Walter Hawkwood
RI Curator
Sure, not perfect, but that's how we decided to implement it, and it's unlikely to see major changes. Don't forget that your total production also grows non-linearly with the number of cities. In Civ 4, each new city normally provides significant net benefit for the whole civ, due to how resources are handled. 5 cities will produce not 5x more than 1 city, but a fair bit more than that. That's not even to mention the factors of strategic depth - a bigger civ will have more hinterland cities that don't need as much protection. It does prompt bigger civs to garrison hinterlands with irregulars (which scale upwards way less than everything else), but that's actually more realistic, as that's how it was IRL as well.
All in all, it's ultimately up to you whether to turn it on or off, but you're making an a priori assessment of something that was balanced and tested for several years (at least for non-extreme map sizes; might actually be a good idea to apply a bit of correction for tiny and huge maps).
All in all, it's ultimately up to you whether to turn it on or off, but you're making an a priori assessment of something that was balanced and tested for several years (at least for non-extreme map sizes; might actually be a good idea to apply a bit of correction for tiny and huge maps).