How many cities do you settle?

I usually expand out to 12-15 settled cities, but was wondering if this is rather unsporting since the AI usually only goes with four to five cities. I also read on the Civ Rev Info Center that ‘a typical empire consists of only six or so cities.’

So I got to thinking: Do I keep piling on against the AI with 10+ cities or make it more sporting with a self-imposed city limit?

[Note: I CivRev on the iPad, multiplayer is not available.]

Well, if you want it to be fair, you can cap the number of cities you build. But the game is much easier if you have more cities. I normally settle 10-13 cities, and then I can just tech ahead of the ai and go for any victory I want. The more cities you have, the more production, wealth, and science you have.

I usually go to 15-17 a game (including captured cities). Although I sometimes have less than 10 if I want it to be a hard game.

I play the Iphone version.. is there a way to leave capture city? To destruct capture city?

There is not on the ds, so I assume there is not on the iphone either.

Not possible to raze a captured city on the iPad version, either. Although I recently pulled a boner and lost a city to barbarians. [I was waiting two more turns to unlock Bronze and build an archer.] That city disappeared.

sturgeon said:

Not possible to raze a captured city on the iPad version, either. Although I recently pulled a boner and lost a city to barbarians. [I was waiting two more turns to unlock Bronze and build an archer.] That city disappeared.

Click to expand...

iPhone/iPad version is the DS version with a pretty wrapper.

nerdfighter13 said:

Well, if you want it to be fair, you can cap the number of cities you build. But the game is much easier if you have more cities. I normally settle 10-13 cities, and then I can just tech ahead of the ai and go for any victory I want. The more cities you have, the more production, wealth, and science you have.

Click to expand...

True up to a point. I find that somewhere around 15 cities, you have actually overproduced if your goal is earliest possible win.* For any non-conquest win, you want to get out of Republic, into Democracy and start building up the cities you have. For instance, if you are going for an Econ win, at some point new settler-cities will not be able to produce as much gold as the city which spawned them would have produced with the extra population. Two citizens of a big city with Market and Bank produce 16g/turn, 24g/turn with Great Explorer/Industrialist. If the big city still needs a Bank, accelerating that helps more than starting as new city which has nothing.

* Remember that when you need a victory Wonder (including spaceship) finishing the money, tech or culture part is not necessary until you are also ready to produce the victory Wonder! With 20+ cities, what can happen is that you produce, say 20,000g, then your huge empire produces another 20,000g while one lonely city builds the World Bank. That is obviously not very efficient.