[R&F] Is there any penalty for spamming cities?

[Victoria]

Well, 4 cities is doable in civ 6 but it's a challenge

People have won with one city at deity. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

 

[Bad Wolf]

I remember some strategy discussions about this very issue in Civ5 BNW, as well as G&K and Vanilla. Although there's clearly a penalty for spamming cities beyond 4, more than in any other edition of Civ, players who practiced at playing "wide" found that you could in fact achieve higher scores and quicker victories. You had to use courthouses. And to take full advantage of going wide, you wanted to maximize your science output in as many cities as possible, usually with public schools at least. Wide games were very playable or Domination or SV; not so sure about other win types though likely Diplomacy as well.

Ultimately I usually ended up going wide in Civ V, it was just frustrating and not very enjoyable a lot of the time.

 

[liv]

Loved Civ V. Always went wide. It was not that much of an issue (but on immortal not on deity though)

 

[Athmos]

People have won with one city at deity. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

Yes, I know it has been done (never managed or even tried it myself,, but I'm quite sure It would take many fails and restart).

I'm sure you'll agree that it's usually harder to win with 4 cities than with 8 (hence why I used the term "challenge") ?

 

[Victoria]

I'm sure you'll agree that it's usually harder to win with 4 cities than with 8 (hence why I used the term "challenge") ?

100% agree and I like a challenge
and yes when someone says they won a peaceful science victory on deity there is likely an awful lot of retry going on

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Are there any other penalties that im unaware of?

More interaction with the horrible city UI was for me the main reason to stop expanding (settling or conquering) after 8 or so cities in Vanilla Civ 6. CQUI mod definitely helps with that issue.

With R&F, you also have a limited amount of governors available and if you recruit all 7, you won't be able to promote them much. This, coupled with the fact that several useful policies/government bonuses now affect only cities with governors means that in most games you'll have a diminishing return on cities after the first 5-6 and definitely after the 7th one. This is especially true if you consider that each new city is more costly than the previous one, even thought the Ancestor's Hall government building goes a long way to help you expand quickly and of course if you're conquering nothing stops you from growing to 40+ cities if you tolerate that much clicking around.