When I try to play tall, I always end up wide?

Hi everyone, I'm trying to learn why I keep ending up playing wide when I intended to play tall. This applies to domination for me because that's the main victory type I play for. I do fine until about one third of the way through, then it seems like I have to spread out for strategic reasons. For instance, if I have 4 cities on one continent and I need to attack some cities on another.....I start to want a Civ city or city state, for naval units, or to rebase aircraft. On and on it goes until I have 20 extra cities to maintain...which I really don't like to do.

Anyway, just trying to learn better strategies so I stick to my tall plan. Thanks for any advice.

Attaching a wide conquered empire to a 4 city Tradition core is very viable. It's not a flaw in your game plan at all as long as you remembered to thin down the AI cities on conquest by razing their "junk cities" and keeping the rest.

Having 24 cities at the end of the game is an impressive count for a standard size map. Is this a large or huge map?

The main way I can think of if your wanting a map where you are less tempted to conquer the AI would be a map with more landmasses since the oceans can make natural boundaries.
However it sounded like some of your invasions are overseas, so maybe move up a difficulty level? On higher difficulty levels the AI builds more units thanks to the production bonuses they get.

joncnunn said:

Attaching a wide conquered empire to a 4 city Tradition core is very viable. It's not a flaw in your game plan at all as long as you remembered to thin down the AI cities on conquest by razing their "junk cities" and keeping the rest.

Having 24 cities at the end of the game is an impressive count for a standard size map. Is this a large or huge map?

The main way I can think of if your wanting a map where you are less tempted to conquer the AI would be a map with more landmasses since the oceans can make natural boundaries.
However it sounded like some of your invasions are overseas, so maybe move up a difficulty level? On higher difficulty levels the AI builds more units thanks to the production bonuses they get.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, thanks joncnunn. Yep I haven't quite mastered the art of discerning "junk cities" so I need to learn that. Interesting idea, on more landmasses. I've invaded both overseas and on land to great success yet I've never actually razed a city; perhaps I should. Concerning difficulty level, I lowered it from Warlord to Chieftain after getting owned playing Mongolia. I'm not gonna be happy until I beat that level...maybe more.

I've already won the dom vic with the Shoshone this time. Have you ever tried a tall strategy and kept your original 3 - 4 cities and found no more? Thx again.

Prozac1964 said:

Hmmm, thanks joncnunn. Yep I haven't quite mastered the art of discerning "junk cities" so I need to learn that. Interesting idea, on more landmasses. I've invaded both overseas and on land to great success yet I've never actually razed a city; perhaps I should. Concerning difficulty level, I lowered it from Warlord to Chieftain after getting owned playing Mongolia. I'm not gonna be happy until I beat that level...maybe more.

I've already won the dom vic with the Shoshone this time. Have you ever tried a tall strategy and kept your original 3 - 4 cities and found no more? Thx again.

Click to expand...

It was really easy in Vanilla post vanilla balance patches to never self found any more (on Prince or higher), both due to all the penalties for self founding cities and how little happiness sources there were. By the time G&K added more sources I was already set in my ways.

As I like to end games before nukes, I base my planning around airports; due to Triplanes, which have dinky legs and a warm fart for a fuel tank; on a huge earth map, the Nome to Tierra del Fuego would so many turns, that you should crate them up and send by rail !
One game, during conquest, there was a gap of 27 tiles between cities; Atilla was razing his way to Vladivostok; I had to drop 4 cities with airports, to go west to get TO Atilla's Court at Stockholm .
As China, the time loss gave my foes in the Americas time to dig in .
After crossing the Atlantic, I hit Brazil and Chesapeke Bay in 2 waves and rolled up N. and S. America in 60 turns .

Just write down a rule saying you will raze every city with less than two luxuries.
Stick that to your monitor.

Or just puppet the cities, less to manage then

--
I find myself facing the opposite problem of trying to go wide with liberty and only ending up with 4-6 cities.

And for me it's backwards. I pick Russia and I'm stuck with 4 cities tradition because I'm an idiot.

Illianor123 said:

Just write down a rule saying you will raze every city with less than two luxuries.
Stick that to your monitor.

Or just puppet the cities, less to manage then

--
I find myself facing the opposite problem of trying to go wide with liberty and only ending up with 4-6 cities.

Click to expand...

Good idea on the two luxuries. I'm gonna keep an eye on that.

Illianor123 said:

Just write down a rule saying you will raze every city with less than two luxuries.
Stick that to your monitor.

Or just puppet the cities, less to manage then

--
I find myself facing the opposite problem of trying to go wide with liberty and only ending up with 4-6 cities.

Click to expand...

I also like keeping cities if they have strategic resources that I covet but can't immediately get to. But not that so much I guess if you're going to be very wide and you'll have more than enough anyway. I'd also may close attention to the wonders and art slots and works, but it might be unlikely that you'll get wonders in non-capitals. For the art, I'd try to switch around, and then raze.

Way back in the Eisenhower (US) era, I started playing "RISK", and it still carries over to today, in underlying fashion .
With slow, careful, caravan management, even 'junk' cities are useful .

The major problems I have with Elder AI cities, is urban sprawl; EX., a Capital province having an 8-9tile RADIUS ! Miles of acreage that cries out for 2-4 new cities in that area to grab/exploit those formerly useless resources !!

Method: go crazy on building Caravanseries !!; for each new city founded, build 2 trade routes, 1 for food, 1 for hammers, then put them to SLEEP, until the settler gets to where it is going; Found the new city, and THEN WAKE UP those 2 sleeping trade units , and send them (on same turn) to New City !!
This helps the Trade management screen, as your TRoutes (TR's) are listed in sending sequence order .
As TRoutes mature, they get re-directed, so if you want to put a city on steroids, say, 8 food TR's, and 8 hammer TR's; population and production growths will get FAST !!, to operational levels .

I think if you want to be "better" you should just try to go up some difficulty levels. There are things you can do on Prince and lower that would not work that well on higher levels. On higher levels you have to watch sciene more and so you want to build National College and focus on food to get large cities. These are things that would force you to limit expansion or combat early.

Anyways do what entertains you. I like wide myself

Me playing domination means: Raze all cities without wonders/has 2 or less luxuries.

I have the exact opposite problem, I can't make a wide civ, even if I want to.

Prozac1964 said:

Have you ever tried a tall strategy and kept your original 3 - 4 cities and found no more?

Click to expand...

That is actually more common than not, when playing at a sufficiently challenging level. Tall refers to the number of cities you found; cities you puppet do not count against that count. I suspect that you are developing habits that will make it hard to progress through difficulty levels. How are you doing with National Wonders?