Does anyone settle more than four cities?

[slobberinbear]

I believe that at least up to immortal four cities are too many. 2, sometimes 3 cities are enough. Luxuries and resources are accessible through puppets and CS's. Social policies are abundant for 2 cities. What else do you need for any type of victory?

Well, there's always the consideration that more cities, expanding, and whatnot ... make a player happy. Also, I am convinced I can win a Science victory quicker and more satisfyingly with a big empire of homegrown cities.

 

[Ptftw]

I normally find more then 3. Actually, Im playing my first game for a culture win with Gandhi. A lot of first times in one game tho. First time marathon, first time culture win, first time King and also going for the 3 city achievement with Gandhi. Eventhough the game is keeping me on my toes and interested, it sometimes does feel very boring.

Last couple of games were either domination victories or science ones. In those game I normally had an empire of countless cities. I didnt actually count the cities in my last game, but on a TSL Huge Earth map (mod) with Cathrine, I had conquered the whole of Asia, Europe, Africa and about 70% of North America, hardly razing any cities. I would guess I had around 70 cities, most of them with courthouses to keep happyness in check. This was on Prince difficulty tho.

 

[SRG]

Even earlier in this thread I said I stick to a few.

So I started a Prince Standard everything Archipaleago game with the Polynesians. I had planned to just settle a few and culture win.

So many good city sites that I could get to so early. I settled 9... NINE cities on a standard map, and got a culture victory in like 1890 (dunno what turn). Very strong economy, very productive cities, TONS of culture (picking good policies helps). I usually play on King nowadays, so it was a relaxing game where early rexing really paid off.



Both methods are very fun.


Also, I tend to find the best thing to do with an aggressive game is settle 2 cities. Get going with your first, put your second in a strategic postion (close to first target, snagging Iron or Horses or whatever you need) and then a puppet empire will let you just snowball to victory.


Also, I played a few games with Hiawatha and the Incan guy where I would just expand continuously, because I land locked early and had tons of expansion room. You need to keep a balance between happiness and expansion/growth. The best here is running a strong economy and settling a new city with a few choice building purchases. Late in the game I could settle a city, drop 4k or so and have it running and productive in 5 turns or less. This is fun for micromanagers, but you need good geography to facilitate an early block.

 

[Panth]

I've been getting really discouraged myself lately about this sort of thing.

I'm an expander/builder at heart but it seems that any time I get more than a handful of cities the unhappiness becomes quickly overwhelming. Most of my victories have been cultural with 2-3 cities usually but the pacifist-hit-next-turn approach, while effective, gets a bit boring.

So this current game I'm on I picked France, settled my capitol, and starting wiping out civs. 3 Mongol cities, 3 Persian, 3-4 German, 3-4 Russian, 2-3 Greek . . .the continent is huge and the civs were pretty spread out so I basically went clockwise around the whole place. I also hit a smaller island continent and took the 5-ish Iroquois cities there. Then went after ottomans and took their 4-5 cities, now working on India and will then only have Japan (3) and Egypt (7?) left in the world.

My problem? I have had negative happiness almost the entire game. I'd get it up to 3-5 positive for a few tuns but then it would drop again. I believe it is currently at about 85 Pretty much any time I've tried a bunch of cities I get the slow policy growth and happiness issues (though not nearly to this extent usually )

I would love to be able to have a ton of cities but the gimped policy acquisition and happiness issues usually keep me to a very few cities.

Is there some way of managing a large empire and keeping happiness/policy growth in check that I'm missing? As it sits now every city I capture is going to increase my by 20 or so. I just gotta try to win before my empire implodes now.

 

[SRG]

I've been getting really discouraged myself lately about this sort of thing.

I'm an expander/builder at heart but it seems that any time I get more than a handful of cities the unhappiness becomes quickly overwhelming. Most of my victories have been cultural with 2-3 cities usually but the pacifist-hit-next-turn approach, while effective, gets a bit boring.

So this current game I'm on I picked France, settled my capitol, and starting wiping out civs. 3 Mongol cities, 3 Persian, 3-4 German, 3-4 Russian, 2-3 Greek . . .the continent is huge and the civs were pretty spread out so I basically went clockwise around the whole place. I also hit a smaller island continent and took the 5-ish Iroquois cities there. Then went after ottomans and took their 4-5 cities, now working on India and will then only have Japan (3) and Egypt (7?) left in the world.

