Need for Large City Games

[Phrederick]

This illustrates the earlier point - decisions which are dominated are not options. I cannot imagine a set of goals that is not aided by burning through the tech tree aggressively at the expense of immediate term production.

Here's some goals that are not aided by burning through the tree aggressively:

Using a given UU. It sucks to get Civil Service early when playing Persia, because it means you don't get to build a bunch of Immortals. Although I've never played Japan, I probably won't prioritize Rifling until my rivals have it, to maximize my Samurai window.

Building lots of wonders. Granted, wonders are easier to build once you have a 5-10+ tech advantage, but that won't help with the per-Renaissance wonders, which can be lots of fun to have.

Achieving constant Golden Age as Persia. That's uncoupled from tech rate once you can build Taj Mahal. Perhaps even negatively correlated, since it means fewer GSs to bulb, as you'll need a lot of Great People for golden ages.

Having an army that includes, say, 4 logistics/range cannon, 6 medic/march longswordsmen, on a small map, by the time you hit rifling/artillery. I really enjoy having highly promoted units, which is why I'll sometimes choose the Honor tree even though it may slow down my win time. And frequent warring doesn't require a fast tech rate; it only requires a proportional tech rate, and on non-Deity difficulties, that's not necessarily all that fast.

I think your perspective is that the only worthwhile goal is to win fast. That's fine. It's not everyone's perspective.

 

[aimlessgun]

I think I can prove that it's impossible right now to have 10 size 20 cities by turn 200. A size 20 city requires a total of 2500 food to grow to that point- that's a LOT of food. Of course you cut down on that with hospitals, but it's hard to have biology much sooner than turn 200 if you're also focused on growing cities (because scientist you make is a farm you don't use). Getting 2500 food in 200 turns means you need an average of 12.5 food/turn- and that's just for the capital! Getting other cities big requires an even BIGGER food surplus! Usually you can't found a 10th city until at least turn 100, which means it needs to somehow bring in 25 food/turn, on average. No way is that going to happen.

Yeah that sounds reasonable. Maintaining such a huge surplus doesn't seem feasible, especially with the tradeoffs you face when it comes to income and science. You can definitely beeline hospitals very fast since you're effectively doubling the value of your food for the 70-80 turns you'll have them, but it wouldn't matter.

The goal might have to be as modest as 5 cities of 20, everything you found after that getting turned into a smaller gold/science support city. Or alternately I think a turn goal of 220-230 would be doable: once you get both the hospitals and medlabs up, the population points really fly. But I think I'd rather find a different esoteric goal rather than continuing with this one

 

[E66man]

But I think I'd rather find a different esoteric goal rather than continuing with this one

Earliest date for a size 50 city?

 

[Seanner]

Assuming perfect conditions with rivers everywhere then you can have at least 8 CS farms for +16F, 4 maritimes and +4 from granary + mill, doesn't sound impossible at all. Any additional gold could be used to rushbuy hospitals in the smallest cities.

Granted perfection conditions may not be common, but to say it can't happen is pretty bold. Also Don't forget WLTK days. If you could somehow always be in it you would only need 3/4 the food.

I admit it sounds difficult because getting those buildings while maintaining surplus food while having the culture or gold to buy enough tiles to not lose food from unemployment/desert/etc. is a whole lot of stuff to accomplish at the same time, but again any city built BEFORE 100 has a head start, and any captured capital has a huge head start.

So difficult, but probably doable.

 

[aimlessgun]

Assuming perfect conditions with rivers everywhere then you can have at least 8 CS farms for +16F, 4 maritimes and +4 from granary + mill, doesn't sound impossible at all. Any additional gold could be used to rushbuy hospitals in the smallest cities.

Granted perfection conditions may not be common, but to say it can't happen is pretty bold. Also Don't forget WLTK days. If you could somehow always be in it you would only need 3/4 the food.

I admit it sounds difficult because getting those buildings while maintaining surplus food while having the culture or gold to buy enough tiles to not lose food from unemployment/desert/etc. is a whole lot of stuff to accomplish at the same time, but again any city built BEFORE 100 has a head start, and any captured capital has a huge head start.

So difficult, but probably doable.

But the odds of getting perfect conditions for 10 cities is so vanishingly small :/ You could probably generate maps for days and not get 10 perfect city sites clustered close enough together.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Here's some goals that are not aided by burning through the tree aggressively:

Using a given UU. It sucks to get Civil Service early when playing Persia, because it means you don't get to build a bunch of Immortals. Although I've never played Japan, I probably won't prioritize Rifling until my rivals have it, to maximize my Samurai window.

