Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

[Tannhauser]

Holy crap, 20 cities!?  I do about 5-7 cities on average.  That's before any conquests.  I'm holding off playing until I get the xpac.  That way things are pretty fresh.  I've put the most hours in Civ V than anything else in my Steam library. 

[naum]

Yes, my last 2 games were both won with 5 cities total. One by score and the other the UN vote deal, both playing Japan (though I selected "random everything" on the game setup screen). It's also the first time I stayed with a game all the way through -- usually restart by the time I got just into AD, no matter if I best score or not.

[Shannow]

Call it a lack of impulse control but I simply can't play a game of civ without at least  10 cities or so. Never mind 4-5 or god forbid 1  . 

I just can't let good territory go to waste... 'Oh look a nice river, with a cpl of pastures, hrrm some hills for production...even a luxury resource....mmmm....urr excuse me I need some alone time'


And now I got a big old island all to myself.....

[Rishathra]

So I guess this is a standard thing for Civ V then?  Because I can't think of any game of Civ IV, no matter the win condition I was going for, where I wouldn't get completely crushed because I only built 5-7 cities.

[Merusk]

Yes.  The current game is really centered around 4, no more than 10 cities. 

I built 22 on the game I'm doing right now and unhappiness is almost unmanageable.  I don't know how the 'wide small' thing Maledict was talking about is supposed to work but I was giving it a shot.  It doesn't seem feasable. I'm constantly at 6-10 and will sometimes bump as high as 20 unhappiness.  I can't take-over anyone else's cities because it will destroy me. 

Unhappiness detracts not only from your gold but from your science, so now in the early 1800s I've fallen from 1-2nd place to 4th, teetering on 5th and the most gold per turn I've ever had was 5.  Now that a few more happiness buildings are becoming available I might be able to turn it around, but I've not been able to build a single critical wonder. 

Even though I have a ton of cities, the AI with it's fewer, more spread-out model is doing much, much better and I'm only on Prince so it's not cheating. 

That's before even getting in to the whole "No cities have any production capacity" thing that crunching them together so close causes.

[Malakili]

Yeah, I almost never build more than 5.  There is little reason to, you can use most of the resources in a fairly large area with a few cities once they get built up enough.  Production isn't an issue because you can get a pretty substantial income on a handful of cities and then just buy whatever you need.  All over-expanding tends to do is leave you unhappy and spread too thin.  I tend to only play on normal sized maps though, maybe if you play on the bigger maps more cities make sense.

[Rishathra]

Is it the same deal as before where each city has about 20 tiles around it that it can manage, or is it more (or less) than that? 

I know whenever I built my empires, if a city shared ONE tile with any other I considered the affair a failure, and I always resented when a pushy neighbor forced me to plop a city in a relatively tight space to prevent them from establishing a 'colony' in the middle of my beautiful sprawl.

[Flinky]

Is it the same deal as before where each city has about 20 tiles around it that it can manage, or is it more (or less) than that?

Cities can work any hex within a 3 tile radius of themselves for a total of 36 (not including the city tile itself). This is also the limit of the area you can buy tiles, though your cultural borders can naturally expand beyond this.

I built 22 on the game I'm doing right now and unhappiness is almost unmanageable.  I don't know how the 'wide small' thing Maledict was talking about is supposed to work but I was giving it a shot.  It doesn't seem feasable. I'm constantly at 6-10 and will sometimes bump as high as 20 unhappiness.  I can't take-over anyone else's cities because it will destroy me.

Are you limiting the population growth in your cities? For a wide strategy you're supposed to get about 3-4 population (based on the amount of happiness available for you to work with) per city and then halt their growth in the citizen management list and only work the best tiles available to them. As more options for happiness open up you can then slowly raise the imposed pop cap on each of your cities.

[MrHat]

Are you limiting the population growth in your cities? For a wide strategy you're supposed to get about 3-4 population (based on the amount of happiness available for you to work with) per city and then halt their growth in the citizen management list and only work the best tiles available to them. As more options for happiness open up you can then slowly raise the imposed pop cap on each of your cities.

That is pretty important. As is the last batch of social policies, I think Order.

