How big can your cities get??

[Illusion13]

Yes, I am a n00b at Civ II, doesnt mean I've never contacted some sort of Civ game before... Anyway, I got like, 5/8 of my cities to 35, then global warming ****ed me over...

 

[Smash]

Those are nice big fat cities.I think the largest with normal growth is size 40 something.44 comes to mind for some reason.The city site would have to be all grasslands with food special resources.
Of course with food caravans you can takes cities over 100 in size.No real benefit though as you can only have 16 specialists per city.Just extra points.

 

[Archer 007]

My cities normally cap at about size 25 or so, but I have dozens of them.

 

[ElephantU]

Global Warming in Civ2 is caused by pollution, of which there is two kinds, "population" and "production". Your bigger cities were probably polluting a fair amount. Build Mass Transit to take care of "population pollution", and build Solar Plant to take care of "production pollution", or build Recycling Plant or Nuke/Hydro Plant to cut it down to manageable size. Use Settlers and Engineers to clean up any skulls that appear on the terrain. A pair of Engineers working together can clean up a single skull the same turn it appears, assuming they have movement points left over after arriving on the tile. One of the good reasons for roading every tile in each city radius in the late game.

 

[Titi]

There's a scenario in CiC where you have to take out the evil with a specific tech/unit. Sorry I can't be more precise, I'm not at home.

Anyway, the bad guys live in a size 127 city. This should be the maximum then.

By the way, at the end of my games I usually have cities greater than size 25.

I believe I once succeeded in going up to 39, but the location was really meant for it

 

[MikeLynch]

The largest I have "naturally" gotten a city to (i.e., without scenario adjusting/cheating or food caravans) was also 39. I have seen cities exceed 40 in size, but you almost have to terraform and farm everything.

 

[la fayette]

Grassland farmland provides 4 food/square.
Hence 21 squares provide 84 food, which means size 42, max size with 'natural' growth (without specials). With food caravans you can reach 127 (completely useless, except if you are playing high score ).

 

[Tsargrad]

Highest I ever got was 37, and a 35 in the same game. Both built around present day Moscow on the world map.

But didn't know you could artificially make them higher.. Although it sounds as not overally necessary would still be cool having a super sized city to match the likes of modern day Mexico City

 

[SomeGuyNamedRob]

My highest (capital city) was 50.

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by Tsargrad
Highest I ever got was 37, and a 35 in the same game. Both built around present day Moscow on the world map.

But didn't know you could artificially make them higher.. Although it sounds as not overally necessary would still be cool having a super sized city to match the likes of modern day Mexico City

Interesting. I made a size 46 Moscow for a scenerio I was working on. Lots of caravans.

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by SomeGuyNamedRob
My highest (capital city) was 50.

Were you using caravans or working with the game rules?

 

[Ace]

Originally posted by la fayette
Grassland farmland provides 4 food/square.
Hence 21 squares provide 84 food, which means size 42, max size with 'natural' growth (without specials). With food caravans you can reach 127 (completely useless, except if you are playing high score ).

I believe the max size you can reach without food caravans is size 46. You need 4 specials that can generate 6 food as farmland. Musk Ox, Oasis, and Wheat are the only ones. The only real problem is finding such a city site. I have been playing civ2 since it was published and I have never seen that combination appearing naturally. In fact, I cannot remember ever seeing any three of them in one city. Of course it doesn't matter since we are talking theoretical natural size.

 

[Pariah]

I've hardly ever got past size 30 without cheating, since I prefer my cities to have at least one production-type resource square (mine or forest with railroad). But when the cities do get really big, it's fun to see the "Elvis convention" of redundant citizens!

If we are limited to 16 "Einsteins" regardless of city size, there must be a theoretical limit for the science output of a city - combining the Einsteins with science improvements, wonders, and a 100% trade allocation for research. Does anyone have a value for this limit?

 

[The Last Conformist]

I got a size 41 city once without any caravans or cheating. Produced a whole lot of food and trade, but almost no shields, of course.

 

[la fayette]

Originally posted by Pariah

If we are limited to 16 "Einsteins" regardless of city size, there must be a theoretical limit for the science output of a city - combining the Einsteins with science improvements, wonders, and a 100% trade allocation for research. Does anyone have a value for this limit?

A fully developed Super Science City brings easily more than 1000 beakers/turn. The theoretical limit is much higher than that, because it is strongly related to the size of the 3 trade routes.
The max is obtained when you manage to build a direct RR between your SSC and a huge AI city, but this is almost pure luck, that's why I consider the theoretical limit completely useless.

 

[la fayette]

The limit is useless, but the guidelines are very useful: I have seen strong players (like solo) sending engineers to AI territory in order to improve their terrain and help the 'partner' city grow faster.

 

[Pariah]

Discounting special situations like the one city challenge, who thinks it's better to have, say, 10 or fewer cities of size 30+ than dozen of smaller ones?

 

[funxus]

Originally posted by Pariah
Discounting special situations like the one city challenge, who thinks it's better to have, say, 10 or fewer cities of size 30+ than dozen of smaller ones?

Without saying it's better, I think part of the fun is to build the empire, so I'd go with the few bigger ones.

 

[la fayette]

Originally posted by Pariah
Discounting special situations like the one city challenge, who thinks it's better to have, say, 10 or fewer cities of size 30+ than dozen of smaller ones?

1) Early landing:
What you need is at least one SSC, size 21+, and 6 'helper' cities, size 3.

2) Early conquest:
What you need is the knowledge of Polytheism (+MapMaking if the map is archipelago). You build barracks in all cities while researching Poly; then you build vet ellies. No problem of city size: the AI builds the cities for you and you take them.

3) Scenarios:
In most scenarios, many cities are already built when you start playing. It is generally much wiser to destroy the improvements inside and buy strong units with the gold you get, than try to build bigger and richer cities. The famous victory by daveV in 43 turns playing the Rome scenario is the best example I have in mind (he didn't build a single improvement, but sold hundreds of them and bought legions and elephants with the money).

 

[lord_yoshi]

size 45 (Athens) no cheating no caravans.