City Size

[Scrivener]

Hail everyone! I'm sure this has been discussed numerous times. How large can a city grow (max) with a cxxcxxc spacing? Inner cities, not cities on the edges. I'm sure, like all my questions, there are numerous variables I'm unaware of, and my simple question is actually quite complex.

A loyal servant,
Scrivener

 

[Padma]

There are many variables involved, and it can be rather complex.

If you have a lot of food-producing tiles, you can grow quite large, with any citizens unable to work tiles becoming specialists (which don't produce food). I have seen cities of 30 and more, under those conditions.

(My cities rarely get so large - the game is usually over before I build Hospitals, for one thing, and even if not, I've usually got better things to build....)

 

[Siaphi94]

dang! the largest my city ever has grown was 14! btw, it dosent have to grow... you can make smaller cities build workers and have them join your capital, but if the city were to grow to 30, then the cities would have to be really far away from it! which is impossible i thought

 

[Kernal]

I've had over 30 before...I remember I didn't used to know that I could mine grasslands, so I would just irrigate them like I did in Civ 2 and get huge cities that could only produce like 4 shields a turn.

 

[Norton II]

Hail everyone! I'm sure this has been discussed numerous times. How large can a city grow (max) with a cxxcxxc spacing? Inner cities, not cities on the edges. I'm sure, like all my questions, there are numerous variables I'm unaware of, and my simple question is actually quite complex.

A loyal servant,
Scrivener

Depends on how much food is available. With that spacing pattern, my cities usually end up between 8 and 12, but they can be made much larger with more irrigation and less mining. In one game, I got my capital up to 25 with cxxc spacing (taking quite a few tiles away from nearby cities, of course), but that isn't always the best thing to do--that was a fast science game, and the capital had Copernicus' and Newton's. Normally, I don't even build hospitals; the only reason I did it that time is that I got sanitation as my free tech for entering the IA.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, a city can only work 20 tiles - the "fat cross" - getting a city above size 20 means that you have to have extra food and all citizens become specialists.

In the core, this is rarely that useful, since by the time you get to that large a city, you have markets and perhaps banks, libs and unis and factories/coal plants... so in most cases, you are better off setting food and shields to whatever levels is most efficient for your city, remembering that if you are above size 12, you will get some pollution sometime.

 

[Desertsnow]

Yes, this has been discussed recently. City size is all about food. The more food a city has, the more people it can feed. The theoretical maximum, I belive, is 71, with all floodplain and wheat, though a more average maximum without a contrived setup is more like thirties to forties.

 

[vmxa]

Actually I think there is no limit. I think you could use the Longjev wonder to put hundreds ofpop in a city. This is done by having lots of town make workers and adding them into a city.

You get to pop for each full food basket, so those town do not shrink. The supercity can keep growing as you ca only lose 1 pop per turn and you will be adding in many workers each turn.

 

[Turner]

Actually I think there is no limit. I think you could use the Longjev wonder to put hundreds ofpop in a city. This is done by having lots of town make workers and adding them into a city.

You get to pop for each full food basket, so those town do not shrink. The supercity can keep growing as you ca only lose 1 pop per turn and you will be adding in many workers each turn.

Once you go negitive on food, you can't add any more pop. There was a scoring exploit where you could get a city up to 256 pop and only lose one pop per turn. I forget which patch changed this.

 

[vmxa]

I was not sure if that was ever corrected, I never tried it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I know you can't add workers to a city that is starving in the last CSC patch.

 

[Bartleby]

I think I read that if the city is in disorder you can still dogpile workers.