Just alter your tech order. You're absolutely correct that you want to delay Civil Service, beeline Rifling, then fill CS once you're happy with your Immortal count and upgrade. But you're confusing your end objective, which isn't to make lots of Immortals. It's to upgrade lots of powerful midgame units with Immortals' inherent bonus.

Building lots of wonders. Granted, wonders are easier to build once you have a 5-10+ tech advantage, but that won't help with the per-Renaissance wonders, which can be lots of fun to have.

Tech advantage guarantees you Wonder count even on Deity. If you want the early Wonders, there's one and only one way: lower the difficulty level.

Achieving constant Golden Age as Persia. That's uncoupled from tech rate once you can build Taj Mahal. Perhaps even negatively correlated, since it means fewer GSs to bulb, as you'll need a lot of Great People for golden ages.

As I see this one: Freedom will help you get the second GA sooner, building Hagia Sophia will get you a decent GS production rate (one every 8.33 turns if you max out Unis, I believe), and that will be more than sufficient to bulb and still have GS's left over when the 37 turns from the Happy bucket and Taj GA's run out.

Having an army that includes, say, 4 logistics/range cannon, 6 medic/march longswordsmen, on a small map, by the time you hit rifling/artillery. I really enjoy having highly promoted units, which is why I'll sometimes choose the Honor tree even though it may slow down my win time. And frequent warring doesn't require a fast tech rate; it only requires a proportional tech rate, and on non-Deity difficulties, that's not necessarily all that fast.

You may find it fun, but it's inarguably inefficient.

I think your perspective is that the only worthwhile goal is to win fast. That's fine. It's not everyone's perspective.

No, I'm simply referring to efficient use of your resources. Winning faster is a result of efficiently using your resources. Both a builder and a warmonger get more mileage out of what they have by climbing the tech tree quickly. The efficient buildings are at the beginning and the end of the tech tree, so you want to skip the weak buildings in the middle. And aimlessgun has already posted the math in another thread on why greater inherent unit strength trumps promotions.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I've been experimenting with slowing down my economy somewhat in order to get heroic epic.

I found that overall, at the same timestamp, I'm in a weaker position.
However, with the extra powerful units, even with fewer promotions, I can make up the difference in the midgame.

 

[pi-r8]

Assuming perfect conditions with rivers everywhere then you can have at least 8 CS farms for +16F, 4 maritimes and +4 from granary + mill, doesn't sound impossible at all. Any additional gold could be used to rushbuy hospitals in the smallest cities.

Granted perfection conditions may not be common, but to say it can't happen is pretty bold. Also Don't forget WLTK days. If you could somehow always be in it you would only need 3/4 the food.

I admit it sounds difficult because getting those buildings while maintaining surplus food while having the culture or gold to buy enough tiles to not lose food from unemployment/desert/etc. is a whole lot of stuff to accomplish at the same time, but again any city built BEFORE 100 has a head start, and any captured capital has a huge head start.

So difficult, but probably doable.

Ummm.... no, no way is this happening in just 100 turns. First of all, if we found a city on turn 100, it'll start without being able to work any farms, and then it'll be behind the curve from the beginning (which means it needs more than 25 surplus at the end). It takes 5 turns to build a farm, so even with unlimited workers (and you usually have less than 6 at that point) the city has to wait for farms to be built. Then it'll have to work some mines instead of farms, in order to finish a coloseum in a reasonable time (I'll assume we're India so happiness is less of a problem). Then you'll also need some trading posts, to have enough money to bribe those 4 maritime city states (4 is a lot, early on!). And 8 freshwater farms is really a lot- you're never going to find 10 sites that have that. Finally, while you might maybe get 1 WLTK day, but really- constant WLTK days in all cities? The odds of that are extremely small.

 

[alpaca]

I disagree luddite. My first try, with a fairly weak starting position, is attached (only two luxuries for a long time, but lots of gems - would have preferred more luxuries, though). Immortal Standard Pangaea. I managed to get 10 size 20 cities by turn 212 with only fairly irrelevant low-level warfare except for one aggressive attack on Montezuma to get more space and luxuries.

What you're not taking into account is that you can easily get 25+ food surplus in these cities after you research Fertilizer. Early and mid-game growth is almost irrelevant due to hospitals and medical labs boosting your growth speed immensely in the late game, to the point of being able to grow each of these cities in 5 turns or so. I got Penicillin in turn 192 but I've played games where I got that a lot faster with a better starting position that had a lot of luxuries. I'm sure it's possible to shave off these 12 turns even without "perfect conditions", good ones will be enough. You need Biology, Penicillin and Fertilizer, although I'm not sure about the order.

