Why I think ICS was deliberately designed as an option

[stii]

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.

Problem is no one at any point has proved that ICS is the best way to win. Even at deity the game is so easy there are lots of ways to abuse the system which result in a fast win without using ICS.

People keep using Sulla's game as an example of how broken ICS when he didn't even win the game that fast at all. T270 really isn't that quick.

Note I'm not saying ICS is bad or doesn't work but saying not doing it is always wrong is just rubbish.

 

[ShaqFu]

Note I'm not saying ICS is bad or doesn't work but saying not doing it is always wrong is just rubbish.

You're right, you could horse rush and win by turn 100.

I used Sulla's game as an example since it's well-documented and shows the issue with ICS: it obviates actually playing the game. Economy management? Caring about diplomacy? Prioritizing techs? Nah, just throw cities at the problem and hit Enter another 100 times until the victory screen comes up.

If there's a stronger way to play Civ5, other than horse rushing, I'd like to see it.

 

[Bibor]

The problem is not in ICS or horse rushes (although both needs some proper balancing). The main problem is the completely ******** combat AI. And equally ******** non-combat AI.

The game itself, even in this non-balanced state, is fine. It does enable strategic thought. "Should I build a colloseum or an archer?", "Should I settle this spot or is it too risky?", "Should I build this trade post or bridge that river crossing?", "Should I invest into this maritime or risk having the AI do the same before me?". The general opinion is that the CIV5 core design is lacking the need for "big decisions" and that it's boring. Yes, well, there's no need for big decisions because there's no real competition.

I bet you never made Steel or Machinery a super-high-priority, like people used to make Civil service+machinery (for macemen). That's because your civ wasn't in mortal danger. You never build walls because you never need walls. Et cetera.

As long as players can have everything by doing anything, they are going to be frustrated, bored and annoyed with trivial details. And in my book the ICS issue is just that, a triviality. Because the only thing that can stop you from ICS-ing right now is your own laziness. Loose 80% of your army to an AI rush and suddenly rushbuying/building colliseums, temples and more settlers plummets to the bottom of your priority list.

 

[stii]

You're right, you could horse rush and win by turn 100.

I used Sulla's game as an example since it's well-documented and shows the issue with ICS: it obviates actually playing the game. Economy management? Caring about diplomacy? Prioritizing techs? Nah, just throw cities at the problem and hit Enter another 100 times until the victory screen comes up.

If there's a stronger way to play Civ5, other than horse rushing, I'd like to see it.

Depends how you define stronger really. I have a couple of deity wins without horse rushing and without building very many cities. The AI will declare war on you if you settle near them and they will expand all over the place making near everywhere.

This is still with winning reasonably quickly certainly before t270, if you want to do it by score then maybe ICS is better but it is very subjective.

 

[andrewlt]

The problem that resulted in ICS is how terrible large cities are. A large city is a global happiness drain. A small city with a colosseum isn't. Large cities also grow much slower than small cities, insanely exponentially slower. The only advantage of large cities is having a couple or so to build whatever wonders and projects you want. After that, multiple smaller cities is always better than fewer large cities.

 

[pi-r8]

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.

well done . I love how you're still at 163 happiness too. I can't think of anything that demonstrates how broken this strategy is better than this.

 

[Tarkeel]

Counterbalance the loss of those national wonders with the world wonders that provide a bonus in all cities. (I recall one of those tooltips is wrong though which one I can't recall). This is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

Angkor Wat.
Which doesn't really matter for ICS anyways.

 

[Roxlimn]

Paeanblack:

If you're building the Colosseum first in every city, how are you getting workers and fending off AI attacks? Do you beeline Construction? No Wonders until the ball gets rolling? I'd like to try this out for myself to see how the mechanics interact.

ShaqFu:

I think you are perceiving a problem primarily because you don't like ICS in and of itself. I do not see that big of a problem with this because I don't see ICS as a problem. It is one way to win, but there are many ways to win. You pick the way you like best.

Civ 4's tactics allowed Deity players to outstrip Deity tech, and Civ IV Deity teching was hella fast. Globe Theater Draft was a nice trick, but it was by no means strong, or even all that necessary. You can assemable a powerful army without it. The gain was marginal, at best. Using Quechuas to capture workers was a marginal use of it. The real use was to rush your nearest two Civs to capture their capitals for the megatiles.

That did actually occasionally give you a winning game position outright.

The reason you are perceiving ICS as being powerful is also because large city strategies are not equally powerful in certain criteria - science and gold being the most obvious ones. You can lose doing ICS. I know because I just did. Twice.

