The ICS Experiment w/4 Civs

[The Pilgrim]

Forced myself to play until 199.
I have 30 cities: 7 puppets, 1 annexed, the rest are mine. Growing slowly, but steadily. I allied 2/3 culture CS, and shortly will ally the last one. Policies come once in ~18-20 turns, not horrible. I still don't have lots of cultural buildings. Few universities, PS in capital, another couple in process. I will probably annex Washington and Siamese cities a little later.
Siam is dead, Theodora died last turn as well. Everybody hates everybody, me included. Cathy is hostile and has some sort of an army, so she might DoW soon. Since domination and diplomacy have been 'taken' already, I decided to go science instead. Just for kicks. Tommy is more than welcome to go culture.

 

[The Pilgrim]

The fact that it doesn't do You any good doesn't mean that someone else can't squeeze some good stuff out of it .

Before the time means there is a point when I want to rush buy settlers and not walls, so I prefer the war to be on my terms, when it's convenient for me, and not when one mad AI bribes all my neighbors. Usually I don't mind early DoW's. Free puppets without diplo consequences, how is that bad? But when you're trying to expand and grow, let's say the dogpile is not always appealing.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

And I don't tackle my 13 y.o. son or his friends, despite the fact they are much more competent at sports than AI is at Civ 5. That's how I operate. How others do is not my business. They're entitled to play in any way they like. Your desire to be the biggest daddy ever is hardly a secret, so feel free to keep it up.

haha, yeah. good analogy. sometimes playing with one hand behind your back is what makes it fun when you are playing against children. defeating an already gimpy, poor AI using such cheesy tactics is like dunking on kid in a wheelchair, pointing at him and saying he sucks. still, he can play that way if he prefers it.

dammit, gotm50 is up and running and seeing this thread again makes me want to play some Arabia/Maya/Egypt right now. but im watching The Hobbit in an hour and its almost a 3h long movie. So no ICSing for me until about 5 hours from now. this game is truly crack sometimes.

 

[The Pilgrim]

How about I'll watch The Hobbit and you finish my game?

Yep, AI is a handicapped kid, that's how I see it. So when you have no choice, it's all fair. But when there is a choice, I prefer to avoid extra cheese.

 

[Moriarte]

Before the time means there is a point when I want to rush buy settlers and not walls, so I prefer the war to be on my terms, when it's convenient for me, and not when one mad AI bribes all my neighbors. Usually I don't mind early DoW's. Free puppets without diplo consequences, how is that bad? But when you're trying to expand and grow, let's say the dogpile is not always appealing.

For me it is easier to trim neigboring AI's forces from like turn 35 onwards with few archers. That usually means free workers too, and experience. So, at turn 60, when i have full fledged 6 pack of Bowmen it is easier to take the capital. No walls here. AIs usually retreat to defend their cap, even at Deity, if you DoW first. So you just hunt them down. I find it much much harder to deal with 12 units at turn 60, when i only have 6.

I won't try this while being jammed between aggressive neighbors, because pissing them off before the time doesn't do me any good.

Sorry, I don't see how i can peacefully expand on Deity while being jammed between two aggressive AIs. I will at least try to bribe one to war with other, and will definitely play my part in that war . Otherwise i am getting squashed by a winner of that war.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Sure, if you DoW in order to take the capital or trim AI down, not to snatch a worker. My point is stealing a worker by itself, IMO, is not worth it in such case. Even if you mean to go offensive from the start. Like you say, it's easier to deal with 6 units, not 12, so pushing AI into pumping units mode from turn 15, how is it gonna help you? On turn 40 you find yourself defending on multiple fronts, which just slows you down. This war is not on your terms, it takes a while to counter attack. For me it's easier to attack on 40-50 with several units ready.
India game for example. I stole Incas workers (many, many workers ). Didn't care about him, the war was unavoidable anyways. But for culture I did wanted second and third city asap, before I start spamming units and going offensive. He was fighting Polynesia as well, building a freakin' wonder, offered me cash. I consider him trimmed. 15 turns after we signed peace he comes, all friendly not holding a grudge, and asks to attack Kammy. I decline. Next turn double DoW by two of them. The good part was I had 3 solid cities by that point, lots of improved resources, so I easily rush bought units and walls as needed. And while I was never at danger myself, my army (7-8 guys) was split in two fronts. Half of the army was not sufficient to take Cusco, Kammy on the other side kept banging his head against the wall, so there was no way to pull CB's back. With less defensible terrain or on deity, the story could have been very different for me.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

at t165 in Arabia ICS. left siam and America with 1 city each and settled 14 of my own with 3 puppets. I stupidly annexed Boston when i meant to puppet but its working out since its on the coast and im gonna build a naval army for Edinburg and Moscow. both DF and Stone Circles were taken so i got Messenger instead and have about 160bpt right now. gold/lux is fine but happiness is riding +2/-2 a whole lot. ive been prebuilding roads to when i settled its connected quicker. my religion took a long to time to spread but im in the lead with 14 cities but Boudicca has 4 missionaries that i can see going places. I took Asceticism and Ceremonial burial but its taking forever to get 3 actual followers in the city for the shrine bonus. I have 8 camel archers and some xbows and only 2 melee units, a pike and gifted knight. im gonna build a privateer for sniping some coast cities when the melee units get capped. I still havent met 2 other civs and just now at t163 met Russia. happ would be alot better if i could trade my gigantic lux supply.

i have room for another 7 but not the surplus happiness since Siam and America werent doing any wonders. I hope Boudicca has a bunch. She's next. I only built Pyramids as my wonder. got beat to all the others and had to use liberty's GP on a prophet cuz i missed all the good faith generating pantheons. I can buy cathedrals but am just now starting to get my first one after i had to spam 3 missionaries. I took the 30% cheaper missionaries/inquisitors for the first time to see if it was worth it.

