needed: tips for going wide

[Chomes99]

I just started playing with large maps, and I find them quite fun, but I obviously want to pre-empt any civ running away with too many cities, so I figure I would need to go wide in order to have a chance.

I am playing Terra/emperor/epic/large/raging barbs. current new game with France.

Liberty is obvious, but are they any other consideration anyone can offer? my usual style is to go tall, and war monger and puppet, but I want to actually develop a large empire peacefully if possible. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[fufie]

Make more cities than any AI with ICS There is a good guide at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=473168 for ICS with Maya and Arabia, but many of the tips will work for any civ attempting ICS.

The two UU of France will of course be excellent when your small cities all swarm the world with units.

 

[Chomes99]

Thanks for that, but I think I would like my cities to be more than 3 or 4 pop as per the ICS guide.

 

[SouljahAtWar]

Thanks for that, but I think I would like my cities to be more than 3 or 4 pop as per the ICS guide.

I find it slightly impossible to do unless you have 5-6 refined cities or unable to growing wide anymore.

 

[Seabastian Civ]

Your constraint is happiness.

Obviously, you will need lots of luxuries and mercantile city state allies. Still, you will quickly run out of happiness.

To remedy this, you need religion. The best religion you could get would be Ceremonial burial, with +2 happiness from temples/+1 from shrines (for puppets), pagodas/mosques (for your cities), and one of the enhancers that speed up spread (itinerent/texts). Then you can knock down the happy cost for new cities from 4 to 3, 2, or 1. taking Order will give you that 1 missing happiness.

The problem then is that each new citizen will add 1 unhappiness. Imagine 5 cities adding 1 citizen = 5 unhappiness. Now think about how quickly cities hit 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 pop when they have fish, wheat, salt, etc. That -5 unhappiness will happen every 15 turns or so. For this reason, ICS can't really get bigger than 3 or 4 without major happiness problems.

If you don't want to stick to small cities, then you'll need a mod to turn off happiness, I guess.

 

[thegingerninja]

If you are hemmed in, devour one of you neighbors but leave only their capitol, which you should surround so escape is futile .

 

[joncnunn]

This is also mid game, but pick the policy under Patronage that give +20 influence and combine it with pledging to protect every city state.
That would give you free friendship status with every City State on the map.
(+3 happiness per Merchantile state, along with misc benefits for every city state type)

 

[SYahoo]

It is difficult to play peacfully with a large empire. Generally speaking, without tweaking game start settings the other civs/AIs around you are going to get upset with you because you are scooping up all the land. Planting 7+ cities is not a good way to make friends and it is nearly impossible to do without forward settling on someone.

Terra maps are especially tight-packed starts and the sea-level cannot be altered to make more land available as an option. You can remove some AIs to give more space but, in my experience at least, this quickly leads to a very imbalanced game. Map-type is an important option to consider when you are deciding to try a specific style of play and I find Pangea-Plus works the best if you still want to have an option for a navy (I don't have a lot of experience with Lakes, Frontier, Amazon, etc). Placing CSs off the main land opens up a lot of space to work with and a little more freedom for initial expansion.

The best experience I have had attempting something like this was with Russia once when i was able to destroy the other 2 AIs that started with me on a Continents-Plus map before we met the other 5 civs so it wasn't hard to stay on good terms with them.

 

[fufie]

Of course ICS is the more extreme version of going wide and it requires discipline and sometimes counter-intuitive play early-mid game to restrict growth and foregoing wonders and nice buildings.

Naturally you can also go for a more moderate "wide" with 6-15 cities plus puppets. The key is of course managing happiness (like all wide approaches), typically through religion. Where ICS has small cities and religious happiness tied to early buildings/small cities, the belief choices might be changed a bit for a moderate wide. Goddess of Love is quite strong, Ceremonial Burial is always a winner, Pagodas/Religious Center/Asceticism all help. France doesn't really aid you that much, except you might be able to skip building monuments early in favour of shrines for faith generation. I have also had success with Holland (Emperor) with moderately wide since you can trade like a maniac for gold and still keep above zero happiness due to their UA. The extra dutch gold allows buying of units/buildings so you can spend hammers on other production.

 

[fuzzatron717]

Watch Quill18's maya Ics videos most of his citys were 6-7 in the end last i recall.

