How many cities?

[err76]

Like the title says, how many cities are too many? I keep extending myself out to get nodes and I end up with 10 to 12 cities and my peeps hate me for it. Is there a good number so I can stay competitive with the AI?

Also, Military units, I find myself mass producing them and end up neglecting my cities, Same question, whats a good number to stay close to?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

You have too many cities when your happiness goes to .

If you have 5+ or are grabbing a new luxury, feel free to conquer/build. You can almost never have too many puppets.

On a standard-sized map, I usually only have a core of 3-5 non-puppet cities. I don't do this because of happiness constraints as much as to maintain decent Social Policy adoption.

You have too much military when your goes negative.

Military units get wicked expensive really fast. As long as you keep your gold in the positive, feel free to build away. However, a standing military is generally a waste of money.

I tend to conquer my island and disband just about everything but a few patrolling naval units. On a pangaea, keep just enough units to continually steamroll your border.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

As you said, you want to expand to claim nodes. However, many of my cities are only placeholders. I found the city, and promptly check the box "stop growth". Then I build a colliseum in it, which means that for the rest of the game, that city is a net source of happiness. A trade rout is enough to pay the upkeep on the colliseum, if the road isn't too long. Then, set it to very slowly build military units for the rest of the game.

 

[Tutkarz]

I have only 3 cities - one my capital, and 2 other capitals annexed because they have wonders and some buildings - rest cities is puppeted. I have around 0 happiness so my cities cant grow too much. I would like to try and build small cities with happiness buildings and balance that with tradeposts to fund more happy buildings upkeep but because i will get hit with policies then im not doing this (and i would like to fund more cities in empty swatches of my land so my country doesnt look like few city states loosely connected by road). So maybe someone could rethink penalty for having cities linked to cost of policies.

 

[Polish]

I like to see the whole map turn my color. I have this serious sea to shining sea thing going on! In my current game I have about 10 cities of my own and 18 or so puppets. I don't play ICS, but have always liked large empires (I guess I was just born a son of Manifest Destiny!). Anyway, the real challenge to my play style is the one you noted--happiness is always an issue and I am always in and out. The gold focus of puppets since the patch has helped as has the focus on culturial and happiness buildings. I find myself in constant search of luxuries--at this point I control access to all but spices and am trading for those and building every happiness building I can. The Forbidden Palace is a must have and I have seen stron argument for trying to get the Order Policies in place for Communism, but have not gone down that path myself yet. Anyway, as to your original question, I say, "The more the merrier!" There is clearly power in lots of cities, if you can maintain the happiness.

On the subject of military units, I usually build a set and upgrade them from age to age. They keep their experience and it is generally cheaper to upgrade than build new. There is also a policy on the Order tree (I think) that provides happiness for city garrisons allowing you to use older units if you have kept them around as head knockers in your cities.

 

[rjg85]

Its really easy to balance happiness with a large number of cities if you plan it right and choose the right production queues and social policies. On my current king game I have around 20 cities and a surplus happiness of around 20, and thats with only 5 luxury resources (as the new patch makes trading a tougher effort).

My favourite methods include keeping each city smallish (around 5-7) in size, building Colosseums and circuses early (after monuments, libraries and markets), making sure you get the meritocracy sp (+1 for each trade route - liberty branch), build the forbidden palace asap and preferably keep cities close to each other to lower road costs.

I am different from ICS players in that I don't recommend going the Order policy branch route, mainly because you have to adopt 2 duff policies before you get to the good stuff, AND wait all the way for the industrial era to spread.

Instead, after hitting meritocracy - buffer your culture until the renaissance then adopt the first policy of Freedom (specialists produce half ) and the first two of Rationalism (5 turn golden age, and +2 science from every specialist). Now with all but your best production cities make sure you work as many specialists as you can (in most cases 3 per city - 2 from library and 1 from market). Not only will your happiness dramatically improve but your research beakers will skyrocket and allow you to expand much quicker. Tile improvements are secondary to specialists once you unlock the Rationalism +2 science from every specialist sp in my opinion.

Also I hardly ever build military units except for early on, it takes too long. I simply buy them and keep upgrading my old units.