ICS is back with a vengeance

[Zoetstofzoetje]

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/artofwu.html

Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) is back again, unfortunately. Ironically, the designers of Civ5 set out to make a game which would favor small empires, and have ended up with a game where bigger = better in nearly every way possible!

Remember in Civ4, how a small AI empire could be weak militarily but strong in terms of technology? Not so in this game. The biggest AI empires will always be the most technologically advanced, and have the largest military, and have the most gold per turn to spend.

With Liberty's Meritocracy (+1 happy per city connected to capital) and Order's Planned Economy (-50% unhappy per city) or the Forbidden Palace wonder, each city costs only its own population in unhappiness. Cap its growth at size 4, build a colosseum, and every city is happy-neutral. Now you can spam them endlessly across the map, and every city simply adds more production, more research, more gold...

Every city only makes you stronger. You just have to manage happiness, and once you figure out how to do that, you can expand endlessly without bound. The community is slowly starting to grasp this too. Unless the game design changes, this will become the dominant strategy going forward for everything other than cultural victories. The only tradeoff is losing out on the social policies, and that's well worth it.

summary: build a few 'normal' cities and sprawl the map with size-4/w/colloseum production/gold baskets. you'll be unstoppable.

[frenzyfol]

This truly is a sorry state of affairs.
Great article, thanks for the link.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

ah didn't think of that to cap cities at size 4 but was going towards this idea as cities are ridiculously owerpowered via city states... thanks for the review - it's great, should be reading Sulla's page more often...

will try ICS just for fun... perhaps some revision of this strategy with more citizens and more "happy" buildings could provide for more gold regardless with TP spam, markets, banks... may be interesting to play this way for a while to find it out... just building scouts and disbanding is to micro intensive, despite of good $ effect.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

what i don't like about this, in particular, is the formulaic approach to instant success. it should be dependent on circumstance and related strategy.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

the game is broken, as it is...

I like this very lite comment

. There are a few games where everything feels carefully crafted and polished, where you can just see how much loving attention the designers gave their baby. Without piling on too much, I'll say that I don't get that impression from Civ5 at all.

this is VERY politely said. Instead on improving Civ IV BTS (and it could be improved I am sure, even though it's a great game)... they deliver this :facepalm:

[MxM]

I am not convinced that it works better than the normal start. One size 8 city is more efficient than 2 size 4 cities, plus there is unhappiness associated to the number of cities (I do not know if it grows linearly with number of cities, if it does, then very simple fix would be to have the cost of each next city to be larger than the previous one in terms of happiness). Plus, there is negative impact on social policies acquisition... I found that in the beginning on the game I am much more successful with keeping just one city and expanding much later to 2 or 3 cities than I would be doing in Civ IV. And only starting somewhere in resonance era, there is a drive to expand. But by that time not a lot of good land available for that. And it creates tension with your neighbors.

So, I am not convinced that it works better.

[Proteus_MST]

I am not convinced that it works better than the normal start. One size 8 city is more efficient than 2 size 4 cities, plus there is unhappiness associated to the number of cities (I do not know if it grows linearly with number of cities, if it does, then very simple fix would be to have the cost of each next city to be larger than the previous one in terms of happiness). ...

It does...
each city causes 1 + #citizens unhappiness

[Zoetstofzoetje]

proteus, that effect is cancelled by a single colloseum and a policy

[weregamer1]

The correct formula, if you have no policy and are not India, is 2 unhappiness per city plus one per citizen. A colosseum supplies 3 happiness and costs 3 maintenance per turn, plus it takes IIRC 100 hammers to build.

If you are not Russia and don't want to starve, even if you magically created your city at pop 4, it would have to feed itself, so it would have about 3 or 4 hammers per turn, so it would take about 25-30 turns to build the collosseum, and after building it would have around 3-4 total of gold plus hammers, depending on improvements, to use beyond self-maintenance. With no other maintenance-cost structures like a library, it will generate 4 research. A luxury resource would up the gold some, Russia with a strategic resource would add another hammer.

By comparison, a size 8 city with a collosseum and theatre would have 7gpt maintenance but would be able to build a market and bank quickly enough to be useful before the game was over, and with even the market would be able to throw in a library to improve the research per population.

While there is probably still room for tweaking, I think Civ 5 has done a decent job of making either large or small numbers of cities workable depending on your overall strategy.

In Civ 1-3, ICS was vastly more efficient than large cities because it exploited two things: the free pop working the city center (which is still present in Civ5) and the per-city, very granular happiness rules (which are completely gone).

[frenzyfol]

ICS could be nullified by simply applying an accumulative penalty to every new city.
Civ IV would charge you more and more upkeep/corruption with every city placed, it was a geometric modifier to city spam.
Civ V charges you the same base rate penalty per new city +2 unhapiness. This is a linear penalty and thus open to ICS.

Make the penalty geometric and bye bye ICS

[MxM]

Civ V charges you the same base rate penalty per new city +2 unhapiness. This is a linear penalty and thus open to ICS.

The is no question that you CAN do ICS. However, what I question if it is optimal strategy. From my experience, it is not.
In Civ II it WAS optimal, and extremely powerful strategy. In Civ IV you simply could not do it due to quite artificial limitations such as not city growth and geometrically increasing payment for each city.
Civ V I think handles it better. It gives you this as an option, but it is not dominating strategy.

[Wiglaf]

It's the ideal strategy you buffoon.

[Hauldren Collider]

MxM is just trying to promote his image as the most stubbornly murky-thinking member of this board.

Kidicious would take the prize except he is just incoherent.

[MxM]

It's the ideal strategy you buffoon.

No need to become angry.
Just try it. ISC in classical sense does not work. I have just tried it with French (so that I could avoid building monuments). On my third city my happiness was already negative, and 1 size city shows 60 to 75 turns (!!) to build coliseum. And due to negative happiness, the city was not in the hurry to grow to level two. And if continued to founding 4th city, you happiness become in the red, an you will have to wait until turn 100 when you get your first non-capital coliseums. AND you miss all the early wonders. The only good in such strategy is that it seems that you are not very far behind in research in the beginning, but you will fall soon enough because you do not build libraries/universities in those lvl 4 cities.

Don't get me wrong, fast expansions with limit of 4 in city size is possible, but it is not ISC. You have to wait, each time to accumulate happiness before making new city. This is not the same as ISC where you grow in geometrical progression of 1->2->4->8->16 cities. You can not do it here. Or to be more precise if you do it then your happiness will be so negative that even building settlers will take forever.

[MxM]

MxM is just trying to promote his image as the most stubbornly murky-thinking member of this board.

Yeah, that's exactly what I am trying to do.

Cheer up man. If you do disagree, just say so, and argue your position. That's why these are DISCUSSION boards. There would be very little discussions if everyone agreed with everyone else. Argumentation is part of the fun being here.

Personal attacks, on another hand are not fun or constructive or giving anything to anyone, not to you, not to me.