Thoughts on REX+ICS

So what tech path do you like early on? I know you want to get to Banking, but there are a lot of ways to get there (and you see Acoustics as a wasteful detour).
 
Paeanblack said:
Happiness:

Happiness controls your expansion speed. You can push this down to -9 without problems. If it is higher than -9, you aren't expanding as fast as you could; if it goes -10, you are dead in the water until you fix it (which can sometimes take a while). The reason you can push it negative is that if you are building settlers, there is no penalty for single-digit unhappiness. Those 9 points are free expansion capacity...use them.

The catch, however, is that you need Colosseums, if you are building Colosseums while unhappy, you are losing food=growth=science. To keep the system running smoothly, you need to keep your cities in sync and cycle between building settlers while unhappy and building infrastructure while happy. If your cities are out of sync, you are inefficient. If your happiness is out of cycle, you have gone off the rails.Unfortunately this is an extremely unstable setup. After finishing a round of Colosseums, your happiness just went up, but that's when you want it low. After finishing a batch of Settlers, your happiness is way down, but now you need to immediately raise it by 20 points to handle the next batch of Settlers, or immediately raise it 12-13 points before building Colosseums. 9 points is not enough, because your cities will grow while building infrastructure.
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Excellent info Paeanblack. On the bolded point, how would that work? I mean, I understand why you are building settlers when you are at -9, but when you are at -9 you need to be thinking of building coloseums to get you back to in the positive area. If not, you're at -9, once the new wave of settlers at settled, you could easily be -20. I think this is an impossible position.

The only thing I can think of is simply never go into the negative.
 
yanner39 said:
Excellent info Paeanblack. On the bolded point, how would that work? I mean, I understand why you are building settlers when you are at -9, but when you are at -9 you need to be thinking of building coloseums to get you back to in the positive area. If not, you're at -9, once the new wave of settlers at settled, you could easily be -20. I think this is an impossible position.

The only thing I can think of is simply never go into the negative.
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There are 3 big happiness jumps available:
-Luxury grab: if you are lucky enough to have 3 or 4 new luxuries in your vicinity (~12 tiles from capital) when you have a chunk of settlers ready to go AND have the workers ready to hook them up AND have the techs researched (there is a huge benefit to settling directly on the resource, but only a 1/7 chance that it will fit perfectly into your grid)
-Meritocracy: if you have the roads built AND your expansion rate hasn't yet put more SPs out of reach
-Foreign Palace: if you have Banking AND have a city you can switch to decent production

Each one of these is worth 15-20 Happiness in a single shot, which is enough to safely switch to a round of infrastructure building (Colosseums/Workers/Libraries)

After the FP, things get much more stable. Colosseums start coming on line frequently enough that Happiness is no longer a crucial constraint.
 
How are you gaining 15 happiness out of Meritocracy and still have enough culture to actually get there quickly?
 
alpaca said:
I think he likes to play Gandhi. Gandhi has some advantages when you get tons of food.
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That's right, Meritocracy is only three in (doable). I was thinking it was four in (not happening unless you're Napoleon). Tells you how often I'm running the tree these days.
 
In my first run with France on Immortal, I'm scheduled to enter the industrial era at 520 AD. I know that I made plenty of mistakes. I have maybe 27 cities at this point. Don't have the game open right now. But I suspect that it's possible to hit the industrial era before 0 AD.

It's a small map and I've killed off 3 AI civs, and I haven't been using research agreements. Many research agreements could speed it up considerably.
 
Martin Alvito said:
Frogs. Only Napoleon can run a proper ICS.
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Or....Before I read Paeanblack, I just settled one city, racked up the culture points and once I got Meritocracy, I spammed a bunch of settlers. I'm delaying the ICS but at least I getting the SPs I need.

Also, building the Monument in the capital helps.
 
Napoleon can get a lot more social policies without sacrificing his expansion speed. That early strength is so unbelievably powerful that I'm pretty sure nobody else is competitive with it.

I filled out the whole liberty tree, the first freedom policy (the second best ICS policy after meritocracy) and the first order policy by 490 AD. And that was without a concerted monument-building effort.
 
Jaguar said:
Napoleon can get a lot more social policies without sacrificing his expansion speed. That early strength is so unbelievably powerful that I'm pretty sure nobody else is competitive with it.

I filled out the whole liberty tree, the first freedom policy (the second best ICS policy after meritocracy) and the first order policy by 490 AD. And that was without a concerted monument-building effort.
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Well, you need 3 policies - you can get there by cultured city state first also - it will delay your maritime but not by that much IMO. I just did it with Siam in a game yesterday (don't think you need the bonus either)
 
Jaguar said:
Napoleon can get a lot more social policies without sacrificing his expansion speed. That early strength is so unbelievably powerful that I'm pretty sure nobody else is competitive with it.

I filled out the whole liberty tree, the first freedom policy (the second best ICS policy after meritocracy) and the first order policy by 490 AD. And that was without a concerted monument-building effort.
Click to expand...

IMO the liberty tree policies are suboptimal for ICS, except the tree itself which you should unlock for the cheap settlers.
 
Paeanblack said:
What's the alternative for REX+ICS?
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Honour I guess? On higher level you will need ot beat the AI back if you want loads of cities. Not that Honour is that exciting either.

Maybe piety for the 20% happyness?
 
Given four, I'd take the first Liberty, the first two in Rationalism, and the first Freedom. If I can have my cake and eat it too on Happiness in the Renaissance, I'll take the brief GA and the huge Scientist buff.

If you're only getting three (ie: all but Napoleon), I can't see any way that you can beat Meritocracy. That much early Happiness is meaningful.
 
As France, you get huge numbers of policies early game. If you were to "save" your points, you'd miss out on the effects of all those early hammers and happiness, and additionally, your policy costs will increase as you get more cities.

It's not a tradeoff of one liberty policy vs one order policy. It's more like a tradeoff of 2-3 liberty policies plus many extra resources earlier vs one order policy.
 
stii said:
Honour I guess? On higher level you will need ot beat the AI back if you want loads of cities. Not that Honour is that exciting either.

Maybe piety for the 20% happyness?
Click to expand...

Both are three down, which is one too many if you want to take liberty and don't have significant extra culture.
 
If you have to wait, I'd say unlock Freedom. Always equal or better than meritocracy by the point you have a library everywhere.
 
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