Need for Large City Games

[Roxlimn]

aimlessgun:

Not quite off the charts - about on an order of magnitude sufficient to make the food curve at that point in the game about right where it should be.

This is one of the first things I perceived about Civ 5 that was different from before. Whereas you needed Granaries in Civ 4 to grow in any reasonable rate throughout the game, and then it stayed relatively even - in Civ 5, you do not require the half-food advantage to grow relatively linearly up to about size 15, at which point you ought to be shooting up for Biology and Penicillin to get growth back up to reasonable rates in the bigger cities.

With both building effects in effect, it's actually okay to stop growth in the smaller cities in favor of growth in the larger cities and not lose speed in the bargain.

In a general design light, I am not altogether certain that this is a bad way to go. The timing of the food coincides with the timing of various other techs and Policies which are necessary. Moving up the Hospital will only emphasize the happiness troubles of smaller empires.

 

[aimlessgun]

aimlessgun:

Not quite off the charts - about on an order of magnitude sufficient to make the food curve at that point in the game about right where it should be.

This is one of the first things I perceived about Civ 5 that was different from before. Whereas you needed Granaries in Civ 4 to grow in any reasonable rate throughout the game, and then it stayed relatively even - in Civ 5, you do not require the half-food advantage to grow relatively linearly up to about size 15, at which point you ought to be shooting up for Biology and Penicillin to get growth back up to reasonable rates in the bigger cities.

With both building effects in effect, it's actually okay to stop growth in the smaller cities in favor of growth in the larger cities and not lose speed in the bargain.

In a general design light, I am not altogether certain that this is a bad way to go. The timing of the food coincides with the timing of various other techs and Policies which are necessary. Moving up the Hospital will only emphasize the happiness troubles of smaller empires.

I'm simply pointing out that 12 turns seems tantalizingly close, but when you realize you're making upwards of 12000 effective food in those last 12 turns (25 fpt x 4 x 10 cities x 12 turns), it makes shaving those turns seem a little more daunting.

But I do agree, it shows that the food curve for larger cities maybe isn't as complain-worthy as I felt it to be before.

 

[Bibor]

Can we conclude that Roxlimn was right when he said we should theorycraft less and play more?

More to point, people underestimate the massive changes the Hospital and Biology labs introduce to farm-working cities.

A size 15 city working 10 grassland farms with civil service/fertilizer will produce 10 surplus food per turn. A hospital halves the food requirements so the effective surplus becomes 20 per turn. With lab it gets halved again so the surplus becomes 40 per turn. If the 5 citizens who are not farming are being Engineers and Scientists under Civil Society the surplus food output is even greater.

I'm not sure how the curve looks like (I simply forgot), but I bet 40 surplus makes even large cities grow pretty fast. Oh, this is excluding any bonuses from Maritimes.

 

[alpaca]

I'm simply pointing out that 12 turns seems tantalizingly close, but when you realize you're making upwards of 12000 effective food in those last 12 turns (25 fpt x 4 x 10 cities x 12 turns), it makes shaving those turns seem a little more daunting.

But I do agree, it shows that the food curve for larger cities maybe isn't as complain-worthy as I felt it to be before.

I think the main point where you can do significantly better than I did is teching faster. I've played ICS games where I was close to researching future techs at turn 200 so it should be possible to have Fertilizer + Penicillin by turn 180 or even earlier if you're a bit lucky. Maybe one should forego liberty in favor of rationalism to get a research boost. If I had had more grassland my growth would have been better, too - you will notice that many of my growth cities are not in fact in good positions.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Don't forget we love the king days ..
I played a really long game recently ('cos err .. I play huge map marathon) where I managed to get 1 of each lux at about 1000 AD.
The growth rates of my cities were silly fast .. which got me wondering about the actual boost you get from it.

Haven't got around to looking at it in detail, though ... shouldn't be too difficult to have a size 12 or so city with 8 surplus that demands a lux a CS has ...
Just ally the CS and see what happens to the growth rate.

