How wide is wide? How tall is tall?

As title. When a civ should be played either wide or tall, what are the exact definitions?

Varies. There is no exact definition. Typically tall you are looking at around 4 cities with around 20+ pop. Wide is more cities, with fewer pop in each. Founding cities everywhere (at the closest possible distances) is know as ICS (Infinite City Spam) and has become increasingly popular since G+K as happiness is now much easier to get due to religion.

kamex said:

Varies. There is no exact definition. Typically tall you are looking at around 4 cities with around 20+ pop. Wide is more cities, with fewer pop in each. Founding cities everywhere (at the closest possible distances) is know as ICS (Infinite City Spam) and has become increasingly popular since G+K as happiness is now much easier to get due to religion.

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Also founding cities together makes religious pressure stronger

Widest I've had was the 36 cities or whatever for the "Longest Name Ever..." achievement, and my tallest city was over 100 citizens with the Aztecs on lakes map.

I feel like it levels out, before ICS was almost impossible, tall empires practically dominate, specially in science, but they lack the power to expand religiously. which is where wide/ics have made a comeback

at least from the MP perspective, since i know in SP the AI has enough happiness to go wide

I've won on Immortal with 4 cities under my control all less than 10 pop. It's called going Short. It's not the quantity but the quality (except for the number of puppets and/or city-states).

'going short'? It's just called puppet empire no?

generally you're talking 3-4 cities for a very tall build - this is the best way to do cultural victories. 5-6 cities is fairly tall - I think people useing the strong science civs go for a build like this as an optimal startegy but I do science vc rarely. Over 10 by the end of the game is wide, and anything in between is the nomansland. Bad because neither the tall nor the wide bonuses will really apply to you. For city size, just make them as big as you can (in wide empires some may stunt growth because of hapiness issues), though this will be easier when going tall with the food bonuses from tradition, and generally being a happier civ

Wide doesn't really have a limit. The idea is to have as many cities as you possibly can, and be able to maintain them. The more the merrier. A tall empire ranges from 3-4 cities. In an ideal situation, you want to have 4, but three, and sometimes even two can get the job done if you have the right wonders and religious beliefs.