 

[Dr. D]

I always go for domination so happiness can be a battle. Lately I have found quite a bit of success with goddess of love pantheon, ceremonial burial, asceticism for shrines, religious center for temples, and religious texts or itinerant preachers. As long as you build the appropriate happiness buildings throughout the game, you can get quite a bit of mileage out of this strategy.

 

[Fluffball]

Thanks for that, but I think I would like my cities to be more than 3 or 4 pop as per the ICS guide.

The size of your filler cities doesn't need to be that low and i generally have my smallest cities (excluding ones i found very late) as at least 6-9 depending on what religion i get.

+2 for Colosseum and +3 for theaters is reasonable in the vast majority of cities so that is 5 base to start with.
Then you may have a quarry or horses/elephants and then a minimum of a university so if you take rationalism that is another +1 happiness.

The main point of ICS is to stay happiness neutral in each city and that to that end, depending on what policies you take you can grow a city to around 15/16 and be able to build happiness buildings to counter the unhappiness from citizens.

My general rule is to grow each city as large as possible while being able to build happiness buildings to counter the growth. If i build a city in tundra/forest it is likely i will have a lot of production but little food so i can build the happiness buildings but not grow the population so i will maybe only keep that city at 3 or 4 population.
On the opposite scale i may have a city with a huge amount of food and very little production so i can grow my city but not realistically build the expensive happiness buildings so will likely keep that at around 6-8 (i will build up to theaters).
If i have the production and food available to grow and build extra happiness buildings, along with the right social policies i will try to grow a city much higher.

 

[DrunkenRine]

pick egypt (+2 happiness from temple), liberty and piety,

pick for your religion:
+1 happiness for city with size 6
+2 happiness for temple
+1 happiness for shrine (could also pick +2 culture on temple)

with +1 happiness per trade route it adds to

+7 happiness on a city with size 6

so with colosseum you can easily grow to size 9, circus? size 11, theater? the list goes on.

any global penalties from number of cities are already nerfed through the map size.


does that solve your happiness issues?


btw: i didnt mention city states, wonders, luxuries or any other modifier gained through other policies.

 

[Zezima]

A great happiness boost for going wide is the Commerce policy that gives +2 happiness for every luxury. You can easily manage having ~10 pop cities while going super wide (just not as wide as ICS). You just need the proper policy selection and happiness buildings (a mercantile CS or two helps of course).

The key to accomplishing this is to put some extra distance between your cities (4-6 hexes) instead of ICS's standard 3. ICS is an entirely different beast compared to going wide, because the objective is to mass as many cities as possible. A wide player still probably has a general idea of how many cities they want and are picky about their city locations.

 

[Chomes99]

all great tips everyone. thanks!

I tend to be very picky about my city placement, and want to have as much space as possible and take advantage of every resource I can. for instance, I had to settle a city far from my capital near India's border just because it had 5 ocean resouces, it will be a boom town once I tap those resources, with lighthouse, habour, shipyard. but for the time being it has no land resources and will be a slow starter

In my current French game, I have settled 6 cities and I am starting to get hemmed in, but I could probably squeak two more out if I am quick. nobody has warned me yet. I will post save file tonight, as I am very proud of my game so far. I felt very lucky getting a desert start and got Petra and desert folklore. my religion is the boss.

 

[GustavAdolf270]

I was just wondering how many cities an ICS strategy yields by the end of a game? I don't particularly do an ICS per se, but end up with 35-40 cities when I go for a wide type empire. But ususally I try and get all my cities over 20 pop. with about 1/3 being over 30 pop.

 

[Matthew.]

35-40 cities would qualify as ICS. What map size and how many of those are sacked enemy empires?

 

[civ54lyfe]

I couldn't pull off expansion like this unless I either started near a great Nat wonder, or started to focus my religion on Happy (instead of Hammers like I always do).

 

[Cicerosaurus]

I love going wide, but as has been mentioned, happiness does require some management. Mercantile CS area great benefit as are social policies that provide happiness.

End game, the castle that is built after railway (Wonder) is extremely useful and the AI doesn't seem to bother with it.

The other thing is with a lot of cities you need a lot of defensive military units. They may need to cover a lot of ground to get to the action so having some handy to each likely attack spot is a must.

 

[Matthew.]

The key with going wide is all about netting luxuries. If you start on a map with not a lot of open space and few luxuries around, then you are better off playing tall or going a domination route and taking your neighbor's cities (since cities always start near luxuries.)