Combine that with religion that gives happiness and as long as they cities don't get big you could have a crazy large empire that is actually super profitable.

[Paelos]

I'm playing a game as Siam. What a useless civilization that is in this game. Ugh.

[Maledict]

The trick to ICS is to remember that you don't build everything in every city and your cities never get that big.

- you need to limit your cities to a size where they can deal with the happyness. Detailed explanation coming, apologies!

 Each city gives you 3 unhappiness for existing, plus 1 per point of population. The 3 unhappiness you get from the city existing is GLOBAL unhappyness, the unhappiness from the population is LOCAL unhappyness.

Buildings you construct in the city can only remove local unhappyness, and cannot remove more than exists. So if your city has a Pagada and Colleseum in it, the first 4 points of population don't generate any unhappyness. Anything over 4 will start adding unhappyness - so you switch your city to stopping growing when it hits population 4.

As you unlock more technologies and more social policies, your can allow your cities to grow further. You need to be aware of the cap and work around it.

GLOBAL unhappyness comes from 4 main sources - Luxuries, select social policies, founder faiths and any happyness from a wonder. Anything that requires a building or has a specific condition attached to it (next to a river for example) is Local happyness. Anything that is general and affects all (e.g. All cities, all cities with your faith, all cities connected to the Capitol) counts as global unhappyness. It's not a hard and fast rule and there are a couple of exceptions but that's basically how it works.

So on prince level an Empire of 10 cities each at 4 population (a very small ICS size) has a total of:

30 unhappyness from the cities existing
40 unhappyness from the cities population

You get 9 happyness from the difficulty level, so need to find 61 more to break even.

Say you have 8 luxuries - that's 32 happyness straight up. You've just eliminated your global unhappyness instantly.

Take the liberty policy that gives 1 happy per city connected - that's another 9 happyness. You're up to 41 happyness without a single building.

Take the religious faith 'Ceremonial Burial'. You now have another 10, so you are at 51 happyness versus 61 unhappyness.

Put a Colleseum in every city, plus a shrine with the religious belief that gives +1 happyness. That's 30 local happyness.



That leaves you with 19 happyness left, before you start looking at Pagodas, Theatres, policies in the Honour tree etc.


General rule of thumb is - if you have 5 or more happyness, settle another city. Cap each cities growth at the population sustainable by the buildings in that city. That's why Egypt is so good at ICS - Burial Tombs give you another 2 local happyness, and all the faith you get means you can have a lot of faith boosters. In my game I had Pagoda's and the shrine happyness benefit, so before I built a single happyness building I could have 5 people in every city. I think I ended up with approx 30 cities in that game.

NOTE- if you have the liberty policy that gives 1 happyness per connected city, the Order policy which gives 1 happyness per city and the faith that gives 1 happynes per city you won't have any unhappyness from settling a city - only the population. At that point you literally can expand forever with no limit to your number of cities.

NOTE 2: the three abilities that reduce unhappyness from population (5% from the liberty tree, 10% from Forbidden Palace, 50% from specialists from the Freedom tree) are great because whilst their lower your unhappyness they don't lower the local happyness cap. So a city at size 10 with the forbidden palace only generates 9 unhappyness due to the population - but you can still get 10 happyness from local happyness sources.

-----------

Re size, I don't thinking correct to say Civ 5 is a 4 city game. I think it's probably better to say its *either* a 4 city game, or its a huge city game. There's no benefit for hitting 7 cities say and then stopping. Either you maximise the 4 you have with Tradition, or you gear up for a huge Empire and take advantage of the bonuses you get through Liberty and the basic stats.

ICS works on standard maps and greater - it's a completely valid strategy but it can give you a headache later on due to the number of cities. You also end up in wars a lot more as the AI gets pissed off due to your number of cities (settling cities too aggressively) and because expanding means your borders touch which also causes grief. On the plus side an ICS empire gearing up for war is ferocious as ICS generally gives you STUPID amounts of cash.

I'm happy to email a save game to anyone who wants to take a look either at the Egyptian or Mayan ICS game I player. Both are only on Emperor level but show the basic concepts off. TBH in both games you end up with SO much happyness you don't know what to do with it and have run out of space to expand further...

