Civ 5 Question about Cities

Hi I just joined this forum to ask people something i find crazy in civ 5 why do people settle so many cities I hear people say they settle 7 - 10 cities whilst I only settle 2 - 3 but all of these cities are at least size 20 and capital is probably civ 30 i ask this because is it bad so settle so little cities the reason why I don't settle much because i don't want useless cities that take like 13 turns (on standard) to build units i like cities that actually mean something and not just take space. so long post i know but what are your thoughts?

it is combination of play stile and intended strategy. For example, piety is useless on 3 cities, you need 8-10 to make it pay.
Tradition designed for 4 city max start.

So,it depends. 3 cities tradition start the most common and probably easiest to play.

I generally go for three to five cities with tradition.
Though on larger maps than standard the penalties for extra cities are less severe so I sometimes settle more. Though this is for a science victory.

For cultural more lands means more potential for archeological sites, and more space for great works.

For domination, more cities means more production sites for units. As well as obviously taking new cities...

For diplo it doesn't really matter. Though more cities can mean more money from city connections and trading posts to work. But anybody can get enough gold to win from sea trade roots.

Some players prefer Tall Empires (4 or less 20+ Pop Cities). Other players prefer Wide Empires (5+ Cities.) Still other players prefer Mixed Tall/Wide Empires (usually with a lot of Puppeted Cities).

For myself I played Wide Empires from the original Civilization to Civilization 4. I was not able to truly understand the power of Tall Empires until G&K and BNW. It is still kind of hard for me to have 2-4 Cities and look at an AI with 10+ Cities and not feel like I am in trouble

Mutineer said:

...piety is useless on 3 cities, you need 8-10 to make it pay.

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I am trying my second game of BWN going wide (hardly did that with GnK) with piety, mostly just to experiment, so your comment caught my attention.

What is the particular synergy to piety with going wide? I am still early game, and I woefully underestimated my potential to spread my religion, so my beliefs were poorly selected. (This game is one of the few times I skipped Tithe, and I am really regretting that now! But I guess I can pick it up as a reformation belief?) Does Civ5 have a religious victory per se? How does one spin piety into a cultural victory? I thought I was just playing my current game casually to experiment with the SP trees, but now that I am vested, I would like to win! (Immortal, small continents, Indonesia.)

beetle said:

What is the particular synergy to piety with going wide? ..

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There are no % bonuses to faith ...
The amount of faith per city is limited (shrine + temple+ mosque + candi + etc + faith tiles (partheon) ) .. Lets say 20 faith per city .. If one city outputs 20 then 10 cities will output 200 (10 x 20) - simple linear scaling .. More cities more faith ..

Very hard to get huge faith per turn output with a few tall cities ( faith doesn't scale with population like science for example) .. Want more faith - get more cities (more dirt also usually means more faith from faith partheon (faith tiles) ) ..

Thanks for the quick reply!

peddroelm said:

Very hard to get huge faith per turn output with a few tall cities (faith doesn't scale with population like science for example) .. Want more faith - get more cities (more dirt also usually means more faith from faith partheon (faith tiles))..

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Okay, that makes perfect sense. But just to nit pick, that is faith scaling with number of cities (but not population), and not the piety tree per se. Of course the piety tree has several things that help a faith oriented game, but is there anything explicitly in piety that supports going wide? (Even with my pantheon choice only helping one city, my faith output is crazy, currently getting me an XB unit every other turn. I might try this map again, making more strategic choices.)

beetle said:

Thanks for the quick reply!



Okay, that makes perfect sense. But just to nit pick, that is faith scaling with number of cities (but not population), and not the piety tree per se. Of course the piety tree has several things that help a faith oriented game, but is there anything explicitly in piety that supports going wide? (Even with my pantheon choice only helping one city, my faith output is crazy, currently getting me an XB unit every other turn. I might try this map again, making more strategic choices.)

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1 city get extra 2 faith per turn from piety (shrine + temple)
...
10 cities get extra 20 faith per turn from piety (20 shrines and temples)

Also piety gives you cheaper mosques/monasteries/pagodas ... and their faith output also scales with the number of cities ..