 

[budweiser]

at t165 in Arabia ICS. left siam and America with 1 city each and settled 14 of my own with 3 puppets. I stupidly annexed Boston when i meant to puppet but its working out since its on the coast and im gonna build a naval army for Edinburg and Moscow. both DF and Stone Circles were taken so i got Messenger instead and have about 160bpt right now. gold/lux is fine but happiness is riding +2/-2 a whole lot. ive been prebuilding roads to when i settled its connected quicker. my religion took a long to time to spread but im in the lead with 14 cities but Boudicca has 4 missionaries that i can see going places. I took Asceticism and Ceremonial burial but its taking forever to get 3 actual followers in the city for the shrine bonus. I have 8 camel archers and some xbows and only 2 melee units, a pike and gifted knight. im gonna build a privateer for sniping some coast cities when the melee units get capped. I still havent met 2 other civs and just now at t163 met Russia. happ would be alot better if i could trade my gigantic lux supply.

i have room for another 7 but not the surplus happiness since Siam and America werent doing any wonders. I hope Boudicca has a bunch. She's next. I only built Pyramids as my wonder. got beat to all the others and had to use liberty's GP on a prophet cuz i missed all the good faith generating pantheons. I can buy cathedrals but am just now starting to get my first one after i had to spam 3 missionaries. I took the 30% cheaper missionaries/inquisitors for the first time to see if it was worth it.

Are you anywhere close to Protectionism? It will solve your happiness problem.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Every turn takes sooooo long...
Turn 225. Russia didn't DoW. I didn't either, but sort of close to it. I have a bad filling the real Mayans will win before my Mayans will reach Alpha Centauri.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Are you anywhere close to Protectionism? It will solve your happiness problem.

didnt open commerce. my cpt is still making policies about every 30-40 turns (i really miss France's every 20 turns) so ive only got maybe 2 more to go. i opened patronage cuz im trying the protect for constant friends thing. only 1 more for that and the order opener should fix it but its 40 turns away and will come when it isnt necessary. and trade route bonus isnt adding up nearly as much as i thought. shouldve taken commerce for the road maintenance and protectionsim.

the other problem is meeting everyone. 2 more civs and several CSs left to help me out with that.

one thing i found from the protect/patronage thing is Florence keeps dropping to 26 and wont stay at 30. it has been rigged a couple times but then doesnt go back up to 30. i put my own spy there but i dont think its high enough level to beat the spy who is there already.

 

[budweiser]

I cant stand a game with no policies, its barbaric. Its probably what holds me back the most from fast finish times. I always need 10-15 turn culture or I lose interest.

Something very weird just happened. I loaded up that t200 save that I showed on page 2 to inspect it. In my screen shot you can very clearly see some red left on Moscow. Enough red to keep that Horse unit from taking the city. Its one reason why I paused at that point. Well, I loaded the save and Moscow was totally down to nothing, no red, so I attacked and won with my Horseman. Thats not too cool if the graphics can get messed up like that.

 

[Browd]

Finally had the chance to start this morning. Picked the Mayans, since I've played more with them than the other three. Started off stealing a worker from Rammy (he was grumpy but later agreed to white peace) and Quebec City (Rammy was protecting it, but we were already as war, so ...). Took longer than I probably should have to start spitting out settlers, but then started the conveyor belt. I must say I don't have the instincts yet for rapid expansion (maybe I will by the time I'm done with these four?) and ICS seems like a needless distraction from, um, winning, but it is interesting.

Currently turn 200, with 21 settled cities and 6 puppets (3 each from Washington and Rammy). For quite a while Cathy had "out ICSed" me, with 18 settled cities and 2 puppets (Utrecht and La Venta) and she's currently the points leader (1644 to 1465), mostly because she's spanking me badly on tech (64% literacy to 55%). But, I'm done settling and starting to work on getting my tech rate up to something respectable and spamming out culture buildings (full Liberty, Rationalism opener, Patronage opener and Aesthetics, the Order Opener and Planned Economy -- next policy is in 13 turns and suspect I'll take take Secularism, although I may take more points in Order). Dynamite is 13 turns away, and Moscow is close (no Russian cities between me and Moscow, just one of Theodora's cities and Prague, but Moscow is up to 96 defense, so I'm going to need some serious firepower. If I'm going to take Moscow, I need to do so before Cathy gets flight -- if that happens, I suspect Diplomatic will be the way to go.