 

[darrelljs]

well done . I love how you're still at 163 happiness too. I can't think of anything that demonstrates how broken this strategy is better than this.

Those cities were all of a decent size...surely he built more than just a Colosseum to have that much excess happiness. I haven't gotten anywhere near turn 199 yet, very impressive .

Darrell

 

[Paeanblack]

Those cities were all of a decent size...surely he built more than just a Colosseum to have that much excess happiness. I haven't gotten anywhere near turn 199 yet, very impressive .

Darrell

No theaters anywhere, iirc. That is from luxuries, FP, and Liberty tree. With that much net happiness, I had no reason to build +happy buildings. I had already been in a GA for the past 30 turns or so.

 

[cracked]

Those cities were all of a decent size...surely he built more than just a Colosseum to have that much excess happiness. I haven't gotten anywhere near turn 199 yet, very impressive .

Darrell

All those cities cause half as much unhappyness because he's playing as the indians. In terms of unhappyness they're closer to 6 or 7 size cities with a standard civ.

 

[Bibor]

No theaters anywhere, iirc. That is from luxuries, FP, and Liberty tree. With that much net happiness, I had no reason to build +happy buildings. I had already been in a GA for the past 30 turns or so.

Can't put my finger to it, but this screenshot smells of photoshopping. I'd really like to see the save.

 

[darrelljs]

All those cities cause half as much unhappyness because he's playing as the indians. In terms of unhappyness they're closer to 6 or 7 size cities with a standard civ.

That explains it...not sure how I missed that .

Darrell

 

[pagh80]

No theaters anywhere, iirc. That is from luxuries, FP, and Liberty tree. With that much net happiness, I had no reason to build +happy buildings. I had already been in a GA for the past 30 turns or so.

Dont tease us. give us a save file.

 

[chaunceymo]

Loose 80% of your army to an AI rush and suddenly rushbuying/building colliseums, temples and more settlers plummets to the bottom of your priority list.

Sure, but even if the AI was improved to make this the case, ICS still wins out heavily. Just might mean spending a little more time building military early on.

Two or five or even ten well developed cities building military can't keep up with the AI's pace in this respect at higher levels. The AI will build dozens of units, and currently the only thing preventing such an AI from stomping a non-ICS player civ is their stupidity.

On the other hand, if you use ICS even if it takes 30 turns to build a rifleman in your dinky 5-6 pop cities, if you have 30 of them building you get a rifleman every turn, PLUS probably enough commerce to rush one every couple turns. Compare to a more traditional approach, in which your few well developed military cities will be lucky to turn out a rifleman every 8-10 turns, and the cost of the better developed cities will mean you don't have enough cash to ever buy them outright.

Making the AI smarter in combat won't somehow fix ICS. It will only make it even more critical on higher levels, as it's the same tactic the aggressive AIs use (and currently wipe the less aggressive ones off the map with).

 

[stii]

You're right, you could horse rush and win by turn 100.

I used Sulla's game as an example since it's well-documented and shows the issue with ICS: it obviates actually playing the game. Economy management? Caring about diplomacy? Prioritizing techs? Nah, just throw cities at the problem and hit Enter another 100 times until the victory screen comes up.

If there's a stronger way to play Civ5, other than horse rushing, I'd like to see it.

Also on this subject I'm gonig to compare building five cities vs building ten. This is assuming you build all those cities pretty early and ten takes the three policies to get +1 happy per city and five takes the left half of the patronage tree. One extra policy from half the number of cities seems pretty fair to me.

I'm assuming with fives cities you still have the same number of luxuries so I'm just going to caluclate the differences. Happyness is -1 for ten (capital is still -2) Assuming a coliseum in every city you gain an extra 5x4. Fro the other side I'm gonig to assuming four CS with three different luxuries for +6. So overall the ten city build has 13 extra happyness so 13 extra people.

Assuming you have library in each you gain +20 science. Each extra person works a grassland trading post (non river as these are the five worst cities) so you get +26 plus 5 from the city base, but then have have to pay for five coliseum leaving you with 16 extra. All of which is nice but four CS will provide more than 20 science and you have to build/buy five settlers five coliseum five library, even assuming oyu only have to buy the coliseum that is over 3000 which will take you 200 turns to make back!

