How do I grow my cities as quickly as possible?

I'm currently playing on Deity, trying to improve my SVs. I usually finish around T285, but around then my capital only has a population of 22-25, my first expansion around the same and the two other expansions usually end up with around 15. I usually use a food caravan for my capital, ally a maritime city state and work as many good food tiles as possible, but once I start filling out all the scientist slots my growth decreases quite rapidly.

So my question is this: what can I do to increase the rate of population growth?

Fermi said:

I'm currently playing on Deity, trying to improve my SVs. I usually finish around T285, but around then my capital only has a population of 22-25, my first expansion around the same and the two other expansions usually end up with around 15. I usually use a food caravan for my capital, ally a maritime city state and work as many good food tiles as possible, but once I start filling out all the scientist slots my growth decreases quite rapidly.

So my question is this: what can I do to increase the rate of population growth?

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More food caravans/cargo ships. Ideally, you use one from every city you have.

1. Use Food Cargo ships instead of Food caravans, which provide double the food compared to caravans. Also, use more than just 1. I most often run 3 Food cargo ships to my capital.

2. You've not mentioned which social tree you start with, Tradition has multiple policies increasing growth, especially for the capital.

3. This is extremely start specific, but God of the Hunt & Sun God in some cases add a lot of food.

Chum said:

More food caravans/cargo ships. Ideally, you use one from every city you have.

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joncnunn said:

1. Use Food Cargo ships instead of Food caravans, which provide double the food compared to caravans. Also, use more than just 1. I most often run 3 Food cargo ships to my capital.

2. You've not mentioned which social tree you start with, Tradition has multiple policies increasing growth, especially for the capital.

3. This is extremely start specific, but God of the Hunt & Sun God in some cases add a lot of food.

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I use cargo ships if my capital is coastal, but I'll try running more food caravans/cargo ships. Although if I do this I'll need to make sure that I still make enough money for CSes, RAs and rush buying some buildings.

I always go Tradition, but I'll have a look into those pantheons. However, I quite like Swords into Plowshares, which on Deity requires a FPT pantheon.

Don't overlook "we love the king days", More growth for 20 turns.

By the time you start filling specialist slots (science or otherwise), your cities should be large enough that they can keep growing at a steady pace regardless. My guess is that your early game is suboptimal, or perhaps the placement of your cities.

I never maximize WLTK. My bad. I almost always maximize food from God.

Maximising your city growth is the key to strong game in my opinion. Getting better at this has improved my game a lot.

Heres a rough guide to how I do it. Bear in mind that:

I usually win a SV between turn 240 and 260.
My capital will be somewhere between size 26 and 30.
My three expansions will be somewhere between size 20 and 26.
These arent as large as some people go for because I dont use lots of internal food caravans. I also shut down growth towards the end and just work all specialist and hammers to build the spaceship and get the last techs.

Rough guide:

Settle near fresh water eg lakes and rivers or on the coast.
Farm up all the tiles with access to fresh water. Get your necessary worker techs done then beeline philosophy. Then beeline Civil Service. Civil Service adds 1 food to all farms next to fresh water. This is the key tech for early growth.
Lock your high food tiles. Lock your food neutral / some hammer tiles (eg quarries). Set production focus. Dont worry that whatever you are building looks like its going to take a very long time. The numbers will come down as you quickly grow.

The idea behind setting production focus is that when the city grows the new unassigned citizen will be placed on a high hammer tile. These count as free hammers for that turn (as hammers are counted after growth and include the new citizens output). If you had set food focus the new citizen would have worked a food tile that turn, but the food had already been counted and the food from that citizen would be lost.

Once the city has grown assign the new citizen to a high food tile (if any are left). If not leave him on the best hammer tile. Be ready to move him to a newly available high food tile (eg worker has improved recently) the turn before the next city growth. This way you get your free hammers again and youve added more food to next stage of growth. Youve also had some reasonable production whilst the citizen was on the mine. This is how most of my early to middle game builds are done. It does mean you need to get in the habit of watching your cities to check if any are going to grow that turn. Its a habit you can get used to!

If you have settled 2 coastal cities, exchange food cargo ships. Send a food caravan to any inland city that needs it eg the cities running the writers and artists guilds.

Try and keep WLTK day running in all your cities, but especially the capital. Be creative in making deals eg

AI's will trade away the last copy of their lux for a normal price if they are getting it from an allied CS.

Trade away the last copy of your luxuries for an AIs luxury that will satisfy a WLTK day request. 4 happiness is 4 happiness right? If youre lucky whilst your lux is out it will become a CS request or WLTK day request which will then complete with no effort when your lux comes back

Dont just check which AIs have the lux you need for WLTK. Check the City States too. Do they have quests you can easily do to become ally? Can you just pay a little bit of gold to become ally?

The trading part of the game can make a really big difference to your game, but it does require a fair bit of effort watching out for what deals you can make. Sometimes it all comes together nicely and you can gain 3-4 CS allies and a couple of WLTK days with one or two smart moves.

Edit : Also if you dont have fresh water access on most of your tiles - beeline fertiliser before scientific theory. Fertiliser adds 1 food to all farms without access to fresh water. Be ready to make some WLTK days happen when the tech lands for some nice late game growth

Forkandles said:

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Thanks! I'll definitely give that a go.