My general strategy was to utilize the money-making and research power of ICS with a more loose initial settling order to get my designated 10 growth cities up ASAP. I didn't go for the FP early this game which is why I have so much happiness because I finished it in turn 195 or so. I think it's probably better to do a normal ICS settling order, though, and just designate every second city as growth-focused. I didn't feel like the game was significantly weaker than a normal ICS game but, of course, this may not be what you think of as a "large city strategy" because I had a large number of smaller cities just built for land-grabbing and science purposes. Getting Civil Society seems to be a good idea because it allows you to get a minimum of 1 food per citizen and to run more specialists.

FYI, Ahmedabad (the last and fairly marginal of my designated growth cities) was founded well after turn 100

 

[kaltorak]

This interests me too. I would prefer building big potent cities would be more profitable than just spamming cities anywere. It would make the game much more fun.

I think you can do good cities, the problem is it's so much worse than other options. So lets say you're beating king with focusing on infraestructure, buildings, growing, then you probably could beat immortal with ics or cavalry rush.

And sadly building an empire based on potent cities is where I had more fun

 

[aemer]

Alright, first try of this is not going so great. Part of that is my pacifist rules (building all your cities and workers yourself sucks!). Anways, got to Hospitals without too much trouble, but I can't build them! Wonder if it's just being on crappy hammer land, but these babies cost a ridiculous amount of hammers and/or gold.

Anyone have any ideas on that? Should I hold off on a hospital beeline and try to set up workshops in my cities first? I saved SPs for Rationalism>Secularism and Freedom>Civil Society, would it be better to wait until Order?

I guess my other problem is that I severely lowballed the amount of workers I needed to build since I'm so used to stealing them, and now I have a bunch of un-improved land.

I got hospitals in 1000AD in my game, but it just doesn't work; like you said, you can't build them.

I'm trying really hard to rig up a happiness-based golden age to get them out now (1400 ad), but it's ridiculously difficult....probably because none of my cities have workshops!

I'm actually thinking that you may want to hold off on the expensive buildings, and run a lean specialist-focused empire (with freedom to help happiness!) untill you have workshops, libraries, colloseums, and factories...food gained from maritime city states, your workers focus only on improving production land with mines and lumber mills...

Then, once you have the foundation for booming in place, you put out hospitals, and then rig everything so you get happiness buildings as you slowly crawl up in population...

Added: Seems i was late to the party...clearly, some have figured out how to manage this =]

Question directed at alpaca: did you use the satelite cities to build up gold reserves and happiness? Did you utilize rushbuy a lot?
Clearly, you're a much better player than I...I'm missing your situation there by at least 80 turns.

Not that I think that's necessarily too late...since I'm a significantly worse player, my game will likely last at least 80 turns longer =P

 

[alpaca]

I got hospitals in 1000AD in my game, but it just doesn't work; like you said, you can't build them.

I'm trying really hard to rig up a happiness-based golden age to get them out now (1400 ad), but it's ridiculously difficult....probably because none of my cities have workshops!

I'm actually thinking that you may want to hold off on the expensive buildings, and run a lean specialist-focused empire (with freedom to help happiness!) untill you have workshops, libraries, colloseums, and factories...food gained from maritime city states, your workers focus only on improving production land with mines and lumber mills...

Then, once you have the foundation for booming in place, you put out hospitals, and then rig everything so you get happiness buildings as you slowly crawl up in population...

Added: Seems i was late to the party...clearly, some have figured out how to manage this =]

Question directed at alpaca: did you use the satelite cities to build up gold reserves and happiness? Did you utilize rushbuy a lot?
Clearly, you're a much better player than I...I'm missing your situation there by at least 80 turns.

Not that I think that's necessarily too late...since I'm a significantly worse player, my game will likely last at least 80 turns longer =P

You don't build hospitals, you buy them. They are 1140 each. The use of all those satellite cities is threefold: Science, trade routes and land. Each city gives you a free 6 tiles for your primary cities to work, these are necessary because you have no chance getting them via culture this quick. They typically run 2 scientist specialists and if I can afford to have a few trade posts around the fringes of my empire, they also add some money. Each city is a free road and adds some trade income.

The happiness cost of these cities is manageable if you have Meritocracy, the Forbidden Palace or Theocracy (although I tend to prefer Rationalism). Build a Colosseum in each and they will only cost you a few happiness points for quite a bit of science and money. I tend to use a lot of my money for rush-buying: I buy Cols in new cities when needed and then save up for Hospitals and Medical Labs, which both cost more than 1000. In a normal ICS game you will typically make something like 150-300 gold per turn outside of a golden age, which, together with selling some luxuries to the AI, should cover your expenses.

