Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

How many cities? As many as you can get and defend, as long as they are valuable (good commerce or production) or give you access to an important resource. You just have to keep maintenance costs in check, which means having a well placed capital / forbidden palace (or state property civic) and courthouses in every city. Costs go up with city distance from capital and population.

It also depends on map size. You don't want to lose too much ground to the AI, so you need to expand before they get all your surrounding good land or they turn into super powers with double or triple the number of cities.

One thing to be wary of is settling cities before you can afford it. Don't go crazy before you have access to courthouses, and don't settle if you are already low on treasury and running 0-20% research.

You might even want to prechop forest in the area (if under borders), then settle the city with a fast courthouse.

Also, do not settle more than one city on the same foreign continent, as colonial maintenance runs high.
Corporation expenses are also significant (but usually worth it).

Coastal cities can usually pay for themselves through trade routes (civics / buildings / open borders / great lighthouse / population / ). Inland cities need commerce tiles from resources / cottages or could run specialists.

Otherwise, they'll need to be paid with money coming from other places (a good production city or great people farm is usually a worthwhile investment, even if it doesn't provide much commerce, so is a city giving you access to that single copper/iron/horse/ivory/coal/oil/aluminum resource, or even luxury/health ones you don't already have).

I believe 10 commerce would usually offset the costs in a city.
Build lots of commerce cities (cottages or farms with specialists, you need to choose a strategy and synchronize you cities and civics).
When in trouble run some merchant specialists.

And don't forget to train enough workers. Unimproved land isn't very profitable, it doesn't hurt to improve some of the land before you settle.
Lastly, keep cities connected through rivers, roads, coastlines. (settle once you have the spot connected)

Remember to chose good city spots with a focus on food, even if it means wasting a few tiles, or overlapping some borders.

There's a lot more to be said... but that's all I've got right now.

 

I have three cities with Legendary Culture and no Culture Victory. No options were clicked.

What gives?

 

Save/screenshots please? Did it specifically say legendary culture or 50000 culture? If playing on a different speed than normal, you need varying amounts of culture for legendary.

 

Six is pretty much the absolute minimum (on a standard sized map) because several national wonders require six cities before you are allowed to build them. As Ansive said, more is always better so long as you don't crash your economy. And, yes, there is no distinction between a captured city and one you found yourself.

It's not an estimate. It is a number. The happy cap is the limit beyond which new citizens refuse to work. You rarely want to exceed this, generally only when you are about to whip the population back or are about to increase the cap in some way. Initially, with an MP, the cap is 5 in the capital and 4 in other cities (at the very lowest difficulty levels, it is more). There is an article in War Academy about methods to increase the cap.

The happy cap for a particular city in its city screen. Mouse over the info to the right of the line which says what the city is building near the top-centre of the screen. Above that is info about the health cap. Exceeding the health cap is OK. It simply means that your city will grow more slowly. Still, that's not desirable so you should look at increasing that as well when you reach the limit.

 

Isn't that pretty much what I said?

 

4-6 cities isn't bad to start off, but if that's all you've got at mid-game you're probably in trouble. By enabling/managing some combination of trade routes, wonders, cottages, resources, specialists, civics, techs, and buildings, you should be able to get into a position to expand some more (peacefully if sites are available, through war if they're not) while still maintaining your research.

Check the War Academy for details.

 

No. 4567890

 

Thank you, I really wasn't expecting so much help.

It's all been noted. The more I find out, the more I'm enjoying the game - although I am just concentrating on cities at the moment.

I haven't played since the first edition of CIV (can't even remember if that was on the Amiga or PC, it was so long ago!) so as you can imagine there's a lot for me to take in. But it's fun.

Thanks again people.

EDIT: Improving land before settling the area is something I just hadn't thought of but makes so much sense! And mousing over the happiness/health info is a great tip, I've got more understanding now.

 

You can't improve land that's not inside your cultural borders. Otherwise it would be awesome!

 

You can build roads and chop forests outside your cultural borders, however. If I have a spare worker or two I'll often send them to chop a forest where I plan to settle, and then build a road back to my empire. This way, I get a few extra hammers for my nearest existing city and when I settle the new city is already connected.

 

Yeah, that. But you can't farm, plantation, mine, etc.

 

Yeah, I've been building roads outside me borders to link cities; but I didn't realise about the forests.

Just to get it straight - if I fell forests outside my city borders, then that temporary production will be assigned to the nearest city from that tile? And it's just forest, not jungle?

 

I don't think you get any production if the forests are outside your borders. You also get less if the forest is beyond the city's BFC.

Pre-chop the forests (down to 1 turn, use the BUG mod), settle the new city, then finish chopping. Closest city gets the boost.

No, jungles don't provide production when removed.

 

you can chop forests outside your culture for some hammers, it decreases with distance (and I think would be more if it was in your culture) I sometimes do this when a neighbour is threatening some forest tiles just outside a city that has low culture, so I chop the forests so the AI can't

While improvements have to be in your culture too, you can still 'prebuild' or 'pre-improve' a city if it falls in other cities' culture. This will probably be at least the third ring of 2 cities (ofc you could share some of each BFC) and could arise when you settle a city further for blocking or getting a resource, or maybe a site that isn't great for initial cities but can be improved and beneficial once you have other cities that can support it (so this might be 6th city and after period)

 

It specifically says Legendary. I have confirmed that Culture victories are enabled.

 

All of the three cities are stated as legendary ?

 

Yes. Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai.

 

Could you please provide a save/screenshot so we could see the circumstance?

 

Maybe you, or somebody else already won.

 

You can also chop forests in enemy territory when at war, if you want, but I think the hammers go to the nearest city (which would be the enemies, unless you capture it before the chop is finished or have a closer city).