Need for Large City Games

[alpaca]

Congratulations! I am impressed; achieving this one took a lot of effort.

I think you've demonstrated quite clearly that the big difference between this game and past Civs is that past Civs all had a cheap, early building that enhanced city growth. Even SMAC had the Creche.

If early vertical growth were more feasible, Colosseums were not so potent, and Maritime didn't feed small satellites (so that they could work 2x Hills), I think you'd see players making fewer, larger cities early on.

Yes, it was definitely harder than I expected. Although I guess with a bit more thinking beforehand I could have saved quite a bit of time because I should have been able to figure out it's about space and money

10 cities is quite a lot if you need enough space for each of them to have 8-10 quality food tiles and enough money to buy the growth buildings in almost all of them. These large cities became surprisingly strong later on, though, especially in a golden age. Most of them have a couple of hills they can work without much fuss and can put out a bank in a couple of turns. They also make a lot of money. In these games I learned that maybe hospitals aren't such bad investments if you think long-term. Of course, if you're aiming for a turn 200 win that's kind of moot

 

[Bandobras Took]

And don't forget SMAC's "Pop Boom" ability.

 

[Martin Alvito]

dkrussian is starting to make a pretty strong case for Hospitals in strong production cities even when gunning for an early spaceship. If you can turn a size 8 city into a size 12-13 one and collect 1.5x the base Hammers, then with a Spaceship Factory it can make two parts faster than an extra production city could make one.

 

[HermannLombard]

Hooray, I finally managed to get 10 size 20 cities: On turn 192!

May we have a save of this one too?

 

[dkrussian]

I'm a lazy bastard and don't really want to read 7 pages of comments, so forgive me if it has been mentioned, but the best way to get a large cities game is to shoot for culture victory without cheese.

The most effective (and boring) way to culture victory is to shoot for as many puppets as you can.

The most fun way to culture is stick to 3-4 cities and slap down every damn culture building you can. (Siam is my favorite when playing like this, they get ******** city state bonuses AND the Wat, awesome)

In this situation you also want one super ******** uber wonderspam megahammer site. for me it's usually capital again (more food, plus I don't get to railroads when going culture my finish is often broadcast towers->cristo->utopia project)

And yes, I think bee-lining biology and slapping down a hospital is good practice. On a side note I made the dumb-ass mistake of not availing myself of workshops before putting up broadcast towers (the workshop pays for itself with JUST the broadcast tower, if I had built it earlier, the hammer savings would have been immense!)

 

[ifinnem]

I'm sure its clear to most but after reading this and looking at the multipliers for gold vs hammers (vs food as an indirect means to other things) my conclusions are
1) Gold is the least constrained "resource"
2) Therefore in most cases you want to trade gold for hammers/food and not the other way around. E.g. buy the hammer / food multiplier buildings - don't try and get the payback in hammers after building it

 

[alpaca]

May we have a save of this one too?

Actually, not on the end turn because I forgot to make a save. I continued playing the game to have a go at the funny Stompy Victory ("Stomp your ant-like enemies underfoot - buy a Giant Death Robot today") so I only finished in turn 256, with a score of about 8000.

I can give you a savegome from turn 207 or from the turn when I bought all the hospitals, sometime in the 170s I think. You can probably finish the one with the hospitals yourself if you like, all you have to do is manage food so the cities grow as equally as possible and to bulb Penicillin and buy Medical Labs when they become available.

By the way, it took me until turn 250 to grow all cities to level 30, but they really started diverging because my largest city was already at 38 at the time. Except for Rhodes, which is bang in the middle of a grass desert, these cities all became production powerhouses (thanks to mines and Statue of Liberty) and science-machines producing something like 200 science each. With the proper infrastructure set up, the best of them produce a GDR in 7 turns at the end of the game. This means a GDR per turn if it took my fancy

(Not that I need more than one against opponents who have rifles at best)

 

[pi-r8]

hahaha, good job alpaca. I'm really surprised you were able to do that.

 

[bombdigie]

We are not worthy!!!!

 

[alpaca]

hahaha, good job alpaca. I'm really surprised you were able to do that.