[Merusk]

Ah the stop growth thing I didn't know about.  That would explain some of the problems, since I'm at 5 or 6 pop on the biggest ones.

I'm playing a game as Siam. What a useless civilization that is in this game. Ugh.

Siam needs city states. There's no two ways about it and IIRC you said you turn them off on all your games, so yes, it'd be a useless civ.

[Maledict]

If your game doesn't have city states it shouldn't pick civs like Siam or Greece to be present unless you manually select them. That would be a much better choice.

I'm playing as America currently. Oddly enough its proving exactly what everyone said - America's ability looks really dull but is actually really handy throughout the entire game. Also minutemen are amazing - sorry but they beat the pants off Janissery's hands down. Superb unit.

Finally got the 'build all wonders in the game' achievement through picking up Ankhor Wat. Totally useless wonder but thought it might be amusing with America's ability to buy half a continent. Again have ended up going 'wide' but proving much harder as am on Immortal difficulty and the Mongols have conquered half the map. We're at war, I've captured two cities but he's ahead on tech and I fear I'm about to see a huge rush of triplanes and Great War bombers to which I have absolutely no defense at all until I find some oil.

[Merusk]

If your game doesn't have city states it shouldn't pick civs like Siam or Greece to be present unless you manually select them. That would be a much better choice.

The game wasn't picking it, Paelos said he's playing as them.  Without city states it's like trying to win a mega-empire game as India.

[Maledict]

Yeah, I almost never build more than 5.  There is little reason to, you can use most of the resources in a fairly large area with a few cities once they get built up enough.  Production isn't an issue because you can get a pretty substantial income on a handful of cities and then just buy whatever you need.  All over-expanding tends to do is leave you unhappy and spread too thin.  I tend to only play on normal sized maps though, maybe if you play on the bigger maps more cities make sense.

Alternatively expanding massively gives you huge amounts of cash and (in the end) science. It's also necessary for aggressive faith strategies as faith mostly comes from buildings.

The trick is that many buildings give static bonuses, and most tiles generally just 'break even' until near the end game on their resources. A large collection of size 5 cities each with a library, market and ampitheatre churning out units generates a nice amount of every resource especially cash.

It does require a lot more work than going tall though. It's also something that is best done with certain civs -whilst anyone and any Civ *can* go wide, there are a select few that really benefit from it - Egypt, Maya, Ethopia (astonishingly) and Rome in particular. Any civ with a good early game building, or a mechanic that increases the more cities you have, is a good candidate for going wide.

Except India. Do not try this with India!

EDIT : joking aside, despite my recent posts I actually prefer going tall rather than wide. Aztec super cities is my favourite game type. Only reason I'm going on so much is because people were questioning its effectively, and because for some reason my last 3 games have all gone wide rather than tall.

[Maledict]

If your game doesn't have city states it shouldn't pick civs like Siam or Greece to be present unless you manually select them. That would be a much better choice.

The game wasn't picking it, Paelos said he's playing as them.  Without city states it's like trying to win a mega-empire game as India.

I'd assumed it was a random selection for him as well. Without city states it sounds like torture!

[Paelos]

I have them on in this game. It's still not awesome. The new version of city states aren't like they used to be. I'm positive I'm playing it wrong, and the playstyle if I am doesn't appeal to me at all.

Plus their units are terrible. An elephant cavalry? That gets waylaid by almost anything ranged in that era.

EDIT: I always play random civ. I don't pick because I like trying new things as a surprise.

[Maledict]

Well, they significantly toned down maritime city states as when the game first launched you're best bet was to ally with All of them, never plant a single farm and put a trade post everywhere. The changes have improved how military states work, but also the addition of merchantable and religious does also lower their power.

Before GnK you could rely on a large amount of maritime and culture cities. Now you also get faith and merchantile which you might to need at all but it does lower your overall income as there's less of the city states you want around.

Personally I like having them in the game, like allying with a couple of them where the quests make sense, but generally not a huge fan of playing games based around them.

[Paelos]

I firebomb people I hate with missionaries.

