CitizenCain
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2005
- Messages
- 144
Just for the record, aqueducts aren't required to grow past a level 6 city. The problem you'll have early in the game is not that your cities reach a hard cap, but that your cities will very quickly reach a level where new citizens are unhappy and don't do anything. (I think it was 6 in the games I played, may have been 7, at least before you reach improvements to combta this effect.) Early effects to fix this problem are not quick to present themselves. :/
With that in mind, my starting strategy was to let my starting city grow one size or two, to buff up production so it wouldn't take 45 turns to build a settler... (killed the time by building a warrior and a scout or two), then I'd build another unit or two I felt was useful, build up two workers (because tile improvements take a long time in Civ 4), then build military units and buildings for a while. Once it was about to grow to the level where the next citizen would be unhappy, I'd start pumping out settlers and workers like crazy. The stopping city growth penalty didn't seem so bad when I knew the next level of growth wouldn't do anything for me anyway. Of course, you'll need to build things other than settlers and workers, but if the next level of growth doesn't add another tile to your city production, why does it matter if your city isn't growing?
With that in mind, my starting strategy was to let my starting city grow one size or two, to buff up production so it wouldn't take 45 turns to build a settler... (killed the time by building a warrior and a scout or two), then I'd build another unit or two I felt was useful, build up two workers (because tile improvements take a long time in Civ 4), then build military units and buildings for a while. Once it was about to grow to the level where the next citizen would be unhappy, I'd start pumping out settlers and workers like crazy. The stopping city growth penalty didn't seem so bad when I knew the next level of growth wouldn't do anything for me anyway. Of course, you'll need to build things other than settlers and workers, but if the next level of growth doesn't add another tile to your city production, why does it matter if your city isn't growing?