 

[Thor7]

This is my biggest complaint with the game. It was obviously designed by someone who hated the building/economy aspects of civ4 and basically wanted to spam a few units and take over the world. Civ5 is not builder friendly, if for one reason that happiness is ridiculous. Even if there was infinite food, your empire gets unhappy so quickly and there's only so many happy buildings you can get and then that's it. There is no luxury slider to fix it, there's no buildings to increase the amount of happiness from resources like in civ4. It's completely dumbed down and stupid.

I have actually modded my game to provide more food so I could have a civ4 builder style game but it still doesn't work because of the happiness problem. Basically I don't see building any cities above about size 16 with any civ other than india as possible. I mean it's technically possible I supposed but you'll have to buy a lot of happy buildings in all your cities and it's a really difficult strategy as opposed to have 10+ cities all size 6 or less and getting policies like +3 hammers in costal or the order one to increase production by 5 in cities.

Actually after thinking it over a bit, why not just go mod the happiness aspect? I don't know exactly how to do it, if it's in the xml it should be pretty easy to change the unhappiness produce by population. Or you could mod the buildings or luxuries to provide more happys.

 

[Thor7]

This thread is an interesting read, but you shouldn't have to strategize to specifically build large cities- they should become large as a byproduct of persuing some victory condition. I mean obviously you have to focus on building some infrastructure, but it's totally ridiculous that you have to actually plan an entire strategy around growing cities instead of just expanding, researching, trying to win and getting large cities in the process.

 

[Bibor]

This is my biggest complaint with the game. It was obviously designed by someone who hated the building/economy aspects of civ4 and basically wanted to spam a few units and take over the world. Civ5 is not builder friendly, if for one reason that happiness is ridiculous. Even if there was infinite food, your empire gets unhappy so quickly and there's only so many happy buildings you can get and then that's it. There is no luxury slider to fix it, there's no buildings to increase the amount of happiness from resources like in civ4. It's completely dumbed down and stupid.

I have actually modded my game to provide more food so I could have a civ4 builder style game but it still doesn't work because of the happiness problem. Basically I don't see building any cities above about size 16 with any civ other than india as possible. I mean it's technically possible I supposed but you'll have to buy a lot of happy buildings in all your cities and it's a really difficult strategy as opposed to have 10+ cities all size 6 or less and getting policies like +3 hammers in costal or the order one to increase production by 5 in cities.

Actually after thinking it over a bit, why not just go mod the happiness aspect? I don't know exactly how to do it, if it's in the xml it should be pretty easy to change the unhappiness produce by population. Or you could mod the buildings or luxuries to provide more happys.

People already proved that there's no such thing as a happiness cap. A month ago.

Just a few examples:
+1 in every city - Meritocracy
+1 in every city past capital - Forbidden Palace
+1 in every city past capital - Planned Economy
+1 for every 5 citizens - Theocracy
+X for every happy resource - Protectionism
+1 for every city with a University - Humanism
+X two specialists make one unhappy citizen - Freedom (can easily go up to +3)

Lets say you have 12 cities of Size 16 (214 required happiness):
Just from having 10 happy resources = 50
Forbidden Palace = 11
Meritocracy = 11
Theocracy = 36 (yes, it's that powerful)
Freedom and two specialists per city = 11
Colosseum in every city = 48
Theatre in every city = 48

Whoops we are at 216.

Make all future citizens specialists and add at least 4 Circuses (extra +12) and you're already looking at twelve size 20 cities before stadiums (because reaching 20 will grant you an extra 12 from Theocracy).

To achieve this you need to:
a) be in reinaissance (for Freedom)
b) have 7 social policies adopted
c) have one World Wonder
d) have Horseback Riding, Printing Press and Construction

Even without Theatres, these hypothetical 12 cities can easily reach pop 14 the moment you enter Renaissance. The real limit being food, obviously.

Add Planned Economy and Stadiums and your 12 cities can easily reach pop 27 if not more.

 

[alpaca]

People already proved that there's no such thing as a happiness cap. A month ago.

There is a happiness cap: It's determined by the amount of happiness buildings you can have in each of your cities. However, it's not a cap in the sense that it can completely stop you from expanding because you can keep on growing horizontally even if you can't grow your old cities anymore. Food is also an issue, though.

