Why I think ICS was deliberately designed as an option

[Bibor]

I just played an ICS, inspired by the numerous posts here and I came to conclusion that the ICS gameplay style was deliberately chosen by designers as one of the ways to create your empire.

Let me elaborate.

Policies
Some policies seem weaker when compared to other policies. In my opinion this is because they are tuned for a really large number of cities. The Commerce tree, the Liberty tree, Primary Freedom (specialist unhappiness halved) bring benefits that are "meh" for a small empire, but really add up for a large one. One good example would be the "roads cost 20% less" which is a 10-gold discount for an empire with 7 cities, but can save up to 50 gold for an ICS empire.

Wonders
Honestly, some wonders don't seem to cut it for a small or medium empire. Big Ben? Who has enough money to rushbuy anything? Even with a superb economy, your money surplus is not going to be that big to afford rushbuys very often. Machu Picchu is similar in effect. While for a 7-city empire it might generate a few dozen gold, for an ICS empire it will generate 200 or more gold. Status (lol @ PDF manual typos) of Liberty won't do you much good for a small empire because generally your cities are big and spead out and you want them to work tiles not specialist slots. Again, for a large empire it can mean over a 100 hammers. I might even add Pyramids to this category, because the number of hexes to be worked does matter. Similar thoughts are on Forbidden palace.

Tech pace
A smaller empire relies on its own large cities for reseach, as well as reseach agreements. Larger empires rely on large population (and less multipliers) for research. Compared to my previous experiences, research rate with a large empire is double of that of a smaller one. But add 3 research agreeements per a 30-turn period and it quickly evens out.

Culture
Although you can rushbuy everything with an ICS, culture generation comes out even, slightly in favor of medium empires, much in favor for small empires. ICS does presume you rushbuy temples, monuments and such, while normal empire approach presumes you build them and save money for research agreements.

In conclusion, this game enables you to make an empire from one city to several dozen cities and you can win with all possible combinations of city numbers, each way having its own merits and negative aspects.

 

[r_rolo1]

I disagree. I do think that they wanted to give a chance to big empires, like they did when they truncated the maintenance formula in civ IV to make the so called "conqueror plateau", where the maintenance per city even decreases a little per city added to the empire ... but they tripped in the execution and have not putted any real restriction to ICS. The issue is that , as Shafer should know as well or better than me, ICS is always the best way to play a TBS of the kind civ games are unless you put enough of countering forces in it. But you can't put countering forces to ICS if you want to keep a global pop count ( roughly ) as the limiter for the empire pop with a fixed penalty per city.

In fact this remembers me another global variable that was introduced in the first time in civ III and that was not well thought: culture and cultural wins. In civ III culture wins are acheived by simply getting a global count of culture in the whole empire ( well, this is not the only way, but it is one of the ways ) ... and this favours to make as many cities as possible and get culture out of everywhere ( Conquests (?) introduced a wonder that gave a free temple in every city until obseletion, that made things in this regard ridiculously easy ). IMHO civ V global happiness suffers of the same illness...

 

[pi-r8]

I think they wanted it to be an "option" but they went too far. Almost everything in this game rewards ICS, the only thing that a few smaller cities are actually better at is cultural victories. There's so many +X/city bonuses, and very few %based bonuses.

 

[Aldor]

Isn't the real problem that you can simply slingshot through entire tech eras (by using great scientists), to enable those cool policies?

It was obviously a design goal to keep a lot of the powerful policies locked until you had reached the era in a "valid" way, but scientists break this somewhat by allowing you to choose techs (as opposed to Civ4 where you got a tech based on what you had researched so far).

IMO the policies are fine as they are, but getting them early is causing those perceived imbalances for the ICS strategy.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I am currently playing a game without city states, and IMO it reduces the effectiveness of ICS, certainly ICS in arid territory (because you need FOOD). Suddenly I am building farms again etc. no maritime craziness - the game before that i had 15 city state allies and 39 food in my capital square.

Also, they need to fix population growth to be linear like Civ 4 to allow vertical growth before hospital.

If you get the vertical growth from CIV 4 with the global happiness from CIV 5 you've hit the sweet spot IMO.

If they manage to balance out maritime city states + fix vertical growth it will solve 90% of the ICS problems of this game.

 

[The Great Apple]

I'm not sure if it was designed, or just happened to be an unintended consequence. Three weeks and a few hundred thousand players will tend to show exploits quicker than testing! That said, the more and more I play Civ 5 the more I think that the designers haven't played Civ 2 or Civ 3, as the same mistakes that were made in those games seem to be repeated here.