My problem? I have had negative happiness almost the entire game. I'd get it up to 3-5 positive for a few tuns but then it would drop again. I believe it is currently at about 85 Pretty much any time I've tried a bunch of cities I get the slow policy growth and happiness issues (though not nearly to this extent usually )

I would love to be able to have a ton of cities but the gimped policy acquisition and happiness issues usually keep me to a very few cities.

Is there some way of managing a large empire and keeping happiness/policy growth in check that I'm missing? As it sits now every city I capture is going to increase my by 20 or so. I just gotta try to win before my empire implodes now.

With games like this, there are a couple of things I like to do (and Happiness is rarely a problem for me on Prince - sometimes on King).

1) Only settle 1 or 2 cities, it seems like you only had a Capital so thats good.
2) Focus on something that will slow down your growth once your happiness gets lower, say Production or Culture or Gold or something. Manage the citizens to stagnate the population in your 1 or 2 cities if you need to hold the happiness.
3) Use Luxury resources to direct your wars. Take the luxury cities as soon as possible.
4) Since your main city will be building troops and such things, use money (which you should have tons of) to rush-buy culture and happiness buildings in your settled cities.
5) Puppet everything, except small badly placed cities with no wonders - burn those. No reason to annex them usually. Maybe if you are inland and need a coastal city for boats or something... but nothing else.
6) The most important one in my opinion.... PICK THE CORRECT SOCIAL POLICIES. With so many puppets and so few settled cities, you should tear through the SP trees. Autocracy is really, really awesome for Domination games. But even outside of that, there are many policies that affect happiness. They really make a world of difference.



I only play Prince/King (I usually drink while playing... what can I say ). But I find the key to any Prince victory is the adequate selection of social policies. On Prince you can afford to build some culture buildings even while pursuing another victory. The SPs are really the engine that drives my empire.

Just my $0.02

 

[snarzberry]

Sometimes I settle many more. My last game I was using Denmark and I attacked Inca early with beserkers and took their only city really quickly and was able to shoot down the continent to Darius who didn't stand a chance. I had taken them both out (Persia down to one small city that I let him keep) in about a dozen turns.

Then my pal Polynesia dude decides he hates me so now it's on. He declares on me and we fight a fairly involved war that included a peace treaty in the middle somewhere. Long story short, I have him reduced down to one small city also by about turn 140.

So I have this super sized continent all to myself as I have the remnants of the remaining civs boxed in. BUT, at this point there are some policies that are very valuable to me. As I plan to settle about ten to fifteen more cities to take up the available land, theocracy is massive and I was yet to get to scholasticism. Also the opening freedom policy will net me massive happiness.

There is a point where a few more policies is most valuable to me, but once I have them completed it switches and now more cities become more valuable. I ended up with a massive empire of about 8 or 9 puppets and maybe about 20 settled cities.

 

[socratease]

I played at emperor level, I am most comfortable at just setting one city and puppet the hell out of the whatever continent I am on. If I settle more than 1 city, the result is endless frustration because of much slower social policy progress and difficulties in building national wonders.

 

[Tabarnak]

I played at emperor level, I am most comfortable at just setting one city and puppet the hell out of the whatever continent I am on. If I settle more than 1 city, the result is endless frustration because of much slower social policy progress and difficulties in building national wonders.

Some people argue that another city to get at least 3-4 more luxuries can be very lucrative in some other ways. National Wonders are not that hard to get if you have the money to rush buy in time.

But yeah in sp mode you can win with only 1 or 2 cities. Don't try this against humans, because you can't have money from luxuries. You need hammers.

 

[Civsassin]

I played at emperor level, I am most comfortable at just setting one city and puppet the hell out of the whatever continent I am on. If I settle more than 1 city, the result is endless frustration because of much slower social policy progress and difficulties in building national wonders.

On the other hand, if you wind up in a spot without close neighbors to take advantage of, you will quickly wind up behind them in tech and economy if you don't expand. In my current game (Vikings, Immortal, continents plus, standard map and speed), I share a continent with a few other civs, but they are geographically far from me. I settled approximately seven cities, and I am managing to keep up with them economically and tech. While I was expanding, our borders came in contact and war followed shortly thereafter, but the bottom line is that if I didn't expand, I would have been crushed by Siam and Greece eventually. Moreover, Washington is a runaway civ on another continent. I would have been way too far behind to compete if I didn't expand. I can accept fewer SPs if I can keep up in other ways.

