Is 2 City NC really that strong?

In the Thread about the very fast science victory on deity the guy went 2 city NC i think and Marbozir even left a settler idle for almost 20 turns in his latest let's play to get the NC earlier.

I can't find a specific Thread within the first page of the search function, so i just want to ask if someone crunshed the numbers on this or how situational this even is???

I'm still getting used to the mechanics of Civ 5 because they are so different to Civ 4.
Basicly so far i have the feeling that almost everything what was good in civ 4(settling close to capitol, tile sharing/overlap, more good citys->faster dates higher scores = more everything) is now not really that good anymore or even bad.

Staying on just 2 citys and delaying 2-3 potential other citys really doesn't seem like a good idea to me^^

Strickl3r said:

In the Thread about the very fast science victory on deity the guy went 2 city NC i think and Marbozir even left a settler idle for almost 20 turns in his latest let's play to get the NC earlier.

I can't find a specific Thread within the first page of the search function, so i just want to ask if someone crunshed the numbers on this or how situational this even is???

I'm still getting used to the mechanics of Civ 5 because they are so different to Civ 4.
Basicly so far i have the feeling that almost everything what was good in civ 4(settling close to capitol, tile sharing/overlap, more good citys->faster dates higher scores = more everything) is now not really that good anymore or even bad.

Staying on just 2 citys and delaying 2-3 potential other citys really doesn't seem like a good idea to me^^

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I think 4 city NC is better. Getting your cities more time to develop will pay off later instead of building NC earlier and delaying settlers.

unrendered said:

I think 4 city NC is better. Getting your cities more time to develop will pay off later instead of building NC earlier and delaying settlers.

Click to expand...

The problem with me when i got 4 city NC is that I can never finish the NC on time, ive been told it needs to start between turn 70-80 but i find that really difficult to do. I wonder if you can slingshot to education faster with just two cities (without building the great library of course)

Strickl3r said:

In the Thread about the very fast science victory on deity the guy went 2 city NC i think and Marbozir even left a settler idle for almost 20 turns in his latest let's play to get the NC earlier.

I can't find a specific Thread within the first page of the search function, so i just want to ask if someone crunshed the numbers on this or how situational this even is???

I'm still getting used to the mechanics of Civ 5 because they are so different to Civ 4.
Basicly so far i have the feeling that almost everything what was good in civ 4(settling close to capitol, tile sharing/overlap, more good citys->faster dates higher scores = more everything) is now not really that good anymore or even bad.

Staying on just 2 citys and delaying 2-3 potential other citys really doesn't seem like a good idea to me^^

Click to expand...

2 City NC actually was the best tradition tactic for G&K. It involved selling luxuries for 240 gold each and a very strict early to Philosophy (right after all local luxuries) so that you'd cash rush the library in that second city before then.
When it's close to completion then the 3rd settler gets cash rushed to arrive to found right afterwards and the 4th founded shortly there after.

5th self founded city is no mans land, remember that you need 100% of all cities to have a long list of national wonders and so its greatly slowing all of those down in addition to slowing down Golden Ages.

For BNW with the removal of free gold, 3 city NC tends to work better. Have your second city be in a productive location so it can hand build a library, and cash buy the library in the newest city. Following completion get a settler out the door.

unrendered said:

I think 4 city NC is better. Getting your cities more time to develop will pay off later instead of building NC earlier and delaying settlers.

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Unless your 3rd city also had a large production potential, that's going to take 800 gold to start construction of NC is a timely matter and so it slows NC down compared to 3 founded first with 4th and final city founded soon after.

i_imperator said:

The problem with me when i got 4 city NC is that I can never finish the NC on time, ive been told it needs to start between turn 70-80 but i find that really difficult to do. I wonder if you can slingshot to education faster with just two cities (without building the great library of course)

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That was the G&K goal.
Before turn 90 is the new BNW mile marker due to removal of free gold.

I have really good luck with 2 city games if I am going to attack the AI.

It can sometimes be good to stay at 2 cities until Hermitage is up. If you can afford to buy the buildings, then of course you can add more cities. But you cant stay at 2 cities and try for early Coal, you need 3.

With just 2 cities you can push food to yourself and tech fast with the lowest research costs, the only thing is, you cant stay at 2 forever.

