How to play with a massive number of cities

[malitano]

Hi, so I've won domination and diplomacy victories on prince with a small number of cities (usually built 1-3 settlers and the rest of the cities were subjugated), total of about 6-8 cities world wide. I played regular continents and I can easily win like this all day everyday.

I wanted to try and see what would happen if I did rapid expansion civ4 style and built lots of settlers carefully keeping an eyes on happiness. I did well money, military and science wise but I had a really hard time avoiding unhappiness. I built coloseums and circuses (when possible); and played around with diplomacy for luxuries to the best of my ability but I simply could not coninue to grow my cities without having happiness issues. If I went to war it was a tragedy to my happiness because they were usually someone I could trade luxuries with.

I also discovered that stop growth did not work when I wanted it to. What am I doing wrong? Is it simply not feasible in this game to continually expand without a massive hit to hapiness?

 

[delra]

Make some buildings which can hold specialists, this will drain your growth a bit. Library is the best pick here cause it can hold two dudes and boost your science greatly. But still, don't aim for more than a dozen of cities. And not more than 3 in the ancient times (1x science (lotsa farms) + 2x production (lotsa hills and forests, preferably resources that give production too)). It's in the Middle Ages when I start gradually adding money cities here and there to my empire when I can build Colosseums and trade luxuries having discovered all AIs and city states.

 

[BobbleBobble]

The biggest problem with big empires of small cities (to avoid unhappiness) is that the avoid growth button doesn't really work.

Well that, and small cities suck.

 

[LL_LordOmega]

Here's the secret. Build trading posts on all flat, non-forested lands, ally with maritime city states (locate them all), build gold multiplier buildings in your cities at a high priority, and now you have enough gold per turn to buy happiness buildings when ever you need them. Also, the liberty policy tree is nice.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've carried nearly an entire continent that had 5 civs on it originally with just 3 SP in honor and full patronage. Forbidden palace helps a lot if you can get it. After that, it's just coli + theater and that should be enough when factoring city state resources to keep you afloat.

Just don't settle weak cities until later (IE ones that don't give you resources or have a ton of early potential, etc).

 

[Mr.Vassal]

Social Policies seem to be key to playing civ 4 style. Specifically, base Piety [+2 happiness], Order (Socialist-->Planned Economy[-50% unhappiness from number of cities), Honor (Discipline-->Military Caste [+1 happiness for each city with a garrison]), and Liberty (Citizenship-->Meritocracy [+1 happiness for each city with trade route to Capital]). That and lots of luxuries.


Mr.Vassal

 

[Babylonicious]

Won my first game on immortal yesterday (Deity is proving to be ridiculously hard). Did it with about 10-12 cities on small continents map. Happiness is a bit of a pain, but a few suggestions:

1) Avoid rapid growth outside of your capital (or whichever city you pick for your science city). Only build farms next to fresh water sources. Otherwise, spam trading posts. The fresh water farms allow you to work one or no food source tiles and maintain growth. More farms than that, and your cities just grow too fast. Plus, the TP give you money, which brings me to my second point.

2) Pay attention to money buildings. I try to go library, monument, market, (mint), bank, university in all my cities except my science city. There, the university comes before the bank and I try to buy it.

3) Don't puppet conquered cities, unless they have a luxury (happiness) resource that you don't already have and you don't have the surplus happiness to take full control of them. If they have a luxury resource, take control of them and build the courthouse immediately. If you don't have the surplus happiness to take full control, do it as soon as possible. Otherwise, just raze them and fill in with your own settler.

Puppet cities add unhappiness that you can't get rid of (without taking control), plus they build lots of expensive buildings, which prevents buying the happiness buildings when you need them.

Basically, managing happiness comes down to managing money so you have the surplus cash to buy a colosseum/circus/theater, etc. when you need it.

 

[shinkicker]

Social Policies seem to be key to playing civ 4 style. Specifically, base Piety [+2 happiness], Order (Socialist-->Planned Economy[-50% unhappiness from number of cities), Honor (Discipline-->Military Caste [+1 happiness for each city with a garrison]), and Liberty (Citizenship-->Meritocracy [+1 happiness for each city with trade route to Capital]). That and lots of luxuries.


Mr.Vassal

What he said.

