Big city advantages

[Fluphen Azine]

I played an efficient SV last night with Tomyris, finished is T181 pretty much owning the world

Funny, I am playing a game with Tommy right now... rolled it random.
I feel like this game is a loss but I always feel like that lol.
All Random... Deity Pangaea Standard Standard.
I was like oh yes this is gonna be easy... I'm gonna roll.
And, as usual, I get in the game and my land is difficult for me... very difficult.
Many players would just re-roll but personally I hate the idea or re-roll or re-load.

Anyways up to turn 83 and doing really bad IMO.
No GG since I didn't build an Encampment cause I have this idea that I need Early Campuses after reading a thread.
Also Korea is in the game far away from me with mountains and difficult land everywhere.

I guess some bright side things like I took one of Russia's cities that they forwarded on me.
I got a peace deal... not much.
I have allies and I should be able to take over Russia hopefully once Xbows get up... I think.
Russia scared me with a couple Xbows so I begged for peace.

As usual the game is not what I envisioned and I have wanted to rage quit for 83 turns but what they heck... one more turn
I decided against Magnus so far since I am low on chopping opportunity.
4 cities by turn 80... oh man I'm dead.
I try to keep up the mantra... 2 pop cities with a campus anywhere you can put them!!
You should of settled them 40 turns ago dummy... me.. I'm the dummy
Two pictures below if you want to take a look and help or if anyone just wants to bash me for how bad I am doing!!
I'm a big boy I can take the lumps!

Spoiler Turn 39 :

Spoiler Turn 83 :

 

[Victoria]

2 pop cities with a campus

... I hate to say it but it’s 10 pop cities now because of rationalism.

 

[KayAU]

A single size 30 with Pingala and a few wonders like Kilwa is a fine looking thing.

Yeah, the Pingala city is a bit of an exception, since the guy actually gives a per citizen yield. It's pretty great when playing high-pop civs like the Inca. My criticism for the general case still stands, though. It makes no sense to me that a mid-sized city should yield almost the same as a huge metropolis, and it makes those cities less exciting than I feel they should be.

Note that this doesn't prevent me from growing my cities as large as possible in every single game. That's just how I play.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Yeah, the Pingala city is a bit of an exception, since the guy actually gives a per citizen yield. It's pretty great when playing high-pop civs like the Inca. My criticism for the general case still stands, though. It makes no sense to me that a mid-sized city should yield almost the same as a huge metropolis, and it makes those cities less exciting than I feel they should be.

Note that this doesn't prevent me from growing my cities as large as possible in every single game. That's just how I play.

I would think that if you go as tall as you can it will limit how many cities you can have?
Is that correct or are you able to have over 20 cities with large populations?

... I hate to say it but it’s 10 pop cities now because of rationalism.

Oh so is it better to have less cities total if they are all 10 pop or higher compared to a bunch of 2 or 4 pop cities?

 

[tetley]

I don"t know what others are doing, but I just grow until I hit housing and amenity limits. The game is a constant quest to increase housing and amenities, so that population can go up. It's just a question of priorities. Some cities, big pop is more important than others.

 

[Sostratus]

I would think that if you go as tall as you can it will limit how many cities you can have?

I alluded to this in my last post but didn’t really spell it out. Unlike Civ 5’s global happiness system, which essentially set an empire wide budget you could spend on cities+pops, the Civ6 amenity system is much more localized. Because amenities can only offer 1 amenity per city, instead of just adding +4 to your empire amenity pool, you can’t really funnel your resources to less than 4 cities, and even if you trade for more luxuries, the impact on any one city is limited. Further, the entertainment complex gives local amenities with the district and arena building, only helping the city it is in.

Luxuries + EC/Arena+ cards is basically where you’re at early game, when you also have an effective housing wall around 15ish depending on a few things. But once you get to the industrial, you can get neighborhoods and zoos, and later stadiums. And just like luxuries, those last two EC buildings work better the more cities you have in range, so you are really encouraged to have a lot of cities packed in; because every city can get 4 amenities from the zoo/stadium plus they always have 1 to start.
TL;DR you can’t amenity Hoard the same way as you could in 5, and while on the one hand stacking a few effects means every city can become size 20+, there is no trade off in terms of amenities for doing so, so it’s almost best to just grow Huge (wide+tall) once you get the zoo and stadium.
On the plus side, it does mean we can have empires as big as we want unlike civ5...

 

[Victoria]

I am not 100% convinced you are limited. Yes half the amenities are local but that means targeted, you can choose where you put a Liang park or a Cahokia mound or an EC.
I have had over 80 cities when going for a points score With perhaps an ever age size of 7.
I guess we can look at it directly from amenities, f we said 20 cities which is enough for anyone sane to manage.

16 luxuries in a game *4 =64. So let’s say 3 per city
Wether it be through 3 wonders (ignoring Estádio for the moment) 4 great merchants, a CS, and national parks and the garrison card we can certainly add 1 per city
We can get +1 per city through the classical Republic card
We can get +2 from the shopping mall
We can get +1 from religion
Estádio is certainly something you would aim for for +2
If you were lucky enough with Cahokia you could also get +2 but let’s not include that
The New Deal civic is a must and gives +2

So that makes 20 cities content at a pop of 25

Digital democracy is +2 per city, Liang parks are +1 and we can bread and circus if need be so we may be lucky enough to get to 20 cities of pop 30. The main issue is growing the cities that big takes a while and sacrificing food halls for shopping malls is detrimental in this regard.

@Fluphen Azine you get +50% science (and or culture) in a pop 10 city with civic cards... 50% is a large bump.