Who's the worst at ICS

[PJayTycy]

Who's worst at ICS?


me ?

[Zoetrope]

First game as Pirates, I had 100 sea bases within 100 turns. Just built sea formers (for kelp) and sea colony pods nonstop.

The kelp grew just dandy, and my alias, Svensgard, grew rapidly in all directions without opposition: sea movement in the early game is better for expansion than one can ever do on land with fission colony pods.

The short turn strategy was to claim all sea territory as mine, but filling in the spaces, soon most sea squares were within base radii.

With so many bases, support was no problem, and if the faction and geographical spread were energy inefficient I didn't notice, what with all the tidal harnesses I was able to build once each area's local formers were free from kelp planting duties.

Settings: "Impossible", Huge map, single-player. Consequences of above strategy: rapid tech dominance and a mean air force to put the Usurpers, Caretakers and other landlubbers in their place, which was to stay on terra firma while the Pirates bombarded them relentlessly from above. Air Pirates, arr-harr!

By comparison, the worst experience I had was as Domai on a huge water map. I was stuck on a tiny island, and it seems the Pirates beelined for me, attacking me with cannon without a break. There was no invasion, but with the constant destruction I never got the chance to develop tech or units, and was essentially the Prisoner of Zenda, until about turn 80, when I quit.

[Straybow]

Dang, PJay took my clever reply. But it really is me.

I once did an ICS game on Civ1 as the Mongols. I've never duplicated the feat. I'm a compulsive builder, it takes extraordinary self-control to keep from piling nearly every facility into every base.

[Archaic]

Errr....I do exactly that, while doing ICS. It's anything but impossible. You might not be able to do as tight ICS (initially) as others, since you need those tiles for minerals (which sats can eventually take over from, allowing late game extra bases to be placed), but you'll be tight enough. You do suffer worse in war, should someone manage to take or destroy a base, but with the extra facilities built, and with the higher minerals per base, you should be able to defend more effectively also.