Hi i want to ask you guys a question about your quickest win you did, biggest city and also a longest play. My quickest win was on easy with 3 civs. I choose germany and did bulid city at first click than some unit and go search a map so i found city and destroy it and after few turns another one and also destroy it so it took me about 10 rounds ? The score was wery big i think araund 97% my best ever score and im playing civ1 since relase date on amiga500 around 1990..or something like that so it gives it around 25 years. Biggest city i did build was 41....longest play 6900 years.
Biggest city, Qiuckest win, Longest play...
- Thread starter 23gym23
- Start date
kirkham7
Warlord
Not sure about longest play, I added extra food and production to every square, so the game hardly ever goes past 1 AD, lol. I do remember a game that I played a few years ago where I was the Mongols with 3 cities and one of them got up to size 53 before the game stopped responding.
Renergy
Warlord
23gym23, you might be interested in this link
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/faq/civfaq3.php#cit4
So the maximum theoretical limit on city size is 63. But special resources are in a certain pattern, and never next to each other, so you cannot create "all oasis" city e.g. with darkpanda's jcived. Nevertheless, there is a resident program (can't remember the name, sorry), which when run before civ allows to modify the map in game and allows to add special resources on a limited number of fields. It is possible with this program loaded to create "all oasis" city, which should grow to size 63. I remember trying it once, but the growth would take rather long time after size 45. With a savegame editor it should be easily attainable, though.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/faq/civfaq3.php#cit4
So the maximum theoretical limit on city size is 63. But special resources are in a certain pattern, and never next to each other, so you cannot create "all oasis" city e.g. with darkpanda's jcived. Nevertheless, there is a resident program (can't remember the name, sorry), which when run before civ allows to modify the map in game and allows to add special resources on a limited number of fields. It is possible with this program loaded to create "all oasis" city, which should grow to size 63. I remember trying it once, but the growth would take rather long time after size 45. With a savegame editor it should be easily attainable, though.
Tristan_C
Emperor
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2006
- Messages
- 1,724
Biggest legit city would be size 46 (17 grass + 4 oasis), but getting that exact configuration of land would be like seeing a winning lottery ticket struck by lightning twice.
41 is very respectable. I wish the civ name space had enough room for "Phantom Taxmen"
41 is very respectable. I wish the civ name space had enough room for "Phantom Taxmen"
The biggest city I ever built was size 42, in the fork of the Mississippi on the Earth map. That impressed me quite a lot, but maybe that's because it happened 20 years ago. Otherwise, I generally don't build cities that large. Land that can support 40 population is better used for two or more smaller cities working the adjacent tiles, even if they overlap a bit. Classic example: you have an island of 12 grassland squares and the rest is ocean. This island can hold one size 28 city, but that city will only make 51 base trade (12x2 for grass + 9x3 for ocean). On the other hand, you can have two smaller cities on the same island that only take up six land tiles each. Those can grow to size 18 (even more if there's fish in the ocean) and they will BOTH generate 6x2 + 13x3 = 51 base trade. The 100% increase in trade more than makes up for the cost of the city improvements you'll have to build.
About the longest play... I don't know. Maybe about until 2100 while dicking around with one enemy city left (also decades ago). I tend to finish most of my games at around 1850. When the world gets all settled and developed, turns become quite long themselves and I will seldom look forward to another hundred, let alone thousand 10+ minute identical caravan pushes in a game I've already won. Although sometimes I'll stretch it out a few years to build the whole spaceship if noone else is close to launching.
About the longest play... I don't know. Maybe about until 2100 while dicking around with one enemy city left (also decades ago). I tend to finish most of my games at around 1850. When the world gets all settled and developed, turns become quite long themselves and I will seldom look forward to another hundred, let alone thousand 10+ minute identical caravan pushes in a game I've already won. Although sometimes I'll stretch it out a few years to build the whole spaceship if noone else is close to launching.
