Biggest city EVER

Kaitzilla

Lord Croissant
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Civ 4 has been around a while and I wanted to try something that no one has done before. I want to go for a 100 Pop city! :eek:


At first glance it seems impossible. Cities top out at size 40, maybe upper 50's with corporations. But there is one thing in the game that can put the century city on the map, and that is the settled great merchant (+1 food).



To get there, we need a hall of fame start. This should do:


Elizabeth
Huge - Rainforest
Settler Difficulty
Marathon
10 opponents, goody huts on, no city razing, barbs off
Buffy Mod (HOF)






That is 6 pigs and 3 wet rice. Farming everything, it should naturally top out at around 47 pop. In theory a city on 20 flood plains would be slightly better at 51 pop, but I think a cap that doesn't start in negative health will get me to future techs faster. Also, 6 pigs and 3 rice provide some protection against the dreaded global warming.



How fast can someone get to future techs on Settler? Iggy managed it in 360BC on his space race victory :goodjob:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=368932


My plan is to get there, farm up dozens of merchant farms, and then press next turn about 1000 times, pouring the GM's into the capital. If a food corporation can get me to 65 population, then I need 70 great merchants minimum. Taking time victory into consideration, I need more like 100 to have a chance.
 
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Won't the rice be a problem? I thought the reason you can't have Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mill together in the same city was because of rice. Besides, wet corn on grassland gets you more food, doesn't it?
 
I'd be shocked if this couldn't be done.
Each merchant spec is worth 10.5 GPP after Pacifism, PHI, and Parthenon bonuses.

If you can manage to get all your GP farms going by 1000 AD (on Settler, that's an astonishingly slow run), that leaves you with 300 turns until end-of-game.

So for each merchant spec. you manage in your GP farms, you generate 3150 GPPs by end-of-game. If you can only manage +10 food out of corporations (a fairly terrible showing), and can find space for just 40 cities which are each working 8 4-food tiles (again, on Huge/Arboreal/Settler, a pathetic empire), you'll have 40 cities which each generated a total of 40950 GPPs by end-of-game. Which is to say each farm could have generated 4 GMs (the last one to finish makes the 40th, 80th, 120th, and 160th, for a total cost of 40k GPPs). You get 160 GMs total.

Using somewhat less pessimistic assumptions, I'm inclined to believe that size-150 is about the maximum to hope for (you need to have about 90 8-tile cities, plus a 30-food corp., set up and running by ~500 AD for that).
 
Sorry, but this has been done and if I recall cities are capped at size 50.
 
@Copaczin

All the victory conditions will be a concern for me. I want to be able to submit the game to the HOF, so I will have to worry about more things than just global warming.
Just the 1 culture per turn from pacifism will cause me domination problems later.


@Um

On the rainforest map, there are hardly any seafood resources, but there are TONs of rice. Cereal mills will be the food corporation of choice. On huge maps I think it gives 0.37 food per resource (Rice, Corn, Wheat) Also, the lack of culture will be a huge boost against accidently triggering the 56% domination limit.


@Coanda

150 :crazyeye: That would be something if I could get it that big in a regular game.


@Vicawoo

If you are referring to the game that naruto kindly linked, sure I could easily get to 100 that way. But conquering 100% of the world and milking it way past 2150 isn't a very fun challenge hehe.
 
Sorry, but this has been done and if I recall cities are capped at size 50.

I have this vague recollection of seeing cities capping out at size 255 in Fall from Heaven II when playing as the demon race.
 
I just did a challenge for myself. Got a city with 3 sea food and 2 other food resources. Build the great lighthouse and colossus and starting farming GM. Stopped at size 45 or something. Was fun.
 
I'd be shocked if this couldn't be done.
Each merchant spec is worth 10.5 GPP after Pacifism, PHI, and Parthenon bonuses.

If you can manage to get all your GP farms going by 1000 AD (on Settler, that's an astonishingly slow run), that leaves you with 300 turns until end-of-game.

