How do you get big cities ?

[History Freak]

I need to get help because the computer always gets bigger cities than me and most of the time i loose The largest citie ive ever gotten was 14

 

[josephstalin]

Hm... Irrigate, irrigate, built granary (speed), find food resourses, put citizens to work on city creen, not entertain others. That should be it.

 

[vmxa]

Why do you want big cities? They can be useful, but I have won on every level without making a any metros, except the capitol. I seldom make more than 4 metros anymore. They are only needed to run up the score in a milking game.

What you need is more productive cities and towns. Anyway you will need to plant rails down in metros to get the extra food from irrigated tiles to make them grow and feed themself at the fastest rate.

 

[Heroes]

The benefits of having bigger cities are: 1. less corruption because of fewer cities; 2. less shields needed for markets, factories, etc. But there are also downsides: 1. more shields into aqueducts and hospitals; 2. more shields into cathedrals etc. for happiness. So it's a balance after all.

 

[DBear]

History freak--don't worry about it. The AI spaces its cities too widely, so it usually has all 21 squares available. Plus, it generally irrigates the squares. Sure AI cities can reach into the 30s, but they are not good shield produces.

 

[Sayounara]

< edited >

I posted in the wrong place lmao

ignore

 

[CivDav]

You wanna have bigger cities? Irrigate, build harbors, and don't stay in despotism. And good luck!

 

[Tee Kay]

The biggest city I had (Sulcis) was located in a flood plain area with some wheats nearby. So I irrigate all the workable squares and build railroads which increased irrigation output by 1 or something. As a result of the railroads the city grew from about size 32 to 40.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

The key to big cities are workers:

1. If a city is growing or still can grow, you need irrigation to get more surplus food and speed up growth. If the city has grown up (say size 12 pre-sanitation) you want little, if at all, surplus food. So, you can change your irrigations to mines.

2. Store your city growth in workers. An ideal city to build a worker is at size 12 with a full food storage box. If you build a worker here, the city will drop to size 11 for one turn only and regrow immediately. When you are building your railroad network, you will have plenty of these cities and of course plenty of workers. Add some of them to cites once hopitals are available.

 

[Desertsnow]

Build an aqueduct if you don't have direct access to fresh water. Get out of despotism (which has a food penalty) as quickly as you can. Build hospitals at size 12. Oh, yes, and irrigate. Training a worker costs one population point, but you'll get it back, especially if you irrigate.

 

[The End Is Nigh]

Irrigate, Irrigate, Irrigate (at least half of the tiles should be irrigated - or if the city is by the sea have a harbour) to get a descent 22-25 size city.

Note that mines produce more shields, so you should always have a good balance between irrigated land (for growth) and mined land (for production),

 

[Drewd81]

I dont worry much about the size of the cities except for the early parts of the game when you need faster production of units.