How to get your cities population to 20+

So I'm still pretty new to civ 4 (my friend just introduced me to it)... anyway i just can't seem to get a population of 20+ in any of my cities by the modern age.

I tend to start the game by spreading out with about 5 cities that each have specialties like research/wealth/culture/unit building.

I build the oracle, get theology or alphabet and then the rest of the initial techs.

I get to iron before my neighbours and take chunks outta their land to hinder them a bit and sell them resource at extortionate prices to help maintain a 70% ish research level as my empire grows.

Anyway, i have no problem getting my cities to population 12/13 without trouble,but when i have to get to 20 (like my neighbours have done) it seems:

1. The farms cant sustain a city of that size

2. If the farms can sustain it, the people get angry (too crowded) and i have to start building culture buildings in my research/unit/wealth cities which slows down research, army building and expansion of my empire and allows my neighbours to take over me and leave me behind.

Any tips you could give me and am i right to separate my city in culture/research/wealth/army?

Cheers

StillCuteDoe said:

So I'm still pretty new to civ 4 (my friend just introduced me to it)... anyway i just can't seem to get a population of 20+ in any of my cities by the modern age.

I tend to start the game by spreading out with about 5 cities that each have specialties like research/wealth/culture/unit building.

Specialties are very important for cities. 1 city should definitely be specializing on units at all times (generally siege units, though in the very early game that's impossible), and will get the heroic epic and great generals to settle in it.
As for specializing in wealth and research, the way to do that with a city is build cottages as the tile improvement. Cottages take some time to grow but provide the most commerce (which is what your slider, the name for the thing that lets you allocate money to % of research/culture/espionage, uses as its "fuel"). For a scientific city, commerce >> building research, though you can (and many times should) build research as well.
There is no reason to have a culture specialized city, unless you are going for a cultural victory (in which case, you need 3 cities specialized in culture, and again you'll use cottage tile improvements and set the slider to culture).


I build the oracle, get theology or alphabet and then the rest of the initial techs.
The oracle is fine, though far from necessary. I would get used to NOT making the oracle until you have practice in the game, so you can get a better understanding of what you should be teching in the early game. But perhaps you have this down already (you didn't tell me what you teched early game).


I get to iron before my neighbours and take chunks outta their land to hinder them a bit and sell them resource at extortionate prices to help maintain a 70% ish research level as my empire grows.
Abandon this strategy unless you are the Romans, as swordsman aren't very good as the difficulty increases, and it's a rare game where going for iron working will be the right call.

Anyway, i have no problem getting my cities to population 12/13 without trouble,but when i have to get to 20 (like my neighbours have done) it seems:
Getting to size 20 just requires food, which can be acquired with farms, food corporations, or with state property, watermill tiles.


1. The farms cant sustain a city of that size
If all you built was farms (not a good idea), you could definitely easily get to 20. But then you'd have 20 citizens only producing food and no money or production, so that would be pretty useless.

2. If the farms can sustain it, the people get angry (too crowded) and i have to start building culture buildings in my research/unit/wealth cities which slows down research, army building and expansion of my empire and allows my neighbours to take over me and leave me behind.
If you listen to my advice above and use cottages to fuel your research instead of hammers, you won't have this problem of sacrificing research hammers for happy structures. That said, cultural building for happiness are pretty bad. You want luxury resources, and a forge (which gives bonus happiness from gems gold and silver, among its other sweet bonus of giving more production). Trade with the AI for luxury resources you don't have, giving them excess health resources in exchange. Happy resources >> health resources. In case you didn't realize luxury resources need their special improvement to work, or they do nothing for your empire, example: gold uses mine, dye uses plantation etc

Any tips you could give me and am i right to separate my city in culture/research/wealth/army?
Army city (farms and mines)/Research or commerce (one and the same: cottage tile cities)/wonder city/great person farm. You only need 1 wonder city at most (mines and farms), and 1 great person farm at most (just farms to run specialists. Build the national epic here if philosophical or you have marble). After that, 1/3 is army, 2/3 are commerce, and then use slavery or nationhood to whip/draft out a large army when you get a military tech lead. The army cities make siege units so that your drafted and whipped army already have all the siege they need. Don't whip the army cities, as they should already be making units decently quickly with their farms and mines.