So for each merchant spec. you manage in your GP farms, you generate 3150 GPPs by end-of-game. If you can only manage +10 food out of corporations (a fairly terrible showing), and can find space for just 40 cities which are each working 8 4-food tiles (again, on Huge/Arboreal/Settler, a pathetic empire), you'll have 40 cities which each generated a total of 40950 GPPs by end-of-game. Which is to say each farm could have generated 4 GMs (the last one to finish makes the 40th, 80th, 120th, and 160th, for a total cost of 40k GPPs). You get 160 GMs total.
You've got the increasing cost of gp's wrong. the 40th GP costs 10000, but
the 80th costs 36000. With 50 cities or so, you'll get ~80 GP and many of the
cities will only produce 1.
You won't be able to use the Parthenon for long, because you need biology.
 
I'd like to see this myself.

There is no pop limit at size 50 - I've seen at least one pic in the gallery of a size 67 city in standard BTS, Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills would appear to be the way to go.
 
You can put floodplains on grasland, wheat on top of it, check how much food that gives ;)
 
You've got the increasing cost of gp's wrong. the 40th GP costs 10000, but
the 80th costs 36000. With 50 cities or so, you'll get ~80 GP and many of the
cities will only produce 1.
You won't be able to use the Parthenon for long, because you need biology.

You're absolutely correct. Shows how often I pay attention to the 11th or later GP I generate. And forgetting the Parthenon going obsolete was a stupid oversight on my part.

With revised numbers, my conservative assumptions do peg it at about 80 GP, which isn't enough to hit size-100 (you'd end up maybe size-90 or so). The more ambitious (but still plausible) assumptions put it around 110 GP, which is certainly enough to hit size-100, and possibly enough to hit size-110, but it's doubtful you'd get much larger than that.
 
You might be able to push GPP a bit more with MoM and Golden ages from Taj Mahal and free great people from techs.

Also remember to buy up available grains from your neighbors after cereal mills ( and to save appropriate GP for the Corp).

There are also many sample games for Settler level that use starting settler to pop more settlers from huts, might want to leverage this to set up satellite GP farms earlier.

What about wonders? Is it worth cramming everything + national epic into main GP farm even at the risk of popping someone other than GM? These unfortunates cold still be used for golden ages.
 
Played up to 1AD as fast as I could. Rainforest is a major drag trying to rush through the techs. Beyond 3 tiles in every direction which gets cleared when the capital location spawns, it is a SOLID wall of jungle. To plant those cottages and workshops you have to chop, chop, chop till the cows come home. No BC future techs on this one.

I also had some bad luck with goody huts. 2 or 3 settlers, a pair of workers and a few techs was my bounty. Rainforest seems to have less goody huts than usual. I also regret using no city razing, as I didn't find an enemy cap with my warrior until turn 60 or so, and it was defended :( Also, no barbs means no woodsman II warriors causing terror. With the unreal bonus players get against them on settler I should have turned them on. Heck, maybe random events would have been kind too :lol:

It isn't the end of the world, I still have the ideal capital, and it IS settler difficulty, so the AI will fall easily. I ran down the bottom of the tech tree and got 3-hammer caste workshops fairly rapidly.





The main problem is how to stop global warming. I've been scouring the forums and found this thread on the mechanics.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=280111


Rather than pray and get lucky, you have two options:

1) Forget building too many unhealthy buildings such as forges, factories, coal plants, power, labs, etc.. (Includes the AI) OR
2) Have 40% or more of the world covered in jungle/forests.


Either by itself should prevent global warming. And NO FIRING NUKES of course.

Recycling Centers and the Enviromental Civic have no effect. Sounds like real life. :mischief:
With the rainforest map I'll work with option #2 as my strategy.





I am avoiding most great wonders except the vital ones, such as MoM, Pyramids, Oracle, and Hagia Sophia (faster workers). I need to kill the AI quickly before they spread too much. I want caste for great merchants and artists' border popping, but I want serfdom to chop faster to make room for caste workshops. It is a mystery which is better, but I am leaning towards caste.

