If going wide the biggest limiting factor is happiness but also the need for a much bigger military.
Wide empires tend to have quite small cities population wise to begin with and you have to accept that although that doesn't deminish the usefulness of population growth factors. The more food you have available, the more production tiles or specialist slots you can work when your waiting for your next happiness fix so you can expand and when you do have excess happines you can jump up quite quickly to catch up and more production allows you to build those new happiness buildings quicker.
I find a useful tactic is to prioritise your cities for potential growth. I tend to follow the general guideline in my games where if i have more than 10 happiness then i will allow all my cities to grow, if i have less than i will stop some of my 'filler' cities from growing and with only a couple of excess happiness or negative happiness only my major cities will grow. Once i reach -5 i will shut down all growth to give a buffer for my puppets who i can restrict but often not stop completely from growing, so i never go below -10 where the production nerf kicks into play.
It is also good to know how much happiness a city can produce and how far you can grow it and be happiness neutral. Most of your cities in a wide empire should never be allowed to go above happiness neutral with some leeway given if you are expecting a new happiness factor to come into play soon so you may allow it to expand in the expectaion of that new happiness fix.e.g. if you are going to be building a theatre in that city quite soon you might allow a city to grow an extra 3 points as you know once you build it it will become happiness neutral again,
Military wise the biggest factor is often your extended borders unless you are lucky enough to end up in a closed off position such as being able to close off a peninsular. So generally you have multiple points an enemy can attack at and all need to be protected. In this case getting a decent road network up and running as early as possible is of great strategic benefit so you can quickly rush reinforcements to all points as required.
Due to your cities tending to be small, military production is often slow so the key is getting as much gold as possible and buying a lot of your military which is helped by you having lots of cities and a well established trade network generating gold but the main focus is sponging gold off the AI's which shouldn't be an issue as one of the main advantages of a wide empire is accessing lots of resources and goods.
To help build up your army allying with a military CS can be cost effective but i tend to only really do this is i have one on my border anyway so they act as a buffer and see the extra units as purely a bonus.
Wide empires tend to have quite small cities population wise to begin with and you have to accept that although that doesn't deminish the usefulness of population growth factors. The more food you have available, the more production tiles or specialist slots you can work when your waiting for your next happiness fix so you can expand and when you do have excess happines you can jump up quite quickly to catch up and more production allows you to build those new happiness buildings quicker.
I find a useful tactic is to prioritise your cities for potential growth. I tend to follow the general guideline in my games where if i have more than 10 happiness then i will allow all my cities to grow, if i have less than i will stop some of my 'filler' cities from growing and with only a couple of excess happiness or negative happiness only my major cities will grow. Once i reach -5 i will shut down all growth to give a buffer for my puppets who i can restrict but often not stop completely from growing, so i never go below -10 where the production nerf kicks into play.
It is also good to know how much happiness a city can produce and how far you can grow it and be happiness neutral. Most of your cities in a wide empire should never be allowed to go above happiness neutral with some leeway given if you are expecting a new happiness factor to come into play soon so you may allow it to expand in the expectaion of that new happiness fix.e.g. if you are going to be building a theatre in that city quite soon you might allow a city to grow an extra 3 points as you know once you build it it will become happiness neutral again,
Military wise the biggest factor is often your extended borders unless you are lucky enough to end up in a closed off position such as being able to close off a peninsular. So generally you have multiple points an enemy can attack at and all need to be protected. In this case getting a decent road network up and running as early as possible is of great strategic benefit so you can quickly rush reinforcements to all points as required.
Due to your cities tending to be small, military production is often slow so the key is getting as much gold as possible and buying a lot of your military which is helped by you having lots of cities and a well established trade network generating gold but the main focus is sponging gold off the AI's which shouldn't be an issue as one of the main advantages of a wide empire is accessing lots of resources and goods.
To help build up your army allying with a military CS can be cost effective but i tend to only really do this is i have one on my border anyway so they act as a buffer and see the extra units as purely a bonus.
and discounted settlers will still apply when you expand. Many times, the higher level players are going straight Liberty until finished to get the free Great Person which figures into one of their strategies.
