Expansion

[MT5678]

Hello.
What are rough guidelines for civilization expansion?
Ex: 2nd city down on 2400 to 2200 BC
3rd city down from 1200 to 100 CC
And so on.
How many cities should I build before attacking a rival?
And finally:
Roughly when should I start my first war, If I am feeling belligerent and have copper/iron?
Thanks.

 

[martin031]

Hello.
What are rough guidelines for civilization expansion?
Ex: 2nd city down on 2400 to 2200 BC
3rd city down from 1200 to 100 CC
And so on.
How many cities should I build before attacking a rival?
And finally:
Roughly when should I start my first war, If I am feeling belligerent and have copper/iron?
Thanks.

What are your settings?
I think if you look around the forum a bit, you will read plenty of strategies. I have begun to adopt the warmonger strategy early. But it depends on if I have the available resources or not. The time is usually better spent training axemen, to conquer and deter others from eyeballing you as a target. Plus your cities will keep growing.But I try to get copper hooked up with my second city, third latest, then let the AI build cities for you.

As far as a set timeline, that is hard to say. It depends too much on your leader traits, starting techs, and what resources you can realistically get to

 

[Jorunkun]

This depends a lot on the level, speed and mapsize you are playing on. If you are playing in the emperor/immortal region on normal settings, I'd suggest the following:

Aim for three cities - give or take one - for phase one. A common strategy is to beeline for bronze working, whip out the first settler from size four and claim the copper. If there is none, settle a food-rich site which grabs other key ressources (i.e. gold) and/or claims valuable territory and beeline for animal husbandry. Then grab the horses with your third city. You should be in a fairly good position to rush someone from this basis.

In terms of timing, the first settler should be absolute priority; the faster, the better. Build a few warriors for barbbusting, maybe a worker, but don't dally. After that it depends on what your options are and what the other civs around you are doing. Sometimes it makes sense to pursue an early wonder, or to block off land rather than rush. Other times you already have a strategic ressource in your first two cities so number three can wait a little longer. But when in doubt, I'd focus on the third city and a rush, it's as close to a no-stick formula as you are likely to get with civ.

 

[DutchJob]

I play mostly Large, Continents. On these maps I try to have six cities by 1-200 AD. Shrine, marketplace, 3 libs. Then perpetual war.

 

[Khanate]

Depends on strategy, but usually I go for 4 cities by 500 BC, and a couple more 800 years later.

 

[cabert]

It's very level dependant.
At the lower levels, you can expand as fast as you wish, it's costing you nothing, really.
At the higher levels, the 4th city is killing your economy. You'd better have currency and/or CoL before sttling this one.

 

[MT5678]

Settings are noble/prince on normal speed

 

[Harbourboy]

Three good cities should be enough for anyone in the early years before Code of Laws. The most important word there is "good". No point having three mediocre cities.

As Cabert says, I'd think long and hard about whether I really needed a 4th city at that point in the game.

 

[oyzar]

At noble/prince you can easily expand as fast as you can protect your cities as you wont run into economy problems unless you neglect is totaly. Heck I have managed to get 12 cities before COL on emproer with only minimal plunder money to keep me afloat to col. There is no set number. If you got 3 gold mines in your capital you might very well get 10+ cities before col or win domination without ever getting there.

 

[cabert]

At noble/prince you can easily expand as fast as you can protect your cities as you wont run into economy problems unless you neglect is totaly. Heck I have managed to get 12 cities before COL on emproer with only minimal plunder money to keep me afloat to col. There is no set number. If you got 3 gold mines in your capital you might very well get 10+ cities before col or win domination without ever getting there.

If you were able to pay for 12 cities, you probably were financial or organized.
I tested a few immortal games with cyrus, and with only 3 cities, I was breaking even at 60% research (maybe a bit less, but high enough to indeed research things). Then I settled (captured in fact) the 4th city.
Break even point went down to 20%.
5th city (all low commerce cities!), 0%.
And no currency and no CoL meant I indeed had to live on pillaging/razing cities.

edit : i agree, on noble expand as fast as possible. Those cities will pay for themselves fast enough.

 

[pigswill]

One of the considerations is how fast you want to research in the short term as opposed to how fast you want to expand so you can research faster later in the game.

A common enough experience is stop/go development. First phase 3-4 cities, research up to Col/Currency then go to war to pick up a few more cities (e.g. 7-10). At this point the number of cities you want will depend largely on victory you're pursuing.