How to increase the amount of cities avaliable on a map?

[Balint Fekete]

I would like to create a big map with a lot of cities but apparently I faced the problem of being limitated because of this limited cities stuff which means you can't create more than 512 cities on map. Is there a way of increasing this number or do I just have to deal with it and have only 512 cities?

 

[tjs282]

I would like to create a big map with a lot of cities but apparently I faced the problem of being limitated because of this limited cities stuff which means you can't create more than 512 cities on map. Is there a way of increasing this number or do I just have to deal with it and have only 512 cities?

Although there is a hacked .exe (for both the game and the editor, IIRC) floating around on CFC, which allegedly increases the city-limit, no-one (except the original creator) seems to have got it to work as intended. From what I've read, it tends to cause the game to crash irretrievably after ~560 towns have been placed (the AI also won't build towns exceeding the 512-limit itself).

So basically, you just have to deal with it — at least if you want to play an epic-type game where you build your Civ up from nothing. The hacked Editor can be used to preplace >512 towns on a Scenario map, but you would then (also) need to play using a 'NoRaze' .exe, to stop the AI from destroying 'excess' towns.

But 512 cities can still cover a pretty big map: if each city gets ~20 exclusive tiles, that's ~10240 tiles, so (assuming all are land-tiles, which they won't be) on a 70% water map, that's ~34133 tiles in total, or ~185 x 185. The biggest map that the Firaxis Editor can make (AFAIK) is 256 x 256 — but due to the offset/isometric layout, that's really only 256 x 128 = 32768 tiles. So your 512 cities would easily fill that world, especially if you make additional terrain-types non-Settleable.

 

[Balint Fekete]

Although there is a hacked .exe (for both the game and the editor, IIRC) floating around on CFC, which allegedly increases the city-limit, no-one (except the original creator) seems to have got it to work as intended. From what I've read, it tends to cause the game to crash irretrievably after ~560 towns have been placed (the AI also won't build towns exceeding the 512-limit itself).

So basically, you just have to deal with it — at least if you want to play an epic-type game where you build your Civ up from nothing. The hacked Editor can be used to preplace >512 towns on a Scenario map, but you would then (also) need to play using a 'NoRaze' .exe, to stop the AI from destroying 'excess' towns.

But 512 cities can still cover a pretty big map: if each city gets ~20 exclusive tiles, that's ~10240 tiles, so (assuming all are land-tiles, which they won't be) on a 70% water map, that's ~34133 tiles in total, or ~185 x 185. The biggest map that the Firaxis Editor can make (AFAIK) is 256 x 256 — but due to the offset/isometric layout, that's really only 256 x 128 = 32768 tiles. So your 512 cities would easily fill that world, especially if you make additional terrain-types non-Settleable.

Well I have just started creating a nowaday world map using Yoda Power's 256x256 Giant Earth map. And I started placing cities all over the world. Europe Asia and Africa is completed but australia and America is left and I have already reached the limit. So every city ond this map would be pre placed and settlers won't be in the game. And because of that I planned to use the no rase mod from the beginning so that is not an issue for me.

 

[r16]

the editor makes maps of 362 by 362 ? Would automatically crash ? And if you are talking about Antal , he was also surprised it was like rare that anyone had working science ages , so perhaps his starting exe was different already ?

 

[agonistes]

There used to be a file here that increased the number of cities, and it works - I have used it.

However, once the normal cap is reached, the ai will not continue to build cities. If you want the ai to expand, you have to settle cities for them and gift them the cities.