A guide to ICS

DaveV · August 17, 2000, 16:53

In response to Carolus Rex's nomination in the "Damn, I didn't know this" thread ( http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HT...tml?date=14:36 ), here is a rough draft of a guide to ICS. Comments, criticisms, and additions are welcome.

Edited 8-21-00 to provide more details about maintaining happiness with HG and building roads for trade.

The easiest way to win at Civilization II is to build lots of cities. The extreme form of this strategy is generally known by the acronym ICS, which stands for Infinite Cities Sleaze, Sprawl, or Strategy, depending on your viewpoint. Although some people hate this technique, it makes the game easier by decreasing the number of decisions you have to make. One thing that makes Civilization II difficult for new players is the staggering number of choices in the game. Do you build military units, settlers, trade units, diplomats, city improvements, or a wonder of the world? If you follow the ICS strategy, you eliminate one of the choices entirely, and can choose from the other options based on a simple pattern.

The cornerstone of this strategy is: don't build ANY improvements in any of your cities (with the exception of a few key Wonders). Build lots of small cities instead of a few big ones. Just keep building troops, settlers, and diplomats, and send them out to build new cities and take away your opponents'.

Here are the details: build your cities close together, since each city will have only 2-3 squares being worked. Initially, build a warrior to garrison each city, then a horsemen to explore. After building these two, switch to settlers. Keep your research at the max, and get to Monarchy as soon as possible. With no starting techs, your research order should be: Horseback Riding, Ceremonial Burial, Alphabet, Code of Laws, and Monarchy.

At Deity level, you'll need a second warrior in some cities to keep order after you build your fifth city under Despotism, or your seventh under Monarchy. By the time you expand beyond eight cities in Despotism, or twelve in Monarchy, you'd better have built the Hanging Gardens (see below). Keep building cities; by the time you have 24, the Hanging Gardens and one warrior will keep a size 2 city out of disorder. Note: these numbers are for a small map; you will be able to build more cities on a larger map before suffering disorder. Another note: to keep lots of cities happy with Hanging Gardens, you may have to move a garrison unit out of the city. A city may riot with two garrison troops, but be content with one. This is counterintuitive, but it works.

An ideal city site has access to a high-food square (whales, grassland, oasis, wheat, or fish), and one or two high-shield squares (forest, iron, peat, coal). At size one, put your worker on the high-food square: your goal is to grow to size 2 as quickly as possible. Once the city reaches size two, arrange your workers to maximize the shields produced by the city. Your goal is to build a settler as quickly as possible; once the city produces a settler and shrinks to size one, it repeats the cycle of growth and settler production. Don't use the settler to irrigate or mine squares; instead, move it to a good city site and build a new city. It's useful to build a network of roads that connects your cities; this eases travel for future settlers and your counterstrike forces. It's also a good idea to build roads where they will provide extra trade (on grassland, plains, or desert squares, or trade specials).

If you see a good special square (wine, buffalo, spice), build a city there to take advantage of it. Another good place to build a city is on a river square (instant bridge, improved defense, and increased trade). Building a city on a hill or mountain will produce an instant road in that square, saving you several turns of settler labor. Since a city square will always be irrigated and roaded, and will always produce at least one shield, some squares can be improved substantially by building a city on it. The following table specifies the bonuses given by building a city on any square:

+1 food, +1 shield, +1 trade - non-shield grassland, furs, wine
+1 food, +1 trade - desert, shield grassland, plains, buffalo, gold, oaisis, desert oil, wheat
+1 food, +1 shield - hills
+1 shield, +1 trade - fruit, gems, spice
+1 food - mountains, tundra, coal, musk ox, iron, glacier oil
+1 shield - jungle, swamp
+1 trade - ivory, silk, any river square
no effect - forest, glacier, pheasant, peat

Do lots of exploring, revealing the map and aggressively searching for huts and new city sites. Fortify some units on good defensive terrain to keep the other guys' scouts out of your territory. Keep a few horsemen and/or diplomats close to home to defend against barbarians and other intruders. Try to attack barbarian archers instead of defending against them - despite everything you read in the manual and help files, barbarian archers have a defense of 1 and can be easily beaten by horsemen on most terrain.

