Organized = small cities?

[Tecibbar]

I was a big fun of big cities. But in my current game I found with organized, small cities can really out produce big cities, especially with slavery.

So for all you organize lovers out there. Do you found lots of overlapping small cities and build no health/luxury building?

 

[Kesshi]

Tecibbar,

The Organized trait reduces civic maintenance, nothing else. To me, this permits me to run expensive civics where it would otherwise not be beneficial. Civics such as Vassalge and Bureaucracy are very expensive, and are two of my favourite civics. Properly managed, larger cities will eventually outproduce Slavery whipping of smaller cities.

Also, due to the way Cottages grow and the way city maintenance is calculated I tend to almost always overlap my early cities.

 

[Earthling]

Well, I assume he is spamming cheap courthouses in his cities - that's almost as important as civic costs can get. This can work fine on smaller maps especially in the early ages (when you can still whip units for one pop apiece). Aiming for free specialists through mercantilism/SoL can work (and corporations are very favorable for getting the small cities to amount to something late game). But basically, there's no need to cram in cities when there's more land to be claimed (larger maps) but it is a good use of organized. Have you ever tried an EE (espionage economy) Tecibbar?

 

[Iranon]

In a way, Organised does favour small cities.

At default civics it'll save you 1 gold per city, 0.2 gold per population +/- some change (fudge factors to prevent big upkeep jumps and lots of rounding; rarely more and usually 1-5 gold less).
So a size 5 city would theoretically need to work 2 commerce tiles (40%) to have the savings equal additional commerce we could get from FIN while a size 10 city would only have to work 3 tiles (30%). That's imo not the defining characteristic of ORG though.

More importantly, it's an economic edge that stays active if you're neglecting commerce/specialists in favour of more production, becoming even stronger if you run civics that increase said production (Organised Religion, Bureaucracy).
As such, it's especially useful if you're abusing your economy and keeping it aloft by cash injections outside of tile yields - be it from the Great Lighthouse and trade routes or spoils from pillaging/conquest.

As such, I find it more useful to a warmonger or an infrastructure nut than a techer extraordinaire. The cheap courthouses are the final touch to allow fairly easy recovery from an economy stretched to the breaking point for some time.

 

[Kesshi]

In a way, Organised does favour small cities.

Iranon,

I'm not sure I agree with this logic. Bigger cities mean more civic costs and more city maintenance. 50% of a bigger number is always going to be bigger than 50% of a smaller number.

 

[Iranon]

Well, the typical choice is between many small and a few bigger cities... in the short term because we're balancing horizontal vs. vertical growth and in the long term because of city spacing. Depending on whether you avoid overlap (to make every multiplier and especially national wonder count) or settle them 3 tiles apart (to circumvent the need for cap raisers, in some times culture buildings and to prepare to abuse per-city-bonuses) you can end up with quite different numbers of cities for a given tract of land.

The comparison with FIN still stands - the bigger the cities, the smaller the percentage of FIN-boosted commerce tiles we need to work to surpass the upkeep savings of ORG.
Also, I won't have the luxury of working as many commerce tiles with many small cities - every single one needs basic infrastructure and a garrison unit, pushing me towards hammers rather than commerce.


The building discounts also help in a many small cities situation - courthouses become more important since maintenance scales with number of cities, not size. Discounted lighthouses are crucial in otherwise marginal fishing villages without resources (likely to be founded mostly for trade routes) to get them started. Factories are a long way off, but one reason to avoid industrialisation would be that my cities are pushing the health caps anyway and it's a questionable investment until I get a few later techs... irrelevant to smaller cities.

 

[Kesshi]

Iranon,

Pardon me for not understanding, but I still don't see how any of that negates this line:

50% of a bigger number is always going to be bigger than 50% of a smaller number.

 

[civvver]

I think the only important way organized effects many small cities vs a few large ones is the cheaper courthouses. A bunch of small cities suddenly can come at a large maintenance discount with cheap courthouses.