Well I'll read that as a comment about the difficulty of the task rather than my skill as a player

I was thinking about this game a bit today and realized that, quite contrary to my expectations, these huge cities were actually pretty good. While I could have continued just spamming small cities, to reach the more than 150 science each of these molochs put out I would have needed 16 small cities (or, more realistically, 10 where some were a bit larger), not to mention I got a hell of a lot of production there. The problem is that they only grow this powerful very late in the game so there's no real application for it.

If there was a future era like in Call To Power, or the good food buildings became available earlier (alternatively, late-game teching took longer), I think this strategy could really work quite well. You can keep decent growth rates if you focus on food for a long time after you hit size 20, even the slowest of my cities kept growing within 7 turns at size 30.

Once you filled up all available hexes with workers making food, you can start working hills and specialists which also makes the cities quite productive. Even better if they are next to a river and you buy or build a hydro plant - most of these were actually good enough to hardbuild one. So in a way I reproduced Roxlinmn's experiences with the small caveat that these cities aren't of much use to me before the end of the game.

 

[HermannLombard]

With the proper infrastructure set up, the best of them produce a GDR in 7 turns at the end of the game. This means a GDR per turn if it took my fancy

Thanks.

I have a vision of a continent with one GDR per tile. "What do you find between the toes of Giant Death Robots?" "Slow humans."

 

[Varanid]

the biggest city I've had was maybe 28...i was Siam....I gotta try this again.

 

[alpaca]

Thanks.

I have a vision of a continent with one GDR per tile. "What do you find between the toes of Giant Death Robots?" "Slow humans."

Haha yeah, unfortunately you need Uranium to build one. I had 12 or so Uranium so I could even have afforded to build Nuclear Plants, which I normally never do due to the rarity of Uranium.

Maybe not a continent but you can at least surround a city with them. The funniest thing is to gift them to some city state which has Uranium and let them stomp a couple of AI nations. City states sometimes go insane when they get GDRs

the biggest city I've had was maybe 28...i was Siam....I gotta try this again.

Well you have to specifically aim for it, otherwise they won't grow so large. We're talking about farm-spamming the whole three-tile radius wherever possible, and selecting city sites with a lot of farmable terrain, preferably grass. I think the largest of the cities in this game should be able to grow to size 50 before turn 400. Happiness becomes an issue, though. Luckily you have all those filler cities that don't do anything much and therefore can afford producing theatres once you grab Planned Economy.

Which reminds me: You can get your culture rate back up to decent levels by building every culture building in your big cities. Each of them will then produce some 30 or so culture, which allows you to get a couple more policies. So maybe there's no need to wait for the industrial era before spamming cities, an alternative is to spam culture buildings once you can afford them. Wonders help, of course.

 

[Varanid]

Oh, culture isn't a problem in even decent sized empires as soon as you have broadcast. My Siam game had my biggest cities, my 2nd most cities, and I won culture victory.

 

[iggymnrr]

I gave this a try in the Balance mod, the one where aqueducts are like hospitals but 40% and come earlier. It also has smokehouses replacing granaries and give +1 food to livestock. I chose Monty on a lakes map, king level. Casual game but he's a killer for this. I had only 2 maritime until the last 10 turns. I didn't think it was possible for me until too late. Posted is the screenshot @turn 200. In 4 turns I will have 10 cities at 20 pop. Built the mids, unlocked liberty and piety. Used the discounted piety GA for a 6 turn oracle to theocracy. (It hadn't gone by then, late.) It's pretty easy to do in this mod at these settings. Surely someone can do this super fast.

Edit: I never made it to the industrial era. I was researching acoustics at turn 200. (Cavs and rifle war going on.) Also, 1 scientist (for fertilizer) and 2 engineers (for FP and Taj) were the only GPs spawned, not including GGs.

 

[HermannLombard]

Other than taking fifty turns longer <cough>, my game followed Alpaca's line. I felt really pleased when I looked at the econ report and saw 7 size 20 cities and 3 size 21; it really felt like an accomplishment. It was hard work, fun, and very satisfying. So my thanks to Alpaca and the rest of you for ideas and tactics!

 

[alpaca]

Other than taking fifty turns longer <cough>, my game followed Alpaca's line. I felt really pleased when I looked at the econ report and saw 7 size 20 cities and 3 size 21; it really felt like an accomplishment. It was hard work, fun, and very satisfying. So my thanks to Alpaca and the rest of you for ideas and tactics!

You're welcome. And don't feel bad about the fifty turns, it took me a couple of games to get to turn 212, too