Benefits of small empires

[SpecialKen99]

Hey, just got this game and I'm moving in from Civ 4. In Civ 4 I was good at REXing or warmongering and having these giant massive epic empires to win the game with. I can repeat that pretty fluidly here in Civ 5 as well.

However, I see social policies like tradition and such that seem to be specifically tailored for smaller empires and I'm interested in building one. Now, I know that these polices are good for cultural victories and such, but I'd like to build a small empire that can win the game without resorting to cultural (so that is diplo, sci, or even conquest (sniping enemy capitals) ).

So, I've been trying England to build a small naval empire that has their hands in the diplomatic arena and I'm having trouble. My last game is going...okay. I have a good military and navy, but the problem is I'm running out of cash and tech compared to the bigger empires. I only have 4 costal cities, all trying to get me more cash, but as they grow in pop and I build more buildings, unit and building maintenance just kills my funds. Tech wise, I have no idea how a small empire of 4 cities can compete with sprawling and developed massive empires in the science frontier. Culturally I'm not as good as I should be as well since each culture buildings take a while to build and adds even more to maintenance. I'm curious if anyone can offer insight on this situation, like how can you manage a small empire competitively versus the big ones. I feel like I should just conquer the world now, before I get left behind...

Thoughts?

 

[Sable]

One quick and dirty source of cash is declaring war on a city, pillaging it to the ground, then suing for peace without conquest. It cripples the civ--or city-state--and the AI doesn't get angry with you so long as you're not actually taking the city. Since you have a good military, liberating city-states works the same way. Pillage away, then liberate the city-state. They'll be eternally grateful to you even if they have no houses

The problem that I've found with smaller empires is that you need to be very careful with city placement. The fewer cities, the more placement matters. I'm currently going for a cultural victory with India (only 3 cities to Napoleon's four frillion), but I've held off three large-scale invasions from the French and the Japanese and I'm ahead of them in tech. You have to play defensively rather than offensively to save gold; if you want the military victory, gift units to allied city-states and let them fight the proxy wars for you. If you've got a city with good production, wonders help a lot. No maintainence, and the bonus culture means your city spreads like wildfire. Happier people too, so more Golden Ages.

I also got lucky--I have 3 coastal cities with India, and I kind of blitzed for the caravel. It meant I was the only maritime power other than England--which was bogged down in war--so I also found a bunch of free goodie huts that no one else had gotten to yet. Free culture and tech? WHY YES THANK YOU.

Also, what policies are you using? Piety is a real winner, as is Freedom to cut down on your specialist costs.

 

[Seven05]

My first win was as Greece on a large map, I got a diplo victory with my 'empire' of five cities.

The first thing you should notice is that a small empire can potentially have the same population as a large empire. You will have fewer +happy buildings but you will have less unhappiness from number of cities. Since the +happy buildings can be expensive that should help a little bit to offset the substantially lower trade route income. Anyway, your tech rate should be very close to that of a large empire and as long as you don't build too many units your upkeep should be lower (building maintenance will definately be lower).

I spent a lot of time fighting proxy wars through city states and I also joined in frequently to get some xp for my units and pillage for a quick gold boost. I didn't really like the small empire route though, if not for my never ending wars I would have been pretty bored without having a couple dozen cities to play around with. I think the large empires are also easier once you get happiness under control, you get a lot of gold through trade routes and you're more likely to have access to luxury resource and excess strategic resources for trade.

 

[Matth3w]

I'm trying to win with a smaller empire. I only have three going on four cities (will be four once I take out a city state that's in my way for key terrain). I'd rather have strong cities than a bunch of strung out places that I am constantly fighting for because my military is over-extended.

 

[SpecialKen99]

Thanks for the replies.

So being England, I thought it would be prudent to do tradition and mercantilism (is that the name? it's the one about gold) I haven't gotten too far into the merchant one because my culture isn't that good, and my upkeep isn't that good either so building more culture buildings means losing cash. I just spammed universities in all my cities to see if they can boost my tech. I'll see where that goes.

In hindsight, I should do Tradition and Piety then go on to the other trees.

As for city placement, since you have so few I'm finding it hard to specialize them. Should I prioritise cities on food, gold, production in that order? What would be a good balance, 1x production city, 2x gold city, 1x growth (tech) city?

Also what do I build in cities when I have most of the buildings I need. Is it wise to leave a city on research, since adding buildings + units means more maintenance?

 

[Giant Dwarf]

I like the analysis. I do think however large empires will undoubtedly snowball into monsters after a certain threshhold. Once they get their happiness and gold problems under control, and if they keep expanding, smaller empires are in trouble.

 

[Sable]

I like the analysis. I do think however large empires will undoubtedly snowball into monsters after a certain threshhold. Once they get their happiness and gold problems under control, and if they keep expanding, smaller empires are in trouble.

