Whats the benefits of large populations?

LordTC said:
It depends also on how close you build your cities.. sometimes you want to spread the wealth around a bit so you can have two neighboring production cities. Extra population is expensive because it generally is a fairly big happiness hit.
Click to expand...

Extra pop is the same happiness hit no matter where you have it, its all just 1 happiness per pop.

If you mean to say that too much vertical growth can inhibit horizontal growth, well that is true and that is something you have to decide in what situation it is worth to do one or the other. But, you can just build a theater in that city and for a few gold you can get many hammers if you have the tiles available.
 
atteSmythe said:
Not quite, I think - IIRC, the formula per city is 1 * 1.25*pop

I'm going to assume you exclude the capital in the city counts above, since a single size-15 city won't produce any trade gold.

5 size 3 cities = 1*5 + 1.25 * 3 * 5 = 23.75:c5gold:
3 size 5 cities = 1*3 + 1.25 * 5 * 3 = 21.75:c5gold:
1 size 15 = 1 + 1.25 * 15 = 18.75:c5gold:
Click to expand...

Yes, I did exclude the capital in the above scenario. I meant that those cities were in addition to whatever else might constitute your empire.

I thought the trade formula was just plain 1,25 * population, without the +1 base. In which case only the total population would matter.
 
I went digging for links. I found PieceofMind's post here, but any other references seem to be just him or people quoting him.

I did find some other hits when I searched for "trade route 1.25" that don't reference the +1, but they were in threads devoted purely to population, not really talking about cities at all. So I guess I'll just have to say that I've not verified it independently. It should be easy enough to do, however: In a new game, road out to a city site and drop a settler. Observe whether your income increases by 1 or 2.
 
Nunya said:
The problem with having large cities is that growing them to a large size is rather difficult. You need Hospitals before you can seriously grow cities beyond size 12 or so and you need Medical Labs to grow them beyond 18.

The second problem is happiness. Coliseum + Theatre + Stadium give 12 happiness. So cities of size 12 and below can cover their own happiness cost, but larger cities will draw on your happiness reserves from luxuries and natural wonders.

Edit: And of course you need to first tech to those happiness buildings before you can build/buy them. Coliseums are early enough, but Stadiums aren't. So for much of the game a happiness neutral city will be limited to size 4-8.
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not that growing is difficult, but to grow, the city has to be surrounded by farms. so it becomes population for the sake of population.

and there is a very important thingy went unnoticed!
more cities one has, the more awesome, free city tiles are worked!


Nunya said:
Yes, I did exclude the capital in the above scenario. I meant that those cities were in addition to whatever else might constitute your empire.

I thought the trade formula was just plain 1,25 * population, without the +1 base. In which case only the total population would matter.
Click to expand...
no, it's 1 + 1.25 * city_size
 
Nunya said:
Yes it does. But trade route income only depends on the total population of your entire empire. 5 size 3 cities, 3 size 5 cities, and a single size 15 city will all produce the same amount of trade gold.
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And that (IMO) is the crux of the problem. 2 size 5 cities connected to the capital, should not give the same trade as 1 size 10 city. It may be the same amount of people, but one size 10 city would (in the real world) produce more.

Yes, I'm not a fan of ICS :)
 
This probably qualifies as a "large" city :-)
 

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Paradigne said:
And that (IMO) is the crux of the problem. 2 size 5 cities connected to the capital, should not give the same trade as 1 size 10 city. It may be the same amount of people, but one size 10 city would (in the real world) produce more.

Yes, I'm not a fan of ICS :)
Click to expand...

I think you have hit the nail on the head here. Perhaps some population based stuff needs to be changed, Im sure a linear relationship looked good on paper (it is simple after all) but its not working in game.

I hate ICS as I love to craft a beautiful civ with amazingly good cities. I only play single player though so its not really an issue that I can't play on Immortal because I gimp myself.
 
You can really ignore all the analysis given to see the answer to the question given. Small cities vs large cities can really be boiled down to simple mathematics: Trade routes increase linearly, research increases (for the most part) linearly, city growth becomes exponentially harder.

As long as this is the case, more smaller cities will ALWAYS be better than fewer larger cities even without taking into account limited specialist spots, slow cultural expansion and savings on road maintenance.
 
Snapp said:
Extra pop is the same happiness hit no matter where you have it, its all just 1 happiness per pop.

If you mean to say that too much vertical growth can inhibit horizontal growth, well that is true and that is something you have to decide in what situation it is worth to do one or the other. But, you can just build a theater in that city and for a few gold you can get many hammers if you have the tiles available.
Click to expand...

What I mean is that the best anti-unhappiness options for cities don't cover that much in the way of vertical growth, whereas a large part of horizontal growth pays for itself by just getting a colliseum.
 
bobbyboy29 said:
You can really ignore all the analysis given to see the answer to the question given. Small cities vs large cities can really be boiled down to simple mathematics: Trade routes increase linearly, research increases (for the most part) linearly, city growth becomes exponentially harder.

As long as this is the case, more smaller cities will ALWAYS be better than fewer larger cities even without taking into account limited specialist spots, slow cultural expansion and savings on road maintenance.
Click to expand...

The biggest problem is actually the free tile you get (size 1 working two spots) and the fact that small cities only need to work the very best tiles in their radius whereas large cities need lots of good tiles for similar benefit. Also, an average tile a citizen produces just enough food to pay for itself, until you get both improvements and technology that improves those improvements.
 
cman2010 said:
how in the heck did you get science to 903?
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Science??? How did he get 25 Uranium? LOL


Too bad you cannot trade Pops for something. Look at all those unemployed people.
 
Nunya said:
Probably took full Patronage.
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I completed 9 entire policy trees (everything but Autocracy), and on the last turn I had enough to open the 10th tree, but that would have cost me the Liberty and Freedom bonuses (and put me in Anarchy). The game was about maximizing population, not culture, so I didn't bother.
 
Paradigne said:
And that (IMO) is the crux of the problem. 2 size 5 cities connected to the capital, should not give the same trade as 1 size 10 city. It may be the same amount of people, but one size 10 city would (in the real world) produce more.

Yes, I'm not a fan of ICS :)
Click to expand...


Well, population (see Demographs) is not based on a million per pop, or something similar. It's getting exponentially bigger.
Trade routes should be based on that amount. Stops the insane economy behind ICS.

Another option would be to introduce economy-related bureaucracy, more cities means more GPT down the drain.


Anyway, at the moment there are way more advantages to smaller cities than to bigger cities. Frankly, the only boon is cultural, and it would help if some policies would be made better, and there would be 2 (a few) more.
 
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