Going wide in Civ VI is always better

[leif erikson]

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[Brutus2]

I don't think it's possible to cap Cities at two. Civ 5 had an avoid growth button that stopped all growth. As far as I can tell we don't have that anymore. Lack of amenities or housing will slow growth but never stop it. So those cities will grow to three pop or more eventually.

 

[Acken]

Soooooo you get many size 2 cities that give 1.4 science and 3-4 production.

Ok. Great plan !. Did I read that properly ?

 

[Brutus2]

You made me wonder, if you are with 4 pop and have a district already and you start a second one, change to a settler mid district production, after the settler is done and you fall to 3 pop.... can you go back building the unfinished district even without the pop requirement?

I'm not 100% on this but I seem to remember Devs saying district limit is based on highest pop the city ever had. So loosing a pop to settler will not lower your number of allowed districts.

 

[LDiCesare]

To those who think size 2 cities are useless, did you ever see what ICS is about?
It was about siez 1 cities which produced exactly 1 settler and 1 unit in the whole game. Nothing else. No science, no building, no other unit, nothing.
It was the optimal strategy in civ I and II.
So please consider the question: Is it worth creating a 5th settler and then conquering as much of the map as you can with this settler and the settlers he will produce, and no other resource?
What are the drawbacks?
One of these cities may actually grant you some strategic resources you wouldn't have otherwise. Some may find luxuries that increase the number of amenities for your big, productive cities.
The drawback is ONE settler. Sure, the cities are hard to defend. But if you let the territory to the enemy, how is it helping you? You'll have more time to see the enemy coming before they reach your core cities anyway, so even if they fall easily, those cities give you time to prepare a counter attack or a proper defense.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It is civilization VI not civilization III.

Settlers are not free not by far and while cities are good there are often much better options to invest your production on.

2 population cities are really bad investment.

 

[LDiCesare]

Settlers were never free. 2 pop cities can give you strategic or luxury resources. They may not be the best investment, but they certainly are not always a bad one. If only by acting as scouts, they provide invaluable intelligence and advance warning against invaders.
The point is, do you prefer someone else to settle there, or do you preempt the land? That land may prove useful later on, and there is no penalty apart from the opportunity cost of building the settler in the first place.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Pretty much every investment of production is better then a pop 2 city. Yes somebody else can take that land but I can take it later by conquest.

Then it is extreamly unlikely that a city would be stuck on pop 2 anyway. But low pop cities are a very questionable investment then there are so much superior investment.

 

[Calcifer]

There is some difference between settling some free land near your borders and settling a city on the snow or in the middle of enemy territory. While the former is most likely to be a good investment, the latter is just going to be a gift to your enemies.

 

[Vincent55]

Ideally, I want to have both a lot of cities and have them be huge.

That being said, it takes 3 population to have 1 district. I suspect a single size 24 city with 8 district to be more than 12 time more useful and powerful than 12 size 2 city (or more than three time more powerful than 3 size 8 cities, to take a less ridiculous comparison). So when you have to make choices that affect 'tall vs wide', I don't think that you should neglect overmuch going 'tall'.

Devil's advocate: England's Royal docks dont' count against the limit so spamming small cities that then spams docks could be a recipe for tons of wealth. I could see myself with a size 20+ London but loads of much smaller cities that span the globe and grants me tons of trade routes. If someone threatens any of these cities (that each came with a free unit) they'll have to deal with my swift and powerful navy. Russia and their Lavra could do something similar with an eye toward religious victory (as well as grabbing tons of territory with their special abilities) though they can less afford to make their territory non-continuous.

 

[Nefelia]

Small cities at size 3 or 4 can be quite useful. They will never be economic powerhouses, but they are useful for pumping out settlers, builders, or troops over a long period of time. Sure, they take a while to build, but 10+ cities producing military units will provide your empire with a new unit every 3-4 turns. This allows you to focus your core cities on building infrastructure, wonders, or projects.

 

[Vincent55]

Small cities at size 3 or 4 can be quite useful. They will never be economic powerhouses, but they are useful for pumping out settlers, builders, or troops over a long period of time. Sure, they take a while to build, but 10+ cities producing military units will provide your empire with a new unit every 3-4 turns. This allows you to focus your core cities on building infrastructure, wonders, or projects.

Could be.

Or it could be that these small cities do not have enough production to be helpful in the war effort as soon as the cost start going up after the ancient era (like 20+ turns to build a single knight for a size 4 city...).

Or produce enough gold to justify the additional required units cost. No new city did in CIV 5, which is why I normally wanted them to develop into assets by building a few key buildings first and let the rest of my empire handle military production to protect them. To have them focus on military production just prolong the period in which these cities are liabilities and delay them turning into assets.

Or build enough encampment / barracks to produce well trained troops that will be actual assets and not just XP fodder for a better trained army.

