Any Penalties for Additional Cities?

[Kanasuke]

What is the penalty for increasing your city count? Is it like in Civ5 it hits the distance it takes for you to reach the next Social policy by X%?

Sry for the post - not sure where to find info like this

 

[Cerilis]

There is none, only settlers and districts get more expensive.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Cities like everything else in the game have a cost to build them but otherwise there is no penalty as far as I can think of.

 

[Ryika]

Well, you have to defend them, which isn't always more difficult, but will in general increase your overall border size.

Small Cities don't contribute much other than some Science and Culture, and it's absolutely impossible to have districts in every city if you're expanding a lot, so you end up with a lot of cities that don't do that much but need to be defended. Which can work out fine if you have extra land that doesn't create new borders, but can also cause more trouble than it really helps.

Those are just opinions from my limited experience of course.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You can have districts in all cities if you take the time to build them

You can start on the first district as soon as the city is founded

 

[rschissler]

Also your luxuries get spread out a little thinner, but that is mostly negligible if your new cities stay small

Can someone explain this? Does that mean that luxuries don't give amenities to all cities?

 

[isau]

Amenities are the limiting factor.

A single unique copy of a luxury benefits up to 4 cities (extra copies don't benefit you at all). So if you go too wide too fast and don't make up for it with amenities you'll face an unhappy empire. However, it is still much much less punishing than Civ V with its global happiness mechanic was.

 

[CBE Player]

Well, you have to defend them, which isn't always more difficult, but will in general increase your overall border size.

Larger empires are easily defended if you have no adversaries to worry about, stay on the offensive once started and take and keep all cities. Once you have a decent war machine just keep it well oiled with the blood of your enemies.

 

[rschissler]

Amenities are the limiting factor.

A single unique copy of a luxury benefits up to 4 cities (extra copies don't benefit you at all). So if you go too wide too fast and don't make up for it with amenities you'll face an unhappy empire. However, it is still much much less punishing than Civ V with its global happiness mechanic was.

Which cities get the benefit? The closest ones next to the luxury?

So, a second copy of a luxury only gives whatever the tile yield is, and it's availability to trade to an AI?

 

[liv]

I think time is also a limiter. Because of the inflation to district cost it makes less sense to build new cities after say the first 150 turns. They just end up very lame at that point. You can compensate some by running trade routes from the new city but I have founded cities where it says it will take over 300 turn to finish the first district. You can spend some resources trying to make it grown etc but I do not think it is a win win in the end

 

[isau]

Which cities get the benefit? The closest ones next to the luxury?

So, a second copy of a luxury only gives whatever the tile yield is, and it's availability to trade to an AI?

The city that gets the luxury is determined by an invisible force that the developers have referred to as something like the "bureau of luxury distribution."

Basically the way it works is it looks at all of your cities and tries to fill in gaps in amenities with luxuries. Like, if one city is already doing great on Amenities and another isn't, it will prioritize the struggling city.

You are correct that the only real use for extra copies of a luxury is trading them.

 

[rschissler]

I think time is also a limiter. Because of the inflation to district cost it makes less sense to build new cities after say the first 150 turns. They just end up very lame at that point. You can compensate some by running trade routes from the new city but I have founded cities where it says it will take over 300 turn to finish the first district. You can spend some resources trying to make it grown etc but I do not think it is a win win in the end

I'm assuming there is some sort of logic to this, as to why this is a good feature to have for the game? Any idea what that is?

 

[ezzlar]

Isnt district cost only based on number of techs and civics?

 

[TomKQT]

There are some false information in this thread.
Districts don't get more expensive with more cities.
Settlers don't directly get more expensive with more cities. Sure, settlers get more expensive with each settler built, but this (AFAIK) doesn't count if you capture the settler.
Builders don't get more expensive with more cities, just with each builder created. But it's true that you probably will need more builders for more cities.

But the biggest error of multiple people in this thread is the "there is no penalty". As some said, there is - each luxury resource distributes only to 4 cities. If you have 1 luxury resource and 1 to 4 cities, each of them gets +1 amenity from the resource. If you have 4+ cities, only 4 of them get +1 amenity from it! And it doesn't matter if you have multiple copies of the same luxury resource (but you can trade those away).

So, the penaulty of having many cities is almost negligible compared to Civ5, but there still is some penalty.

 

[RealAntithesis]

The distribution of luxuries is a somewhat obscure mechanic. I would like a more global happiness system as per Civ 5, perhaps together with a general corruption mechanic from earlier Civs. These two should then be pretty obvious to the player as to what is happening. Ie corruption is higher the further away from the capital a city is founded, which affects all city outputs including city happiness, offset by the global happiness from luxuries (with perhaps a greater effect for the city working a luxury resource), with corruption offset by buildings, policies and government type.

None of this units and districts etc auto magically increasing in cost due to some reason that makes little sense to the player.

 

[joncnunn]

There are some false information in this thread.

This is because before this thread was narced all posts were from the day of the release.

 

[TomKQT]

This is because before this thread was narced all posts were from the day of the release.

Ouch, my bad, I didn't notice the dates. I'm usually carefull about this.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Wasn't there some increase cost when you had more districts than the average of all AIs?

For example, if on average each AI civ had built a Commercial Hub in 50% of their cities, you'd get a penalty if you wanted it in all your cities?

 

[manu-fan]

Wasn't there some increase cost when you had more districts than the average of all AIs?

For example, if on average each AI civ had built a Commercial Hub in 50% of their cities, you'd get a penalty if you wanted it in all your cities?

Nope. District cost is increased by the amount of Tech and Civics you have, and is nothing to do with anything else.

 

[Jaybe]

Nope. District cost is increased by the amount of Tech and Civics you have, and is nothing to do with anything else.

Naw, that's not right either. You can get a discount on the cost increase if you have less-than-average number of the district you are building. I've seen where the common district build-time is 30 turns, but some districts (e.g., encampments, which I build in only select cities), the build time is only 20 turns.

Don't recall what the discount is, and my 30 and 20 turns may be off a bit. The variability of non-unique district costs is definitive.