[BNW] Optimal city size

[renton555]

Considering the scarcity of happiness, is it counter-productive to build cities of a higher population than [number of hill/forest/jungle tiles + number of resource tiles + number of specialists of a type (science for example) + guilds if applies]?

I know there are certainly science benefits to having populations higher than this number, especially with rationalism and running every specialist, but I can't help but think you're running sub-optimal cities for far too long if you just shoot for unbridled growth indefinitely.

For example if I take that sum for a city and it equals 21, once the population of that city reaches 21 I can do the following:

- change all the hill-farms to mines for +2 hammers each.
- change many of the flatland farms to trading posts for +2 gold each.
- potentially even sell the food buildings for +gpt, at least the aqueduct which will be useless.

And in addition to all of that it allows you rein in your happiness or be able to settle or take more cities than you would otherwise.

This is probably all obvious but I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[kb27787]

If you are india, for your capitol, the optimal number is infinite
but of course, I think you run out of tiles and slots to work at around 50.... any higher than that will end up being unemployed people.

And if you don't want to grow just click "avoid growth"...
And unhappiness problems can also be circumvented (in a less drastic way) by letting more people be unemployed.

 

[Tich]

What exactly is the alternative? Get a bit of extra happiness? For what? An extra golden age (not going to happen and not even relevant)? To settle another late, crap city that will increase your tech and social policy costs without contributing much to your overall gameplan? Are you going to ship it a bunch of food caravans that could have been used to generate gold for RAs? Like, I can appreciate what you're trying to do, I just don't see the benefits. Bigger cities means more science (both from population and specialist slots) and more production (working hills and such later on usually). Trading that for late cities that won't have buildings in them, won't have population, won't have specialists but that will increase your costs seems silly to me.

 

[joshua43214]

It really depends on the map and your goal.

If you are playing tall, then the ideal population is the absolute biggest you can get. So in theory, you want to work 11 specialists at a minimum, and ~3 great tile improvements for a typical tall capitol. Assuming you have civil service and are working grassland/flood plains for food, you need 3.5 farms just to support them, those four citizens need a farm just for themselves. That translates into 9 citizens farming and 11 specializing for a total of 20. You will find in practice that ~22 citizens is the bare minimum to feed the population and work some hills, ~26 is better.
At 26 pop with tradition, you need 16 happiness to break even which is easy to do at that point between your local lux's and happiness buildings.

Each city you make reduces your science output by 5%, you start to break over and hurt yourself at ~6 cities depending on population and 8 will pretty much always delay win times and the like.

If you go liberty, you have to manage growth carefully, but even there you will see people grow as tall as possible.

One of the main reasons for getting as much population as possible is because pop=beakers, and libraries increase beakers based on pop.

 

[renton555]

Ok each citizen after the scientists are filled provides 2 beakers * 2 for rationalism/uni/lab + 2 more beakers if it its a merchant or something (again with rationalism). This is * 1.1 for rationalism opener. So best case scenario we're talking 6.6 beakers per citizen, although once even the specialists are filled it will drop to 4.4. If its a national college observatory city then ok we start to really get into some greater benefits of added pop, but otherwise you're trading a ton of production and gold for a few beakers per citizen, usually at a point in the game where you should have secured the tech lead by now.

If you're going strictly for peaceful science then by all means you're shooting yourself in the foot by not growing, but for domination/science or domination/diplo it seems best to curtail growth after this point.

 

[adwcta]

I think I'm in the minority, but I absolutely do purposefully stunt growth at certain points in favor of hammers and/or gold.

Obviously at the end: Whenever it becomes apparent that you'll get the last tech you really need to ensure victory. For SV, it's satellites, for CV it's internet, for DV it's any info era tech. At a certain point in almost every game, I set my workers to trade post spam all my cities. They don't finish by the end of the game, but I get a ton more gold that way without sacrificing science (since late game trade posts assuming full rationalism gives +1 science).