 

[Rittmeyer]

the more I play the more I'm convinced that situations in which you want to settle more then two cities (including the capital) are very rare. Firaxis managed to patch the game up to a point in which settling is a bad strategy. way to go, really.

to me it's like: a) acess to iron - puppet your continent b) no acess to iron - OCC or settle just the multi luxury sites and RA your way to space.

lame.

 

[KevinMiles90000]

to me it's like: a) acess to iron - puppet your continent b) no acess to iron - OCC or settle just the multi luxury sites and RA your way to space.

lame.

Play different maps than continents?

 

[Rittmeyer]

pangea like maps are just the same, it's still either iron or RA's. island maps are not for me.

 

[Save_Ferris]

I can manage 3 cities sometimes, I can manage 6 sometimes. Depends on the civ.

 

[CYZ]

I will probably never gain a large empire because I can't bear myself to settle a city on a site that isn't at least ''good''.

So that means at least 1 luxury and enough food to grow to at least ten. Also enough gold potential to be usefull for the treasury and enough production so I won't have to buy too many buildings.


I'm really curious though. If you have a 15+ city empire, do you settle for mediocre sites or is it all stolen territory?

 

[slobberinbear]

I am currently playing a REX game with Washington on emperor, standard, pangaea plus. I have settled seven cities and conquered Genghis' one and only city, and now have a huge area to expand into. It's around turn 130.

happiness is all. circuses, coliseums, luxuries, meritocracy, trades... so far so good. You just have to watch your vertical growth and make sure you have trading partners. Great setup for a high population science win.

 

[Civsassin]

I am currently playing a REX game with Washington on emperor, standard, pangaea plus. I have settled seven cities and conquered Genghis' one and only city, and now have a huge area to expand into. It's around turn 130.

happiness is all. circuses, coliseums, luxuries, meritocracy, trades... so far so good. You just have to watch your vertical growth and make sure you have trading partners. Great setup for a high population science win.

I do this often when there are no immediate threats. You must just accept that your acquistion of SPs will be minimal or you will have to build culture producing buildings to acquire them more quickly. Another option though is to take the policy in the liberty SP branch that reduces culture required for each subsequently founded city by 33% before you begin expanding.

 

[snarzberry]

I think it works retrospectively, too.

 

[Zaimejs]

I guess I don't read enough strategy guides. I never quite understand how you can win a game with so few cities. I always feel like I need extra cities for some production... so if I'm building a wonder in my capital, I can get some troops from other cities if necessary.

I usually expand to the happiness cap... and if I see a resource, I grab it. I hate feeling like I've been outmaneuvered by the AI, and don't like feeling surrounded, so I tend to expand in at least four directions around my capital and maybe even more.

I will have to try the "vertical" game. I really don't think I get enough of the microstrategies. I play on Prince and I play for fun... as in I don't make all decisions just based on winning the game. I like to role play a bit.

I just started playing Civ V again after a long hiatus due to the game sucking. After the upgrades and after I got a better computer, I have to say that I am having fun playing.

Thanks for all the tips and strategies here!

 

[Lyoncet]

I got up to seven great cities as Arabia on immortal (standard size, fractal-generated Pangaea, 8 civs 16 CS) without any conquest a few days ago. Of course this was partly because my game pretty much demanded it, between lots of good luxuries and my civ choice. Not something I see happening often, but it worked out brilliantly. And yes, I managed to get all seven pretty large - granary and aqueduct in each and lots of riverside farms - and I never went negative happiness even with all the resource selling I did.

So it certainly happens, and it can be used very effectively. But you're probably going to see a lot more games on the 2-4 city side of things.

 

[KevinMiles90000]

I guess I don't read enough strategy guides. I never quite understand how you can win a game with so few cities.

One of the major advantages is that you can trade your excess resources for gold which translates into RAs/CS with scholaticism instead of using them for your own happiness needs. In the later stages of the game this, not usually cities, is where the bulk of your research pts come from.

This tends to be the strategy on higher difficulty levels where the general strategy is always "get in and get out with a win" until the AI gets absurdly high gpt and starts building nukes. If you plan to play until turn 400 or so by all means settle a lot of cities, but if you haven't won by the time the AI has nukes things get really difficult.