Now clearly you could expand after filling out patronage but that probably means clearing out AI cities and going to war for space and then the cities will take ages to build anything. I didn't include universities as they come pretty late and will be build faster with fewer cities reducing any gains to almost nothing. I think four CS is pretty low and I have certainly had lots more. Both plans take time to become active either waiting for patronage or building all ten cities and stuff inside them comparing them around t120-150 seems reasonable to me. This is all just estimate so I might have miscounted the maths somewhere so feel free to point that out.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Best solution is to make Tech costs elevate with each individual city like social policy costs. (and decrease with number of other civ's cities that 'have the tech' already)

 

[Celevin]

Best solution is to make Tech costs elevate with each individual city like social policy costs. (and decrease with number of other civ's cities that 'have the tech' already)

I dunno. Everyone's on this "small empire" craze now, but they forget one key point:
Bigger is supposed to be better.


I'd like the goal to be having small and big empires closer in overall population. If we can do that, then they'd have roughly the same science anyways. Right now it's not a good situation. 90% of the problem is caused by big cities just refusing to grow beyond size 15ish until the very late game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I dunno. Everyone's on this "small empire" craze now, but they forget one key point:
Bigger is supposed to be better.

Why should bigger be better at everything?

Bigger will be better for Production and Gold and Territory. (more units supported, and more resources)

More developed should be better at Science and Policies.

More developed IS better at Policies, but Policies aren't needed, its nice but not essential.

Techs are needed... low tech=poor units=loss

If an empire of size 10 Library cities was behind an empire of size 20 University cities (almost... not entirely but almost) regardless of size, then that would put a strong enough limiter on growth... so that Bigger->Quantity
Smaller->Quality

But both would be possible.

I'd like the goal to be having small and big empires closer in overall population. If we can do that, then they'd have roughly the same science anyways. Right now it's not a good situation. 90% of the problem is caused by big cities just refusing to grow beyond size 15ish until the very late game.

That would be another way to do it.... if the exponential term in the food box formula was eliminated, there would be some BIG cities, and the small ones wouldn't be worth building as much. (except for Happiness support.)

If Maritimes were fixed for a constant food output, and the exponential growth term was gone, then empire population might become more constant with regards to size.

 

[Celevin]

Why should bigger be better at everything?

Bigger will be better for Production and Gold and Territory. (more units supported, and more resources)

More developed should be better at Science and Policies.

More developed IS better at Policies, but Policies aren't needed, its nice but not essential.

Techs are needed... low tech=poor units=loss

If an empire of size 10 Library cities was behind an empire of size 20 University cities (almost... not entirely but almost) regardless of size, then that would put a strong enough limiter on growth... so that Bigger->Quantity
Smaller->Quality

But both would be possible.

We need to differentiate between "big empire" meaning "smaller bit more cities", or "more cities and more overall population". Bigger is better, as in 10 cities of size 10 is better than 5 cities of size 10.

A less population empire will always be weaker. Unless we purposely bring building multipliers out of hand like Civ4, this will just be the case. I already dislike the Civ5 late game huge multipliers, so I feel that it's unreasonable to bring in even more just to try and make empires with few cities better. It's much easier (and cooler) to give them higher population.

I keep hearing stuff like "four size 7 cities VS a size 20 university city" and the like. All I can think about is I make so much more gold with my bigger ICS empire, that I actually have most of the awesome buildings that small empires build. I make 500+ gold per turn! How can a small empire compete with big empires buying a university or market or something else every second turn? Unlike Civ4, in Civ5 your gold only goes up with more cities.

That would be another way to do it.... if the exponential term in the food box formula was eliminated, there would be some BIG cities, and the small ones wouldn't be worth building as much. (except for Happiness support.)

If Maritimes were fixed for a constant food output, and the exponential growth term was gone, then empire population might become more constant with regards to size.

Other than maintenance and opportunity costs for buildings, I wonder how else a size 20 city is better than two size 10's. The raw food required for a big city is way too big, I agree, but I'm not sure it should be linear.

The best way to get bigger cities in the game earlier is one of Ahriman's suggestions: make a building that lowers the food requirement. Right now, if I have a size 10 city and I want more population (because of excess happiness), there's no way in hell I'm waiting for my city to grow. I'm building a new city. You're absolutely right in that Maritimes are the biggest culprit of this by far.


The other problem is that more cities means more happiness, which increases the population threshold. I feel like there needs to be more aid for big cities in getting more happiness. I was thinking of high maintenance buildings that "gives happiness equal to x% of culture", or maybe even simply "gives happiness equal to x% of population". The former's harder to balance but encourages cooler specialization.