Preventing city spamming?

[Martinus]

Yeah, this sounds about right to me. Expansion should mean sacrificing science or culture or faith or whatever in the short-term, but ultimately a big empire should be better.

I also think that roughly half-way, maybe two-thirds of the way through the game, the map should be just about filled up (excepting a few marginal deserts and polar regions). Civ V with its unclaimed land deep into the Information Age just didn't work for me.

That's just simply not true. There are large parts of the world right now which are either uninhabited or inhabited very sparsely (in a way not justifying a Civ city) - Artics and Antarctics, much of Australia, a lot of Africa, Amazonia, big parts of Siberia and Canada, etc.

 

[jjkrause84]

I don't understand why stopping REX is such a big priority. It just leads straight back to four city 'empires'.

Let us expand!

 

[jjkrause84]

That's just simply not true. There are large parts of the world right now which are either uninhabited or inhabited very sparsely (in a way not justifying a Civ city) - Artics and Antarctics, much of Australia, a lot of Africa, Amazonia, big parts of Siberia and Canada, etc.

Uninhabited? Yes. A total no man's land beyond national borders? Not so much....

 

[LDiCesare]

That's just simply not true. There are large parts of the world right now which are either uninhabited or inhabited very sparsely (in a way not justifying a Civ city) - Artics and Antarctics, much of Australia, a lot of Africa, Amazonia, big parts of Siberia and Canada, etc.

These lands are claimed nevertheless, and often exploited. Siberia is ripe with mines. Only the deserts (in China, Sahara, Australia) and Arctic/antarctic, are really un-settled. Arctic regions usually just don't show up on the map so they are irrelevant.
Even Sahara is rich with oil, so Algeria for instance definitely claims these lands because they provide a lot of income, even though they are mostly empty.
Thelands should not be empty on a real world map. There should be oil wells there, ich means they must be inside the cultural influence of some nearby city.

The city center = distrcit in terms of district cost increase can certainly make for less cities.

 

[Lucius_]

There is also the issue of yields not necessarily rising in a linear way with each city, as terrain and district limits play an important role.

One city with a well-placed Campus (e.g. next to 3 mountains) is going to outperform scientifically three cities with Campuses with no adjacency bonuses. So the incentives for rapid expansion are much smaller.

Not necessarily, if the mountain city cannot grow for whatever reason. A 12 pop city with 3 mountain campus, library, and university will be generating 36 science/turn. A 20 pop city with no campus will generate 40/turn. A 20 pop city with a campus without adjacency bonuses will generate 46/turn.

As for your initial example, if all cities are equal size, 3 cities with poor placed campuses will outperform that single city with the nice mountains, eventually. That mountain city will have an early advantage, but the difference would become more negligible as the cities become larger. By late game, the adjacency bonuses for those campuses will probably be insignificant, unless there is a policy or some other way that boosts the importance of adjacency later in the game.

 

[indradiva]

Not necessarily, if the mountain city cannot grow for whatever reason. A 12 pop city with 3 mountain campus, library, and university will be generating 36 science/turn. A 20 pop city with no campus will generate 40/turn. A 20 pop city with a campus without adjacency bonuses will generate 46/turn.

As for your initial example, if all cities are equal size, 3 cities with poor placed campuses will outperform that single city with the nice mountains, eventually. That mountain city will have an early advantage, but the difference would become more negligible as the cities become larger. By late game, the adjacency bonuses for those campuses will probably be insignificant, unless there is a policy or some other way that boosts the importance of adjacency later in the game.

There are at least 3 policies that double the adjacency bonuses and I think there is one for every appliable district