What benefits are there to playing wide?

[Jimdigriz]

Every Civ game I have ever played I have gone wide.

Cant help it! And with Civ V I always play marathon, huge, 10 AI civs and....wide of course. Any other way just sounds boring to me. Yeah wide brings problems and you have to know when to stop building new cities too .

Playing tall just sounds very dull to me.

 

[CraigMak]

On marathon pretty much every strat is going to be boring. You're going to be hitting the next turn button more than playing.

 

[Acken]

Well said. I still don`t get it why some are so against expanding. I understand advantages of having 4 city tall empire but from my experience having more cities is always better. You may have policy, science and happiness penalty but compared to what each of your city can produce regarding culture, science and happiness(combined with either faith buildings or ideology) is just insane, not to mention GPT, strategic resources and military production.

I really urge people to try having a 4 city tall empire on large pangea map on Deity(even Immortal if you are uncomfortable on Deity) and see where does this lead you...Also epic pace on large map works like a charm(just make sure you have quick combat and quick movement checked because otherwise it could really take ages)...

Most people speak here of standard size. The bigger the map the more useful extra cities are due to lower penalities and more space. That's a given.

But if you want to prove that more than 4 cities is "always better" on standard you're free to participate in the Liberty vs Tradition challenge thread or the various immortal/deity maps in strategy and tips.

But like you I urge people to at least give it a try to share the results. Or if they preffer to play wide and don't mind a few extra turns to victory then just play it. People that complain they want to play wide and don't really care for a few extra turns to victory drive me nuts.

 

[Solutionfinder]

Most people speak here of standard size. The bigger the map the more useful extra cities are due to lower penalities and more space. That's a given.

But if you want to prove that more than 4 cities is "always better" on standard you're free to participate in the Liberty vs Tradition challenge thread or the various immortal/deity maps in strategy and tips.

But like you I urge people to at least give it a try to share the results. Or if they preffer to play wide and don't mind a few extra turns to victory then just play it. People that complain they want to play wide and don't really care for a few extra turns to victory drive me nuts.

Yeah on standard map is different I agree due to lack of space...but still personally prefer up to 8 cities rather than 4. I will look into that challange thread...

 

[LordBalkoth]

There is no reason why a large nation could not also have high population density; the choice of spreading out your population vs. concentrating it in a few central areas is a false one.

Except it actually isn't a false choice? Let's look at the US, Russia, and India.

Russia: 17 million square km, 144 million population.
US: 10 million square km, 321 million population
India: 3 million square km, 1.2 billion population.

There are a few exceptions like China (and Brazil) but if you look at population and size you'll see it actually holds up fairly well.

Larger countries often have more harsh environments, sections where few people live, and most of the country can support a smaller number of citizens per square km.

 

[noonex]

Most people speak here of standard size. The bigger the map the more useful extra cities are due to lower penalities and more space.

So if you physically can't go wide, then original question of this thread is not applicable.

 

[LordBalkoth]

So if you physically can't go wide, then original question of this thread is not applicable.

You can still go wide on most standard maps...the question is whether doing so nets more than not going wide. It is very difficult to go wide on Duel/Small maps, though, and very easy on Large/Huge maps.

 

[beetle]

Building more than 5 is still very viable if you like the playstyle, see current tradition vs liberty discussions. Probably won't give you Hof gold medals but still worth playing.

The problem is not many people really even give it a try in the S&T forum so it's a bit difficult to say what really is the best way to play it...

Civ5 has a way better balance on the wide vs tall topic than Civ4 ever had. Sure it's true that it's skewed toward small empires right now but it is not so bad as some people want to believe. This skewness is inferior to the way Civ4 was geared toward rewarding big empires. You could argue that this is not how Civ is supposed to be and that it's normal that big empires always come on top but I'd certainly disagree and preffer a good balance where Civ5 isn't very off. I love C4 for many aspects but this isn't one of them.

Great insight Acken (as always), but these bits in particular.

So if you physically can't go wide, then original question of this thread is not applicable.

I am not sure how you come this conclusion! Wide Liberty means a more engaging game and better chances with late-game strategics.

 

[Acken]

By the way since Huge has approximately half the penalties of standard (2.5% tech 5% culture 60% unhappiness) it would indicate that if Liberty 7ish city is viable on standard, huge can go with 12-13ish

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Civ IV was not as skewed as alleged here. IV and V share the limitation on early expansion; in V it is happiness and in IV it is maintenance (and the tendency to get squeezed on deity). The main difference is that in IV you often needed more land to be competitive on deity because the AI had more bonuses and could apply them more reliably (deity Civ V AI can carpet and retrains units super fast, but it can't put 100-200 units on one tile and walk it into you without flinching).

But ultimately, in both games more land (eventually) pays off. The problem/complaint in V is that it takes so long due to the penalties placed on it that wide becomes a false choice, a sort of cherry-tapping where true expansion isn't really viable before ideologies. In Civ IV it was true you needed tech to handle more than a few cities without imploding, but you had more variety in timing available for expansion and more potential ways the game could force you to play out of a start. Basically, Civ IV had no equivalent cookie-cutter to "tradition 3-4 cities", the closest was a renaissance break-out war to gain competitive land...but that wasn't consistently optimal and in some cases you couldn't do it at all.

V overtuned its expansion timing a bit.

 

[Kullervo]

Honestly, going wide's main benefit to me is, well, it makes the game more fun. I like having a huge empire end-game, I like having ridiculous culture-per-turn (One particularly lucky game I had great faith and culture per turn, so at one point after a Golden Age+World Fair culture boost I bought like 6 great writers in the same turn and got 5 policies in one turn. That felt awesome.) It just feels more satisfying.