I tried another game, with me ol' pal Moctezuma II (because I wanted to try the unique building and was reading an article about the Aztecs in National Geographic). This wasn't quite so successful because I had significant happiness problems through the whole game and two big deserts forcing me to place two of my growth cities far outside of my mainland (which meant I had to place a bunch of land-grabbing cities, too). In this game I also noticed how important my capturing the pyramids in that Gandhi game was, the amount of worker turns you save is staggering.

I didn't finish it but at turn 200 my cities had only 14-15 pop and my research was only ~500. This reinforces me in my belief that you want to play India (or maybe Babylon) for this.

 

[Bibor]

In this game I also noticed how important my capturing the pyramids in that Gandhi game was, the amount of worker turns you save is staggering.

Yup, if I have marble in my capital radius I usually go directly for Pyramids. Not only will I get a Great Engineer at some point, but the benefit of having the 50% bonus - even without citizenship - is insane. I'm not playing on Deity tho.

 

[alpaca]

Yup, if I have marble in my capital radius I usually go directly for Pyramids. Not only will I get a Great Engineer at some point, but the benefit of having the 50% bonus - even without citizenship - is insane. I'm not playing on Deity tho.

It's a real gamble, though. You sacrifice a lot of early-game growth for a random stab at getting the pyramids. Together with Citizenship you can spam farms a lot more quickly when you have them, though.

 

[alpaca]

Ok, so I gave this another try with Wu Zetian. I chose China this time instead of India based on my observation that the most important constraint is not happiness or science but the gold you need to rush-buy all these Hospitals and Medical Labs: a total of just about 25000 gold you need to push out in a short amount of time.

I also didn't go for Meritocracy this time but instead opted for Rationalism to help me get to Penicillin faster. In hindsight this may not have been the best of ideas because Meritocracy would have been very handy at the time before I finished the FP where I already had 25 cities. The science did help a bit, though, and I got to Penicillin at turn 176 or something. Unfortunately, I had to keep buying Med Labs until about turn 195. I hit a very close turn 204. I think you can shave off those 4 turns if the stars align right but I'm pretty sure you can't pull it off with anything resembling consistency, 10 cities with this amount of population is a very strong requirement.

The two end screens and savegame are attached. I also attached my most food-productive city, which is the only one of the 10 where I couldn't fit in a second one close by in its range of good terrain - at the end of the game, it produced almost 60 food surplus at 21 pop and therefore was still able to grow every other turn. If anybody's curious to try it, I think the cities will grow to size 30 before turn 225.

 

[aimlessgun]

Agh so close. I love the size 9 capital, was it in such a poor food spot that eve the maritime bonus wasn't going to make it a viable one of the 10?

 

[bryanw1995]

Big large cities take time to be constructed and even more time to be grown. This is possible but ABSOLUTELY IMPRACTICAL. Sure, it works on King difficulty but what about Deity? You don`t need a city which`s gold production is nearly eaten up by it`s building maintenance. Also instead of spending an eternity for building every building you dream of you are better off spending your hammers on an entire army capable of defending your not so big cities and taking over the whole world.

that's a terrible argument. deity in cIV doesn't exactly encourage normal behavior either.

 

[Bibor]

In my opinion, people vastly underestimated the value of Granary in CIV4 (99,9% of openings planned Granary as either first or second build) when comparing growth to that in CIV5.

It is pretty safe to say this thread proves that Hospitals are just as (really, really) critical for city growth in this game as Granaries were in CIV4.

Hospital can be built in Renaissance, yet one can get the feeling (from all the whines and screams) that it's practically the tech before Fusion.

 

[alpaca]

Agh so close. I love the size 9 capital, was it in such a poor food spot that eve the maritime bonus wasn't going to make it a viable one of the 10?

The maritime bonus is not so important in cities that will bring in >60 food. Beijing was in a highly productive position and focused on building wonders, which was probably a better use of the bonus. You also get a little bit more money by letting other cities than your capital grow, not that it matters much.