[Spiff]

Just finished a large empire game with the Arabs, just from trade routes alone I made a fortune  (also sniped Machu Pichu)
Ended it with a quick science victory even though I was really planning to go for domination for once, but after a thousand year war against the endless Persian Empire I lost the will to conquer.
Also don't forget horses for happiness: allows you to build cheapo circuses which are just as good as yur fancy-pants colloseums but don't cost a cent in maintenance.

[Megrim]

Yeah, I almost never build more than 5.  There is little reason to, you can use most of the resources in a fairly large area with a few cities once they get built up enough.  Production isn't an issue because you can get a pretty substantial income on a handful of cities and then just buy whatever you need.  All over-expanding tends to do is leave you unhappy and spread too thin.  I tend to only play on normal sized maps though, maybe if you play on the bigger maps more cities make sense.

Alternatively expanding massively gives you huge amounts of cash and (in the end) science. It's also necessary for aggressive faith strategies as faith mostly comes from buildings.

The trick is that many buildings give static bonuses, and most tiles generally just 'break even' until near the end game on their resources. A large collection of size 5 cities each with a library, market and ampitheatre churning out units generates a nice amount of every resource especially cash.

It does require a lot more work than going tall though. It's also something that is best done with certain civs -whilst anyone and any Civ *can* go wide, there are a select few that really benefit from it - Egypt, Maya, Ethopia (astonishingly) and Rome in particular. Any civ with a good early game building, or a mechanic that increases the more cities you have, is a good candidate for going wide.

Except India. Do not try this with India!

EDIT : joking aside, despite my recent posts I actually prefer going tall rather than wide. Aztec super cities is my favourite game type. Only reason I'm going on so much is because people were questioning its effectively, and because for some reason my last 3 games have all gone wide rather than tall.

How does the ICS strat deal with overtly aggressive neighbours in the early and mid game? It sounds as though the gold income does not ramp up until later, so unless you are buying a lot of your units, shouldn't production be fairly low?

[Mithas]

Since you don't build everything in every city I will just start producing a bunch of units right away. If I place my cities properly and create choke points for the AI I can usually fend off a larger attack force. 4 or 5 ranged units and a couple melee do the trick for me. Horses if I can get them. I expand so fast that I can afford to lose a city occasionally.

[Sky]

Is it the same deal as before where each city has about 20 tiles around it that it can manage, or is it more (or less) than that? 

I know whenever I built my empires, if a city shared ONE tile with any other I considered the affair a failure, and I always resented when a pushy neighbor forced me to plop a city in a relatively tight space to prevent them from establishing a 'colony' in the middle of my beautiful sprawl.

I always considered a small/constricted city one of those twin cities kind of deals. Dallas/Ft Worth or whatever.

[tazelbain]

I wonder if they can ever make this game more realistic, in real life:
Civs are fractured by nations and factions.
Civs mix.
Civs break apart.
Civ in-fight.
Internet drastic changes cultures spread
Leaders/Great people don't live forever.
Leaders can't control their on a tatical level.
The technology and science doesn't remotely work that way.

[Stormwaltz]

Civs are fractured by nations and factions.
Civs mix.
Civs break apart.
Civ in-fight.

Rhye's and Fall of Civilization for Civ4. A year ago he said he was making a Civ5 version, but I've no idea where that is.

[Sky]

One nice thing about FFH2 (it's relevant!) is the alignment system. Good/Neutral/Evil, events and leaders can affect and change that. Much more effective religion, too. It kind of boggles my mind the innovations brought by many Civ IV mods that were just ignored by Firaxis. HUPA.

[Ingmar]

Yeah assigning Good/Evil/Neutral to historical groups would go over oh-so-well.

[Maledict]

Per launch patch.

Some newe graphics, but the two major changes seem to be:

I) vastly improved optimisation. It was hardly slow before but turns process much more rapidly for me, and the game is a lot smoother and faster at max graphical settings spinning around the map.

II) the AI is freaking vicious when attacking cities now. Much more co-ordinated and deadly.

[Sky]

Yeah assigning Good/Evil/Neutral to historical groups would go over oh-so-well.

Don't be so literal, jackanapes.

[Merusk]

Finished up my first full ICS game.  I went for France and a cultural victory and it was glorious.  I had my Utopia Project unlocked in 1942 but waited until the 60s because Greece had the gall to start a war with me and needed to lose Athens to learn their lesson.