However, it's hard to snowball without outright winning like that. As was said before in the threat, the wintime for CiV is fairly low, so if you want to win quickly, wide is practically completely inviable.

If you're not trying to win quickly, wide becomes much, much more viable and in the end-game, powerful. Certain civs will benefit from it as well, most notably India. Though India is really bad early game, late game Wide India is monstrous.

 

[reddishrecue]

Honestly, going wide's main benefit to me is, well, it makes the game more fun. I like having a huge empire end-game, I like having ridiculous culture-per-turn (One particularly lucky game I had great faith and culture per turn, so at one point after a Golden Age+World Fair culture boost I bought like 6 great writers in the same turn and got 5 policies in one turn. That felt awesome.) It just feels more satisfying.

However, it's hard to snowball without outright winning like that. As was said before in the threat, the wintime for CiV is fairly low, so if you want to win quickly, wide is practically completely inviable.

If you're not trying to win quickly, wide becomes much, much more viable and in the end-game, powerful. Certain civs will benefit from it as well, most notably India. Though India is really bad early game, late game Wide India is monstrous.

You mean monstrous because you get spoiled with so much happiness. If you have ideological issues and want to experiment in late game, wide India gets you that much more happiness... but its too happy..

 

[Kullervo]

Yeah, I have to admit India's happiness gets ludicrous when you have like 10 cities above pop. 20.

 

[Salvatierra]

this is one of the things of Civ V que I really don't enjoy. Especially when i played a lot of Civ 2 always being an extremly , MAD , expansionist (I enjoy quite a lot managing huge empires , it makes me feel powerfull )

I mean, dude, I came from having the game literally pleading me to stop expanding because i reached the limit on the number of cities (200 yes you're reading right 200!!! ) at 1500b.c. (well maybe it was a.c. but you got the idea, my playstyle was like Hiawatha's wet dreams, took me half an hour per turn to manage all that ), and now in CIV I struggle to just get 10 cities working fine, I Feel That is not fair at all.

So sometimes when I like to play just a relaxing game I go with India, because I can play super wide without neglecting the growth of my cities.

In my current game with them i'm getting crazy amounts of happines even when I have 10 cities, I had so much luck to have loads of productive land just for myself secured with mountain ranges.

Spoiler :

The first objective that i wanted to accomplish was getting all the bonuses that make the cities grow as quickly as possible, because with half of the unhappiness I was able to manage it. In order to perform that i had to build the temple of Artemis, finish the tradition policy tree, and the tricky one, found a religion that had both beliefs on growth rate.

Spoiler :

The funny fact of this religion is that it doesn't have a single belief that gives you eiter faith or culture, is just a bunch of productivity boosts, in fact it's really not a religion at all, it's like having an early ideology, that's what i called ''technocracy'' to this build, because it was kinda an ideology to boost science by growing more faster.


The fact that my neighbor was Boudicca helped me a lot because she ran trough the piety policy tree pretty fast and took for her religion Pagodas, Mosques, and as the reformation belief, Jesuit Education, (yeah!! #best-religion-ever) so I left her missionaries and prophets mess around with my empire just to buy all the good staff and then re-convert all of my cities to my ''religion'', I think that I took more advantage of her religion than herself.

Spoiler :

Now that I have lots of happiness I will found some more cities and sit back , when I complete the Commerce policy tree I will have twice the happiness for luxuries, after that I still have 3 more tenets in Order for boosting happinness, and I will have Neuschwanstein and then The CN Tower as the cherry over the sweet, I have everyrhing minutely and coldly calculated.

Spoiler :

 

[reddishrecue]

Playing wide can be done without using liberty so much and that's a good benefit to me because its fun and its a challengeeven with liberty which is good for going wide.

 

[beetle]

So sometimes when I like to play just a relaxing game I go with India, because I can play super wide without neglecting the growth of my cities.

Looks great, but is this Deity? I have tried to make wide India, but without success.

 

[reddishrecue]

In comparison to other civs in deity. ^^

 

[dasaard200]

Waaaaay back in the late 50's, at the tender age of 7, I came across "RISK"; which has infected/influenced/warped my play style; 1) I cannot play "small & tall", 2) I love huge/giant maps (probably because I read "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" as a 1st grader( that book had TEETH !!)), 3) and I really don't mind a Game taking a couple of weeks to finish .

Currently test-driving Buccaneers, with only 40 cities; and about to do a Culture VC . I have 5 SP trees full (Liberty, Tradition, Aesthetics, Rationalism, Patronage), and near 7th Golden Age at T370 .

Slow, careful TARGETED expansions, with 'breathers' between conflict/conquests yield a strong wide, sustainable Empire .

 

[Myth and Legend]

I play Large maps, usually continents. I simply don't have enough land to settle more than 4 good cities. If I do want to settle 5-6, I don't have a unique lux for every city, thus I get hit with negative happiness around the Middle Ages.

I lag behind in tech, and those low pop extra cities are slow to develop. I just don't feel that self founding anything more than 4 cities is good on Deity, unless you get very lucky and have no AI to gobble up your land asap.

 

[beetle]

I play Large maps, usually continents. I simply don't have enough land to settle more than 4 good cities.

Are you prioritizing settlers? I play only on standard, but have enough room for Liberty 6+ cities with about a third of my games. I though Large was suppose to make things easier?