Hi. Just a quick question if anyone would know? I got the game 2 days ago and been playing it. One thing I do know that Civ 4 does punish players having too many cities. My question is how many cities would be optimal let's say around 30 B.C.?

thanks in advance. need Civ 4 today to kill the time before I get married later this afternoon/ealry evening :p yep, today's the day!

Congratulations to you and sid for finally tying the knot.

It all depends on your economy. I actually made a few too many cities in the start and it was killing my research. It actually in the end helped in the long run. Cuz later on i was up from 40% to 80% + extra gold and my cities that i had extra of were population 10. Just keep building em utill you see your upkeep getting high.

so maybe around 5-6 cities by 30 B.C. be enough to survive?

I think 5-6 is a good number, assuming that they're all on decent land.

Congrats on getting married!

If you can found at least 2 religion, then you can have 10+ cities. Otherwise you'll lose too much money. If you don't get any religion holy city, I wouldn't go over 6.

Having Organized will also help alot; you can factor in another city or two without breaking the bank, if you're careful about placement.