Happiness has been on knife's edge for most of the game. Boudicca took Ceremonial Burial, which I really needed (my happiness would be 35 higher with CB). My religion (Desert Folklore, Church Property, Pagodas and Aesthetics) has been good, but I got Machu Picchu (bulbed with a Long Count Great Engineer) so gold hasn't been an issue since about t100 or so (contributing 70 gpt of my non-Golden Age 263 gpt surplus). Besides MP, I got Pyramids, Stonehenge, Oracle, Porcelain Tower, and Notre Dame in my capital and Sistine Chapel in Tikal.

Attached images are eastern empire, western empire, demographics and world religion.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I cant stand a game with no policies, its barbaric. Its probably what holds me back the most from fast finish times. I always need 10-15 turn culture or I lose interest.

Something very weird just happened. I loaded up that t200 save that I showed on page 2 to inspect it. In my screen shot you can very clearly see some red left on Moscow. Enough red to keep that Horse unit from taking the city. Its one reason why I paused at that point. Well, I loaded the save and Moscow was totally down to nothing, no red, so I attacked and won with my Horseman. Thats not too cool if the graphics can get messed up like that.

thats an interesting bug. im currently getting the weird Byz boat graphic on a unit but no icon saying any unit is there, just a dromon picture. I could attack it but not with just a right click. i had to hit attack tile option, then the tile and it attacked but didnt show how much dmg was done.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

im at t185. took over 3 hours for 20 turns! this is more tedious than i expected. im taking on Constantinople right now and then going to try for Moscow. Might not work either, she has MANY units even though my empire is bigger, but CAs are approaching being behind in tech. Only a couple have logisitcs and i need like 5 to keep from upgrading. She is actually 4th in pts behind me, Inca, and William (the wonder-spammer), which i found odd.

And the Prague bottleneck is a real pain. Im tempted to just take it since they have too many units to try and move an army through.

 

[Browd]

Cathy stayed far enough ahead of me in tech that I just focused on diplo victory. Tech came on with such a quick a rush at the end, however (went from about 1200 bpt to over 2100 bpt in about 15-20 turns and I didn't even have schools in half my cities and only NC and a lab in my capital -- built NC near the end--quite expensive with that many cities ). I ended up finishing the tech tree shortly after I finished building the UN. So, after locking up alliances with all of the remaining CSs, I upgraded my artillery, gatlings and GW Bombers to rocket artillery, mech infantry and stealth, and sniped Cathy's wonder-stuffed capital on the turn the UN vote occurred (really boosted my score). She had 4 SS parts built, but dithered on the last 2 parts (as the AI tends to do--building CN Tower and other pointless stuff -- of course, I built my own worthless wonder - Neuschwanstein -- 5 CS were asking for it, so I built it).

I think I will do the Arabian variation on this map, but ICS is tiring and a slow way to win. I was getting social policies every 14 turns or so, but turn times got quite lengthy toward the end.

For Arabia, I will definitely build temples. With pyramids, I skipped temples until very near the end (wanted to boost faith to get one last GE to plant to help build the UN), but that won't work for Arabia.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I didn't get to Protectionism. Got the road maintenance reduction but then switched to Rationalism. Currently I am 9 (ish) turns away from Order opener, so my happiness is on the edge right now, but will be secured soon. I've traded lux per lux until lately when finally everybody started to really hate me, and have pagodas in each and every city I settled/annexed. No major happiness problems till now. Next several turns will be a little tight though. But there is also FP in Moscow.

Hammer Rabbi, are you allied with Prague? I allied them recently and will let Cathy capture them. Double win. She suicides some of her units and wipes out all of theirs and thus cleans my way to Moscow. That's the plan anyways. Hopefully I'll finish this game tonight.

Browd, how did you manage to get NC? And how many hammers is it?
I totally agree on 'interesting distraction from winning' point, btw. Refreshing - yes, beneficial... not so much.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

yeah, i allied with Prague for easy passage but they had 10 plus units clogging stuff up, plus it isnt all horse units. GG and xbows took a long time as my roads ended with America for now. also, the AI knows how to really get in my craw with "random" clogging like Boudicca's scouts/missionaries deciding to plant themselves in my way for no damn reason.

i actually reloaded after a rage-dow on her for placing 2 of her missionaries directly in front of Byz's cap the turn my knights could take the capital. I had to get it out of my system before resuming regular play. Stuff like that makes me want to legitimately punch the screen.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

kind of random, but ive never tried this as i rarely have such a HUGE surplus of luxes but do you get positive status modifiers for gifting luxes to AI? do they perceive it as weakness or are they thankful? is it treated like actually giving them demands without them actually begging for stuff? ive traded for all their gold and luxes at 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 prices and I still have excess copies from Bazaars. I wish I could gift them to CSs for 20 favor or something equivalent to 250g.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Yeah, when they have too many units moving forward can be very painful. Whatever is on that isthmus must be taken. Otherwise embarking will be much faster.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I guess, you'll get a positive 'we've traded recently' modifier. But it's a weak one. I have it with everybody, and they still hate me.