City Strategy - Spam them?

[Ferigno]

Hey all. Longtime Civ player here. Loving the changes in Civ 6

But with regards to cities, I don't see a lot of downside to just having a settler-pump city and trying to expand into open area as fast as possible. In the past, there was definite downsides with global happiness and the culture cost increases. Am I just not noticing similar downsides?

Are you guys just putting out cities as fast as you can? Even if one of them is mediocre, it's still filling space where someone else can't go.

Thanks

 

[ichbinsehselber]

I do hope you are right.
I disliked the unhappiness mechanism of civ5 a lot.

Settler cost is apparently increasing in civ6 with the number of cities.

 

[Underseer]

I do hope you are right.
I disliked the unhappiness mechanism of civ5 a lot.

Settler cost is apparently increasing in civ6 with the number of cities.

I think worker cost also scales with either number of cities or total number of workers built. Not sure which, but it's incredibly annoying.

 

[CivScientist]

I'm pretty sure both scale by number built and not by the number of cities you have.

 

[MasterDinadan]

Settler cost increases by 20 each time you create one.
Builder cost increasss by 4 each time you create one.

It was thought for some time that increasing district costs were deterrent to going wide. It's now known that district costs scale with your tech/civic progress, not the number you have, so it's actually better to get cities out early on before districts become prohibitively expensive.

There is a 25% discount for districts if you have fewer than the average civ, but thats not much incentive for going tall vs getting out cities as soon as possible before the tech scaling is out of control.

 

[ichbinsehselber]

Increasing district cost with tech/civic progress: This sounds like a very bad idea. The opposite like in Masters of Orion to get your stuff cheaper through progress seems more logical.

 

[CivScientist]

So how dramatically do district costs go up as you advanced in tech and civics? If it's dramatic enough, that could be a legitimate reason to not spam cities.

 

[Setrax]

The district production scaling is one issue, I suppose the real mechanic is that one well-placed city is going to out-perform the cities that are placed badly. (Growth wise).

I've noticed the AI will aggressively settle closer to you, so it sort of prompts you to do the same.

 

[LDiCesare]

I don't spam them much but the AI does, so I end up ICS'ing nevvertheless.

 

[MkLh]

So how dramatically do district costs go up as you advanced in tech and civics? If it's dramatic enough, that could be a legitimate reason to not spam cities.

Quite the opposite. You should expand very fast early and start as many districts as you can. AFAIK if you have already started a district, its cost won't change.

 

[genyl]

I think you can go more wide than in civ5 but there are some penalties:

Luxury resources cover only 4 cities

Every settler you built costs more

You need space to build districts. if you get adjacency bonus even better

but a strong incentive to pack your cities is the 6 square bonus of some districts buildings. and you can build entertainment dist and wonders like colisseum. so yes i think wide is better. i hardly raze any city

What I find more different is that coastal cities with lots of sea are not so good because there are no cargo ships and the only district you can build in water is the harbor

However tundra and desert are much better because you can build your districts and wonders there

 

[LDiCesare]

The only thing I found hard when you ICS is makign use fo your naturalists. A natural park needs 4 nice tiles from the same city with no improvement on it, and that's hard to find if you crowd the map. Although mountain ranges help.

 

[Zenstrive]

Park needs tiles that have no improvements or never been improved?
What about tiles that are reforested?

 

[LDiCesare]

They need no improvement, high appeal, be in the same city, and form a shape of 4 together in a diamond pattern.
If you spam cities close to each other, it's unlikely you'll have many of these configurations around, except maybe near mountains.

 

[lordqarlyn]

I prefer "Intelligent City Spam". I like to put out lots cities, but not for the sake of having more cities, I want them to be strategically placed, either location-wise, or resource-wise, and I want to them to have huge production potential.

 

[krakow2000]

Today i tested city spam and... it's amaizing + factory rush it's amaizing !!! Ofc depend what enemy you got. I got nice map to test this... continent on prince where 0 enemy and 7 non player city. After get factory AI steal my great library but... couple turn later i was 1st in science and army power. It's amaizing if you put correct city and factory, insane boost. Now i got turn 197 got 14 city first science, cultural and military power. 120 science per turn and 74 culture per turn and 247 gold per turn as america.

This is my second game... i read some info from other player about city rush.