Opt. number of cities and...

[WaterDragoon]

I have a question, In my warlord game i hae now built my 50+ city. I know about the opt number of cities, my question is is 50 to much??? I also n4eed about 12 more to cover my continent. second question. I am worried about my large coastline, is it a threat for the A.I civs to launch an atttack or would they search for an area with no cultural border and try to land there?

If i have to put a unit or two all along my coasts i am going to be in debt....

 

[WackenOpenAir]

You never have too many cities. Every city is an addition to your empire. If you have many though they furthest are very corrupt and only good to support some scientists. 100 far away cities have no negative effect on your good cities close to the capital though.

They can attack anywhere on your coastline. The best defence is a bunch of fast moving units like knights or cavalry. These can cover quite a large piece of coastline. Place them strategically.

 

[Delphi456]

1. You will eventaully want rail covering your entire perimeter, so start now by laying roads around the perimeter. Rail will allow you to transport and fire artillery in the same turn. You will be untouchable! But make sure you have improved your core tiles before doing this.

2. Turn your highly corrupt towns into science farms and have them crank out workers. Add these workers back to your core towns to bring the pop up to 7, so you get 3 unit support instead of 1.

3. If you hold off on your golden age until your core cities are at ~ pop 10, you'll have gold shooting out your ars...

 

[Synobun]

The highest city number if I remember is around 500... No worries of bumping into the max city limit.

 

[gmaharriet]

I just finished winning a game last night where I had 168 cities/towns. Most of them were tax/science farms, but I was able to do 4 to 5-turn research in the Modern Age and had plenty of gold. Besides using the corrupt towns for specialists, I have them building workers, settlers and artillery.

Besides, you can only have 1 army for every 4 towns. You can never have too many towns!

 

[TimBentley]

513 cities is too many. Seriously, you can have too many cities in communism (the following numbers are for C3C, it was much worse in vanilla and PTW). For example, on a huge map with 200 cities, corruption (for non palace/FP/SPHQ cities, obviously) is about 40% with a courthouse and police station.

 

[Aabraxan]

Besides, you can only have 1 army for every 4 towns. You can never have too many towns!

Or too many armies.

 

[WaterDragoon]

Hmm interesting.... I have set up the far cities as size one science farm, sometimes size 3.... anwho, I thought that artillery was useless. i remember someone posting in a thread of mine not to make artillery.

So, I guess there is always going to be the threat of war. I am going to try and keep my army strength to be strongre than everyone and hope that keeps them away. thank you all for you posts...

 

[darski]

. I am worried about my large coastline, is it a threat for the A.I civs to launch an atttack or would they search for an area with no cultural border and try to land there?

If i have to put a unit or two all along my coasts i am going to be in debt....

They will try to land and put a city on any _and I do mean any - square they can get on and settle. They will not generally land/ intrude into your borders from a vessel but an un-bordered square will get their attention. put a warrior, or such, on a square that is just sitting there if you can until your culture pushes outward.

 

[Aabraxan]

second question. I am worried about my large coastline, is it a threat for the A.I civs to launch an atttack or would they search for an area with no cultural border and try to land there?

If i have to put a unit or two all along my coasts i am going to be in debt....

First, the AI is terrible at naval invasions. Second, if you control your continent and have rails, just don't let them land. Rail the perimeter of your continent. Keep a stack with artillery and your best offensive units on the rails. If an AI ship gets next to your continent, go ping it with artillery and kill whatever lands. If you don't have rails yet, a few stacks of fast attackers go a long way to defending, because of the area they can cover.

 

[Nitfan]

@TimBentley - are you sure those numbers are right. I've got 119 in my current game and don't have higher than 20% in any city w/o courthouse/police station (level is Deity). Maybe there is a huge effect after you exceed an OCN but I would expect that I've already done that.

How much do you suspect the commercial trait helps? I'm playing as Iroquois.

 

[Aceman101]

I think it's actually 512 cities your allowed in complete. But for unpatched vanilla versions its 256 cities. I read this in the "Changes with the 1.29f patch".

 

[gmaharriet]

I thought that artillery was useless. i remember someone posting in a thread of mine not to make artillery.

Well, artillery is both a specific unit AND a sort of generic term for catapults, trebs, cannons and actual artillery units. Each one gets increasingly better at hitting their targets and doing more damage.

A lot depends, I think, on your level of gameplay. At Chieftain through Regent (maybe Monarch), you can get by with just building a lot of units and charging straight at the AI. As the difficulty increases, there is more need for using combined arms (offense/defense/bombard units together), and I have found it effective at lower play levels as well. If nothing else, it's great practice for moving up later.

Artillery can do a lot of damage to the enemy before your offensive units attack, so you take fewer losses while having better chances of promotions/leaders when you win, so I build a LOT of them...very often 3 or 4 times as many arty as actual units...especially in late game.

There are a couple of War Academy articles dealing with both offensive and defensive use of artillery, and I'd strongly recommend reading them.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

How in the world do you people get hundreds of cities?!! I can't even imagine that. I havn't been able to get past 20-30 something at the very most at the start of the industrial ages... not mentioning the fact my neighbors take up all the rest of the land that I don't have.

And all of those cities are churning out the military units I need to defend them and make strategic conquering campains. I try to build them up as much as I can but with as many wars I've been in this game I haven't been able to. Heck, not even a majority of them have a Barracks, I don't think. That's just how busy the wars has kept me.

And I can't even imagine cranking out settlers if I can't do that.

How are you people getting that many cities?

 

[Aceman101]

For me 200 cities would be average. But I'm more intense on building cities than most people. And since I play with more civs there no room for thos cities. So I wage War.

Surely you can build more than 20 cities for the industrial era.

Ever heard of settler factories?
Get heaps of them. Irrigate and make granarys. Make settler after settler.
You also need some shield production in settler factories, so it doesn't take too long to make the settler itself.

Also wage war for cities capture them and get troops to quel the resistors.

 

[Delphi456]

How are you people getting that many cities?

1. By not building any AA wonders. These take away from production.
2. Don't build temples. Build only settlers, workers and military.
3. Place cities CxxC.

 

[MAS]

or play on bigger maps (but those take longer to play)

 

[gmaharriet]

I havn't been able to get past 20-30 something at the very most at the start of the industrial ages... not mentioning the fact my neighbors take up all the rest of the land that I don't have.

I've never counted how many I had at the start of the Industrial Age...probably not many more than you do. It's during that age, when you get rails and real artillery, that you can conquer several cities in one turn.

Those lands are usually 100% corrupt, so place your settlers between their old cities ICS style (CxCxCxC), water everything flat, and turn them into tax/science farms. You can also farm settlers and artillery in those towns, increasing both your firepower and number of new towns from those settlers. By the end of the game (Standard map) I'll have between 125 to 175 towns, usually winning early in the Modern Age.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

Thanks for the advice! I think the biggest problem I'm having right now is that so much of my terrain is made up Mountains/Volcanos, Jungle, and Marshlands. And what's not is weak plains and sand tiles. I have very little grassland and a offset pattern for my river floodplain tiles. And they're all stacked for miles and miles together too. I don't think I've ever seen as many unusable tiles as that together before.

Simply put, I think this is the most difficult terain in my civ I've ever been dealt with or seen. The A.I seems to a little better terrain though.

I picked 4000 BC in the game selection screen so it suprises me the land is this tough.

 

[Delphi456]

During this learning phase you may want to go with 5M BC to give yourself better terrain so you can learn proper city placement and land improvment.