I'm not really a fan of ICS as a play style... it's not fun. I prefer to feel like each city means something, and I really hope they bash it around the head with patches. I think maybe if they complicate the tech tree (more prerequisites) and bash maritime city states a bit then it might become a bit less viable.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think that they wanted big, multi-city empires to be viable. There are three separate mechanics for curbing new-city unhappiness (the only real barrier to establishing new cities) and the penalties are cut in half with Meritocracy (an early game policy) and negated once Forbidden Palace hits. By the time you have Planned Economy, each connected city actually nets you +1 happiness when it's founded.

It's not true that ICS is uniformly better at everything. It has trouble getting policies as fast as empires with less cities, and it famously has trouble with hammer concentration, which can be an issue when building wonders or making buildings.

 

[ShaqFu]

It's not true that ICS is uniformly better at everything. It has trouble getting policies as fast as empires with less cities, and it famously has trouble with hammer concentration, which can be an issue when building wonders or making buildings.

Buildings are irrelevant, since you only need cheap ones (Library, Monument, Coliseum). It certainly helps that you can rushbuy buildings, and ICS shines at having huge gold intakes. I can't think of any situation where I wouldn't want to ICS - hell, you could do a cultural victory through ICS and just sell/trade/give all your cities to the AI before your winning turn.

I'm all for all empires, big and small, being viable. I'm not all for one empire being so dominantly good that it obviates any other strategy, because by not choosing it, you're intentionally weakening yourself.

 

[Roxlimn]

ShaqFu:

You can't win Cultural as easily with a pure ICS since you're going to have trouble amassing hammer for timely Wonder production in multiple cities, and you can't buy Wonders, last I checked (not being sarcastic - I'm really not sure this is true for all Wonders).

A modified ICS isn't really ICS anymore - it's just having as many cities as you possibly can, and having more cities being always good has always been a mark of Civ games, most notoriously III, though also true in IV.

 

[dannythefool]

There is a difference between ICS and large empires. These policies may as well be there to encourage military domination. I don't really think they wanted people to build insane amounts of size 4 cities as close together as possible, but they probably did want people to build something that feels like a large empire.
I think they just forgot to make sure that ICS doesn't benefit more than "legitimate" large empire strategies ;-)

 

[Roxlimn]

dannythefool:

That's actually the point I was pointing out. Pure ICS as a theory is doable, but it's not optimized. It's actually better to just have a large empire with core cities and peripheral small cities - this actually looks fairly organic, from how I've played.

Small cities make money off of trading posts and Maritime food, core cities get farms and ridiculous numbers of Specialists and hammers.

 

[Paeanblack]

Just tried a serious REX+ICS strategy for the first time. Launched the spaceship on turn 199 (1370AD iirc).

This was Emperor/Pangaea/Standard.

It wasn't really the policies that dominated, since I hardly bothered with culture at all. I picked up 4 policies in Liberty and that was it for the rest of the game. After that, my Social Policy costs were increasing faster than my culture. The ridiculousness came from raw population (Science!) and the trade route income.

I was packing cities at max density with no regard for terrain. Workers built luxuries, then roads, then farms. The trade route income was absolutely obscene. After turn 80 or so, I had stopped training settlers and was purchasing two every three turns. By turn 120, that was three every two turns. I'd temporarily lose a city or two from an AI DoW, but the overlapping city crossfire eliminated any danger from invasions. I'd rush buy a few military, retake the cities, and keep expanding like nothing happened.

The cities built nothing but a Colosseum and Library. Once the first few expansion cities were finishing their Colosseums, everything snowballed.

Unfortunately, playing the game this way was extremely dull. I was extremely excited about Civ 5 reducing the amount of time each late-game turn would take, with puppets and whatnot. ICS is a total reversal of that. You spend a very small amount of time early on making important decisions, and then spend a ton of time later on managing inconsequential crap.

The last thing I managed to research was Nuclear Fusion. It took 1 turn. I researched all of the Future Era techs in 1 turn each. The entire rocket took 11 turns to construct.

 

[alpaca]

dannythefool:

That's actually the point I was pointing out. Pure ICS as a theory is doable, but it's not optimized. It's actually better to just have a large empire with core cities and peripheral small cities - this actually looks fairly organic, from how I've played.

Small cities make money off of trading posts and Maritime food, core cities get farms and ridiculous numbers of Specialists and hammers.

"Pure ICS"? If I decide some cities are more important than others and allowed to grow that doesn't mean it's not ICS because I still put in as many cities as I can fit on the map.

