Anyone has a good reason to play tall in CiVI ?

[Arms Longfellow]

Planting cities spaced wide apart to eventually get all their tiles filled with pop from your fewer but bigger cities: that's tall
Planting cities close together to get all your tiles worked quicker while eventually having lots of smaller cities: that's "wide" (or "smallpox" for the older civ players among us)

I like this definition of tall vs wide. I don't have a problem with large empires being overall more powerful than smaller empires, because that's how it works in real life too. What I would like to see is more benefit for those empires that space their cities far apart from each other so that they can work tons of tiles and run lots of specialists. Currently, when given the exact same amount of territory to work with, it's better to cram more cities 3-4 spaces apart in this territory than it is to build the cities 6 spaces apart, because more cities means more trading routes, more campuses loaded with all the science buildings etc. It's also easier to cover multiple cities with factories and entertainment districts when spaced close together, not to mention the closer distance means it's easier for cities to protect each other. Buffing tall play would also help relieve some of the tedium of having to micro so many cities and re-assigning trade routes constantly.

 

[MyOtherName]

it's better to cram more cities 3-4 spaces apart in this territory than it is to build the cities 6 spaces apart, because more cities means more trading routes, more campuses loaded with all the science buildings etc....

Ignore all that: it's better to cram more cities 3-4 spaces apart simply because you don't have size 36 cities. Even if you grow to half that size, it will take most of the game to get there. That's a lot of wasted terrain for most of the game. You need to pack your cities more tightly together simply so that you can use your terrain.

And even ignoring that, population points are very expensive in huge cities. Growing one city to size 36 city costs over five times as much food as it does to grow one city to size 18. It costs over thirteen times as much food as growing one city to size 12! Multiple small cities is much cheaper than few large cities. And that's just food: you still have the housing costs to contend with!

 

[Japper007]

Ignore all that: it's better to cram more cities 3-4 spaces apart simply because you don't have size 36 cities. Even if you grow to half that size, it will take most of the game to get there. That's a lot of wasted terrain for most of the game. You need to pack your cities more tightly together simply so that you can use your terrain.

And even ignoring that, population points are very expensive in huge cities. Growing one city to size 36 city costs over five times as much food as it does to grow one city to size 18. It costs over thirteen times as much food as growing one city to size 12! Multiple small cities is much cheaper than few large cities. And that's just food: you still have the housing costs to contend with!

That would be the case if you'd work every tile in a cities radius, but often you end up with lots of tiles you flat-out can't work (districts, wonders, mountains, flat desert) or that at least are barely worth working (desert hills, tundra if not Russia) within your 36 tiles. I often find that growing to about 20 pop is more than enough to work all the good tiles in your territory, even without any overlap.

 

[Victoria]

Perfect @Japper007 just what I was meaning.
I feel that tall can win you a cultural game faster but not the other types

 

[Jailbreaker]

What would have to change to make tall viable?

I tried a one-city challenge (on Prince) a few days ago, and found myself lacking in science, more than anything else, even by Medieval times. It's not impossible to keep your culture up if you have the proper religion, city-states, or improvements. But science is a lot harder to get from any of those sources.

 

[Victoria]

Try a one city challenge on cheftain. That's the starting point to knowing why it does not work..... the value out of a city gets better at first the tails off

 

[king of nowhere]

tall is not the best strategy simply because housing prevents you from going tall until the industrial age, when you get neighborhoods. so the only advantage of going tall is that you spend less cogs on settlers early on.
even the way districts work, with flat bonuses, favors going wide. In civ4, percentage bonuses and maintenance costs ensured that in the late game, tall was better than wide - though in practice it still was inferior for most of the game and wide would steamroll you before you could get there. but in civ6, there's not even that small benefit. I go tall anyway because I find wide cities to be ugly, with so few space available and such low population, but I can see it's not efficient.
tall should really get some love.

 

[BuzWeaverCiv]

From testing at Prince to Emperor difficulty, 5 cities seems to be the minimum you can have and still squeak out a victory. Playing Tall in Civ VI just isn't a very viable strategy. It's practically designed not to be Tall.

 

[MyOtherName]

In civ4, percentage bonuses and maintenance costs ensured that in the late game, tall was better than wide - though in practice it still was inferior for most of the game and wide would steamroll you before you could get there.

I don't even know what "tall vs wide" could mean in the context of Civ 4.

