I have been playing a few games now and i still dont understand the city upkeep nor the unit upkeep.

When does city upkeep kick in and what is a good number of cities to have at a large map? When should i build my 2nd/3rd city?

and how manny free units do i get? And when do i need to pay for them?

City upkeep kicks in by your second city, I believe. It should only be 1 or 2 gold at that point. How many cities is really up to you; I tend to spread mine out, so there is a fair bit of "wasted" space in between them. You could cluster them more, but you'd have to deal with much higher upkeep costs.

When to build your second city is a really good question. I don't think anyone here has played enough to give a decent answer. Build it when you feel like it. Well, make sure to have a second warrior around first...

I'm not sure what the exact numbers on unit upkeep are, but I know it comes in three parts. First, you have to pay if you have too many units total, counting workers, settlers, and maybe even great people. Second, you have to pay if you have too many military units. Finally, you have to pay again for units outside your borders. The number of free units for each category decreases, so you have the most free units overall, less free military units, and very few free foreign units.

I tend to spread my cities too since its no use to cluster them if you cant grab a few resources within there culture/working space.

Upkeep is LOWER, not HIGHER with clustered cities...

No, it's actually higher. Distance upkeep won't go up, but number of cities upkeep will go through the roof.

correct me if i'm wrong, but that has nothing to do with clustered vs. non-clustered. that has to do with # of cities, regardless of how they are arranged.

well kaim is assuming that you will build those distant cities anyways since you want too get the resources nearby. At least i think thats what he means.

well kaim is assuming that you will build those distant cities anyways since you want too get the resources nearby. At least i think thats what he means.

That still has nothing to do with clustered vs. non-clustered. It has to do with adding additional cities. Upkeep would be even WORSE if you added them in a non-clustered fashion.

I seem to only be building cities in beneficial locations, I don't follow the old 2 space, three space rules as in CIV3, I do try to keep cities within 6 spaces in early game, so I can keep barbarians from destroying improvements..

Can we clarify language here? This thread is actually about "Maintenance": the per-city cost determined by city size and distance from capital. Courthouses reduce a City's maintenance cost by 50%.

"Upkeep" is a term meaning "cost in gold for the current set of Civics" and is not under discussion.

well i mean maintaince :)

someone else who knows when these things kick in?

City maintenence is based on two things: Number of cities in your empire and the distance they are from your capitol.

Therefore, if two players have 5 cities each, and one plays clustered and the other spreads out, the spread-out player will have higher city maintenence costs. This will kick in at starting at your second city.

Generally, maintenence problems will occur if you expand too fast or too far for your economy to handle. Once you've researched Code of Laws, you can build courthouse improvements to mitigate this expense.

Therefore, unlike Civ III (where it was best to spam cities with few buildings) Civ 4 encourages more developed cities so they can be worth the maintenence costs.

We still need to find out what determines how many units are supported.

unit cost are generally based on difficulty and civics.

maybe map size? I'm not sure.

well yeah im trying to determine that but well i play mostly different map types.