Is not following ICS a foolish startegy?

[Incan_Warrior]

I too despise ICS - and I don't plan on ever using it either. The beauty of Civ3 MP is that a group can play with house rules. While I have, on rare occasions, placed a city that overlaps 1 or 2 of the 21 tile radius of another city, it has been purely for strategy (like closing off a choke point) and even then I regret wasting the tiles. There's really no reason for either group to get upset though - I think a 5 player game comprised of those that ICS can have just as much fun as a game with 5 players that don't. It's just a problem if you have a game combining the 2 camps. Therefore, it is up to the players to be responsible enough to show their true colors before the game starts.

JAWAJOCKY: Dr Fell is probably referring to the archer-rush strategy, which is basically gearing your civilization for war from the get-go. There is a long thread contemplating the value of this strategy. I predict that it will be used a lot in MP but won't be as effective as it is vs. the AI.

[DrFell]

Rushing

There are several rush strategies, and it all depends on the situation etc. Basically you can conduct a rush with any of the ancient units (except catapults, lol). As IW said, you gear up your civ for war from the start, each city early on being a unit factory or resource-claimer, or upgrade factory, or slave labour camp, etc. You build lots of units (depending on the rush and the civ you're using you may or may not build veterans) and keep a stream of them heading for your opponent. The key is to weaken by cutting roads, capturing workers, and generally harassing your opponent, taking cities is merely a bonus. With a generic rush strategy you will normally gradually switch to building up your civ, setting some cities to wonder building and other tasks, but all the time keeping a military about to harrass the enemy. By the time you begin building up your cities the game should be effectively over, with your opponent lagging behind you in science and productivity.

As for the units to pick, fast ones like horsemen are best for rushing. I can think of several powerful rushes, but I won't reveal them yet though, not until MP

All-out perfectionist strategies tend to come out the worse in a rush situation, with cities placed further apart (normally, but ICS perfectionism does exist) and poorly defended. ICS give you a boost in the early game which might allow you to keep up with a rusher. Closely spaced cities are easier to defend with less units, and make you grow faster. An ICS approach combined with say, the Greeks or the Zulus would make short work of most rushers unless they stuck to harrassment tactics.

[Anglophile]

The easiest way to make ICS a losing strategy is to play the biggest possible maps with low strategic resource levels. That way one needs a very large - geographically - empire to ensure even a few luxuries and most of the strategic ones. Empires are far apart, early rushing won't work. REX will and is a superior strategy without being tacky. ICS will result in resource starved empires that can't compete, at least on the higher levels. That makes ICS an inferior strategy on SP, but then will never likely be relevant on MP - if you have 12 civs on MP on a fully expanded map, Civ becomes a real RTS, i.e. will take about 6000 years to finish.

So MP, a bunch of highly competitive, aggressive players all using the same tacky startegy on tiny maps. Sounds like a blast; no wait, I'll generate a new huge random map for SP instead.

[wohmongarinf00l]

anglophile - ICS works best in large maps with few opponents. it doesn't work very well in small maps.
early wars simply require iron and/or horses. so long as one can get one source of either, they are all set.

[DrFell]

Yep, ICS gives you huge production capacity on bigger maps when you have room to expand. Sure, players who position cities further apart will initially get more territory, but as time goes on the ICS player will be able to mass produce settlers at a greater and greater rate which makes up for it on huge maps. 100-150 cities by 0AD is not difficult using ICS on a huge map. REX resource claiming tactics would probably work best on archipelago maps of the smaller size.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Incan_Warrior
I too despise ICS - and I don't plan on ever using it either. The beauty of Civ3 MP is that a group can play with house rules. . .

Very well said. And a good idea.

ICS is a gimmick, a trick within the game mechanics to exploit a flaw or oversight in Civ 3. ICS should be disabled or the user penalized in such a way that it is ineffective. Using it is also just another unrealistic non-historical aspect of the game.

Those who play the game just to win and care nothing about simulating reality or history can try any contrived trickery they want.

But those of us who expected a game that increases realism over what Civ 2 had should be able to turn off functions and other nonsense (such as ICS) that mocks reality. Firaxis is allowing Flipping to be turned OFF in PTW. They should do something similar for ICS.

ICS is just a trick exploiting a weakness in the design. That weakness should be corrected.

ICS?? No thanks.

[DrFell]

There's no easy way to fix ICS without restricting the player too much.

[Tuberski]

ICS has been around since Civ. It isn't a flaw within the design of Civ 3.

Civ3 actually TRIED to curb it with the corruption increases, but it hasn't really stopped it.

[player1]

Personlly I find it always STUPID to make perfect 21-tile cities.
It's so resource WASTEFULL.
So much of good territory unexploited.
Never understood that strategy.
BAD strategy.


On the other hand I always found it STUPID to make 1-2tile cities, it's aloso resource wastefull. You'll never cover good position in time with such expansion (just try in SP), you'll have high corruption due high number of cities (but also lower corrruption due distance factor).
Needeless to say time needed for making settler is longer in Civ3, which goes in no-ICS player favor.


3 tiles is way to go.

And I don't wont ANY kind of "MP house rule" to penalizae me for that.

[=DrJambo=]

ICS? Care someone to explain?

Anyways, 3 tile spacing seems the most logical, certainly against the AI.