ICS status according to current Civ3 info

[Takeshi]

(For those who don't know, ICS stands for Infinite City Sprawl and it is a strategy where a player builds lots of cities close together as quickly as possible, taking advantage of bonuses such as free improvement on city square and extra tile worked.)

I thought it would be time to revisit this with some of the new info we have now.

Changes which negatively affect ICS:

1-Settler units now require 2 population points and can only build cities. This significantly slows down the rate of new cities. Terrain improvement is done by a seperate worker unit which requires 1 population points.

2-National borders are based on culture, which in turn is generated by improvments and wonders. Thus the borders of the small undevelopped cities of an ICS player will not extend very far. Also cities will be vulnerable to absorbtion by a more culturally advanced civilization.

3-The removal of the caravan unit and the inability of rushing production without a leader will make the contruction of expensive improvements/wonders very difficult.

4-Some mini-wonders require the construction of a minimum number of improvements. At first this seems more easily attained by the ICS strategy but due to point #3 above it will actually be much harder.

5-The number of freely supported units is partly based on the size of a city.


And here are the changes which ICS could benefit from:

1- Commercial and Industrious abilities give bonuses on a per-city basis.

2- The number of freely supported units is also partly based on the number of cities.

3- While the outer border will be weak, the inside territory will be tightly secured. Bigger territory will mean more special ressources. Extensive road network between cities will make it difficult to cut it off from these ressources.

4- Leaders come from a highly successful military unit, so if the ICS player chooses carefully the units which suicide-attack and which give the final blow, a breed of highly successful units could be raised, thus increasing the chance of obtaining leaders.

5- Armies are more easily assembled by leaders due to point #4 above and the large number of units typically built in an ICS strategy.

6- Golden Ages give bonuses on a per tile worked basis, which favors the ICS strategy of numerous cities because of the free worked tile per city.

7- Forbidden Palace mini-wonder could curb the corruption problem normally present in large ICS empires.


Hmmm, ICS still seems like a viable strategy in Civ3. Of course, we won't know until we see the final game. Are there any other points to be added to the above?

[connorkimbro]

looks like a pretty good analysis you've done there. good work. i'm sure it will still be possible. things are always possible. there will be workarounds discovered before too long. .

[Sarxis]

Again, I think the #1 balancer for ICS in CivIII is the fact that it takes 2 population points to build settlers. The biggest controversy of ICS is that you get a virtual 2 population points for 1 settler unit when you build a new city (worker PLUS city worked tile).

Settler pop cost has made this more fair.

[dennis580]

You forgot that after a city reaches population 2 all city increases in population only cost 40 food. So this is another thing that greatly promotes big cities. Also we don't know how agrresive and how well the AI will cordniate thier attacks. I have a feeling that this will be hundred's of times better the Civ 2's crappy AI. So that's another thing that will kill ICS.

Personally I feel ICS will be a complete waste of time in Civ III and just not worth it.

[Falconius]

Originally posted by dennis580
You forgot that after a city reaches population 2 all city increases in population only cost 40 food. So this is another thing that greatly promotes big cities.

Funny, I see that the opposite way. With your cities growing faster, that speeds up your output of settlers to create more cities. It kind of offsets the minus 2 population points.

[Skanky Burns]

ICS wont exist in Civ 3 the way it did in Civ 2.
In Civ 2, ICS thrived because each city got a 'bonus' pop working in the city center. Now that each settler costs 2 pop-points, this city center is fully 'paid for' when founding the city. The game actually penalizes an ICSer, as larger cities grow at a faster rate than smaller ones due to the size 40 food-bins.

What i think could happen is that towards the later stage of the game, once the player can build an army per four cities, people will start laying down heaps of cheese cities just to build up the number of armies that their empire can build. They are not penalized as much as an early ICSer, as they will already have large cities that can grow at a fast rate, recovering the lost population they used building many cheap cities.

[Inverse Icarus]

within 2 weeks of playing someone will come up with an updated version of ICS, it's just a fact.

[Sarxis]

Hmm, the more I look at CivIII's culture model (what little I can find out), it looks like ICS is very undesireable. In CivII and SMAC, having ICS cities meant having small population cities that gave you a free worker. But in CivIII, if what I am reading about culture is correct, not only will you not be getting that 'free' worker, but ICS cities will be very feable culturally, which means these cities will easily fall prey to conquest, amongst having other shortcomings.

But I guess we shall soon see how the ICS sleazes fair in CivIII.

[Crouchback]

Aside from the 2 population cost of settlers and the big city bonus, a lot seems to depend on how strong the cultural factor is in practice. Could it be that a culturally advanced nation ends up with hundreds of a neighboring ICS civilisation's small cities? Can one literally conquer the world with culture alone? It maybe game balance requires the preservation of some strong ISC elements.