It's important to prioritise the hospitals, so buy them first in the smallest cities which grow the slowest. The same goes for medical labs, obviously. You also have to micro-manage tile allotment to the cities a lot because there will be some overlap at least in the third ring - don't worry about taking away all tiles from a filler city and running unemployed citizens, they are only there to add some science anyways. In the game I posted something like 7 of the 10 cities reached size 20 in turn 212 due to excessive micro. Your aim will be to have >25 food surplus size 10-17 or so, after that your growth tiles are probably more or less used up and food surplus will slowly decline with each additional pop point (by 1 if you run them as specialist).

I should like to stress that I think it's impossible to have 10 of these cities without waging war at all unless you get very lucky and get a ton of land. Playing a completely peaceful game is not desirable to me anyways.

 

[Sullla]

That's pretty hilarious. So you can have a bunch of big cities... but only if the rest of your empire is running Infinite City Sprawl, so that you can afford the research to get hospitals quickly and afford the cash to rush-buy hospitals and maritime city state alliances. Delicious irony.

 

[Stanislaw]

That's pretty hilarious. So you can have a bunch of big cities... but only if the rest of your empire is running Infinite City Sprawl, so that you can afford the research to get hospitals quickly and afford the cash to rush-buy hospitals and maritime city state alliances. Delicious irony.

Well, technically that is only true if you want a bunch of big cities fast, which the goal right now is to get 10 in 200 turns. If you take your time, you can have a bunch of big cities with or without ICS.

Yeah yeah, I know I'm being picky.

 

[ifinnem]

I disagree luddite. My first try, with a fairly weak starting position, is attached (only two luxuries for a long time, but lots of gems - would have preferred more luxuries, though). Immortal Standard Pangaea. I managed to get 10 size 20 cities by turn 212 with only fairly irrelevant low-level warfare except for one aggressive attack on Montezuma to get more space and luxuries.

What you're not taking into account is that you can easily get 25+ food surplus in these cities after you research Fertilizer. Early and mid-game growth is almost irrelevant due to hospitals and medical labs boosting your growth speed immensely in the late game, to the point of being able to grow each of these cities in 5 turns or so. I got Penicillin in turn 192 but I've played games where I got that a lot faster with a better starting position that had a lot of luxuries. I'm sure it's possible to shave off these 12 turns even without "perfect conditions", good ones will be enough. You need Biology, Penicillin and Fertilizer, although I'm not sure about the order.

My general strategy was to utilize the money-making and research power of ICS with a more loose initial settling order to get my designated 10 growth cities up ASAP. I didn't go for the FP early this game which is why I have so much happiness because I finished it in turn 195 or so. I think it's probably better to do a normal ICS settling order, though, and just designate every second city as growth-focused. I didn't feel like the game was significantly weaker than a normal ICS game but, of course, this may not be what you think of as a "large city strategy" because I had a large number of smaller cities just built for land-grabbing and science purposes. Getting Civil Society seems to be a good idea because it allows you to get a minimum of 1 food per citizen and to run more specialists.

FYI, Ahmedabad (the last and fairly marginal of my designated growth cities) was founded well after turn 100

Would be great if you could post some screenies of the empire layout + tile improvements. Save would be even better

 

[alpaca]

Would be great if you could post some screenies of the empire layout + tile improvements. Save would be even better

Sure, here's the save in turn 212.

Sullla: Well it's not so unrealistic, is it? Large cities need lots of villages to feed them

Actually that strategy is not much different to how I usually play ICS, except for focusing on farms instead of trade posts. Since ICS is probably unbeatable from a science point of view, using it to get Biology ASAP is obvious

 

[Roxlimn]

Sullla:

It's not clear to me that this is particularly ironic. In point of fact, I have used large-and-small settling as a rough guide of how to play the game since I got it. Certainly, I used a similar sort of building strat in Civ 4, for different reasons (small cities to grab out-of-the-way luxuries, for drafting, for tile maximization, and such).

 

[ifinnem]

Sure, here's the save in turn 212.

Thanks!

 

[Bandobras Took]

Sullla:

It's not clear to me that this is particularly ironic.

It's ironic in the background of the designer's stated intent to make the game more about small empires with a few largely developed cities. Multiple small cities sort of pokes holes in that.

 

[aimlessgun]

Nice work alpaca! Nice micro too with the uniform 20's

12 turns is pretty darn close...but maybe not as close as it might seem on the surface, since the amount of food you are effectively generating in those last turns with Medlabs, Hospitals, and fertilizer farms is off the charts.