ICS strategies don't hinge on policies, maritime CS or most things you guys mention. They hinge on small city growth being a huge lot faster than large city growth, happiness buildings and high trade route efficiency. The rest is fluff and bonus but not necessary. If you like you can play an ICS game without ever picking up a social policy on a map without city states.

I don't know if it was deliberately designed but I think the devs were probably aware they left a lot of "hooks" in the game that point towards such a strategy

 

[Roxlimn]

alpaca:

If you are not limiting all your cities to 6 hexes of worked tiles, then it is not pure ICS, but simply a city-building strategy that takes advantage of ICS principles. It isn't ICS.

I have to wonder at a strategy where you don't get Meritocracy, don't have Maritime allies, don't get Forbidden Palace, or even trading posts.

Colosseums are expensive things, and if you have no money, no happiness, and no food bonuses, how can you possibly cover the hump to get the ball rolling quickly enough?

 

[pi-r8]

Just tried a serious REX+ICS strategy for the first time. Launched the spaceship on turn 199 (1370AD iirc).

This was Emperor/Pangaea/Standard.

It wasn't really the policies that dominated, since I hardly bothered with culture at all. I picked up 4 policies in Liberty and that was it for the rest of the game. After that, my Social Policy costs were increasing faster than my culture. The ridiculousness came from raw population (Science!) and the trade route income.

I was packing cities at max density with no regard for terrain. Workers built luxuries, then roads, then farms. The trade route income was absolutely obscene. After turn 80 or so, I had stopped training settlers and was purchasing two every three turns. By turn 120, that was three every two turns. I'd temporarily lose a city or two from an AI DoW, but the overlapping city crossfire eliminated any danger from invasions. I'd rush buy a few military, retake the cities, and keep expanding like nothing happened.

The cities built nothing but a Colosseum and Library. Once the first few expansion cities were finishing their Colosseums, everything snowballed.

Unfortunately, playing the game this way was extremely dull. I was extremely excited about Civ 5 reducing the amount of time each late-game turn would take, with puppets and whatnot. ICS is a total reversal of that. You spend a very small amount of time early on making important decisions, and then spend a ton of time later on managing inconsequential crap.

The last thing I managed to research was Nuclear Fusion. It took 1 turn. I researched all of the Future Era techs in 1 turn each. The entire rocket took 11 turns to construct.

That's really fast! I've never gotten it anywhere near that fast. I'm surprised you were able to defend with just the city defense, actually.

 

[Roxlimn]

Paeanblack:

Wow. That really is surprising. Did the nature of the map (Pangaea) affect your game, do you think? I have to try this with some of my more isolated Continental starts. This might actually make those viable. Take Collective Rule also? Did having access to all Luxuries eventually manage to make it easier?

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Just tried a serious REX+ICS strategy for the first time. Launched the spaceship on turn 199 (1370AD iirc).

This was Emperor/Pangaea/Standard.

It wasn't really the policies that dominated, since I hardly bothered with culture at all. I picked up 4 policies in Liberty and that was it for the rest of the game. After that, my Social Policy costs were increasing faster than my culture. The ridiculousness came from raw population (Science!) and the trade route income.

I was packing cities at max density with no regard for terrain. Workers built luxuries, then roads, then farms. The trade route income was absolutely obscene. After turn 80 or so, I had stopped training settlers and was purchasing two every three turns. By turn 120, that was three every two turns. I'd temporarily lose a city or two from an AI DoW, but the overlapping city crossfire eliminated any danger from invasions. I'd rush buy a few military, retake the cities, and keep expanding like nothing happened.

The cities built nothing but a Colosseum and Library. Once the first few expansion cities were finishing their Colosseums, everything snowballed.

Unfortunately, playing the game this way was extremely dull. I was extremely excited about Civ 5 reducing the amount of time each late-game turn would take, with puppets and whatnot. ICS is a total reversal of that. You spend a very small amount of time early on making important decisions, and then spend a ton of time later on managing inconsequential crap.

The last thing I managed to research was Nuclear Fusion. It took 1 turn. I researched all of the Future Era techs in 1 turn each. The entire rocket took 11 turns to construct.

Wow! Outstanding. Can you post a screenshot of the city layout? I really like the cross fire idea. Hadn't thought of that before.

 

[tibbles]

Wow, that's impressive. I know what I'm trying when I get home I've hit that research level before, but not until the 1700s and with a lot more SP boosts.

 

[bombastinator]

All this talk of ICS is great, but what the heck IS it? Anyone got a link? The search feature hands me squat.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

All this talk of ICS is great, but what the heck IS it? Anyone got a link? The search feature hands me squat.

ICS = infinite city sprawl

Check out this thread: ICS, Civ V style

There are others as well.