If you are playing against the computer, demand tribute from any AI civ that you can reach by land. They will be intimidated by your large number of cities and military units, and will generally pay immediately. Demand tribute every turn; when the AIs accumulate enough money, they will pay up. If an AI civ declares war on you, they will usually pay for peace within one or two turns. If they still won't pay, take one of their cities and they'll start to see reason.

If you are in a multiplayer game, make sure your border guards are stacked with another unit to prevent bribery. After the early game, your exploring units should also be stacked. A good defensive unit and a diplomat make a good exploring team in the mid game - if you stay on mountains and hills your explorers will be relatively safe from attack; the diplomat can help the team maneuver around hostile units and cities.

You'll have lots of money, because you aren't spending anything on upkeep. Keep a small reserve (100-200 gold) for emergencies; then use the money to rushbuild settlers in cities that are about to grow to size 3, or to build military units or diplomats in trouble spots, or to bribe hostile units. It's also useful to "even out" your shields. If a city is producing five shields per turn toward a settler and has 17 shields in the box, change the production in that city to horsemen, rush-build them, then change production back to settlers. This saves you a turn of production, and two wasted shields, at the cost of only 6 gold pieces.

After Monarchy, your research should focus on Trade. When you get it, switch your research to Pottery (if you haven't found it in a hut, traded for it, or stolen it already), and switch four cities to building caravans. Use them to build Hanging Gardens. This wonder will allow you to build as many small cities as you want without needing any happiness improvements or wonders.

After building the Hanging Gardens, your next choices depend on your position. If you're on an island, you need Map Making. In a multiplayer game, you'll want the Great Wall or Sun Tzu's War Academy, so set your research goal to Masonry or Feudalism, respectively. Otherwise, I like to go for Invention. This lets you build Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade all your warriors and horsemen to good units. Once you have Invention, you face a choice of going for Gunpowder or Democracy. Each is a valid choice: gunpowder upgrades your warriors to musketeers, who are very powerful both offensively and defensively against pre-gunpowder units. Democracy lets you build the Statue of Liberty, which gives invaluable early access to the two ideal ICS governments: Communism and Fundamentalism. Communism allows you to keep your cities happy with double martial law. It eliminates corruption, waste, and the extra unhappiness from "too many" cities (riot factor). Fundamentalism eliminates any happiness worries completely, and allows a huge support-free army. Its major disadvantage lies in its research penalty. Generally, I use Communism for research; when I've discovered some good military techs (usually Gunpowder and Leadership are more than sufficient). I switch to Fundamentalism and start cranking out the units. Note that the combination of Fundamentalism, lots of cities, and one or both of the global happy wonders (Michelangelo's Chapel or Bach's Cathedral) will produce an enormous income in tithes.

One of the reasons ICS works so well is that each city gets a "free" worker for the city square, that is, a size one city gets to work two squares. Also, corruption and waste are less for a small city. And, of course, no improvements mean you don't have to spend shields building them nor pay maintenance on them. You can expand exponentially by building lots of settlers: your first city builds one, your two cities build two, your four cities build four.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 21, 2000).]

jpk · August 17, 2000, 17:01

Thanks for the wonderful description of ICS. I think I will try it for my next game.

Carolus Rex · August 17, 2000, 17:19

Great effort, I tip my hat!

The "warrior to musketeer"-strategy is in there explicitly as well (going for Gunpowder after Invention and staying away from Feudalism).

Assuming that ICSing is a decease, what's the cure?

Anyone?

Edited: Changed im- to ex-...

Carolus

[This message has been edited by Carolus Rex (edited August 17, 2000).]

kcbob · August 17, 2000, 18:07

quote:

Originally posted by DaveV on 08-17-2000 04:53 PM
If you see a good special square (wine, buffalo, spice), build a city there to take advantage of it.