Cheers

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Also, read the thread on the main page atm called "How to deal with pop unhealthiness? " and really try to absorb the advice there. Similarish question to your own was asked.
And look at this site for an explanation on commerce gold and research, courtesy of Mec AntiKythera:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=450366

Thanks! Great answer, will try and beat noble now

As well as trading for happiness resources (ivory comes early with Hunting, gold/silver/gem mines with Mining) you should be able to get to 20+ population without too much difficulty if you are utilising Hereditary Rule that is enabled with Monarchy. Stack a bunch of warriors/archers or whatever in a city (each troop gives +1 happiness).

Early on balancing Happiness with Health can be tricky, however, but post-Calendar it should be far easier. Trading Health resources for Happiness ones early is a great way to increase your 'happy-cap', as well as the bonus to diplomacy that long-lasting trading provides.

Other than your capitol, the remaining cities in your Empire won't make it much above 10-14 population before Biology and there is nothing wrong with this unless you are concentrating on a Great Person farm and/or running a Specialist economy via the Representation civic (enabled via Constitution or, early on, by building the Pyramids).

During war-time the majority of my cities will sit around pop 2-6 other than my Capitol, Heroic Epic and National Epic sites, large pops won't help much during wars until quite late in the game when you switch out of Slavery.

tl;dr - don't worry about getting your cities to a high population early in the game other than your 'core' cities (capitol, HE and NE sites).

Sid. Sushi.

Focussed cities are a decent idea. A focussed culture city is only really necessary to peacefully secure resources on borders (make sure you've got the arms to back up your claim, the AI hate to lose land!); aiming for a culture win requires a fairly specialised economy for which there are plenty of guides.

The AI gets a number of bonuses, trying to copy how it plays doesn't work too well. Focus on what works for a human player and leverage the advantages of not being an AI playing by (occasionally random) numbers

70% research sounds like you're generally expanding sensibly. A decent hammer city (farms & mines) can produce wealth (with Currency) to help subsidise the upkeep of an extra commerce city or two

I just have to mention that I can see Iron Working to be not good tech to aim for too (unlike Currency and Alphabet etc). Bronze units do okay against Swordsmen, if your enemy gets Iron, you always can counter swords with axes. However Iron Working is not only for getting Iron online. It also unlocks jungle chopping. That is good if you are facing a jungle start. In this situation you got to hurry Iron Working to clear the jungle to get the grassland below the forest able to build improvements on. The average gamers here knew that already but because the opening poster has just joined here, I decided to clear things up.

I think this thread actually belongs to Strategy and Tips- subforum, where we discuss strategy like in this thread and play forum games to improve our skills and help noobies to get on their feet.

I forgot that Iron Working is ofc good way to go if you don't have neither, horse or copper.

Robert FIN said:

I forgot that Iron Working is ofc good way to go if you don't have neither, horse or copper.

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Usually archery is a better course. But as I said, it's a rare game when iron working is the right choice, not no games. Incredibly jungle-heavy maps do require iron working. and the best things about those games is that despite going for IW early, the AI does very poorly on jungle heavy maps, so you don't lose out that much on tech.

Since I normally play no tech trading, you have to research it eventually.

And if you play always peace and no tech-trading, then doing anything but bee-lining alpha and focusing espionage is pointless. I can only talk about the more-or-less general settings of the game...

traius said:

And if you play always peace and no tech-trading, then doing anything but bee-lining alpha and focusing espionage is pointless. I can only talk about the more-or-less general settings of the game...

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Do they tech Alphabet for ???

I thought that the reasons to get that is being able to do trades and building research. I don't know if I should do more espionage but I find it a bit boring. I've noticed that if AI starts to leave behind in tech and score, they'll start spamming stuff on my face. Also if I'm losing I try tricks but then it just gets worse...

....And now I'm reading dat quote above and realizing that I didn't get the message right... Well.. D'oh!!