civ V sprawl

[acetoolguy]

Is there a setting or mod that will allow me to play an old style civ game in civ 5? I mean one that lets me spread out my cities far and wide. found 25 if you want...start reusing names..you get the picture.
Thanks

 

[Menzies]

Just play on a bigger map with less AI civs?

 

[Spatzimaus]

If you're asking for the near-infinite sprawl of the older games, then no, there aren't any mods that do that sort of thing. The game has several mechanisms by which it discourages this sort of thing, most notably the Happiness system; since cities can't generate enough happiness through buildings to completely offset the population unhappiness indefinitely, you're effectively limited to a number of cities based on the number of luxuries (which are finite), the policies you choose, the Wonders you build, and the size at which your cities top out.

So if you wanted to make incredibly huge empires with no real downside, what you'd need is a mod that changes a lot of variables to make Happiness not be an effective limit. And since that sort of game would not be fun at all for most of us (since you'd wipe the floor with the AI), no one makes mods like that. You could always do it yourself, though.

 

[acetoolguy]

Thanks for the info..

 

[MadDjinn]

change the city spacing in the XML to 1 or 2 then do as you will.

but don't complain about the results.

 

[w a i n y]

change the city spacing in the XML to 1 or 2 then do as you will.

but don't complain about the results.

Lol. Well, you'd have to disable or reduce happiness too. It might still be reasonably well-balanced.

 

[Aldor]

Is there a setting or mod that will allow me to play an old style civ game in civ 5? I mean one that lets me spread out my cities far and wide. found 25 if you want...start reusing names..you get the picture.
Thanks

Try Settler level, you have pretty much no happiness limits there. Of course don't expect any AI interaction either

 

[MadDjinn]

Lol. Well, you'd have to disable or reduce happiness too. It might still be reasonably well-balanced.

nah, just take organized religion and meritocracy and you won't have happiness issues.

 

[Strategist83]

Thanks for the info..

Hopefully you didn't take off because the information you've been given is incorrect.

It is possible for you to have an unlimited number of cities with the right combination of social policies. Of course, you can't do that right off the bat where you don't have sufficient policies or happy building techs but that is really no different from previous games (civ 3 and 4, anyway) where an 'unlimited' number of cities would destroy your economy due to corruption/city maintenance. In the modern era you can have an infinite number of cities. If you simply want to have as many cities as possible, adopt Piety and in the industrial era, Order. A 100+ city empire is entirely possible but not necessarily the most efficient (you'll have to limit city growth because you cannot support more than 9 population per city using standard happiness buildings.

This is for standard map settings. On Large or Huge maps, you can have many more cities than normal.

Ideal civs for a such globe-spanning empire are Russia and Rome.

If, however, you came here asking if you can somehow spam cities ad nauseum from the very beginning then the answer is you (almost) can, but it's a completely inefficient way to play. Once again, no different from previous games so CiV isn't really lacking.

 

[Becephalus]

With the right policies and buildings it is possible to have an infinite number of size 22 cities, with even normal policies and buildings it is super possible to be happiness positive with a 100 city empire with 10 population per city average.

 

[ShahJahanII]

I would like to be able to play the games on all different versions. By this I mean for each patch that came out. If you want to dumb things down a bit, you could switch to the first version of the game, where you can clear a continent with 4 horsemen on Diety.

 

[acetoolguy]

Thanks for the update. Not looking to always do that, but i find it fun now an then to see how many I can maintain. A game with in the game.

 

[Redox]

You can easily reduce the unhappiness from population and number of cities by giving your leader a trait. Even if you aren't a modder, the following is easy to do:

Say, you are playing as Alexander. Go to his xml file in Leaders folder and add

	<Leader_Traits>
		<Row>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
			<TraitType>TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</TraitType>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
			<TraitType>TRAIT_REDUCED_UNHAPPINESS_MOD</TraitType>
		</Row>				
	</Leader_Traits>

then go to Civilizations/Civ5Traits.xml and between <Traits> ... </Traits> tags add

		<Row>
			<Type>TRAIT_REDUCED_UNHAPPINESS_MOD</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</Description>
			<ShortDescription>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP_SHORT</ShortDescription>
			<CityUnhappinessModifier>-25</CityUnhappinessModifier>
			<PopulationUnhappinessModifier>-25</PopulationUnhappinessModifier>			
		</Row>

there's a bunch of similar traits there, just add this one alongside. It reduces unhappiness by 25%, and I like it It's actually not so much cheating: it allows you to do whatever you want without worrying about happiness, but if you want lots of Golden Ages you still need to worry about colosseums and stuff.