Do you mean ON the special square or just make sure it is withing the city limits?

BTW. Excellent explanation. I thought I had ICSing down. Au contraire.

And Carolus... "decease"???

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Frodo lives!

Better dead than "Red"... or green... or blue... or yellow... or orange... or purple... or white.

Carolus Rex · August 17, 2000, 18:28

Ok, here is an unsophisticated attempt to present the results from some tests that I ran some time ago.

I tested what the city square yields (in terms of resources) depending on the terrain and type of early government. Deity, normal production.

I do have it in matrix form (Excel spreadsheet), but I don't know how to present it in a single table here. So I just take one terrain type at a time.

Added: I only present the results for plains until I learn how to post it sufficiently easy to read. All help and suggestions on how to do it are welcome.

Example: The city square is plains

River////Special////....Food/Shields/Trade

No...////..No...////....2/1/1
Yes..////..No...////....2/1/2
No...////Buffalo////....2/2(3)/1
No...////.Wheat.////....3(4)/1/1
Yes..////.Wheat.////....3(4)/1/2

Explanation:

This was tested under both Despotism and Monarchy. Any number within brackets belongs to Monarchy. If there is only one unique number, then the square yields the same amount of that resource regardless of government type.

Read it like this:

i) First row

The city square is only plains and yields 2 food, 1 shield and 1 trade irrespective of whether you're in Despotism or Monarchy.

ii) Second row

The city square is plains with river and yields 2 food, 1 shield and 2 trade irrespective of whether you're in Despotism or Monarchy.

iii) Third row

Plains with buffalo and no river. Yields 2 food, 2 shields under despo and 3 shields under monarchy, 1 trade.

iv) Fourth row

Plains with wheat and no river. Yields 3 food under despo and 4 food under Monarchy, 1 shield, 1 trade.

v) Fifth row

Plains with wheat and a river. Yields 3 food under despo and 4 food under Monarchy, 1 shield, 2 trade.

I haven't tested plains with buffalo and a river, but the logical amount of resources ought to be: 2 food, 2 shields under despo and 3 shields under monarchy, 2 trade.

Hope I got it down all right. Now how does it look, readable?

Carolus

[This message has been edited by Carolus Rex (edited August 17, 2000).]

Carolus Rex · August 17, 2000, 18:33

ARGH!!!!

I have to edit it...

kcbob,

Decease as in illness?

Carolus

Carolus Rex · August 17, 2000, 18:42

So, what I presented above have I done with almost every type of terrain and configuration with rivers and specials.

Is this useful knowledge or not?

Carolus

Smash · August 17, 2000, 23:37

Great idea.There isn't too much info on ICS other than build a city, build a unit, build a settler.

One of the best aspects of ICS type plan is terrain isn't nearly as important.I know many players have ICS as a backup plan in MP for bad terrain.No reason why it won't work very well on good terrain.

Scouse Gits · August 17, 2000, 23:50

Dave V - Excellent! I hope it will inspire others to write about the game.

Ming - I suggest that we introduce a Civ 2 Reference Section so the ICS and OCC Guides (plus any other works) are clear to all who visit this site.

Perhaps we could replace the "Short Tips" section with some real information!

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SG (2)

Scouse Gits · August 18, 2000, 07:14

Hear, hear!

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

DaveV · August 18, 2000, 07:20

quote:

Originally posted by Carolus Rex on 08-17-2000 05:19 PM
Assuming that ICSing is a disease, what's the cure?

Anyone?
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 18, 2000).]

Play Deity/raging, and change Hanging Gardens to:
a) Cost more
b) expire earlier
c) be available later
d) all of the above

It is, of course, possible to sleaze without HG, using temples/elvis or Mike's/JSB. None of these other solutions is as effective as HG, however.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 18, 2000).]

kcbob · August 18, 2000, 08:19

Now this is interesting. I have NEVER built HG. Expiring wonders hold little wonder for me... pun intended.