My usual, and most successful, formula has been a lib/tradition mixed start. That usually means 3 or, more often, 4 city NC. I'm not so sure, after the patch, if this will work anymore due to free monuments being delayed by so much. I really don't see the logic in not hard-building monuments, and 4 free amphitheaters is pretty blah. I think that approach has been killed.

Is the first build in the last city you found before completing NC going to be a library? It seems to me that the last-city-before-NC, more-so than the 1 or 2 before it, needs to be on a hill with food bonus in the first ring.

Shark Diver said:

My usual, and most successful, formula has been a lib/tradition mixed start. That usually means 3 or, more often, 4 city NC. I'm not so sure, after the patch, if this will work anymore due to free monuments being delayed by so much. I really don't see the logic in not hard-building monuments, and 4 free amphitheaters is pretty blah. I think that approach has been killed.

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My most successful policy start pre last weeks patch was full tradition. See my above post for # of cities.

You don't actually need Engineering to be granted the free aqueducts (either before or after this patch) so it's very much best going Tradition to finish the tree as soon as possible without delaying it via other policies.

Yes, I have another thread on how the nerf bat actually was applied to mixing Tradition with other trees instead of to pure tradition.
It's a given post patch that the capital will need to hand build a monument. As to other cities it will depend upon timing of when the new city was built and it's production, but other than the Spanish discover natural wonder early situation I'm leaning towards other cities continue to skip the monument and build something else instead.

beetle said:

Is the first build in the last city you found before completing NC going to be a library? It seems to me that the last-city-before-NC, more-so than the 1 or 2 before it, needs to be on a hill with food bonus in the first ring.

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I would highly recommend cash rushing the library in the last city you build before NC. Otherwise it's going to greatly slow down NC.
For 3 city NC, Library first would be standard for the second city.

So one might assume, if selling embassy and get at least one DCF for some extra cash from a double luxury 4 city NC becomes more viable, because it will be no problem to just rush buy the last Lib.

If you have the choice between 3 citys and turn 90ish NC or 4 citys and turn 100ish NC what would you pick?(Let's assume you get NC ~10 turns earlier and the spot is somewhat save to get after NC)

btw i often find myself in a situation where i can only rush buy one Lib and it won't speed up NC much, because the other city is still working on the Lib for a while due to both other citys beeing settled within a couple of turns.

Strickl3r said:

So one might assume, if selling embassy and get at least one DCF for some extra cash from a double luxury 4 city NC becomes more viable, because it will be no problem to just rush buy the last Lib.

If you have the choice between 3 citys and turn 90ish NC or 4 citys and turn 100ish NC what would you pick?(Let's assume you get NC ~10 turns earlier and the spot is somewhat save to get after NC)

btw i often find myself in a situation where i can only rush buy one Lib and it won't speed up NC much, because the other city is still working on the Lib for a while due to both other citys beeing settled within a couple of turns.

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Actually the opposite because you ALWAYS want to cash rush the last library, actually it's the change from cash now to having to wait (per turn) that caused 3 city NC to be more viable than 2 city NC in BNW. (There was just no way with removal of the AIs immediate luxury gold to cash rush a library before reaching Philosophy and ideally that library was bought earlier than that to shave a turn off of researching it)

3 city NC because in that case the 4th city will be founded no more than 5 turns after NC completes resulting in having the combo of 4 cities plus NC 5 turns earlier.
However, if you had cash rushed that 4th settler pre NC it's more likely that you delayed NC by 15 turns since it's unlikely you had close to 900 gold sitting around.

The biggest part of 3 city NC is have the Library be the very first build in city #2, hand build settlers 2 & 3. Be sure that #2 is the more immediately hammer productive city. #3 is best as an immediate city which will quickly get gold. due to luxuries. First build here is a Granary. There's a war academy article with more details.

The main thing that would make founding 4 cities first better is if in addition to cities #2 & #3 both being initially hammer centric cities that if the AI didn't have enough GPT to even sell a luxury to them and most of the city states were far away from you. (In other words cities #2 & #3 both being able to hand build a library before you get 400 gold) Playing the Incas with a hills bias also makes this more likely to occur than when playing other civs.

Maybe i just had a few games where the 2nd city was to slow, but i can't find the right timing with buying the 3rd Lib and finishing the 2nd. I would almost always have to still build the Lib in the 2nd city for 10 turns or so, while with the 4th i can time that easily to finish building the Libs in 2 citys and rush buying the 4th as soon as i settle the city.