I think going for a productive capital is a good idea, in my case it had two cows and a bunch of hills. So many that I could plant a second production city right next to it and they both didn't have much trouble working hills.

Forgot to mention: In this game I went for the Taj first and conquered Chichen Itza from Mongolia in order to make good use of the "perpetual golden age for money" doctrine. Strangely enough, this game is all about money (not food) due to the rush-buying and growth buildings arriving late, it's a shame I don't have the worker turns to spam TPs first and convert them to farms later.

In my opinion, people vastly underestimated the value of Granary in CIV4 (99,9% of openings planned Granary as either first or second build) when comparing growth to that in CIV5.

It is pretty safe to say this thread proves that Hospitals are just as (really, really) critical for city growth in this game as Granaries were in CIV4.

Hospital can be built in Renaissance, yet one can get the feeling (from all the whines and screams) that it's practically the tech before Fusion.

Industrial, actually. But yes, hospitals and med labs are definitely what drives your growth. If such a building came around earlier, going for large cities would still not be worth it, though, because they are so expensive and there's little advantage over spreading out your citizens instead.

 

[EscapedGoat]

Industrial, actually. But yes, hospitals and med labs are definitely what drives your growth. If such a building came around earlier, going for large cities would still not be worth it, though, because they are so expensive and there's little advantage over spreading out your citizens instead.

I don't understand why they made the growth curve so steep compared to CIV4 (ref your math thread or the granary thread i forget ) I think citizen 20 in CIV 4 only cost something like 60 food, while in CIV 5 he costs hundreds. To make matters worse, the "granary" comes with industrial and costs a fortune, compared to dirt cheap and available with an early tech.

If there is a design reason behind it, it must be that large cities would be too powerfull, yet there is no evidence for this in game, since the multiplier buildings are relatively modest.

 

[alpaca]

I don't understand why they made the growth curve so steep compared to CIV4 (ref your math thread or the granary thread i forget ) I think citizen 20 in CIV 4 only cost something like 60 food, while in CIV 5 he costs hundreds. To make matters worse, the "granary" comes with industrial and costs a fortune, compared to dirt cheap and available with an early tech.

If there is a design reason behind it, it must be that large cities would be too powerfull, yet there is no evidence for this in game, since the multiplier buildings are relatively modest.

I'm pretty stumped about this as well. A linear cost increase like in Civ4 (iirc) would have been easily enough. My personal theory is that the devs for this game really like diminishing returns on everything for some reason. Most high-tier buildings are worse from a cost/benefit perspective than the lower-tier ones, border growth and social policies become more expensive, etc.

Another reason might be that the devs wanted to allow you to run excess happiness while still growing your cities.

In fact, I put this change on my personal minimod changelist a while ago

 

[alpaca]

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

This time I was playing Alexander. Following a similar logic like with Wu, Alexander gets more money than other civs by cutting down on your largest money drain: City states. In a normal game you will spend a couple thousand to renew those alliances, and Alexander really gets a significant bargain for this.

As I probably don't have to mention, the Companion Cavalry also allows you to destroy a couple of enemies after you set up your first five cities or so. In my case, I conquered America, Iroquois and India (who had the Chichen Itza). This gave me enough living space to spread out my food cities quite nicely. The ones I got from America were in plains, though, which slowed them down by four turns compared to the rest of my cities. To put this into perspective: They had something like 30-35 food per turn in the last 20 turns, while the other 8 cities had 45-65 - yes, I had 8 cities with more than 50 food surplus for a while. Production was a lot better in America, though.

Another small modification of the strategy was that I went for an early Big Ben before researching Biology, which had to wait until turn 155 or so, and waited to buy 7 Hospitals immediately when it was finished (the other 3 were built the hard way in the American cities and Athens). Big Ben therefore saved me something like 7000 gold total which allowed me to buy as many Medical Labs as I needed to push my weaker cities after Penicillin was bulbed on turn 178.

Interesting note: These cities are still growing strong and each of them has 30 base science. They only have a university at best but it should be possible to push science with them now if I so choose. It's also funny (and quite unintentional) that Megara lives up to its name and is my largest city

 

[Martin Alvito]

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.