We'll see, it will be fun to test these theories.

Intuitively, toward the classical era and beyond, I expect my miltary will mostly come from one or two of my bigger cities, cities that have an encampment district with all key buildings built and later on an industrial district to pump production. Cities that can produce a capable well trained unit in just a few turn and then has time to build some more buildings to keep developping. The notion of pumping fresh rookies over a wide territory from small cities that desperately need to be developping instead of spending a loooong time producing one rookie unit seems unwise to me. Against human players anyway, and probably against high difficulty AI (who seems to have combat bonuses).

If we play online and you want to test this theory, I call Gorgo. Hmm, I can taste all the free culture!

 

[LDiCesare]

The point in the OP is that building a new city does not cost you anything except the initial settler cost. Even more, since this city can be used to pump settlers, building any number of cities does not cost more than one settler from your core cities.
The fact that size 2 cities arenot as useful as big cities is not disputed. The question is whether for the cost of a single settler, is it better to build a lot of small cities or to create a single improvement or military unit in one of your core cities?
It seems obvious to me that creating cities is better, for it lets you atthe very least see enemies coming, and these small cities will produce, after a while, the military units you could have built instead of the settler.

 

[Alchemy101]

I'd like to add to LDiCesare's point regarding the premise of the original post. Yes, large cities are better than small ones but that is not the argument. The argument is N+1 cities > N cities. Below is my attempt to rationalize some of the arguments made this far.

1. Production of the N+1 settler. Yes, this is a cost which scales with each additional settler and there are opportunities costs for building the N+1 settler. Therefore, it may or may not be advantageous to devote resources for this first N+1 settler. How does the argument change if the settler is captured? Meaning it cost you nothing (or only the cost of the military unit and war the yielded it).
   
   
2. Amenities. Assuming the growth of N+1 is capped such that it does not adversely affect the N other cities there is no negative impact. The question becomes, can growth be capped either implicitly or explicitly? At the moment it looks like this cannot be done explicitly (e.g. buy a no growth button a la Civ V) but perhaps can be done implicitly by locking citizen to selected tiles.
   
   
3. Districts. The assertion in the original post is that no additional districts (other than the city center) are constructed. Therefore, assuming the city center is not included in the scaling factor for districts there is no negative impact to the N other cities. If the city center is included in the scaling it is likely not worth building N+1 and surely not worth multiple additional tiny cities. This will need to be confirmed.
   
   
4. Production in the N+1 city. As to not contribute any "costs" to the empire, the N+1 city could not build units nor buildings that contribute maintenance or contribute to scaling effects. Are there any such units or buildings? Do settlers require maintenance? Alternatively, if the N+1 city does produce a unit it is assumed that it would have otherwise been produced in one of the N cities and therefore not really a "cost" but a savings of the marginal production available in the N+1 city.
   
   
5. Defence. This may be a concern however it may not be a significant one depending on the situation. Again, the original post is suggesting N+1 > N. With that in mind, is there cost of defending one additional city? Some may play with dedicated units to defend cities but I suspect most do not, moving the army around as needed. This may or may not be an opportunity cost.

Let's assume you explicitly choose not to defend it, therefore removing the "defense costs". What is the downside of losing this city in a war? The territory along with any passive developments that this city was able to accumulate (as per #4), which you have "benefited" from up to its capture is now in the hands of the enemy. If the enemy captures the city they...​

1. have accrued warmongering score with the other players
2. must now "protect" their new prize
3. have expanded resources, albeit likely little resources, to capture it
4. assuming they in tended to develop the city they will now suffer the N+1 costs. If they raze the city, they receive even greater warmongering penalties. Likely irrelevent but if they keep the city you will have a casus belli agains them.
5. The "agressor" must also declare war on you adding to the warmongering penalties. The fact that you may be declared on, daring other playes into a war may have either posative or negative effects.

On balance, if the city center district is not included in the scaling, I suspect there is likely a very small positive effect for the N+1 city.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You want to expand but building settler after settler is not the correct way to do it.

Building a few cities, tech up and then go on a conquest spree is vastly superior.

 

[Furycrab]

You want to expand but building settler after settler is not the correct way to do it.

Building a few cities, tech up and then go on a conquest spree is vastly superior.

Vastly I think is a bit of an exaggeration, but since there's no direct expansion penalty, let's compare this in say RTS terms...

If you go to 4 cities, and I rush to get 5 or 6 good cities, you'll have a timing window in which you'll be a bit stronger but if you miss that window, go to early or to late, I'm likely to be able to defend your attack, in which case you will eventually lose once I get the same infrastructure you have, just a bit stronger because I now have more cities. If I never stop pumping settlers/respond to the fact that you stopped to build up, than ya, I deserve and should lose.