Yeah, I'm finding that out. Arabia is the large empire in my game, and they get something obscene like 350 gold per turn I'm doing ok with about 100 gold per turn, more in Golden Ages, but still, that's kind of scary. But they're also a continent away and a bit behind me tech wise with no naval force, so I think I'm ok for now. Maybe. Hopefully

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

I've so far won 2 "small empire" games, the first as England on Prince and the second as Greece on King. The trick to getting a science edge (in my king game I was 10 techs ahead) is knowing the tech tree and "slingshotting" with specialist/wonders. You also have to work your capital carefully (I usually don't get my second city until close to 0AD), sell every and any excess luxuries/strategic resources, befrind city states (lack of cash means you'll be doing some missions) and keep an eye on world development. With a tech edge you can usually field a small but advanced army, use it to help other civs fight wars against the bigger ones, maintain a world balance and you should be able to take either a culture or a diplomatic victory.

Edit:

I also meant to put more emphasis on specialization; national epic, garden, and even that wonder (cant remember which one it is right now) that gives 33% gp across the empire. I only need one city doing this (usually my capital) with a hard goal toward great scientist. maritime City states are your friend, and most importantly adopt the Freedom SP tree as soon as it becomes available. Piety/Golden ages help too.

 

[ethanyoung66]

I think for a small empire, specialized city for certain purpose will be more needed.
Because small empire needs those gold income, I can't afford to allow my gold income drop while all of my cities are trying to build something. As long as i have a steady gold flow, i can get food from city state and even rush buy some buildings in those specialized city.

 

[Bibor]

Traits of small empires:
- large, generic cities
- better returns from buildings
- fast production
- fast city culture, fast empire culture
- no happiness issues
- strong tech pace
- better diplomacy
- more golden ages
- more great people
- less resources

Traits of large empires
- small, specialized cities
- relies on puppets for research and science
- lots and lots of gold per turn
- huge upkeep costs (buildings, rail/roads)
- tricky diplomacy
- slow city culture, mediocre empire culture
- slow production
- more resources, higher chance having all strategic ones and a lot of happy ones


The only real benefit of having large empires is keeping the AIs in check (i.e. preventing monster-AIs from happening). Even for a conquest victory, grabbing that "omg happy resource" city on the other continent does more harm than good (+5 happy from a resource, -7 from having that city in the first place).

150 total population (and around 200 hexes to shuffle around) is a good number, regardless of the number of cities.

 

[Seven05]

Traits of large empires
- small, specialized cities
- relies on puppets for research and science
- lots and lots of gold per turn
- huge upkeep costs (buildings, rail/roads)
- tricky diplomacy
- slow city culture, mediocre empire culture
- slow production
- more resources, higher chance having all strategic ones and a lot of happy ones

I beg to differ

My large empire has several large, specialized cities making up about 20% of my cities and around 50% of my population.

I only annex, I never have puppets. Puppets are the doom of a large empire because they completely kill your economy with excess buildings that you don't need.

Route maintenance is only bad if you spread out too much. Since most cities in a large empire will never exceed 10 pop there is no reason to spread them out. The trade route return on a size 10 city using a two or three tile road is pretty good, good enough that it works out to be cheaper than harbors. With specialized cities building maintenance can be kept under control too, unless you really did go with puppet states.

Diplomacy isn't really any different. There are ways to get the AI to unwillingly vacate the land you want without conquering or razing a single city yourself. If you're happy without conquest you can still have a large empire with no enemies at all.

Slow culture? Sorry, I was too busy abusing my cultural city state allies to notice that my culture was slow. Yeah, policies are slower that they are with a small empire but not by much. City culture is irrelevant since you'll have so much money you can just buy the land if you're worried about somebody else beating you to it.

My St. Petersburg built the Pentagon in seven turns in my epic speed game. If that's low production I'll take it. It turns out that large empires running communism have some insane production capabilities.

Yes, a ton of resources which can be traded away for a ton of gold or used to support a half dozen factories and hydro plants.

 

[Bibor]

I beg to differ .

Are you talking about a continent-wide empire here?

 

[alpaca]

One mistake I made when I started playing Civ5 is that I built to many buildings. In Civ4, most buildings are somewhat useful or at least not harmful. In Civ5, it's the other way around and most buildings are harmful in most cities because the benefit is very low compared to their cost. Be sure to build only what you need, especially if you have a small empire.

 

[Ahriman]

I only annex, I never have puppets. Puppets are the doom of a large empire because they completely kill your economy with excess buildings that you don't need.

I find that the solution to this is to build over everything with trading posts. No mines, almost no farms, no mills. So they don't suck up your happiness too much, and it takes them ages to do much other than build some culture buildings (monument, temple at least) and they act as nice gold providers.