That's an excellent point. I saw that SP with +1 fpt for shrines/temple and was tempted to open aesthetics instead! But I wanted to close out the Piety tree, just to have done it once. Still, that SP seemed exceptionally weak, the worst one ever. I was not thinking about how rare are faith sources, and how that SP synergies with going with wide, and the half price shrines and temples I was already building.

sp00ky pirate said:

Hi I just joined this forum to ask people something i find crazy in civ 5 why do people settle so many cities I hear people say they settle 7 - 10 cities whilst I only settle 2 - 3 but all of these cities are at least size 20 and capital is probably civ 30 i ask this because is it bad so settle so little cities the reason why I don't settle much because i don't want useless cities that take like 13 turns (on standard) to build units i like cities that actually mean something and not just take space. so long post i know but what are your thoughts?

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That first group is liberty wide players. 6+ is normal for them. They tend to skip most national wonders entirely (or at the very least get them really, really late.) They also at most get one natural Golden Age.

The second ground is tall tradition. This is usually 3 or 4 cities instead of just 2 in BNW. (Even the 2 in Vanilla and G&K was only those going for old cultural victory) This way will tend to get national wonders quickly and have several natural Golden Ages during the course of the game.
A tall Tradition empire though can attach a wide empire via conquest, initially puppeting and only annexing when the city won't slow down national wonder construction.

Mutineer said:

it is combination of play stile and intended strategy. For example, piety is useless on 3 cities, you need 8-10 to make it pay.
Tradition designed for 4 city max start.

So,it depends. 3 cities tradition start the most common and probably easiest to play.

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If the empire self founded 8 to 10 cities, Liberty is much easier than Piety. (Liberty will speed up the settler construction which is much more expensive than Shrines)
In fact, Piety is really weak compared to standard Tradition / Liberty openings, it's more of a self imposed challenge than anything else to go Piety unless you are playing Poland. The Piety tree also suffers from parts of it wanting to be a second tree and come later while other parts need to be a first tree to get the best use out of. (Reformation in which the 2 most popular beliefs with humans are always taken first and second by the AI which is behind two policies that are just as good if they came later.)

On the second paragraph for Tradition that's actually 3 city NC + 1 city after NC to make 4 cities under most BNW starts. This largely replaced the 2 city NC + 2 cities after NC from Vanilla and G&K which the requirement for DOF to get 240 gold from luxuries made getting the 400 gold to cash rush a library more difficult.

beetle said:

I am trying my second game of BWN going wide (hardly did that with GnK) with piety, mostly just to experiment, so your comment caught my attention.

What is the particular synergy to piety with going wide? I am still early game, and I woefully underestimated my potential to spread my religion, so my beliefs were poorly selected. (This game is one of the few times I skipped Tithe, and I am really regretting that now! But I guess I can pick it up as a reformation belief?) Does Civ5 have a religious victory per se? How does one spin piety into a cultural victory? I thought I was just playing my current game casually to experiment with the SP trees, but now that I am vested, I would like to win! (Immortal, small continents, Indonesia.)

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I actually never use title, yes gold usually problem for wide empires but some other options are attractive.


Synergy?
1) With piety your every city produce 5? fault just from buildings. If you have enough cities you can skip fault pantheon for something else, I recommend go full happiness for wide empires.

2) You will fall behind in tech and it is a good thin. The longer you stay in feudal age the more you can do with your religion. I tend to intentionally stay there as long as possible. (research every feudal tech but steel, stopping steel at 1 turn to finish and them research reformation tech you need, usually printing press for more happiness.
After that together with your happiness form religion kicking in you start to breeze try reformation and catch to ai in industrial.


Happiness pantheon, happy founder, as many happy religious building as you can get, cheap missionaries for enchanted believe and Jesuit education for reformation. Take happy from temple/shrine if no happy religious available.

Explanation:

Happy from your religion give more benefits more cities you have.
For many relatively small cities building production buildings is a limiting factor. So, sci building with fault let you have critical infrastructure the turn you discover tech and let you build other thinks.

Cheaper missionaries you will need to convert your cities to your religion, because when you build 10 cities and higher level first your cities will get your neighbor religion. That will give you opportunity to build HIS religious buildings first and then convert to your religion.

joncnunn said:

If the empire self founded 8 to 10 cities, Liberty is much easier than Piety. (Liberty will speed up the settler construction which is much more expensive than Shrines)

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That is true, that why I always advocate to put 3 into liberty first, until free settler and settler bonus and then go piety.

you can not build 8-10 cities in reasonable time with out liberty bonus, so yes, pure piety opening simply do not work.