I gave it some thought and am burning golden ages to reach communism, biology, and other major milestones faster. 80 GP farms can't get rolling until Future Tech 10, and getting there 100 turns later just so I can have x4 GPP instead of x3 GPP for a few dozen turns doesn't seem worth it to me.


Here I am at 1AD:

Spoiler :


If I fail this 100 pop city thing, maybe I should try rolling a 20FP multi-corn start on the great plains at the bottom of the map. Then I could make a dense grid of cities on the greenish eastern side of the map while demanding wheat from my AI serfs and sabotaging them with spies and war bribes (gold) so they dont make the industrial era.
 
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Snaky continents with GHL+colossus makes way more sense than rainforest. Philosophical doesn't make that much sense either. You're looking at 50% from the parth, 100% from pacifism. PHI then only gives a 40% bonus. GP mechanics then kick in and you're getting way less than 40%.

I'ld go with Pacal of Carthage. EXP gets you set up that much faster, FIN collossus coastal makes for extremely fast teching without any setup costs. Added bonus, extra TR everywhere with harbors, which get sped up by EXP.
 
Snaky continents with GHL+colossus makes way more sense than rainforest. Philosophical doesn't make that much sense either. You're looking at 50% from the parth, 100% from pacifism. PHI then only gives a 40% bonus. GP mechanics then kick in and you're getting way less than 40%.

I'ld go with Pacal of Carthage. EXP gets you set up that much faster, FIN collossus coastal makes for extremely fast teching without any setup costs. Added bonus, extra TR everywhere with harbors, which get sped up by EXP.

As barbertje pointed out when I made the same mistake, Parthenon is going obsolete quickly. PHI is an effective 50% boost, which means it takes only 2/3 as long to get the same number of GMs. So if he would be spending 250 turns at the end of the game just hitting end-turn over and over (1500 AD to end), by switching to Pacal he'd need to instead spend 375 turns doing that to get the same number of GMs (750 BC to end). I guarantee you EXP isn't that big of a boost. Going with Pericles might be worth trying though - EXP instead of FIN might pay off.
 
SUCCESS :D


Here she is, in all her glory:






Total Pop reached was 122.
Pop 100 was reached on turn 1022/1500 in 1942AD.
Food corp maxed out at +41 food.

132 great people were grown, 5 more came through techs.
10 were burned in 4 golden ages.
1 great scientist built an academy in the capital.
1 great merchant was accidentally settled in Orporto
In 2050, 121 great merchants were settled in the capital.
The 133rd great person would have cost 285600 GPP.


It turns out a triple/x4 gem capital would have been a stronger play, as my second largest city had one less food:

Spoiler :



My sanity was saved by the Buffy Mod. The enhanced domestic advisor screen quickly let me see which cities were not running 100% great merchant specialists each turn. I was then able to click on and correct the offending city.

Spoiler :





It turns out that if a city grows while building an item and is using every tile, it will add a great engineer by default if possible.
If a city grows while building wealth/research/culture, it is a coin flip between adding a great merchant or a great scientist.
If a city grows while building research or culture AND you are researching future tech, it will add a great merchant every time :p Oddly, building wealth in the 3rd case adds a pesky great engineer specialist again.

That last discovery allowed me to press next turn about 800 times nonstop.


I nearly ended the game prematurely due to dom limit when Lincoln stopped being willing to take any of my cities. Does anyone know why an AI does this?


Spoiler :
Nice Lincoln


Mean Lincoln



After giving it some thought, I agree that Elizabeth might not be best for this kind of thing. I only built cottages in my cap and one or two other cities at the start, and after that used only workshops. Instead of financial, something else might be used more fully. Phil is essential though. Perhaps Ghandi with his fast workers hrmm.

No HOF for this one, I crashed it in 1120AD taking a screenshot of the 2 Bil population message :cry:

I'll attach the game in this thread just so it exists somewhere.




Oh ya, no Global Warming occured. :goodjob:
 

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