 

[Seven05]

Are you talking about a continent-wide empire here?

Pretty close, excluding the city states (I never conquer them) and an expanse of mountains & tundra in the south end of a 'C' shaped continent. For a size comparison there were four of us that started on my continent but Babylon, Rome and Berlin are now Russian cities

 

[Dizzy75]

I find that the solution to this is to build over everything with trading posts. No mines, almost no farms, no mills. So they don't suck up your happiness too much, and it takes them ages to do much other than build some culture buildings (monument, temple at least) and they act as nice gold providers.

I only have two controlled cities (both founded by me) and seven puppets in my current game. Prince, Babylon, Standard continents.

I took over my continent several turns ago, apart from two maritimes and one cultured CS (wiped Egypt and India). It's 880AD and I just got my first artillery unit.

I've spammed TPs in most of the puppets to constrain their construction - they seem bent on building the most expensive buildings that they're not going to use. But there's a limit to how much this can be done - I have to build mines on gems, for example, and plains produce hammers even with a TP on them.

However, the biggest problem I'm facing is happiness. Two maritime allies make population grow very quickly, and with only two cities where I can control production, it's hard to keep up, and soon I will run out of happiness buildings. They also cost $$ to maintain, which is bad.

This is a mid-game transition problem that I haven't quite worked out yet. I think I could basically wipe any rival off the map at this point, but maybe it's not worth it to hang onto their territory? An alternative may be to slowly annex the puppets one-by-one, which would result in a big happiness hit initially, but maybe it's worth it. Seems like it would take a very long time, though.

 

[Ben Franklin]

I was looking for some strategy about small empires, and I found a very good article on getting a great start using City States extensively, tried it and it works like a charm!
You'll find it in the University section on Apolyton.net, it's called City States, who's your buddy
I hope this is not against the forum policies to hint to another Forum...
If so I apologize. (But it's a great article nonetheless...) ;-)
Never thought City States could be that useful before that...

 

[SpecialKen99]

Haha, that article was pretty cool. I gotta get better at using city states. I figure if I can use them well I can rock the small empires better.

 

[Seven05]

This is a mid-game transition problem that I haven't quite worked out yet. I think I could basically wipe any rival off the map at this point, but maybe it's not worth it to hang onto their territory? An alternative may be to slowly annex the puppets one-by-one, which would result in a big happiness hit initially, but maybe it's worth it. Seems like it would take a very long time, though.

Well... here's how I do it to avoid those problems:

There is really no need for rapid conquest except for very early in the game when you want to wipe out your neighbors before they meet any other civs. Doing this will allow you to conquer without getting a bad reputation so I decide whether or not to conquer based on how many civs I'll have to conquer to be on a clean slate with the rest of the world. If I can't conquer my entire continent before astronomy I have two choices- 1) Deal with bad diplomatic hits from conquering cities, or 2) proxy wars via city states since they'll raze any city they conquer freeing up the land for me to settle.

If you don't care about diplomacy it's pretty easy, as you go to war you don't conquer any cities unless you can handle the hapiness hit until the courthouse is finished. Any amount of possitive happiness is enough to handle at least one annexed city. So while you wait for you happiness to go possitive you go to war to pillage (lots of gold), kill units (lots of xp for your army) and bombard their cities (more xp). As long as you're in control of the war you can completely cripple their economy and production making it impossible for them to actually fight back. At the same time you'll end up with highly promoted units to further exagerate your military advantage even if they keep up with you in tech. As you annex cities, set them to focus on production and get the courthouse out ASAP and then continue with whatever they need (gold & happiness buildings more often then not). Try to annex cities with luxury resources you don't have first regardless of where they are in relation to your own borders and then grab the 'in between' cities to establish the trade routes. If you have all of the luxury resources available on your continent already focus on first conquering cities with good production capabilities to get their courthouses out quickly allowing you to conquer more.

If you don't want the diplomatic hit it's not too different. You still go to war and pillage their lands and bombard their cities for gold and XP. You also provide military units to your city state allies that are close to the target civ, as long as they share a broder with them or have an open path of unclaimed land they'll rush in and capture & raze their cities for you. As long as you've destroyed their units and bombarded their cities the city state units will rip through them very quickly. With this method, you just need to conquer the capitals and then go through and rebuild everything you pillaged and you use your own settlers to replace the razed cities at a pace that doesn't push you into negative happiness.

 

[Dizzy75]

Hmm, I'll think about that, thanks.

The big thing about 2 cities and 7+ puppets is that I can grab lots and lots of SPs. So I suppose it would be best to start annexing or building new cities after I have the core SPs I want. Unless I can quickly increase my total culture output by +30% of base with each city I annex/settle.