Back in the old days there were two terms that everybody used REX and ICS.
REX = Rapidly early expansion, the idea that the best strategy is to have as many cities as possible as quickly as possible.
ICS = Infinite City Sprawl, the best strategy is the one that has the most cities packed as closely as possible.
Both of those are generally considered to be bad things, partly because they are gamey, but mostly because having only one viable strategy is dull. Note that this doesn't mean that people do not want a map covered by various empires colour (as could happen in Civ5). I think it is good that by the mid game every piece of land is owned or contested. However, that does not translate into saying that every city should be built as early as possible, as close as possible to each other.
An important resource in the game is (and should be, although it wasn't in Civ5) land. Being a sparse resource, the natural question is how should it be used.
There ought to be a real choice between filling the same landmass with tons of tiny cities, and filling it with a few small cities.
There ought to be a real choice between building cities very fast from the start, or growing 'tall' first and then expanding.
In every case the end game should be to own the most land and the most pop, but the choice is how you distribute the pop, in space and in time.
At the moment Civ6 encourages both REX and ICS incredibly strongly. This ought to change.
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