City size

[rabottens]

I got one to 32 once then I shut off the growth so it wouldn't grow any further. I don't know how much further it would have grown but it was getting quite difficult maintaining happiness. This particular city was one of my hybrid Science/Culture cities.

 

[gram123]

Well first of all in civ4 you could easely get a city to like 25-30 if near floodplains and with one or two food resources (Rice, Fish, Corn, etc) But I dont know what the benefit of this should be. You would rather have commece and production than a huge amont of people. dont you think ?

Second thing is that I too miss the caravans from Civ2. Being able to make food caravans to transport ekstra food to large citys, and the "Help Building wonder funktion was wonderfull.

 

[hendu]

The practical limit I've found is about 18-20 in the default game. This assumes one is not specifically building a ton of farms for the sole purpose of having a big city. I generally find that towns are better than any specialist, except maybe engineers.

I try and specialize my cities so my commerce cities are a lot like that, but I try and have one great person factory that hits 3x pop by the end of the game. It is usually nothing, but farms at the end. It has the globe theatre to control happiness and produces a steady stream of great people with all the specialists.