I like to rush buy my 2nd worker btw in almost all games, so i would never get the idea to rush buy a settler that early, i don't steal much though because I'm afraid i can't handle diplomatic consequences or i just like my juicy quest for that city state to much to pass on it.

No to mention the times where i absolutly have to rush buy an archer.

Strickl3r said:

I like to rush buy my 2nd worker btw in almost all games, so i would never get the idea to rush buy a settler that early

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Ah, the cash buying the worker is actually why you're having trouble getting 400 gold in time for your 3rd city while having it for the 4th.
Hand building the second worker will get you that 400 cash quicker.

2 cities NC is great under mp games but you can easily go for 3 pre NC in sp games due to larger initiatives(worker stealing, luxs selling,etc).

For 4 cities pre NC you need a solid capital start and some neighbors ready to buy some luxs.

joncnunn said:

I would highly recommend cash rushing the library in the last city you build before NC. Otherwise it's going to greatly slow down NC. For 3 city NC, Library first would be standard for the second city.

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I never seem to be able to save enough gold to cash rush the library. OTOH, many games I am able to cash rush an archer when desperately needed, so maybe I can hold off that. You have confirmed my thinking though: library first in 1st or 2nd expo, so that city must be founded on a hill, more so than the few before or after.

Strickl3r said:

So one might assume, if selling embassy and get at least one DCF for some extra cash from a double luxury 4 city NC becomes more viable, because it will be no problem to just rush buy the last Lib.

If you have the choice between 3 citys and turn 90ish NC or 4 citys and turn 100ish NC what would you pick?(Let's assume you get NC ~10 turns earlier and the spot is somewhat save to get after NC)

btw i often find myself in a situation where i can only rush buy one Lib and it won't speed up NC much, because the other city is still working on the Lib for a while due to both other citys beeing settled within a couple of turns.

Click to expand...

I find myself always being able to buy the last library, sometimes even a worker at the same time. I think getting NC done on t100 with four cities is a lot better than three cites and t90 NC.

beetle said:

I never seem to be able to save enough gold to cash rush the library. OTOH, many games I am able to cash rush an archer when desperately needed, so maybe I can hold off that. You have confirmed my thinking though: library first in 1st or 2nd expo, so that city must be founded on a hill, more so than the few before or after.

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Yes, a very key part of making 3 city NC work (and even the previous 2 city one) was don't cash buy anything (nor buy tiles) before the last cites library.

Part of why others prefer 4 city NC is that (with high enough hammer production in city 2 & 3) they do have enough cash to have done something else first before cashing buying the 4th one.

joncnunn said:

Yes, a very key part of making 3 city NC work (and even the previous 2 city one) was don't cash buy anything (nor buy tiles) before the last cites library.

Part of why others prefer 4 city NC is that (with high enough hammer production in city 2 & 3) they do have enough cash to have done something else first before cashing buying the 4th one.

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This is exacly what i meant in my previous post. You can rush buy a worker/archer and rush buying tiles is in some cases absolutly necessary. (yes computer give me that juicy 2 food grasland tile, nn stupid copper in the 3rd ring, not that it gives me happiness or anything , one more reason to rank pocatello as tier 1 character)

+ trololol hi I'm your neighbour and i just settled a city 3 tiles away from your 3rd city. I guess you don't need all those ressources so i'll thought i just drop by and take them.

The other option is that you can also chop forest to speed a library. 2-3 forests will go a long way to rushing it.

budweiser said:

I have really good luck with 2 city games if I am going to attack the AI.

It can sometimes be good to stay at 2 cities until Hermitage is up. If you can afford to buy the buildings, then of course you can add more cities. But you cant stay at 2 cities and try for early Coal, you need 3.

With just 2 cities you can push food to yourself and tech fast with the lowest research costs, the only thing is, you cant stay at 2 forever.

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Staying at two cities until hermitage? Isn't it like an auto loss already then? If not does it even make sense to settle afterwards? The cities won't have enough time to grow.

joncnunn said:

Part of why others prefer 4 city NC is that (with high enough hammer production in city 2 & 3) they do have enough cash to have done something else first before cashing buying the 4th one.

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I really feel compelled to have cities 2 and 3 first build be a monument or shrine before starting to hard build the library (because otherwise the monument or shrine is terribly delayed by the library build). If I get better at saving, then the 4th city can safely start with monument or shrine also (since it's cash rushing the library). Most games I struggle to get NC done by turn 100, but I certainly agree that doing so makes a big difference.