David

[Skanky Burns]

In Civ 2 doing pure ICS, im told that the ICSer will build temples, markets, and other assorted 'cheap' buildings in each city. These building would provide the ICS empire with a level of culture - albeit not as much as a perfectionist city would, but the ICSer would have a massive number of cities pumping out this weak amount of culture which would add up.

So i dont think culture will be much of a problem to ICS, if someone can get it going.

[Tventano]

On GamesWeb it says:

Jeff: The biggest change is that the number of units you can support for free is based on your government type AND the number and types of your cities. Larger cities allow the free support units, but the exact number they allow is dictated by the government type.

I would say that this is a strong argument against ICS.

[Akron]

Culture is definitely another thing that will hurt ICS. Though it may seem possible to build a bunch of cheap culture producing buildings in ICS cities, this will take a long time, since ICS cities will have little production and the economy will be under much more strain. Also, with the economy under much more strain, this will limit the number of culture producing buildings an ICS civ can build. Sure, you can get more gold by building more roads, but now you'll have to build workers separately, which will slow things down and take away more pop. Also, military units require gold for upkeep, which will hurt ICS yet some more (given the low development and corruption of cities). And an ICS civ, since its culture will probably lag behind others, will be easily converted, will have a difficult time assimilating conquered cities, and will have a difficult time obtaining needed resources from foreign civs (if it wasn't able to obtain these resources through its land-grabbing efforts).

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Falconius


Funny, I see that the opposite way. With your cities growing faster, that speeds up your output of settlers to create more cities. It kind of offsets the minus 2 population points.

Could you explain how (all cities above 2 requiring 40 food to grow) would benefit the ICS player more than someone with larger, more spread out cities?

Think about it... ICS player has 3 cities, size 2 each, each working three squares, pulling in 6 food per turn. In 7 turns those cities will grow one larger.

In contrast a non-ICS player will have 1 city size 7 pulling in 21 food each turn. In the same 7 turns this city will have grown to roughly size 12 with more production capabilities, etc.

The equal food box would seem to work exponentially, as the larger a city grows the more food it (should) bring in and the faster it will grow.

No one knows for sure until it can be tested but the increased settler cost (easier to produce with larger production in large cities) and equal food requirements would seem to favor larger cities who can maintain the growth and production and likely gain back the population during and maybe even before the next settler is produced.

ICS may live but there will probably be a "golden" size established that cities should grow to before they start.

[Rommel393]

There are too many disadvantages to ICS for it to be a succesful strategy. Firaxis has done an excellent job in solving this problem.

Death to ICS!

[Inverse Icarus]

but Rommel, ICS will re-ermerge, i'd put money on it.

there are "loopholes" in every game i ever played, and im sure that after a week or two someone will have a screenshot of a 250+ city empire all happy and strong with some humorous caption.

[jadlakha]

Originally posted by Jingo
but Rommel, ICS will re-ermerge, i'd put money on it.

there are "loopholes" in every game i ever played, and im sure that after a week or two someone will have a screenshot of a 250+ city empire all happy and strong with some humorous caption.

10 Dollars Jingo.

Im just in a gambling mood for somereason.

[cassembler]

Will ICS Exist in Civ3? Yes. Will it be the same startegy as Civ2? Definitely not. All empires must expand somewhat, and building more cities doesn't mean that you're using the ICS strategy. I think the traditional phalanx-settler-phalanx-settler bulding queue has been obliterated though. It will probably be phalanx (or other unit)-worker-temple-settler-marketplace-settler or something like that.

[Crouchback]

I've been thinking about this question a lot since the civ3.com faq was updated, and I can see a problem.

The driving force behind ICS is that first free square on which the city is founded as well as the one worked by the first citizen. Cities stay small because, rather than expand to use all 21 squares, the player builds new cities within city radius to get another free square. Lots of cities with a greater combined productive capacity than smaller ones.

As for resources, build a new city on them.

Culture will only be important if a better spread out, more advanced civilization can absorb the small numerous cities of an ICS player. Defence won't matter, ICS has always been defended in depth and number of cities count against armies only when you try to form a new one. Plus ICS can resist by stationing large numbers of troops in border cities, which helps prevent militarily weaker nations from overrunning their outposts.

It is that 2 population cost that is going to hurt, but not that much if small cities grow faster than large ones (20 stored food rather than 40), and the 1 population cost of workers. I'm not so sure this is a cure for ICS, it could be the strategy is back with a vengeance in civ3.