All seriousness aside, is HG really THAT good of a wonder? At Deity, I suppose it might be. Personally, I've been going warrior, warrior, temple to control happiness. Then again, I maybe never really understood ICS until this thread.

BTW, Carolus... decease as in dead... or disease as in illness? And I truly hope I'm not offending you with this exchange. Your profile lists Sweden as your home port so I'm guessing English might be your second language? Or third or fourth for that matter.

Which reminds me of the observation made that children born in the Republic of China are the most intelligent in the world. After all, they learn Chinese at such an early age!!

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Frodo lives!

Better dead than "Red"... or green... or blue... or yellow... or orange... or purple... or white.

SCG · August 18, 2000, 09:50

quote:

Originally posted by kcbob on 08-18-2000 08:19 AM
All seriousness aside, is HG really THAT good of a wonder? At Deity, I suppose it might be.

I built it for one of the first times in OCC 12 (the Fundamentalist one), and found it to be very powerful if you don't expect railroad too soon (and with only 1 city, stuck in fundy that fits the description to a T). with 1 city, it virtually assured that my city would be celebrating at all times with practically no luxuries (3 happy in city, 1 happy in each other city), meaning i could bring in rep/demo trade. With that kind of power, no wonder they had it expire.

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

Carolus Rex · August 18, 2000, 10:01

quote:

Originally posted by kcbob on 08-18-2000 08:19 AM

BTW, Carolus... decease as in dead... or disease as in illness? And I truly hope I'm not offending you with this exchange. Your profile lists Sweden as your home port so I'm guessing English might be your second language? Or third or fourth for that matter.

No offense taken! You're right about English not being my native language. I did mean disease.

When we were kids my brother had a poster with Sylvester Stallone, promoting a film of his called Cobra. Stallone was wearing sun glasses, had an automatic gun thrown casually over his shoulder and a tooth pick in his mouth.

The text went like this:

Crime is a disease. He's the cure.

I just happened to remember it when I wanted suggestions for an antidote against sleaziness.

I don't remember what I did yesterday at this time, but that poster is still in there somewhere. Funny thing, a person's memory...

BTW (to all that propose it), IMHO it takes more than just snatching HG from an ICSer to stop him/her. Any other suggestions?

Carolus

Sten Sture · August 18, 2000, 15:23

Carolus you still write english better than I do...

Two additional related benefits of the ICS approach when you are playing raging hordes.

1) You are less likely to get barbs close by because you have less open space.

2) If you go the Feudalism -> Chivalry route the barbs will be Knights which will successfully attack hapless small AI civs in the name of progress while you gobble up terrain undisturbed.

Scouse Gits · August 18, 2000, 16:07

If you have a string of cities along a coastline - every other square apart - when the barb boat is spotted you can move out your units to the intermediate squares so they have no place to land. Perhaps Civ 3 should have barb marines.

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SG (2)

jpk · August 19, 2000, 13:07

This is a newbie to ICS post. Feel free to snicker. After that I would appreciate advice.

1. Should a player spend any time looking for a starting location or should a player found two cities as soon as possible.

2. If there are no trade squares (Whales, rivers, etc.) should a player build a road square prior to founding a city.

Thank you.

Scouse Gits · August 19, 2000, 17:21

I don't mind spending a few turns looking around. It is infuriating to find a whale just outside your capital's city limit. During this time I hope to open a couple of huts for "non" units. The risk is finding scrolls of wisdom you don't want at that time. Whilst starting techs don't alter your research rate any tech from a hut does slow you down - even before the first city is founded.

I only build roads after about four cities.

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SG (2)

kcbob · August 21, 2000, 08:41

Well, I'm trying this out in my latest game and it is actually working!!! Thank you so much Dave! I thought I was forever going to be locked in the wonderful world of OCC. Now I have an alternative again.

But, I'm not building as close together as I would think the classic ICS calls for. My first four cities were about 2 or 3 hexs (how do you pluricate hex?) but the later ones are more like 5 or 6 apart. Oh, well. The non-building improvements is the key.

