Another tall question :)

[robincox]

When building tall empires I usually build 3 to 4 cities tops. Now the question, is it good to wait a bit with building cities 2,3 and 4 in favor of growing my capital and building important buildings like for instance national colleague. Or is it a good idéa to get all 3 or 4 cities out as soon as possible?

 

[Calouste]

Depends. How good is your capital site? How secure are the potential other city spots from being captured by other civs and how good are they? Do you have a civ with a UI like the Inca, Brazil or the Dutch that allows you to settle locations that aren't that attractive to others, so you don't have to rush to those locations? Do you have aggressive neighbors like Shaka, Alexander or Napoleon that require you to have some extra defense for your new city? How about happiness?

I usually try at least to have my capital work all its resources before I start to look at expanding. And build any wonders I really think are must have, but that's usually limited to Hanging Gardens in a low food/high production capital.

 

[robincox]

I was thinking in a scenario where I have my own big island and all the other ai are miles and miles away.

 

[Calouste]

Well, in that case, if the capital has enough production, I'd go for National College and Circus Maximus first (and hopefully finish the Tradition tree for the Aqueducts and extra growth), then you can found a new city, run a food trade route to it and have two workers around, and those cities will boom.

Early settling when going tall is mostly there to grab the land before anybody else.

 

[evilcat]

In both liberty and tradicion i build settler in more or less same time, the difference is that with liberty it is 2x settlers in time of one. With tradicion it is still good to get the second city, since i can buiold units like worker, army, caravans in the second one, while in capital building some real buildings all wonder i need. With Tradicion i could buy a settler at some point if there is still a place for one more city.

 

[FrostK]

Obviously depends on the land. If you see spot with 8 salts (this happens not that often), then you'll probably want to settle there asap.

 

[Calouste]

Obviously depends on the land. If you see spot with 8 salts (this happens not that often), then you'll probably want to settle there asap.

In one of my recent games my second city had 5 sheep, 3 fish, 2 gems, a silver and an iron. Might also have had a deer, not quite sure. A sea food route and it was boomtown.

 

[robincox]

Early settling when going tall is mostly there to grab the land before anybody else.

Perhaps it's not even worth grabbing land.

I just played a game on king where I built 4 cities quite fast before my capital got big because I had to get land before my neighbours. I was behind all game through, had an unhappy population nearly all the time.

Then I played a game on emperor. Got a big (over 10 pop) capital before settling new cities. I even only got 3 cities out total. In this game I was easily in the lead with a lot of excess happiness.

 

[evilcat]

It is interesting, since with Tradicion i generally end with 3 cities, and sometimes capture 4th city as capital, just to pacify my nearest neighbour.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I think it is better to first grow the capital and wait until you have finished tradition before starting to settle the remaining cities. Also gives you time to get the NC and a few wonders up.

However, if you are either extremely close to a CIV that is expanding rapidly OR you have really good terrain + many luxuries, you *might* want to settle a bit earlier to make sure that you get the spot.

So...
..."it depends", just like so much in CIV5.