David

[Father Beast]

in every city screen I've seen, te food box is size 40

[cyril25376]

Look at this screenshot, building a settler is much more expensive (worker 1 turn, settler 4 turns)
http://www.multiplayer.it/show.php3?...00/s_img12.jpg

[Jason Beaudoin]

I don't think it will be very easy to expand very quickly in CIV III as it was in CIV II, and because of that, I believe that most players will come across major problems when they attempt to do so. Not only will it be more difficult to produce many settlers, but because they can be captured, it would be very unwise to set them off on their own, as I usually did when I was just beginning. I would, most certain, accompany them with a unit, especially because they are so expensive to build.

I think the pressures brought on by other civs, and because of cultural factors, I believe it will be impossible to use the ICS strategy. So much is influenced by culture (from trade, diplomacy and border size) that if people ignore it and just expand, they'll be crushed!

Besides, Firaxis has already said that ICS doesn't work. This debate is kind of moot. I'm sure we can count on their assessment of the game, after all, they are the ones that have played the game, not us.

[korn469]

Besides, Firaxis has already said that ICS doesn't work. This debate is kind of moot. I'm sure we can count on their assessment of the game, after all, they are the ones that have played the game, not us.

and another thing nobody at firaxis has beat civ3 at deity either...so i guess beating the game on deity is a moot point too right?

i read over on civfanatics that size 1 cities and size 2 cities only require 20 food each to grow while the rest require 40 food to grow, if this proves to be true, couple that with granaries and we have what could be the area where ICS pops back up

as for culture, i think it will be somewhat of a deterant to ICS, but certainly nothing overwhelming if all but the super cities only have a three to five border radius

it does seem that ICS as we know it from civ2 is ineffective because of the many rule changes, but who knows what new thing will creep up because of this

because of the new support system army laundering in democracy especially worries me

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by korn469
...
as for culture, i think it will be somewhat of a deterant to ICS, but certainly nothing overwhelming if all but the super cities only have a three to five border radius
...

The MAXIMUM border radius is five,
unless you have won the game through culture.

[Akron]

Originally posted by korn469

and another thing nobody at firaxis has beat civ3 at deity either...so i guess beating the game on deity is a moot point too right?

The real question to ask is "How many people tried to beat it on deity?"

Hopefully, a lot of good players did and failed.

[Simpson II]

Thinking about the expansion strategy; if the food box never gets larger size 40 then bigger cities will definitely pay off better. On the other hand, big cities have worse happiness problems... controling those is probably going to be the harder than growing your cities, so unless large empires come with crippling happiness problems then we may end up producing settlers like crazy to get rid of population points.

Overall I suspect that early control over luxuries will be absolutely decisive. So early scouting and military is strongly indicated, and I'll probably start playing with an expansionist/militarist civ... hmmm.

[Comrade Tribune]

Very good thread!

I believe in the end it will come down to the basic question: What price a Settler?

To build up a city from pop1 to pop3 costs 20*2 = 40 food. So I would use size 3 cities to churn out Settlers.

40 food plus (probably) 60 shields is not really that much, so I fear ICS will be back.

[HalfLotus]

Another knock against ICS: I read in the "interview with Firaxians" that larger cities will be able to support more units without cost. This favors larger cities. Death to ICS.

Edit:
Oops. Just noticed #5. **bangs head against table**

[Lorizael]

I definetely think that ICS will take a big hit for all of the reasons listed above. But remember this. There have been civilizations in history that simply expand without paying too much attention to infrastructure. Not the best way, but it can be done. Hopefully thos will be difficult. I always found it better to only have like 20 or 25 cities though, as all of those cities would be awesome.

[albiedamned]

The 2 pop point cost for settlers is certainly a deterrent to ICS, but it seems to me that culture will be the biggest deterrent. ICS cities generally have weak infrastructure, which will mean weak culture in Civ3. Someone mentioned in an earlier post in this thread that a lot of cities producing a little culture could match a big city producing a lot of culture. But I think I read that the calculation for determining when a weak culture city is absorbed by another civ with a nearby strong culture city (or cities) is based on the culture points of the inidividual cities in question, not the culture points of the civ as whole. So even if a lot of weak culture cities can produce the same total culture points as a few strong culture cities, this won't stop the border cities from being absorbed by culturally strong neighbors. To me that's the single biggest factor against ICS.

[Skanky Burns]

You're right, a superior culture does assimilate weaker cultural cities. However, a city producing a small amount of culture will slow down the assimilation by the big culture-producing city. Also, a (larger) military garrison will prevent the city from being taken over. My point was that by building just a temple in each city (or just those on the frontier even) the new cities will survive long enough for the ICSer to take action against the culturally superior city (ie: wipe it off the map )

And this is only if total culture isnt a factor in determining if a city is assimilated. If total culture is a factor, then 100 cities producing 10 CPs will give the same as 10 super-cities producing 100 CPs.

Personally, i hope that total culture is used to help determine if a city is assimilated. Although it helps an ICSer, it also helps anyone and everyone who builds a new city near another civ, regardless of playing style.