Otherwise the larger cities leveraging more expensive civics seems negligible to me- small cities benefit from OR and vassalage just as much as big ones. Bureaucracy seems to be the only real civic that requires a large city to be effective.

I think what you're finding is that in the past you may have grown vertically too much while neglecting your horizontal growth, but I doubt this has anything to do with the organized trait.

 

[z0wb13]

Iranon,

I'm not sure I agree with this logic. Bigger cities mean more civic costs and more city maintenance. 50% of a bigger number is always going to be bigger than 50% of a smaller number.

the cost of city maintenance increases geometrically as you control more cities. being organized indirectly affects this by allowing the construction of 1/2 priced courts.

so, correct me if i'm wrong, civic maintenance costs scale linearly by taking your total population as its one big datum. so if you had 3 population spread over 7 cities or 7 pop over 3 cities, you would pay civic maintenance for 21 people and being organized cuts that price in half. (maybe not?)

however, and i guess that this depends on the map size, the city maintenance cost for 7 cities is going to be more than 3, *almost regardless of total population, even though larger cities cost more. and, it will probably be a lot more. so, being organized makes it cheaper and easier to whip/build courts, cutting that city's maintenance in half.

so i think organized is a good trait for large empires, but especially large, cold, cramped empires with lots of suboptimal tundra and ocean tiles. financial is great when you can afford it, but you need some way to feed it.

 

[Kesshi]

z0wb13,

Oh, I think I see. You're talking about the number of cities, not the size of them.

 

[Iranon]

@ Kesshi: I think there's always a trade-off between size of individual cities and number of them... so to me 'small cities' will carry a heavy association of 'many cities'. Maybe I should have made that clearer?

@ zOwb13: I'd like to point out that poor land isn't necessary for ORG to shine compared to other economy traits - the same maths applies to good land if we decide to focus on something other than commerce.
This doesn't have to be heavy specialist use - hammers for warmongering until someone cries Uncle and gives us techs for free also applies, as does going overboard on wonders/infrastructure.

 

[Kesshi]

Iranon,

I find thay my choice in land improvements dictate the size of my cities more than the number of cities or the spacing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Iranon,

Pardon me for not understanding, but I still don't see how any of that negates this line:

You are applying the courthouse savings to more cities, and your aggregate pop will be at least similar in both cases (many close cities or bigger spread ones), and possibly in favor of tight spacing. ORG can definitely make more sense there.

 

[Kesshi]

You are applying the courthouse savings to more cities, and your aggregate pop will be at least similar in both cases (many close cities or bigger spread ones), and possibly in favor of tight spacing. ORG can definitely make more sense there.

TheMeInTeam,

Yeah, I get that now. They were assuming that when they said "smaller cities" everyone understood that it was synonymous to "more cities." I did not. I find that I fluxuate between a CE and a SE economy quite a bit now, and that the improvements dictate the size of my city, not the number of cities. Even with heavy overlapping, I will still have high population cities while running a heavy SE.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TheMeInTeam,

Yeah, I get that now. They were assuming that when they said "smaller cities" everyone understood that it was synonymous to "more cities." I did not. I find that I fluxuate between a CE and a SE economy quite a bit now, and that the improvements dictate the size of my city, not the number of cities. Even with heavy overlapping, I will still have high population cities while running a heavy SE.

Eventually. Early in the game it's difficult/unnecessary to have a ton of large cities with overlap when using mostly specialist-based farm cities. Post biology, that becomes far more a reality, and spec-reliant empires will tend to have more pop.

Spreading pop across a ton of smaller cities for specialists makes more sense than trying to create a slew of size 30+ cities located where you'd put cottage cities to accomplish the same thing. This is because happy and especially health (which the slider won't address) caps can make getting utterly huge cities brutal, while having more cities doesn't hurt as much and has some benefits attached. Whipping and drafting are both very typical means of hammers in food-heavy cities, and both are more efficient with smaller cities. Of course, by "smaller" I'm talking well over 10 by the mid game, some closing in on 20...but that's very much a post biology thing to have ALL your overlap cities looking that way.