Why I think ICS was deliberately designed as an option

[QuixotesGhost]

In a way, building maintenance is supposed to fill the same role as city upkeep, since you're paying gold for the city either way.
[/i].

No. Paying per-city and per building has vastly different effects. Paying per city stunts horizontal growth, since you'll get that flat penalty no matter the size or development of the city. Just like flat bonuses (like +5 production with communism) encourage ICS, flat penalties stifle ICS. Paying per building stifles vertical growth. It punishes you for developing cities.

In short:

Paying-per-city stifles horiztonal growth.

Paying-per-building stifles vertical growth.

As far as the effects they have on gameplay, the two mechanics are like black and white.

 

[ShaqFu]

No. Paying per-city and per building has vastly different effects. Paying per city stunts horizontal growth, since you'll get that flat penalty no matter the size or development of the city. Just like flat bonuses (like +5 production with communism) encourage ICS, flat penalties stifle ICS. Paying per building stifles vertical growth. It punishes you for developing cities.

Hence why I said it's supposed to.

When Firaxis was trying to figure out corruption/upkeep-free expansion limiters, they probably assumed that, since you're building at least some buildings (Coliseum, Library, Monument), the accrued maintenance would function as a light limiter. After all, who wants to pay for 25 Libraries in size 5 cities, when it's more efficient to run 5 in size 25 cities? Well, except when you're TP spamming the continent, so there's no real need to care about the upkeep, and getting vertical growth is impossible due to how quickly the food box expands.

If it wasn't so damned hard to get big cities, ICS wouldn't be as powerful. Since everything - science, gold, production - is tied to population, and the only way to get any real population growth after a point is via ICS, the answer is obvious on the best strategy. There's just no reason to grow vertically - it's more work for less rewards. Buildings are the same way; I'd love to hear a realistic scenario in which building a Stadium is better than dropping a new city and building a Coliseum.

 

[gaiko]

I don't want to punish REX - Rapid EARLY Expansion - but I want to put a stop to ICS. That's the trick. Krikkitone may be on the right track:

"Theaters should cost less Maintenance than Colluseums rather than more."

Right, scale up the Happiness/Maintenance ratio to make growing large cities a viable alternative to continuing a REX at some point. Note again, REX, not ICS, even if that REX takes on the appearance of an "ICS-like" lattice, which is designed to leverage the ranged power of cities + garrisoned ranged units. I think this a really cool feature of CivV, permitting true "turtling" for the first time in Civ history, IMO. Within a sufficiently large city-lattice, the above fix to the happiness buildings will allow select core cities to grow and specialize.

"Trading posts should give 1 Gold... and Marketplaces, Banks, etc. should give +50%, and cost some maintenance. (or at least be expensive)"

I agree that nerfing TPs along with Maritime food is critical to stopping ICS.

But I want REX to remain a viable gambit.

In a way, building maintenance is supposed to fill the same role as city upkeep, since you're paying gold for the city either way. Unfortunately, it's so easy to get back your money for the first level buildings (and if you're China, they're functionally all free!) that it isn't nearly as limiting.

Happiness was supposed to replace upkeep, but since it's trivial to get happy-neutral cities that still add hammers/gold/science, once again, there's no reason not to ICS.

If Civ5 had some way of making REX punishing in the short-term, a la Civ4, it'd work out fine - you'd put up with early deficits/anger for long-term gains. Instead, there's nothing stopping you from getting your cities happy-neutral quickly. Imagine Civ4, but instead of the Courthouse giving -50% upkeep, it was -10 GPT paid in upkeep. You'd just choose an Organized leader and spam cities that took less than 10 GPT to maintain, since there's no reason not to.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

That's what's so puzzling about it though, Shaqfu. They already had a way of limiting expansion which worked fine. Then they regressed back to Civ3/AC Building Matainence and it broke the system again and now ICS is once again viable. It's like a team of aircraft engineers threw a pair of bi-wings on a jet fighter and wonder why the performance characteristics are now all screwed up.

