Is ICS reccommended in this game?

[Daddy ♥♥♥ Cannon]

Hi, i'm a Civ III veteran if you will, and was wondering if ICS is worth while in this game.

If you don't know what ICS is, it stands for "Infinte city strategy", the whole idea of ICS was essentially to make as many cities as possible as soon as possible, because even a weak city was better then not having that city at all.

But, in this game, it penalizes you for having a large Empire (every city you have makes it so you need 7% more culture to get policies, and it takes 4% longer to reasearch tech's) unless you're going for domination.

While I kind of like this idea, at the same time, it kind of goes against the spirit of Civ, which was to try and make a EMPIRE to stand the tests of time, and the penalties for having each city really doesn't make sense at all. Wouldn't having more cities mean having more Scientests, therefore making more science? Or am I just overthinking things.

There are even Civilizations made specificaly FOR ICS (Russia, Rome ECT) so now i'm just confused as to what's more benefical: ICS, or just having a few cities?

[Acken]

In general no, don't ICS.
However there is a cheesy strategy involving ICS and Piety. If you go Piety, found a religion with 2 religious building, then take the +2 tourism bonus per religious building reformation, then spam cities. You can win a fast culture victory doing that. This is very easy to pull off on emperor and below (my GF do it up to Prince and she's a terrible player). It works mostly on pangea map because you need to meet every civ early.

The game sweet spot is between 4 and 6 cities on standard map and a couple more on huge maps. Happiness being your main limitation to expansion. And by the way more cities will give you more science by having more population. The penalties could be seen as some form of corruption or managing issues that arises with a growing empire.

[dasaard200]

I think that a few Built cities would fund Conquest, puppeting along the way, and IF there's space for a new city in the new province, put one to fit. Annexation is, of course, dependant on: city worth, position, your army strength, deep pockets for courthouses, and, I think, how many buildings you'll want to build/buy to bring city up to productive speed to keep the steamroller going .

[Zednaught]

ICS has been heavily nerfed since Vanilla, where it was actually a powerful strategy. In BNW, 3-6 cities is your maximum, and on the higher difficulties, I find it rare to get more than 4 cities before I've run out of good spots to settle without bumping into the AI.

[Harold]

ICS is far far less risky in BNW and is still a legitamate tactic its best used with mayans and arabia but faith is key

[Damsteri]

Faith is the key for ICS, like is said here earlier. Faith is the only linear resource left in BNW, all other resources has city count penalties. Prophets, missionaries and buildings has the same price, regardless how many cities you have.

Culture victory with sacred sites is easy, culture victory can be achieved before the ideologies are selected (I think my fastest one is 168 turns on standard speed). You don't need to play pangaea for sacred sites culture victory, because you can get a free great admiral from libertyy tree finisher and use that admiral to meet civs from other continents. Great admirals can travel to ocean tiles immediately. Sacred sites culture victory is possible even without Aesthetics policy tree, great works or tourism wonders, using just your religion. I did that once with Maya and 44 cities.

I have been able to keep up and actually lead in science up to Emperor level, when using ICS strategy with Maya (pyramids), Messenger of the Gods pantheon and Jesuit Education reformation belief.

[zxcvbob]

I recently went for the Longest Name Ever achievement in BNW, and it was a nightmare trying to manage 30-something cities. It's a lot more fun with 3 to 5 core cities and the rest are puppets.

[Harold]

with ICS if you have maby 20 cities settled and the lowest ones pop is 5 t150 standard you could have pagodas and mosques in all of them your generating 3 happiness which cancels out the -3 you get from the city but if you go liberty and prepare a road before the city is settled the inital -4 unhappiness is canceled out which in conjunction with circuses in most cities you can you should float around 4-12 happiness having piety and liberty should help with culture penalties (holy sites extra yields). if you get commerce finisher (+2 happiness from every lux) you happiness hits 20s,30s and 40s allowing for some growth in core cities allowing you to tech towards gold and happiness techlonogies so you can start to snowball in industrial era through to the end of the game this depends on having jesuit education, byzantine get a bad rep but there pretty crazy if you do this right. BNW punishes having lots of cities early game but if you wait it out and prepare for the coming eras where there are loads of victory options are open

[Harold]

BNW policies trees that are best for this are liberty, piety, commerce and rationionalism then order or freedom (depending on what the happiness situation is and if your the leader in tourism and culture or this is the majority ideology)