Also, it's worth noting that after you've puppeted a city for a while, they get their pop and production back so that when you do annex them, it shouldn't take that long to build a Courthouse. Within 10-12 turns that annexed city should be back to normal for you. It's just not a good idea to annex a lot of them at once. Chew your food slowly

I'll also echo what others said about rapid growth. Number of cities isn't a huge drain on happiness, but population can be. Grow slowly so you can build happy stuff and exploit luxuries and you can manage it.

This is one reason I love the Persians. Satrap's Court not only gives you cash, but each building gives you +2 happiness for no maintenance cost. Makes it much easier to get those Golden Ages Darius loves so much!

 

[Lord Chambers]

Social Policies seem to be key to playing civ 4 style. Specifically, base Piety [+2 happiness], Order (Socialist-->Planned Economy[-50% unhappiness from number of cities), Honor (Discipline-->Military Caste [+1 happiness for each city with a garrison]), and Liberty (Citizenship-->Meritocracy [+1 happiness for each city with trade route to Capital]). That and lots of luxuries.

Nothing wrong with your post. I'll just add that this is 9 social policies total.

Military Caste is NOT the way to try and increase happiness, considering the upkeep costs of military units. A colosseum and circus cost 6gpt and provide 7 happiness. Seven happiness from Military Caste costs between 10 to 100gpt.

 

[delra]

Caste is awkward cause number of garrisoned cities is quite low these days. I typically have units only where enemy actually walks by... Need rebalance IMO.

 

[vendur]

The upkeep issue is a joke for military caste, but if you are playing a conquerer style, beggars cant be choosers, and you usually just bite the bullet to keep your happiness outside of -10 when warring, and above 0 when not. It's really just a stop gap measure.

 

[The Tollan]

Caste is awkward cause number of garrisoned cities is quite low these days. I typically have units only where enemy actually walks by... Need rebalance IMO.

Agreed, it looks too much less effective than meritocracy in direct comparison.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Piety social tree is crucial for late game empire. The 20% less unhappiness from number of population is pretty gigantic if you play on larger map.

 

[duxup]

Yeah my experience is much the same of others. For a larger empires you have to really work to plan out your social policies and wonders, even then it requires a lot of turn by turn management.

 

[pi-r8]

The ideal situation is to have forbidden palace + planned economy, for +2 happiness/city. However, you can do it without either of those, if you just keep your cities small. A size 4 city with a coloseum is happiness neutral, and still adds a good amount production, gold, and science.

 

[Codeman]

The upkeep issue is a joke for military caste, but if you are playing a conquerer style, beggars cant be choosers, and you usually just bite the bullet to keep your happiness outside of -10 when warring, and above 0 when not. It's really just a stop gap measure.

agree completely.

i think professional army should include -50% unit maintenance. since you have to have military caste to get professional army, this would make the honor tree worth the effort.

 

[Pirrip]

Good advice here.

Another option: play with India. Their UA is supposed to make you want to build just a few huge cities, but it actually works very well with tons of cities, as long as you expand progressively.

 

[Lyoncet]

Other thing to note about Military Caste: you can micro your happiness using it. This may not seem like much, but since the avoid growth button utterly fails in this game, you can micro your units around to keep your happiness at -1 if you want to slow growth for a moment but not incur a significant penalty to your golden age points.

Still, mostly just a stopgap, but I've used that once to decent effect.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Another option: play with India. Their UA is supposed to make you want to build just a few huge cities, but it actually works very well with tons of cities, as long as you expand progressively.

I haven't played with India so... But really? Doesn't the UA explicitly penalize for # of cities? I'm not sure I understand how this could be true.

 

[Thecos]

I haven't played with India so... But really? Doesn't the UA explicitly penalize for # of cities? I'm not sure I understand how this could be true.

I haven't actually tried this yet or done the math, but I had a pretty large empire playing as Arabia last game, and I'm pretty sure when I looked at my happiness calculation late game as my cities got big, the happiness penalty for population was still much worse than the penalty for number of cities. I'm pretty sure if I had doubled the unhappiness from # of cities and halved the unhappiness for population it would have been a net gain, even with 8-10 cities. India's bonus will ruin you if you have tons of small cities for sure, but with lots of big cities, I think it still might help.