It's an eginma to me as to why they would reintroduce building maintence.

 

[Bibor]

*sigh*

ICS was never really away in CIV4. Not really. At least not in the minds of players. Larger minimum distances between cities didn't stop ICS - cities were still built as tightly packed as it was reasonable to do so (often with lots of overlaps). City upkeep costs were "cheated" by stuff like Great lighthouse and early Currency beelines. In CIV4, very much like in CIV5, the more cities you had the more powerful civ you had. Players had numerous tactics like ignoring the Marketplace-grocer-bank line or early rushes that secured large chunks of land (and there were no puppets). It was not uncommon for two cities to share hills/mines either. If that's not ICS I don't know what is.

No, the real power that stopped ICS in CIV4 was the AI. You were literally afraid of expanding too much because army sizes did matter. Also the AI was expanding like crazy and there wasn't usually enough room to plant 30 cities in the first 200 turns, so landgrab took priority over ICS. Junk cities like 1-fish-1 copper mine or 3-furs-city-on-ice still existed. The only difference was that their graphical and game value was different.

The artificial economy currently enabled by Maritime City-states (NOT ICS by itself) is what needs to go away. A 6-pop city that needs to tend for its own food will not be an economic powerhouse. It will become what it was in CIV4: a mediocre city built to grab a resource and to provide for its own expenses and some surplus.

This means that people that really like to ICS will still be able to do so (even if its ugly and whatnot), but optimal empires will be of a mixed variety with several really big cities, large number of average cities and a similar number of small filler cities.

I see nothing wrong in having two 6-pop cities, one being production oriented and working mines and farms, while the other being commerce oriented, paying for the bills of the first city+its own. It's exactly the same as having a 12-pop city doing both commerce and production at the same time, and in both examples the one or the two cities will take up roughly the same area. The fact that you can build two colloseums and not just one can be called cheating. But so is pre-chopping Pyramids in CIV4 (double research for the rest of the game).

In the U-Sun's Byzantine Deity game there were so many game mechanics abuses (having 34 angry faces per city negated by Hippodrome, just to name one) that it's not even funny.

The real thing that needs to become better is the AI, that's the key. Once the AI starts being a threat, nobody will care if tightly-packed cities were the key to that particular victory. Just like nobody cared in CIV4 if the player used 125,950,998 game mechanics exploits to do it.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I'm applauding the previous post.

 

[generalwar]

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.

My congrats, that's really fast. Do you have any screenshots?
Edit: I agree with Bibor. Maritime CSs should go away and everything would be much balanced. Or they should give you minimum food. +1 for all cities for friendly and 2 for allies and it shouldn't be increased by era. Ok maybe for +3 food or 4 in capital in modern era, but not event that. Just take them away and give us reasons to build farms.

 

[Bibor]

For some reason I just knew that a poster nicknamed general War has to be from Croatia.

Spoiler :

 

[alpaca]

My congrats, that's really fast. Do you have any screenshots?
Edit: I agree with Bibor. Maritime CSs should go away and everything would be much balanced. Or they should give you minimum food. +1 for all cities for friendly and 2 for allies and it shouldn't be increased by era. Ok maybe for +3 food or 4 in capital in modern era, but not event that. Just take them away and give us reasons to build farms.

This won't balance ICS one bit, I tried it without city states and it still hands down beats any other strategy. Small cities still grow a lot faster than large ones, happiness for small cities is still a lot cheaper and trade route upkeep is still saved big time with ICS. That are the main culprits from my experience.

 

[Bandobras Took]

To balance ICS, there needs to be more benefit to larger cities. Reduced unhappiness from higher population counts in cities and science bonuses for higher levels of population would be a good start.

 

[Roxlimn]

ShaqFu:

There is actually something stopping gamers from getting their cities to happiness-neutral quickly, and that is the rate at which they can put Colosseums into their cities. Colosseums are not cheap buildings, especially for early REXing players. The problem comes when the player acquires enough cities and enough income to buy Colosseums outright, which is effectively the ability to buy new cities outright.

