Poll - Average number of cities in your civilization?

[Civ Chemist]

It really depends on my chosen victory condition and strategy. For religious games I usually go 3-5 cities, as most of my faith is coming from the pilgrimage belief and holy sites prayers.
Reliquaries Culture victories can often be won with < 10 cities. For normal culture science victories it's usually 13-18 cities and in domination games 30+ (but often only 3-5 settled myself)

 

[Abaxial]

For me, average is misleading as it isn't a normal distribution. It depends very much on circumstances.

 

[tedhebert]

Same here - I regard Tall as 8-12, really surprised at the number of people who have tiny empires. I get it's easier to manage each one but don't you struggle to get anything done??

well the question is ´on average’...

i very often get to 20-25 also, especially if I decide to play an aggressive game. But my average run of the mill game where I don’t take any AI cities apart from 2-3 at the beggining of the game, i’ll usually end up around 13-17

 

[thecrazyscot]

I don’t often enjoy dealing with more than 10 cities tbh (I play on small maps with 8 AI).
More than 10 just starts to feels tedious for me to manage.

Yes, city governors need to be brought back.

They had them in Civ 2...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Yes, city governors need to be brought back.

You want the AI to run your cities??

 

[newbie2]

Same here - I regard Tall as 8-12, really surprised at the number of people who have tiny empires. I get it's easier to manage each one but don't you struggle to get anything done??

I mean, do you get anything done when you have to manage 15+ cities?

I only play emperor, and then 8-12 is a good amount, not to mention you run out of space if you don't warmonger. settler costs becomes too much as well (even with monumentality).
In my portugal game I had like 15, but that was because because I was buying settlers easily and needed to settle some islands

 

[thecrazyscot]

You want the AI to run your cities??

If I have more than 10? Yes! I'll manage my core cities and let the governors run all those ancillary ones that contribute little I'd even be cool with a "corruption" penalty for letting a governor run the city...

 

[The Civs 6]

Basically, if you give me any civ that isn't very specifically geared to playing tall, the marginal empire-wide profit of a new city is extremely high. This is so even if the city is placed on a tiny scrap of land. If you can get 1 trade route out of it, and 1 district (preferably one that is oriented to your victory condition), the only possible downside is it might piss off your neighbors. But even then the neighbors will ask you nicely not to do it again.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I only play emperor, and then 8-12 is a good amount

I play Emperor as well and generally peacefully, I aim for a core of 8-12 by t100/110 with another 4/8 to grab resources or spam trade routes over the next 50 turns or so.

 

[Caprikel]

Tall cities are simply more fun to manage than tiny trash cities that only exist for one or two districts, so I stick to 6-10.

 

[Snarf054]

I generally like to have enough cities to put a governor in each one. So 6-8 is my goal. If a map gets crowded early I'm fine with anything 4 or above. Very rarely I'll find myself alone on fantasy island and I'll balloon to 10 or more.

 

[shaglio]

I would say I average about 8-15 cities founded per game, but that's 2 overlapping categories

 

[Archon_Wing]

Probably 15? Although I never limit it to an arbitrary amount; that just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[PiR]

not what you think is best, but what you actually tend to do

well then

As many as I can get.

so I vote 20+

I mean, do you get anything done when you have to manage 15+ cities?

Yes, I spend 15 minutes per turn.

 

[The Civs 6]

I just don't get how you can play tall on Civ 6, unless you really hate micromanaging that much. To me, tall = lots of wonders and districts. But if you have anything less than 10 cities, that means your empire starts to get crowded and you have to start eating up some good yield hexes. So at some point that caps the potential of your cities to grow unless you are running a ton of internal trade routes.

And this is coming from someone who, in Civ 5, saw 4 cities as the absolute ideal.

 

[darkace77450]

I stop building cities as soon as I run out of governors, so it's seven for me.

 

[Francel]

Science, religion, and diplomacy wins are quite feasible with a single city.

Has anyone won a culture game with a single city? I think I will make that my next objective.

Admittedly, domination seems impossible.

 

[PiR]

Admittedly, domination seems impossible.

Well, I had one game where I wanted to experience meteors, and each time I conquered a capital, a meteor fell on it shortly after. Probably a coincidence, but still, what are the odds if it's not programmed?
I don't know if flooding could destroy opponents' capital?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Same here - I regard Tall as 8-12, really surprised at the number of people who have tiny empires. I get it's easier to manage each one but don't you struggle to get anything done??

Sometimes you don't have a choice.
Had a recent deity game where I was quickly locked in by Khmer and France on both side, and my starting location being really awkward on a narrow strip of land wedged between mountains and coast/lakes.
Could settle a maximum of 3 cities, but even city number 2 and 3 were about to be lost through loyalty by before I had researched craftsmanship (meaning no Governor for quite a while).
My only choice was to rush down France at that point, and the second she got her walls up it was another 5 turns till my cities would have been lost.
That was a reroll for me.

Other cases are perhaps not as extreme as that one, but a recent science victory I pulled off (also deity) had me pinched between several civs and the ocean to the south.
I managed to pull off a successful rush against Persia (go Gaul!), but had to be content with 8-9 cities for the rest of the game after that.
8-9 cities is about the point where I find that I can still manage to win comfortably on deity, and lots of games are like this for me before all the land is grabbed.
I do get some games where I get an enormous amount of land to settle (15+ cities), but that's hit or miss.

Otherwise related to this topic, I do suspect that the answers here will largely depend on the settings the game is played on.
Difficulty being one of them, but also if one plays with fewer players than the intended map size etc.

Games where I can settle 20+ cities are usually extremely rare for me.

Science, religion, and diplomacy wins are quite feasible with a single city.

Does require a lot of cheesing (and cooking) though, at least if we're talking higher difficulties.
One does not start a completely random map and proceed to comfortably win a SV on a OCC.

 

[PiR]

Otherwise related to this topic, I do suspect that the answers here will largely depend on the settings the game is played on.
Difficulty being one of them, but also if one plays with fewer players than the intended map size etc.

Well for me it obviously totally depends on map size. I adapt my number of cities to that.