 

[king of nowhere]

I don't even know what "tall vs wide" could mean in the context of Civ 4.

the same thing it means in civ6: making as many cities as possible closely grouped together, or spreading them more so that every city will be able to use the maximum amount of land.

 

[MyOtherName]

the same thing it means in civ6: making as many cities as possible closely grouped together, or spreading them more so that every city will be able to use the maximum amount of land.

Okay, then tall vs wide by that definition was not a dilemma in civ 4 because neither option was competitive: you placed cities to make the best use of the land. Sample reasons to have overlap are:

• Resource tiles were very strong; you want to have enough cities to ensure you are making good use of them throughout the entire game.
• A single food resource could be used to grow three different cities, but only if you accept the overlap
• Your powerhouse cottage cities are much more powerful if neighboring cities help develop its cottages while it's too small to do so.

Packing cities more tightly together than the land dictates, however, causes problems such as

• Increased maintenance costs
• You're spending a huge amount of resources to work poor tiles that give almost no benefit
• Growth is extremely slow because cities lack access to good food tiles
• You can't improve city center squares

 

[king of nowhere]

it was still a dilemma; on most lands, you could aim to grow cities to size 15, or to size 10, or to size 6-7. especially with floodplains tiles, you had many different ways to split food among different cities. making more cities would let you develop faster, but it was worse in the late game. and going tall was much more viable than it is in civ6. in my multiplayer experience, the best option was to aim at size 10-12 cities. in civ6, until the industrial age it's difficult to grow past size 8.

 

[Victoria]

I played another 1 city challenge the other day. Pericles on settler only owning 1 city you have to win a CV.
Try it

 

[antimony]

The biggest problem for a cultural OCC would be to find enough tourism sources early in the game, and enough great work spots. Perhaps it would work with Kongo, or one of the civs with bonuses to wonders (China, Egypt)?

 

[Victoria]

I avoided the early religious accidents by using Pericles. Pericles can push fast culture to get to museums quickly and peacefully.

 

[joncnunn]

I don't even know what "tall vs wide" could mean in the context of Civ 4.

the same thing it means in civ6: making as many cities as possible closely grouped together, or spreading them more so that every city will be able to use the maximum amount of land.

"Tall vs Wide" wasn't a thing for Civ IV (or any of I-III / SMAC) ; the closest thing was the debate on how close to each other should I build them:
It was generally assumed that no one would stop building cities (although sometimes there would be gambit tactics for early game war during the timeframe most players are building new cities and catch up with a round of settler building later)
But it was also assumed that other than "worker factory / settler factory" cities that no one would intently keep each of their cities from growing when not having happiness problems if the game allowed it. (e.g. Civ I,II,III population hard cap of 6 in non-river cities until an aqueduct was built.)

Civ VI is the same; you shouldn't really be leaving good city spots (that can be easily defended) blank simply because you already have built X cities. There is a strong incentive like there was in III to starting the game with a big REX to get them all up before district costs increase. (However, you need more military units to deal with barbs while doing this than you did in III). The conquer city-state or two early (via archers and one melee unit to finish the job) and then REX is also an option like Civ III's sword-rush / horse-rush.
And there's no need to hit anything like an avoid growth button in Civ VI; housing problems will be hit way before amenity problems cause rebels unless it's WW.

 

[antimony]

I got a one-city CV on cheftain with Kongo (small, Pangea). Turn 160, pop 17, yields are about 45 sci., 110 cult. and 60 prod. Major boosts to culture were a early relic from a goody hut, then Chichen Itza. I thought religion would help but no one spread it to my city. In addition to the cultural bonuses, the great merchant points from Kongo were useful to get extra trade routes.

 

[Victoria]

Nice... Kongo is easy though.

 

[JustifierNA]

I don't think the term applies to Civilization VI.

The closest thing that I can think of involving population size as far as getting one MASSIVE city has nothing to do with getting a few really "tall" cities but rather different ways of using trade to get "tall" using Centralized Trade, or using Decentralized Trade to go "wide"
But even then the terms do not really apply. In Civilization VI more cities: better. End of story.

• CENTRALIZED TRADE: Make all trade routes go from your CAPITAL to expansions for a MASSIVE 30+ pop, 100+production capital
  
  
• DECENTRALIZED TRADE: Make all your trade routes go from your EXPANSIONS to your capital OR Foreign Cities for a little production/growth or gold/science/culture/hammers everywhere.
  

 

[Victoria]

Tall in civ V terms really means few cities and growing them big, yeah it just does not work in the same way because of districts