 

[Duo]

Machu Picchu is awesome.

I think they did want large empires to be possible, but they're too powerful right now.

 

[pi-r8]

*sigh*

The real thing that needs to become better is the AI, that's the key. Once the AI starts being a threat, nobody will care if tightly-packed cities were the key to that particular victory. Just like nobody cared in CIV4 if the player used 125,950,998 game mechanics exploits to do it.

You don't see a difference between a victory that abuses 1 particular mechanic, and one that abuses 125,950,998 different mechanics? I'd just call that a clever strategy.

While you're correct that the landgrab in Civ 4 happened too fast usually to really allow ICS, that doesn't really affect it. The majority of your research power in Civ 4 early on comes from just your capital and maybe 1 GP Farm (sometimes both are the same city). Building more cities just slows you down for a long time, and they don't show a profit for a very long time. You have to carefully balance horizontal growth with vertical growth, and it's not easy.

 

[Xger]

Anyone else rather confused by the turn 199 space win? I tried ICS and while it was going ok, it would not have been anywhere near 199 for me. I'd love more details on that

 

[pi-r8]

Anyone else rather confused by the turn 199 space win? I tried ICS and while it was going ok, it would not have been anywhere near 199 for me. I'd love more details on that

Yeah turn 199 is extremely fast. I'd like to see screenshots of that.

 

[Paeanblack]

Yeah turn 199 is extremely fast. I'd like to see screenshots of that.

Stupid question...how do I take screenshots?

 

[luciol]

Stupid question...how do I take screenshots?

"print screen" key then :
- paste in paint
- or go to C:\Users\"you"\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\ScreenShots and convert .tga to .jpg

 

[Paeanblack]

There is actually something stopping gamers from getting their cities to happiness-neutral quickly, and that is the rate at which they can put Colosseums into their cities. Colosseums are not cheap buildings, especially for early REXing players.

Even if it takes 30-40 turns to build the Colosseum, that's still okay for ICS. As long as you can find a few luxuries (it doesn't take many...say two or three), as you are initially expanding, it works fine.

You build the Colosseum first in every city. Once the first one comes online, everything snowballs, because every other turn or so, you are gaining +3 happiness. As long as early luxuries and the negative-nine happiness buffer carried you through the initial wait for the first colosseum, you have absolutely no issues after that.

After the Colosseum is done, you build a Library. After the Library is done, I was concerned with building spaceship parts.

 

[Paeanblack]

Yeah turn 199 is extremely fast. I'd like to see screenshots of that.

This right after the last autosave. After Delhi finished the Stasis Chamber, it built a Booster in 6 turns. All the other parts are currently under construction in other cities.

 

[ShaqFu]

Just like nobody cared in CIV4 if the player used 125,950,998 game mechanics exploits to do it.

The difference between Civ4's combination of exploits was that none of them, nor all of them in tandem, were as game-breaking as ICS. Civ4's exploits never singly won games. Having a Globe Theatre draft city was powerful, but it never conquered the world. Whipping out 6 Axemen in 4 turns was powerful, but it never conquered the world. Using Quechas to steal early Workers was powerful, but it never gave anyone crushing tech leads. Hippodrome antics are powerful, but they never gave anyone +1000 economy/turn. ICS does all of this, and more.

(And most of the nonsense going on in Civ4 only really brought the player to parity with the boosted AI...)

ICS is powerful to the point that, by not doing it, you're always making the wrong decision. The difference between ICS and traditional exploits is best described in CCG terms: traditional exploits are 2 cards that go very well together, and ICS is that 60-card deck that wins 70% of its games on the first turn and 99% by the second. You can use a deck of good 2-card combos and use them to gain a gradual victory by outplaying your opposition, or you can go for the ICS deck and play with total disregard of the actual game. Look at Sulla's France game - he chose a Diplomatic win because, at that point, the opponent's activities were totally irrelevant and he just wanted to win with minimal hassle.

That may very well be the textbook definition of broken game design.