ICS is back with a vengeance

[binTravkin]

MxM, I thin you need to read the article again and actually TRY it.
Many of us have a background of ICSing the crap out of the game (Civ II, Civ III, SMACX), so if we smell ICS, it is likely that we know it's the real thing.

The extra city penalty can be removed by two policies:
Meritocracy (+1 happiness per connected city)
Military Caste (+1 happiness per garrisoned city)
Also there was at least one other policy that cut the penaly in half, I think, so if you place your policies right, you can even get a surplus.
Both of the named policies are available from the ancient age.
Colosseum is also not the only building you could do to improve your happiness.

Basically, once you have solved the +2 extra unhappiness all you get for ICSing is improvement that is more than linear (count in the city square and other bonuses, e.g. trade bonus) compared to "normal" strategy.
So Civ 5 is MORE about ICS than SMACX, for example, where you actually got diminishing returns (although they diminished by a very little amount).

It seems that France is the perfect civ for ICSing with it's Ancien Regime.

[Sir Og]

ICS in civ5 is way more powerfull because with the right policies and CS you get a ton of free food, free production, free happines and free culture from each new city. Also the penalty for each new city is linear, not progressive, which means that there is no problem to spam the whole map with cities.

Having said that spamming cities from the start might not be the best idea. You need to secure the right CSs and SPs before you start in order to be most effective.

[binTravkin]

That's why I said France.
The more cities you have, the faster your SPs come.

[MxM]

MxM, I thin you need to read the article again and actually TRY it.
Many of us have a background of ICSing the crap out of the game (Civ II, Civ III, SMACX), so if we smell ICS, it is likely that we know it's the real thing.
...
It seems that France is the perfect civ for ICSing with it's Ancient Regime.

I did try France, as I said. And while you CAN fast expand, THIS IS NOT ICS. What he did is aggressive expansion without getting into negative happiness. He had 3 sites at turn 58, and 4 sites at turn 74 and 5 sites at turn 98. That's NOT geometrical progression of ICS 1->2->4->8... It is actually slowing down after 3d city, not accelerating.
What civ V allows you to do is to make 3 cities as fast as you can (and sometimes only 2, depending on happiness and resources), and after that you have to carrifully follow happiness value, which slows you down and at 5 cites you usually stop. In his own words:

This situation was pretty comparable to what I've found in my other games. Five cities usually appears to be the limit after 100 turns, unless the player has been very lucky in acquiring extra happiness resources

Is this what you call INFINITE city sprawl? And to say "You just have to manage happiness" is like in civ IV to say "you just have to manage city maintenance" (that's towards the original post).

I am not arguing that Civ is perfectly balanced, far from it. And may be the City cost should be higher in therms of unhappiness. But I can not say that we have ICS in Civ V. Unless we re-define what ICS is. With ICS you pack cities as much as you can, he does not do that. He chose very careful the next place for city. With ICS you rate of founding cities accelerating, he does not do it either.

What he did is optimal strategy of aggressive and relatively fast expand, and beat game on immortal. Yes, some people can do it with this game, especially with present state of AI. So what? I personally can not beat Immortal AI on small continental map. Some players are just better than others, some maps are easier than others...

But this is not ICS.

[binTravkin]

Unless we re-define what ICS is.

Yes, you just did this and that's why you are still arguing against.

With ICS you pack cities as much as you can

No. That's your definition, not the commonly agreed one.

With ICS you rate of founding cities accelerating, he does not do it either.

No. That's your definition, not the commonly agreed one.

ICS means Infinite City Sprawl (or Spam), "Infinite" going for being able to do it as long as there is land left, "City" for cities obviously and "Sprawl" for, well, settling them.
The power of the strategy comes neither from packing cities tight, nor arranging them to linear pattern, those are just nuances that some people like, some don't.
The power of the strategy comes from having lots of cities as it's outcome, preferably more than any of the opponents and from the fact that (in some games) more cities translate to more power or faster growth of power (as compared to growing less, bigger cities), thus resulting in either more cities or any other benefit (units, research, etc) the player wishes to have.


You could argue that REX (Rapid Early Expansion) is not possible due to need of managing the happiness, but again you'd be wrong as long as you do your exploration and settle the early cities next to happiness resources.
By the time you run out of them, you'll be getting happiness from other sources (buildings, SPs).

[rah]

You could argue that REX (Rapid Early Expansion) is not possible due to need of managing the happiness, but again you'd be wrong as long as you do your exploration and settle the early cities next to happiness resources.

The way maps are generated makes it hard to settle early cities nearby within reach of different happy resources. Normally if you see a different happy resource early in the game, it just means a CS is nearby and will be claiming that hex soon. The variety of happy resources is rigged against the player in the immediate area of start. Which is one reason you see the AI building cities so far away from their caps early on.

