When I first played Civ 5 I began chain settlers a I did in past civ games, trying to land grab and just throw cities down in strategic spots like choke points, every available resource, coastal spot for mass producing a navy etc. Then when my first game went to hell due to lack of gpt due to city buildings, culture slowing to a crawl, and finding out that my dozen+ cities could not each be garrisoned AND make an invading army I started to get why Civ5 penalizes mass cities even in a large empire.
Civ5's direction is "definitely less is more" mantra, where a "big army" is fielding a dozen or so units (mix of air, land, sea). When you think in proportions of the USA being an "empire" how many major cities does it really have? I mean really giant, sprawling, "18-22" civ pop cities wich would equate to LA/Chicago/NY? Sure USA has thousands of cities, but even cities like San Franciso, Houston etc are not a NY size city which I think Civ5 is trying to say "each civ city is pop/production of NY or London or Berlin irl". Even in history how many major cities in a single empire were as big as Rome? Cairo, Jerusalem maybe? This is just my theory of course.
In my games now I stopped spamming cities and guess what? My culture does the work for me, expanding and grabbing resoureces or I just buy tiles instead of throwing down useless cities. When I did throw down useless cities they would most often wither or not grow or be in -gpt anyway. I actually have to think STRATEGICALLY where to put cities now! I think the change is a lot better than the old strat where you just land grabbed till you hit someone elses border.
Even looking at the policy tree one entire branch is devoted more or less to the capital, which I did not understand at first. I thought it was a useless tree because my capital out of 20 cities did not mean much. Yet if you have 8-10 cities your capital becomes a major production/economical/science source percentage wise. I have had games where I settled only 4-5 cities and have had an entire continent covered by culture and my borders, puppeting a few invaded cities and producing an effective army and navy and not crippled my own economy.
Bottom line, the devs (weather you agree or not) made civ to be a LOW CITY COUNT, HIGHER STRATEGIC PLACEMENT game. Just my observances, and in practice less seems to make a far more enjoyable game! Unless they revert this design decision to the old civ ways I think this is the best way to play civ5!
Civ5's direction is "definitely less is more" mantra, where a "big army" is fielding a dozen or so units (mix of air, land, sea). When you think in proportions of the USA being an "empire" how many major cities does it really have? I mean really giant, sprawling, "18-22" civ pop cities wich would equate to LA/Chicago/NY? Sure USA has thousands of cities, but even cities like San Franciso, Houston etc are not a NY size city which I think Civ5 is trying to say "each civ city is pop/production of NY or London or Berlin irl". Even in history how many major cities in a single empire were as big as Rome? Cairo, Jerusalem maybe? This is just my theory of course.
In my games now I stopped spamming cities and guess what? My culture does the work for me, expanding and grabbing resoureces or I just buy tiles instead of throwing down useless cities. When I did throw down useless cities they would most often wither or not grow or be in -gpt anyway. I actually have to think STRATEGICALLY where to put cities now! I think the change is a lot better than the old strat where you just land grabbed till you hit someone elses border.
Even looking at the policy tree one entire branch is devoted more or less to the capital, which I did not understand at first. I thought it was a useless tree because my capital out of 20 cities did not mean much. Yet if you have 8-10 cities your capital becomes a major production/economical/science source percentage wise. I have had games where I settled only 4-5 cities and have had an entire continent covered by culture and my borders, puppeting a few invaded cities and producing an effective army and navy and not crippled my own economy.
Bottom line, the devs (weather you agree or not) made civ to be a LOW CITY COUNT, HIGHER STRATEGIC PLACEMENT game. Just my observances, and in practice less seems to make a far more enjoyable game! Unless they revert this design decision to the old civ ways I think this is the best way to play civ5!