But, I'll purposefully sabotage growth for many things even earlier. Sometimes, extra GP points, or hammers, or gold is far more useful than more growth. The baselines should be growth obviously, but the idea that "moar growth is always better" is false. It's a shorthand while learning the game, because if you're asking "what should I do, grow or do something else?" 90% of the time the answer is "grow". But, your gameplay is still inefficient the other 10% of the time if all you're doing is growing:
- Cities at or near max capacity without any tiles that do non-food stuff. This applies mostly to cities on the coast. At a certain point, more growth is nothing but more science. Also, for these cities, it is often wise to not get a hospital / medical center to save gold and hammers. They'll grow to capacity anyway, and if they need an extra push, one food route for 30 turns will do it, and cost you far less overall value than that many hammers and gpt. I've had this happen in Industrial Era, so it's potentially a mid-game consideration.
- When you need to hard build a wonder, or archeologists (when you need a lot of them). When time is money, hitting that certain tech means you can slow down the future beaker production and do something actually useful.
- When you have military tech parity and are in a mid-late game war. This depends on how many units you already have... but if you're short on units, growth takes second place to not losing a city / getting pillaged / having an extended war destroy your trade routes.
- When a trade city needs extra gold to maintain competitiveness. You get extra dividends from AI trade routes, so sacrificing an international trade route to turn into a food route to work more trade posts and/or merchant slots may ultimately get you MORE gold without sacrificing any growth (or even get more growth).
- You screwed up your happiness somehow. If you're nearing the 0 happiness marker without any surefire means of getting happiness. Lower your growth in certain cities so you can fill up the pop-unhappiness using other cities (that need to grow more). This helps you allocate your citizens so your happiness cap is being best used. You don't ultimately lose any science in the long run since you would need to avoid unhappiness anyway (just some turns on that last 1-2 pop, which will be insignificant in about 20 more turns).

No one goes growth 100% (everyone has SOME international trade routes). It's the same principle, just applied to every aspect of the game instead of just trade routes.

 

[Buccaneer]

I regularly micromanage my city workers to achieve the short-term goals for growth, production or happiness. Hard-building wonders tend to max out production because time is usually of the essence (both in racing against an AI and that I build so few of them), as well as shortening the number of turns in max production so I can get back to growing again.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

About 45 is enough to work all tiles and specialists

 

[FrostK]

Considering the scarcity of happiness, is it counter-productive to build cities of a higher population than [number of hill/forest/jungle tiles + number of resource tiles + number of specialists of a type (science for example) + guilds if applies]?

If u go SV, population is good and u can never say that u have too much. If u go cultural or domination, then usually u make hammer focus or put too much specialists during game and you do not achieve this number.

 

[Copperwire]

Ahem. Just to make it clear:

It is not a good idea to keep growing pop when you are at 0 happiness, even aiming for SV. If you are close to 0 happy you should be deciding which cities you want to grow and choking the rest. Playing for other VC, there are tons of situations where you want to limit growth or prioritize other things.

It is very easy to grow pop faster then you can grow happiness. For those situations, if you activate avoid growth in each city the turn before it would grow your other cities keep filling their food meters without the growth penalties of being even -1 unhappy (much less all the other niggling effects). As soon as you do get more happiness (like a zoo finishes, you buy the next pagoda, you finish razing something, or you save enough money to buy that CS back from Siam that stole it ....) you can untoggle avoid growth in exactly the cities you want growth in and fill the happiness you have exactly.

I could give more examples, even for SV games but basically, I'm with adwcta. What he said.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

An unemployed person in your capital with NC lib and public school and secularism is 13, while any specialist in any other city will be 2 or 3 whatevers 4. If that slot happens to be a scientist, it's 7. I'd much rather have an engineer or even a merchant in another city than a NEET in the capital. That isn't taking into account the university, but that's on all science, so it doesn't matter. Point is, even in science victory, unemployed citizens are a waste of happy.

I'm bad at math, so those numbers might be wrong, but not by enough to change the conclusion.