 

[Nefelia]

One thing people need to keep in mind is that play-styles vary in effectiveness depending on map type, map size, and victory conditions. While 4 tall cities was a viable choice on CiV Standard maps, it became less effective on Large maps and Huge maps, and a death sentence on Giant maps.

The inverse is true for the city sprawl strategy. On giant maps you have the space and time to set up a few hatchery cities to keep expanding your empire while core cities shift to infrastructure and wonders. As you more to smaller maps, you start to run out of the buffer room needed to make this strategy work.

Too many people ignore this reality when discussing such matters. However, I have played Giant Earth in CiV on immortal difficulty enpough times to know the power of city spam when it is done intelligently.

Could be.

Or it could be that these small cities do not have enough production to be helpful in the war effort as soon as the cost start going up after the ancient era (like 20+ turns to build a single knight for a size 4 city...).

With just 5 cities producing knights, you will get one every four turns.

Or produce enough gold to justify the additional required units cost. No new city did in CIV 5, which is why I normally wanted them to develop into assets by building a few key buildings first and let the rest of my empire handle military production to protect them. To have them focus on military production just prolong the period in which these cities are liabilities and delay them turning into assets.

Small cities build units, larger cities focus on economic, scientific, cultural, and faith output.

Or build enough encampment / barracks to produce well trained troops that will be actual assets and not just XP fodder for a better trained army.

Fresh units go into the wilderness to level up on barbarians. This becomes less viable on smaller maps.

Intuitively, toward the classical era and beyond, I expect my miltary will mostly come from one or two of my bigger cities, cities that have an encampment district with all key buildings built and later on an industrial district to pump production. Cities that can produce a capable well trained unit in just a few turn and then has time to build some more buildings to keep developping.

That is just one of the many, many viable avenues of producing troops. I've always preferred to build a large empire that focuses on finances. Small cities build troops while mid-sized and large cities focus on getting gold and building a large surplus. Excess gold is uesed to rush buy Barracks and Armouries in a border city and rush a unit a turn. Sometimes I would get 2-3 cities doing this if necessary.

The notion of pumping fresh rookies over a wide territory from small cities that desperately need to be developping instead of spending a loooong time producing one rookie unit seems unwise to me.

When you have over 200 cities, just a quarter of them building units became a management nightmare.

Against human players anyway, and probably against high difficulty AI (who seems to have combat bonuses).

Can't speak for Deity, but on Immortal with Giant Earth, if you didn't sprawl quickly enough, you would get crushed by the one or two AI who managed to out-expand you (usually the Shoshone, Russia, or Iroqois).

If we play online and you want to test this theory, I call Gorgo. Hmm, I can taste all the free culture!

I play MMO PvP for my online gaming, so I'll have to give that a pass.

Would city sprawl work on multi-player Civ VI? Not unless you guys play huge or giant maps.

 

[Nefelia]

Defence. This may be a concern however it may not be a significant one depending on the situation. Again, the original post is suggesting N+1 > N. With that in mind, is there cost of defending one additional city? Some may play with dedicated units to defend cities but I suspect most do not, moving the army around as needed. This may or may not be an opportunity cost.

From what I understand from my limited reading, pillaging is going to be more damaging to the victim than it previously was. I would far rather have a surprise force conquer one of my small frontier cities than have it smash right into my core cities for a pillaging spree.

With roads being built via trade routes, I can see more players stationing fast-response troops in strategic spots within their empires.

 

[Zenstrive]

Thankfully there are no Iroquois yet this time around.
Hiawatha is expansion obsessed, annoying creature

Also, I think veteran CiV player would be hardwired to expand to few cities only, and start managing the core cities once they have reached 5 or 6 cities. I know I am hard wired to only have 4 cities before industrial age and start expanding again (by war or filling empty tiles) afterward, especially after I got an ideology (usually Freedom) that guarantee I have enough global happiness to compensate for high number of cities.

 

[Nefelia]

Thankfully there are no Iroquois yet this time around.
Hiawatha is expansion obsessed, annoying creature

Also, I think veteran CiV player would be hardwired to expand to few cities only, and start managing the core cities once they have reached 5 or 6 cities. I know I am hard wired to only have 4 cities before industrial age and start expanding again (by war or filling empty tiles) afterward, especially after I got an ideology (usually Freedom) that guarantee I have enough global happiness to compensate for high number of cities.

As I said, I played on Immortal difficulty on a giant world map. If I waited for the Industrial Age to expand, all of the best luxury/resource clusters would have already been nabbed by Persia or Austria. With Pagodas and the right civic choices, I tended to have at least 8 faith in each of my cities. By the time I got to the industrial age with ~100 cities, the amount of faith and culture I produced was simply ludicrous... as was my financial and industrial production.

My science suffered due to the rapid expansion, but with the largest military and strongest economy, that didn't matter much.