Renergy
Warlord
Well one trick is to railroad the city square before founding the city, this gives you usually one extra food. I do not have a savegame ready, but as far as I remember, there are places in midwest North America on Earth map (also in South America, after irrigation) where it is possible to have cities >30 (iirc) without any cheats. Just have city without any settler (they eat up food), all squares railroaded and irrigated as this gives you the most food, granary naturally to speed up growth, then just wait.
But as pointed out earlier, big cities are not actually so profitable. One of the arguments against overly big cities: trade routes. You can have three per city, and that makes city square (much) more potent than the regular one, as far as trade goes.
When I began with civilization long time ago, I actually thought that the "fat cross" (a pattern of squares the city can work) is not a good game design, since you cannot "carpet" the map so that every square is used and the "fat crosses" of cities don't overlap. But then I found, that optimal size is ~20 or so, trade routes established. This gives the most money.
Osvaldo Manso
Warlord
I don't remember my quickest win since most of the times I like to develop my civ and try to be peaceful as much as possible (I don't start wars although I retaliate when attacked).
As for the longest game, I think I played once up to 2200 or 2300 but it was very artificial situation because I left only one enemy city left surrounded by military units so that whenever the poor city built any unit it was immediately destroyed. Soon the fun was over and so the game ended.
My biggest city was size 40 and located where Atlanta is in real life. That's the optimal location when you play Earth (which I rarely do) because it is surrounded by rivers and their food production can be maximized by using irrigation and railroad. It's hard and expensive to maintain quite a big city. Nowadays my cities are usually around size 6 to 9. I find cities of this size to be quite efficient.
As for the longest game, I think I played once up to 2200 or 2300 but it was very artificial situation because I left only one enemy city left surrounded by military units so that whenever the poor city built any unit it was immediately destroyed. Soon the fun was over and so the game ended.
My biggest city was size 40 and located where Atlanta is in real life. That's the optimal location when you play Earth (which I rarely do) because it is surrounded by rivers and their food production can be maximized by using irrigation and railroad. It's hard and expensive to maintain quite a big city. Nowadays my cities are usually around size 6 to 9. I find cities of this size to be quite efficient.
Nesretnik
Chieftain
This is very interesting stuff, and it's an aspect of the beloved game that I wasn't aware of.
In all my years of playing, like Gimlo, I've never had a city that reached 30 inhabitants. I never imagined that 40+ was possible. (I'm expansionist: I prefer a wide empire to a tall one. Could that have something to do with it? And I don't like the look of railways - it's a personal aesthetic thing - so I don't always put them everywhere I can, which can certainly limit growth.)
I've always placed cities so as to cover the available land effectively. It never occurred to me that the trade benefits of the non-productive sea made it such a valuable resource, and that working the sea might be more profitable than having a bevy of specialists.
This will change the way I play in future, so thanks for the tip!
There's nothing wrong with being expansionist and still having a couple of bigger cities for trade, while the smaller ones stick to producing units and settlers. But yes, that is most probably the reason you rarely see those in an expansionist game. Territory, for the bigger part of the game, is conquered by shields and units. Convert all the temples and markets, and caravans, and everything a bigger city needs to chariots and see what I mean.
Still, I've had many games, in which building high-trade cities was my only viable option. I'd find myself on a small continent or locked in on a peninsula by the AI with no access to good production squares (cities making 2-3 shields). So I can't really build a lot of units, or grow my cities very quickly for that matter, unless I have cash to buy stuff. This way the early game becomes a race for trade and sailing, and having the collossus and the observatory in my best city. Well, not the current best, but the one I expect to be making the most trade when fully-grown.
Still, I've had many games, in which building high-trade cities was my only viable option. I'd find myself on a small continent or locked in on a peninsula by the AI with no access to good production squares (cities making 2-3 shields). So I can't really build a lot of units, or grow my cities very quickly for that matter, unless I have cash to buy stuff. This way the early game becomes a race for trade and sailing, and having the collossus and the observatory in my best city. Well, not the current best, but the one I expect to be making the most trade when fully-grown.
Similar threads