[Dinner]

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

I completely agree. Civ5 has been a huge disappointment. I hope the patches and expansions fix it but I become less hopeful with each passing day. I've honestly played more Civ4 then Civ5 in the past week.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

The way maps are generated makes it hard to settle early cities nearby within reach of different happy resources. Normally if you see a different happy resource early in the game, it just means a CS is nearby and will be claiming that hex soon. The variety of happy resources is rigged against the player in the immediate area of start. Which is one reason you see the AI building cities so far away from their caps early on.

are you sure? i never had any problem with this. might be partly random? also, you might have to adjust your settling strategy. myself, i find i leave a lot of empty spaces. to keep the AI out, they form a large 'ring'.

[rah]

Yes, I'm sure. Happy resource are grouped on the maps to encourage trading and conquest. It's not perfect but you if you look at maps you'll see it quick quickly. But yes there are exceptions but look at the overall pattern.

[binTravkin]

Another reason to consider playing around with advanced settings (resources - abundant).

[MxM]

Another reason to consider playing around with advanced settings (resources - abundant).

To enable ICS?

[weregamer1]

Hmm, I think this thread is going nowhere. The original ICS strategy, given that name when it was published as an article, was as MxM described it. This thing you are calling ICS is not the exploit that ICS was, it's the viability of an aggressive growth strategy. I am very happy that an aggressive early growth strategy and a conservative build-up strategy are both viable in this game.

[MxM]

Yes, you just did this and that's why you are still arguing against.


No. That's your definition, not the commonly agreed one.


No. That's your definition, not the commonly agreed one.

ICS means Infinite City Sprawl (or Spam), "Infinite" going for being able to do it as long as there is land left, "City" for cities obviously and "Sprawl" for, well, settling them.
The power of the strategy comes neither from packing cities tight, nor arranging them to linear pattern, those are just nuances that some people like, some don't.
The power of the strategy comes from having lots of cities as it's outcome, preferably more than any of the opponents and from the fact that (in some games) more cities translate to more power or faster growth of power (as compared to growing less, bigger cities), thus resulting in either more cities or any other benefit (units, research, etc) the player wishes to have.

Ehm? First you disagree and then agree that the power comes from packing tight?

You could argue that REX (Rapid Early Expansion) is not possible due to need of managing the happiness, but again you'd be wrong as long as you do your exploration and settle the early cities next to happiness resources.
By the time you run out of them, you'll be getting happiness from other sources (buildings, SPs).

Oh, I would argue that REX IS possible here (to some extend) and this is exactly what has been demonstrated. But REX != ICS.

I think we have to work on definitions here before continue the discussion. Because I think this is where we may have disagreement. We both agree that there is a way to play the game as it is described in the original link, but we do not agree how to call it.

I think we agree on the point that close packing IS characteristics of ICS. This is because the power of ICS comes from the number of cites, and the more you have it, the better. The gameplay sample did not demonstrate it. From that respect, it is not ICS.

How can you define the difference of ICS strategy compared to REX? How can you say if the shown example is REX or ICS? In my view, the fact that you SLOW DOWN your expansion (and more or less stop at 5 cities), shows that it is REX, and not ICS. (ICS should continue forever, more over, in order for it to be good strategy is should accelerate)

And, I am not saying that ICS is not possible in Civ V. Mathematically it is possible to infinity build sites. I am just questioning if it is the best optimal strategy, and I am saying that as far as I can tell, the shown example is not ICS for the reasons I provided above.

When I see people playing normal sized continental maps and packing 20+ sites on their continent everywhere, with the distance close to minimal to fill all available space and wining the hardest difficulty, then I will agree that it is good strategy. Right now I do not have any foundation to say that, and my personal experience shows similar results to what was posted: REX to 5 sites, and then war.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

i "rex" like an idiot, with the additional requirement of expansion towards a new luxury. in that way in my last game i expanded within 140 turns to ~20 sites at size 5, bar a few core cities being my capital and a production moloch. at that stage happiness was just above zero. no collosei required.

please note that cities are not required to be connected to the capital in order for 'connection' of the luxury to global happiness. this might be considered an exploit by some.

with my twenty cities i didn't see the need for further expansion - mostly due to the AI's stupidity. more expansion would equate to sending a garbage truck to pick up an empty match box, or using a supercomputer to run the graphics for a gameboy.

under MP circumstances i would continue expansion for the sake of further military expansion and additional research points.

[MxM]

You know what may be interesting fix for that could be - reduction of Golden Age requirement by factor of 2.