I had to restart as a few different civs because I just wasn't getting the hang of things.. then I remembered I had "Raging Barbarians" checked because of the Bismark game I played.  Whoops.  Suddenly I wasn't having to build a billion troops early on and could spit-out settlers as I wanted.  Yay.

Since so many of my games have been narrow-but-tall in structure I hadn't had to actually siege a city in the Modern era in a long, long time.  Holy crap are Rocket Artillery overpowered.  Alex and I were about equal on tech, so my normal Arty would take 4-5 turns beating his walls down with the 4 I'd rotate through.  Then when I got Rockets and took one of his cities so I could upgrade.. pow, 2 arty in one turn would wipe out a city defense so my tanks could sweep in.  Game over.

Wide was an interesting experience because I wound up with so much happiness towards the end because I took the Piety tree.  I think I had 251 happy people and culture of 400+ per turn with an income surplus of nearly 850 before I started shooting out troops for the war.  Good lord!

I will note that I did drop down a level because I wasn't getting the hang early-on and Civs were hitting the Renissance while I was just getting in to the Classical age.  I knew those games were losses, so it was restart time.  After the 4th one I decided to drop-down.

Thanks for pointing out the play mode, was quite fun.  I haven't had a large empire culture win like that since Civ3.

[Morat20]

I'm getting a bit annoyed with Civ 5 -- it's suddenly stopped recognizing achievements. I get some, but not all.

I finished a game via Diplomatic victory? Still haven't gotten it. Finished one as Alexander (and another as Arabia), and won both, and still have those left locked.

All I can remember doing is downloading -- but not actually enabling -- a mod. I unsubscribed from it, still nothing.

[Tannhauser]

I'm missing several achievements as well.  Not sure if related, but I've downloaded a fair amount of mods.  I tried the ICS with America.  Not my playstyle it seems.  Hard to keep happiness up.  May take it back up after the xpac.

Played as Spain yesterday, restarted three times and all three times the natural wonders were far, far away from my territory.     That is a cool UA though and I may try again.  Conquistadors ROCK, fight and settle?  Yes please!

Has anyone tried Polynesia?  That UA that lets them go across the ocean on TURN ONE is ah-mazing!  I'll try them as a cultural win after the xpac, but for now I think they are great for grabbing the choice spots and making gold and a diplomatic win.  They probably fade since all of their unique stuff is front-loaded, but by then you might be established on the best hexes on the map.  I tend to be explorer/commerce oriented and this culture seems prime for that.  Off to see!

[Malakili]

I'm missing several achievements as well.  Not sure if related, but I've downloaded a fair amount of mods.  I tried the ICS with America.  Not my playstyle it seems.  Hard to keep happiness up.  May take it back up after the xpac.

Played as Spain yesterday, restarted three times and all three times the natural wonders were far, far away from my territory.     That is a cool UA though and I may try again.  Conquistadors ROCK, fight and settle?  Yes please!

Has anyone tried Polynesia?  That UA that lets them go across the ocean on TURN ONE is ah-mazing!  I'll try them as a cultural win after the xpac, but for now I think they are great for grabbing the choice spots and making gold and a diplomatic win.  They probably fade since all of their unique stuff is front-loaded, but by then you might be established on the best hexes on the map.  I tend to be explorer/commerce oriented and this culture seems prime for that.  Off to see!

I played Polynesia on an archipelago map once and it was pretty fun.  Definitely need to play a map type that is going to allow for a lot of sailing to really enjoy that Civ though.

[Morat20]

Turns out a bug in the last patch turned off or screwed up achievements for 'win' conditions. So if you win with a new civ or a new condition, no achievement.

I'll just bank a few save games on the last turn then. :)

[Sophismata]

Played as Spain yesterday, restarted three times and all three times the natural wonders were far, far away from my territory.     That is a cool UA though and I may try again.  Conquistadors ROCK, fight and settle?  Yes please!

Spain is the most powerful Civ in the game if they get their bonus, and usually they will start near a natural wonder due to terrain bias.

The 500g bonus can get them two cities before the 10th turn, and if the wonder itself is a good resource producer, Spain will rapidly win the science, faith or production game as well.