BTW, isn't it amazing how someone who learns a foreign language does NOT learn the bad habits? It drives me crazy when someone says "between he and I".

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Frodo lives!

Better dead than "Red"... or green... or blue... or yellow... or orange... or purple... or white.

Kaak · August 21, 2000, 22:36

Grrr...like we didn't have enough newbies in the league already straight ICSing...For those of you who do this, you better get a new strategy before you play someone like eyes or myself, or you will get killed. I was doing this before it had a name, and I know it's weaknesses.

If you aren't good, it won't save you...

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Kaak
Tribe of the Divine

To fail to try is the only true failure...

Sten Sture · August 22, 2000, 02:02

tool

DaveV · August 22, 2000, 16:58

quote:

Originally posted by Kaak on 08-21-2000 10:36 PM
For those of you who do this, you better get a new strategy before you play someone like eyes or myself, or you will get killed. I was doing this before it had a name, and I know it's weaknesses.

Kaak - any chance of you or Eyes sharing some of your techniques for fighting ICS? We had a thread here quite a while back (started by Eyes, as I recall

) about ways to combat ICS. I didn't see anything there that convinced me to stop sleazing...

August 23, 2000, 06:07

I apologize for my stupidity, but what does OCC mean?

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"By bashing a steal chain on your head, I was showing that I had integrity." Kurt Angle, WWF wrestler

Scouse Gits · August 23, 2000, 06:15

The opposite of ICS --
OCC = One City Challenge - get to AC first with only one city ever!
Paul (and helpers) have written a definitive document colloquially known as the Paulicy that is invaluable...

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____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

Shadowstrike · August 23, 2000, 09:31

Speaking of OCC, has anyone ever tried an OCC win via world conquest? Better make on of those... real challenge as you must destroy, not capture every enemy city.

Scouse Gits · August 23, 2000, 10:43

I may have been dreaming, but didn't ming and/or rah and/or xin recently conquer the world with NO cities at any time?

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____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

rah · August 23, 2000, 10:49

No, Ming and I were doing the nomad challange, which the limitation was that you couldn't build a city or get one from a hut. All your cities had to come through conquest.
I accomplished both ends of the challange in the same game. I launched a ship and finished the last civ off while it was in flight.

DaveV · August 23, 2000, 11:15

Shadowstrike - I started, but didn't finish, an OCCC (one city conquest challenge

). I think it would be pretty easy. Play like a regular OCC, but build diplomats early and bribe lots of NONE units. Go for the Communism tech instead of spaceship techs and build lots of spies (one per turn should be manageable). Use them to poison water supplies to reduce pop in the target cities, then tear down walls at size one. Attack with a decent offensive unit; no more city. Repeat until no more cities are left.

SCG · August 23, 2000, 17:59

quote:

<font size=1>Originally posted by Shadowstrike on 08-23-2000 09:31 AM</font>
Speaking of OCC, has anyone ever tried an OCC win via world conquest? Better make on of those... real challenge as you must destroy, not capture every enemy city.

Close, SG1, it was vik. [url=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001188.html?date=00:47]World Conquered - 750bc - No Cities, http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HT...tml?date=00:47

Edit: I seem to be fighting with links today
[This message has been edited by SCG (edited August 23, 2000).]

cbn · August 24, 2000, 00:21

Thanks DaveV

I had never before seen ICS explained so clearly. I won my last few SP deity games using a SSC perfectionist style but thought this ICS could be powerful tool in combination with one or two large cities.

Well wow--I am in the mid 1800s (small world, deity, raging hoards) running Fundy and could wipe the two remaining AI off the earth in about 10 turns (they tuck cities in all sorts of places) . using this style there are units everywhere supported by those little size 2 and 3 cities while my two large cities (size 15+) build wonders and improvements.

My only complaint is that managing so many cities and units is a bit of a pain - I think to have shorter games I will try OCC.