tiles you can spare.

So, ICS is back. Back like the Terminator. Hunting for John Connor.

 

[The_Reckoning]

Reasons ICS is dominant:

1. Lack of high %age bonus buildings with high tradeoffs. City specialisation is practically impossible. Buildings have extremely low percentage bonuses compared to the increase by just starting another city. What does 5% to unit production mean when you could just have +1 hammers towards anything instead?

2. Many per-city flat bonuses from buildings/virtues/starting choices with no downside (1g maintenance is nothing) - means the total flat bonus your civ can receive scales linearly with number of cities. This includes health, which is meant to be the "Malthusian check" on ICS.

3. Trade routes imbalanced.

4. Wonders severely underpowered, and have no "build X in all cities" requirement.

5. The amount of strategic resources you have scales linearly with the size of your civ. Many useful buildings and units require them.

6. Similarly, the ability to deploy satellites scales with land grabbed.

7. The quest system favours having many cities so that you can complete all the objectives more quickly.

8. The nuisance of aliens incentivises at least some military, which in turn incentivises high production capacity.

9. Health penalties are weak enough to be well compensated for by just having more cities.

Anything I've missed?

 

[ahawk]

#4 from what The Reckoning said is also a biggie: national college used to mean I rarely had a 2nd city until turn 70 at the earliest in Civ V.

But now? Well, there are no national wonders save for the espionage headquarters... so, there's less incentive to not expand widely in favor of using national wonders.

 

[Serenum]

Reasons ICS is dominant:

1. Lack of high %age bonus buildings with high tradeoffs. City specialisation is practically impossible. Buildings have extremely low percentage bonuses compared to the increase by just starting another city. What does 5% to unit production mean when you could just have +1 hammers towards anything instead?

2. Many per-city flat bonuses from buildings/virtues/starting choices with no downside (1g maintenance is nothing) - means the total flat bonus your civ can receive scales linearly with number of cities. This includes health, which is meant to be the "Malthusian check" on ICS.

3. Trade routes imbalanced.

4. Wonders severely underpowered, and have no "build X in all cities" requirement.

5. The amount of strategic resources you have scales linearly with the size of your civ. Many useful buildings and units require them.

6. Similarly, the ability to deploy satellites scales with land grabbed.

7. The quest system favours having many cities so that you can complete all the objectives more quickly.

8. The nuisance of aliens incentivises at least some military, which in turn incentivises high production capacity.

9. Health penalties are weak enough to be well compensated for by just having more cities.

Anything I've missed?

I would say that n.8 is not all that true, aliens in my opinion are even less annoying or threatening than barbarians in Civ5 and become a non-issue after a certain point.
Outside of that, I think you are spot-on.

 

[alpaca]

Anything I've missed?

Defensibility is also better in my opinion. Fewer ways to surround your cities and more firepower.

Colonists are rather energy-efficient for rush buying, especially in the early game.

No building trees also means there's less building up cities than in Civ5.

Apart from that, the list seems pretty exhaustive. The biggest reasons for me are the trade routes, puny health penalties and flat building bonuses rather than percentage-based values.

 

[chazzycat]

ICS is probably as strong as its ever been right now. almost all the buildings provide flat bonuses, not percentages, and you can get new cities up to speed with trade routes super fast. Combine that with wayyyy less harsh unhappiness (unhealthiness) penalties and it's set up to heavily favor ICS. Oh yeah and expansion is a total breeze, the aliens aren't a threat at all if you just get 1 point in purity and use explorers to protect settlers.

 

[kwidem]

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