Is a 40-pop city too big?

[Gary King]

Lately I've had tremendous success on Emperor difficulty. I used to play by using Liberty, but I've heard that Tradition is "better", and considering that even on Liberty I usually build four to five quality cities before I run out of space, I decided to try it out. My biggest problem in the early game expansion is handling Happiness and Gold, which is why I usually end up with five cities at most. And now I'm winning games pretty easily, usually through a Diplomacy or Science victory, sometimes even without engaging in a single war (either started by myself or the AI). I usually am allied with every City-State in the game.

I also sometimes end up with 30-pop to 40-pop cities. Besides having a lot of Farms, this is often the result of being Allies with every Maritime City-State in the game. Besides being able to run every single specialist in the city, and the fact that every pop increase Science output by 1, is there any other advantage to having such massive cities? Should I instead be building less Farms, and more say, Trading Posts? Should I place more cities, and put them closer together, so that Terrain is better maximized? I don't place Farms absolutely everywhere; I place Mines where necessary, and usually do not chop Forests and Jungles, instead opting to use Lumbermills in Forests and Trading Posts in Jungles (for University later on), so my cities are often well-balanced. Yet they still grow massive.

 

[CraigMak]

Bigger is pretty much always better. More science, more gold from city connections, more hammers, more specialists. Being large gives you everything else in the game. If the cities are gigantic then they should be spread apart so that they don't overlap with each other. All those citizens need tiles to work.

Although it is pretty hard to plan for your cities being huge. It usually just happens without you having any idea how big you will get later on in the game.

 

[Jampine]

Even with all slots filled, the extra citizens still produce more production, along with the bonuses from buildings, like gold and science, so if you can support a large city, go for it!

Also, it might help to have some.......cannon fodder if Gandhi goes nuclear on you

 

[joncnunn]

I always play 4 city Tall tradition.

My capital is always at least size 30 by the end of the game.
But since I normally go for cultural victory instead of science; it's normally 35 +/- one instead of being near 40. (Playing a generic civ, it appears much, much faster to win by culture than by science. )

 

[myclan]

If a citizen have to be umeployed, I think the city is too big. If a city has a potential of being too big ,I will not build hospital/medical lab there, so they won't become too big before I win the game

 

[GoStu]

30 is good, 40 is starting to push it a bit. There's 36 workable tiles around a city, plus four Scientist slots, four Engineer spots (with a Windmill), four Merchant slots, and potentially up to six Artist/Writers/Musicians.

At first glance, that gives you a maximum really useful size of 54 - every tile worked, every specialist filled. However, there are often some tiles that are real losers to work like bare ocean or flat desert (with an improvement). At best those become food-neutral, where the citizen barely makes enough to feed themselves, but otherwise is only another beaker or two at the cost of unhappiness.

Also, it's a serious question of opportunity cost. To push a city that high takes a lot of time from your Trade Routes, which might be better used making money or growing a different city. For the Unhappiness, you could have a citizen in another city producing something more than just food to feed themselves.

 

[danaphanous]

It depends, Some things to consider:

Big cities often have huge science and production multipliers meaning excess population is always good. I typically don't consider it to be "too big" unless every specialist slot is filled and every useful tile is worked. If I utterly don't care about cultural aspect I might omit musicians guild but it's always nice to get a little passive tourism and culture. I even work "food-neutral" tiles, the only thing I won't try to work are "food-negative" tiles that also have little else to offer (aka 1 food). The reason is that extra population after mutipliers is a few extra points in science and is more valuable than in a crappy little city that utilizes population less efficiently. Also, food-neutral citizens can be converted over the unemployed status briefly to cause a significant production boost for large projects like spaceship parts. I've found this make a few turns difference and can be useful. I like to grow my best cities to around 40. Excluding shared tiles or worthless ones like non-water ocean (always 1 food) this seems to be around the cap.

If I plan for large core cities that do not share many tiles I can sometimes get some between 40-50 but have found it often more efficient to space a little more densely. This is because the city can't utilize those extra tiles for most of the game but more cities can. Therefore they're being inefficiently used if you space too widely until around the atomic age. At this point I choose the best cities and capture more tiles to allow them to grow big if they're struggling. I'll choose the less-attractive ones and force them to stay smaller and take a lesser share resulting in 20-30 pop instead. For all cities I shoot for using most available tiles and most specialists whatever pop that happens to be for the area.

 

[kb27787]

meh I'd say 40 is about standard for deity games around the end (240-300 turns); remember that with tradition each citizen only costs half unhappiness and earns you half of one gold per turn (with freedom policy specialists in the capitol cost no unhappiness at all!)

So if it's your capitol, feel free to grow it to the high heavens.

 

[dashwinner]

It really depends on which type of city you want. You do want to try and grow a city out at first, for obvious reasons stated above. However, later in the game, you get to a point where you need to ask yourself if its really necessary, or could that happiness or trade route be better used somewhere else. If its my production city, i'll want to make sure that all my mines + engineer slots + food tiles to support it are worked, as well as perhaps scientists. Same for science, or specialist city. At some point, if you're still growing, no point building hospitals, and probably worth swapping some of those plains to trading posts.

 

[haniblecter]

Lately, I've been viewing all these people that insist on tall as dorks. I don't know why, I can come up with some reasons, but in the end its just this gut feeling of wuss I get from the concept.

Moderator Action: This is nothing but trolling. Unacceptable.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Myth and Legend]

Lately, I've been viewing all these people that insist on tall as dorks. I don't know why, I can come up with some reasons, but in the end its just this gut feeling of wuss I get from the concept.

Moderator Action: This is nothing but trolling. Unacceptable.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

CoD forum is that way buddy >>>