Question about city spamming

[SaucyJ]

In Civ V you had to deal with global happiness so that spamming a ton of cities wasn't optimal, as the more cities you had the faster your happiness dropped until it was in the crapper.

However, in Civ VI it seems that really, the only limiter to population contentment is amenities, which seem to be strictly at the city level, not the global level.

With that said, is there any penalty whatsoever (ignoring the turns taken to build them that could go towards some other building/unit) to just spamming settlers and founding as many cities as you possibly can?

 

[Quotey]

Each Luxury provides 4 cities with 1 amenity (on small maps? might scale with size). So you will have less amenities across your empire spamming cities. That's the only global limit. Spamming cities seems to be pretty good, yeah.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Amenities are still partially global - each luxury provides 4 cities with 1 amenite each - so there is still a happiness penalty to growth, though nothing like the civ 5 system. It allows lots of small cities or fewer large ones, but puts a limit on lots of large cities.

Defence is another limiting factor in the early game - more cities means more targets for barbs and you have to defend a larger territory with slow-moving troops. After a while this stops being important and extra cities pushing back fog start to make defence easier. It gets harder again if you start settling on a distant landmass that has AI or barbarians.

There's a bit of diplo downside to settling close to other civs which you hit pretty quickly when expanding. But if they're that close and you're keen to expand quickly, they're usually a target so good relations aren't a priority

There are huge advantages to expanding - production, growth, cheaper districts placed earlier, CS bonuses, per-citizen yields, resources, denying terrain to opponents etc etc. Conquest is usually even better than settling - cities and entire civs can be captured with zero losses. Many strategies for quick victory include rapid expansion to 20+ cities by turn 100 or soon after.

Eventually though the cost of new settlers start to outweigh the benefit - the cost per settler goes up with each one built, and cities start being placed in low-yield spots in tundra or desert. Depending on your victory condition it will also make sense to switch focus to those districts at some point rather than settle all the free land on the map - as the cost of districts increases, new cities take longer to start adding value .

 

[joncnunn]

Eventually though the cost of new settlers start to outweigh the benefit - the cost per settler goes up with each one built, and cities start being placed in low-yield spots in tundra or desert. Depending on your victory condition it will also make sense to switch focus to those districts at some point rather than settle all the free land on the map - as the cost of districts increases, new cities take longer to start adding value .

Use of an early REX plus district lock in price exploit (choose a district the moment you found a city / hit pop 4 / 7 / 10 etc but put no hammers into it until ready for it) helps avoid a lot of the district cost increase.

 

[Victoria]

There does become a time when settlers get too expensive as already said and thats the real time.

Without taking cities you can grow to around 10 cities by turn 100.
I will often build 2-4 cities by turn 100 and then have about 10-15 by turn 200 and stop because There is no value in settling anywhere else (fresh water and resources all gone) but I will hold a settler or 2 to annoy a civ on purpose (trolling city) and also England gets a free troop with every city on a foreign continent.

As the cities will grow less and start costing amenities cities can become more of a problem after 20 and certainly you get less value. There is also the overhead of maintaining all these cities.

In old money you may call 5 cities tall and 15 cities wide but there really is no "tall" in this game.

 

[fortydayweekend]

In old money you may call 5 cities tall and 15 cities wide but there really is no "tall" in this game.

Yeah.. also as there's no real need to go tall. No multipliers means no point in having mega cities (for the first time in the civ franchise). While that's not a reason to go wide in itself it means there's less opportunity cost to it

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I'd ask one other fundamental question: after how many pop would you consider a city "tall"? I've been questioning it after so many of my cities end up with 9 pop or more by the endgame if I don't limit growth.

Personally, I find that since the Factory nerf, I've been keen on growing cities for the tile yields and extra districts (which may increase local production and trade route yield).

 

[joncnunn]

I'd ask one other fundamental question: after how many pop would you consider a city "tall"? I've been questioning it after so many of my cities end up with 9 pop or more by the endgame if I don't limit growth.

By the end of the game 25+ if it's the capital, 20+ otherwise.
I'd consider a size 9 city after neighborhoods become available (which largely negate the housing capacity limits and by then there's large farm bonuses) to be tiny.
After you've founded how ever many cities you are going to build, there's no reason not to try to get each cities population as high as practical.

 

[FurballRocker]

I'd ask one other fundamental question: after how many pop would you consider a city "tall"? I've been questioning it after so many of my cities end up with 9 pop or more by the endgame if I don't limit growth.

Personally, I find that since the Factory nerf, I've been keen on growing cities for the tile yields and extra districts (which may increase local production and trade route yield).

I am not sure the old terms of tall and wide really apply. Instead i think of core and satellite cities.

I would probably consider anything over 7 to be a equivalent to an old tall city, what i would call a core city currently considering there is little advantage to growing most cities over that size as the main power of cities comes from the districts and you only need the population to build the districts where 7 pop will get you a commercial district, harbour and district of your chosen victory type or if not able to build a harbour you can build a top up district for something you are lacking although i often leave my none coastal satellite cities at 4 pop unless i have a excess of amenities.

For my core (tall) cities i tend to aim for 16 which will allow me to build a:-
commercial district
industrial district
campus
theater district
entertainment district
harbour if coastal or possible encampment/airport if not although i tend to have encampments in satellite cities rather than core cities and buy units rather tan build them.

 

[paulthebug]

For my core (tall) cities i tend to aim for 16 which will allow me to build a:-
commercial district
industrial district
campus
theater district
entertainment district
harbour if coastal or possible encampment/airport if not although i tend to have encampments in satellite cities rather than core cities and buy units rather tan build them.

Hi FurballRocker,
I don't understand, even if you can build them, but why would you wanna build IZ or ED in all of your core tall cities?
Wouldn't you rather build more units or run more projects?

 

[FurballRocker]

Well in regard to units by the time of building IZ and ED i am usually getting more than enough gold per turn to just be buying units rather than building them and in regard to projects i tend to do projects in my small satellite cities which run out of things to build very quickly.

As for building ED and IZ in all core cities, while they have been made less effective in the last patch so cities could only get one bonus from IZ and ED so they no longer stack my core cities tend to be the cities i want to produce big things in like wonders etc and as the early adjacency bonuses and workshop cogs only affect the city it was built in i like to ensure my core cities have maximum production potential.
The same applies to the ED where the complex itself and arena only apply amenities to the city it was built in and as these will be my tallest cities they will need the most amenities.

With the new overlap restriction in mind though i try to space my core cities out so there is as little or no overlap if possible to maximise the effectiveness of the IZ and ED to my empire as a whole.

Always baring in mind though that this is always taken as a general guideline rather than a defined rule as there are times for example where i have more than enough amenities for my empire so there is no point in building ED so i may end up with a harbour and an airport but no ED for example if the situation seems appropriate. Therefore i aim for 16 pop as it will allow the most flexibility to build everything i may need in the cities that can build them quickest and often need them most rather than because i will build everything there.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I've built Aerodromes in my spaceport cities too, mostly while I was waiting for Rocketry. It's useful to have that extra bit of production when building the spaceport, minor as it is (maybe shaving off 1 or 2 turns).