Thoughts on REX+ICS

[alpaca]

You were suggesting an early GE for the FP in RB3....have you actually played a game where you went this route?

Sometimes the FP is a serious pain in the ass to build, especially with India's grassland starts. If the golden age timing is off, it could take my best city 20-25 turns to build. I like to pop Civil Service with my first GS, so I'd be seriously delaying that and researching workshops detours away from Banking.

...just wondering if anyone has found GE->FP to be a timesaver.

I think I was arguing against the engineer, and we ultimately didn't try it. I never tested it so far because it means you have to seriously delay putting scientists specialists in your cities, seeing they provide points twice as quickly as the single GE slot does. I don't think it's worth it but I'm not so sure that I think I might not stand corrected

 

[pi-r8]

I still think that it could work, although I haven't tried it yet either. It's probably close either way, though.

First, let's assume that we're going to be hurrying along the bottom tech path quickly, anyway, in order to get good seige units. So we'll get metal casting pretty quickly, not too long after getting writing. And we assume that we're not going to use a scientist on any early tech like civil service, but use the first one on banking.

It takes at least 20 turns to build the forbidden palace, and at most 10 turns to research banking. So the engineer saves more time than a scientist there. However the engineer does come out later, maybe not until after you've researched banking. And it might also delay your 2nd and 3rd scientists a little (1st scientists gets replaced with an engineer).

I think in those circumstances the engineer might get you the FP about 5 turns faster. Which is not great, but it's something. Worth considering if you're having happiness issues, and don't have a lot of production anywhere.

 

[random1102]

How do you guys run your ICS strategy ?


seems like at some point , it just seems to choke and backfire on me.

heres my typical scenario ( i am still stuck on prince)

pick china
churn out settlers
tech for writing to get papermaker , construction for colosseum
-here's another part i can't figure out , how are players paying for their colosseum upkeep on each of their mini towns ? for china , it kinda feels like papermaker offsets the colosseum upkeep and at least i get to keep the town produce.

each city population caps around 4-5 , so there isn't much citizens to allocate for specialist buildings nor do i build them.

generally , i try to avoid wars by gifting some towns in conflict zones and make the AI fight themselves.

i intend to win by diplomacy ... but around the renaissance era , i start losing steam and the AI starts to overtake me in terms of ... just about everything except land size.
and its not even anywhere near the united nations era yet ...

any advice ?

 

[ZwodahS]

i recently try ICSREX with china due to papermaker as well. one of my initial thought is , since i will definitely build library in every town, and paper maker give me a net +3gold which cover the cost of colosseum,using china means that i get a net of 0 gold from building. a town of 4 citizen give around 3~4 gold(from trade route), + other gold input from tiles, which will give you around 8~10 (correct me if i am wrong).

On top of that, if you have meritocracy, each city gives you +1unhappiness + 4 unhappiness = net of 1 unhappiness after you build a colosseum in it. what this means is that you can have 5 city per luxury. and you kind of get free gold/free science from each city.

without papermaker, you just make 3 less gold from each city. but the trade route kind of covers the cost of colosseum.

as for how to defend against the AI, i am lucky for my current game that i have a choke point that kind of divide me with the other part of the continent and i have enough space for like 14 cities within the choked area. AI haven't declare war on me though i have stupidly agree to a war against germany due to another civ.

personally i feel that space vict seems to be the most desirable vict condition since you will be out teching AI pretty much the whole game =/.

another key lesson i learn so far, probably mentioned by OP, maintaining a key amount of army will let the other civ think twice about DOW on you. this can be done by keeping track of your demograph and ensure you are not 8th in military strength. I also have a few production city (with 15 hammer from tiles) to generate troops when there is nothing much to build.

 

[ZwodahS]

Just a question , at what size do you stop the city growth ? at the moment i stop growth on most city at size 4, while letting my production city grow to the number of prod tiles they have around them. it is a good strategy ? or just let all the city grow ?

 

[atteSmythe]

Just a question , at what size do you stop the city growth ? at the moment i stop growth on most city at size 4, while letting my production city grow to the number of prod tiles they have around them. it is a good strategy ? or just let all the city grow ?

Personally, I've been stopping most of my cities at five, but only because you don't get a status notification when it pops to size 6. Ideally, I'd like to start capping at 4, then uncap them all for one turn to let them grow once I pop a new happiness trait or wonder...I just haven't had the discipline to do that yet.

 

[Monthar]

I've been stopping my growth at 2 Citizens early on because that is the required number to build settlers. This has allowed me to found more cities early on. The nice thing about that is the prevent growth button lets the city fill the food stores and just holds off adding that next citizen. So when you uncheck the box and hit next turn, that city will get its next citizen.

I figure once I have as much land as I can grab and have built libraries in the cities, I can let it grow and the next turn get a bunch of them to 3, allowing an instant boost of +2 science per city from assigning that new citizen to one of the specialist slots.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Size 2 is clearly optimal early on. You want to work as many city tiles as possible during the period when you are badly constrained by Happiness. Once Colosseums start going up, you can buy additional Maritime allies to fuel Settler production, then grow.

 

[ZwodahS]

Capping at 2 is optimal at the start. At the moment I am the point most of my starting cities already have paper maker and col. Some even have market. So most of my city is at size 4. I dun see a reason why I should grow them unless the city have high hammer tiles around it or high gold tiles(3 and above)

But at the moment I have 2 maritime ally and I find that by not letting them grow kind but wasting my maritime. But I can't stop allying them cause my production cities need the food.

Do you guys build market and bank ? Since after col and lib there is practically nothing to build in that cities except settlers or do you just keep spamming cities.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Depends on who you ask. I build Unis. Others spam more cities.

 

[pi-r8]

I do build some markets, but that's mainly out of laziness (it let's me forget about that city for a while). I don't think the market is really a good build. It's 120 hammers, and only adds 2 or 3 gold/turn. I would think you could find a better deal than that.

edit: if you think you can win within the next 50 turns then you're probably better off just building gold.

 

[atteSmythe]

I tried capping at 2 last night. It did seem to be nicer for expansion before I got my second MCS up...afterward and beyond, it felt like the small filler cities were losing me gold and slowing my colosseum build rate. It was definitely nice for them to have full granaries, so they'd grow the very next turn. Easier than trying to remember five turns from now which cities were supposed to grow and not. So, I guess my next task is to figure out when best to allow them to grow to 4, and then to 5.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Once you add the second Maritime, growth to 4 becomes inevitable. Once you open Renaissance, cities will grow to 4 whether you like it or not.

 

[Paeanblack]

Once you add the second Maritime, growth to 4 becomes inevitable. Once you open Renaissance, cities will grow to 4 whether you like it or not.

Unless you keep producing settlers.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Unless you keep producing settlers.

There exists an upper limit to your ability to do so profitably.

 

[Monthar]

Once you add the second Maritime, growth to 4 becomes inevitable. Once you open Renaissance, cities will grow to 4 whether you like it or not.

Unless you keep producing settlers.

Or you just check the avoid growth box. This will do two things; 1) Not let the city add a new citizen when the food stores are filled. 2) Move citizens to higher hammer/gold tiles instead of food tiles, if possible, no matter what focus the city is set to.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I tried a very sloppy game (watching TV while playing), France, prince difficulty, powerful start, just to test it out. 3 saves: 70turns, 100turns, 170turns.

ICS is good for a casual player that doesn't want to micromanagement but I have to say it's not the optimal approach. Growth is fast, but linear rather than exponential because the game places some bottlenecks to limit it. Maybe I'm not doing it right? I don't know, I fought my way to beat deity as a warmonger, maybe I'm not a very good peacemonger?