So what do you think the ideal empire size is?

[Gorey]

Seems that unlike Civ 4, more is not always a good thing. Since happiness is global, and science is based on population there's a tradeoff.

More /w smaller cities
Less /w bigger cities.

The more approach has the benifit of faster population growth when cities are small, but you have to build alot more buildings and incur all that maintenance. Faster growth means quicker increases in science and more gold tiles being worked faster. On the downside, you're gonna be dealing with the happy cap alot sooner, so that means less extra happy to drop in the golden age bucket over the course of the game.

The less approach has the benefit of less maintenance, but slower increases in science due to slowing of growth as the city gets bigger. On the up side, you will likely have higher happy left over to hit more golden ages.

Somewhere in there is a happy medium, and im still trying to find it. My last game i decided to stick with just 4 cities to see what happened. I was able to keep up with the AI quite easily on King.

In Civ4 i would have been creamed with only 4 cities.

 

[aimlessgun]

As long as you can keep settling them near new luxuries, more is always better in Civ5, frankly.

My first game I went up to 12, seemed like a nice number. Had solid population (10-15) in most of them. I later found out from a gold and beaker perspective it wasn't all that great, but the hammers were astounding.

 

[Show]

You know... you can just ignore happiness, the minus aren't as big of a deal as it's supposed to be, at least once your core cities have grown enough.

Golden age is better triggered by other means, generally you just want to be as big as you can for science and keep up with AI on higher difficulty levels.

However , yes you can do with almost no cities even on high difficulty level, the 1 unit per tiles makes producing units more or less useless, 5 units can conquer the world. For continent play you might have to settle a bit tho after conquering the continent as 1 civ will probably gobble all of the other and become an unstoppable monster and you need to somehow keep up.

It's a bit more complicated with culture(for other reasons than happiness), but if your new city can produce 30% of what your best city produces it's worth it. Puppets are always worth it culture wise tho.

 

[delra]

2-4 initial cities depending how much space I have and how many initial good spots I can find. Then up to a dozen over time.

Most I had was 15 or 16 but that was when I was lame and still on Prince.

 

[lilnev]

As long as you can keep settling them near new luxuries, more is always better in Civ5, frankly.

And when there are no more unclaimed luxuries, don't make any more cities. The world consists of scattered luxury tiles and their immediate surroundings. Everything else is wasteland, dead, not worth settling, I don't care how many food resources there are. That's one of the things I don't like about V.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Im finding that the largest Civ wins the vast majority of the time and usually it's not even close. Once a Civ (human or AI) hits critical mass, it becomes self-sustaining and can easily continue to grow until victory.

I find that unfortunate because I dont want to have to go on a conquering spree every game that someone else is doing it.

 

[Nefelia]

And when there are no more unclaimed luxuries, don't make any more cities. The world consists of scattered luxury tiles and their immediate surroundings. Everything else is wasteland, dead, not worth settling, I don't care how many food resources there are. That's one of the things I don't like about V.

Keep some small happy cities (size 3-4 building colosseums, etc) to support bigger cities elsewhere. There are plenty of cities one would want to build but not grow, so make the most of them.

If your income is particularly good, you can just end up buying those +happy buildings in the smaller cities as needed. The smaller cities will not be able to compensate for the maintenance costs, but the size 18+ city you will then be able to build will more than cover the costs.

 

[bigfatjonny]

And when there are no more unclaimed luxuries, don't make any more cities. The world consists of scattered luxury tiles and their immediate surroundings. Everything else is wasteland, dead, not worth settling, I don't care how many food resources there are. That's one of the things I don't like about V.

No, no, no!!!

The only reason you need to stop building cities is when you have land that cant sustain itself, or if you cant produce more culture per turn from the city than it increase the cap by - if you want further culture.

Gold can be very easily converted in Happiness in cities by purchasing buildings. More smaller cities are more cost effective happiness wise because the more advanced buildings cost more per turn. In this way, each happiness resource you take is effectively 5 - 8 gpt that you save yourself from having to build happiness buildings.

A Colosseum alone produces 4 happiness and costs 3 gpt, with no SP this can support 2 population (2 pop + 2 for city).
2 pop working trade posts = 4 gpt + 1 from city (not including market or other buildings.)
Therefore this city is already making a profit.

Infinite city spam is a possibility, you just need to be able to afford the buildings.
Want a 20 pop city? Simply build a small city next door (or somewhere) and build all happiness buildings, cost 18gpt inc circus, gives +15 happiness.

Don't complain about happiness, it is all about gpt - what you can afford.
12 grassland tiles completely devoid of any bonus resources can bring in 24 gpt with no bonuses. It is all about getting tiles worked and earning their keep.

 

[delra]

Remember that difficulty breaks happiness.

 

[kaltorak]

4-5 controled cities and lots of puppets

 

[Trickster7135]

On a standard map, I find five or six the best. I usually go for a cultural victory as well.

 

[Bibor]

I just played a standard map emperor and had my own 10 cities (2 of them former capitals and 2 captured ones) and 1 puppet capital. It's prefectly doable to have a lot of cities, but time your "annexes" with Golden Ages (so Corthouses get produced fast) and let them be puppets while they build useful buildings (happy/culture ones).

As a rule of thumb, for every 5 population over 10 in your main cities, you can add another city, because the large high production cities can build up happy buildings as needed.

 

[Daniel D]

I've been staying as small as possible while picking up as many puppets with decent resources as I can in my last few games. Happiness is of value, but the bigger motivator for me has been keeping culture developing at a decent pace until I can unlock the civics that I want that game.

 

[EscapedGoat]

IMO the "ideal" strategy will in the end prove to be some sort of infinite city sprawl because of the bonuses you can get to your city squares are just obscene. With 4 maritime allies (not so hard to pull off) you can have a city square producing 10 food, 2 hammers and 1 coin right off the bat. If you can assemble the production needed for happy buildings quickly, it's essentially something you could do to infinity even without luxuries, and then the answer to your question is really just "as big as possible".

 

[gingerbill]

I tend to build 4-6 of my own , then at some point capture a few of the best cities of my enemy and stick to that . As someone above said i think its worth expanding always if theres a new happy resource .

 

[Bibor]

IMO the "ideal" strategy will in the end prove to be some sort of infinite city sprawl because of the bonuses you can get to your city squares are just obscene. With 4 maritime allies (not so hard to pull off) you can have a city square producing 10 food, 2 hammers and 1 coin right off the bat. If you can assemble the production needed for happy buildings quickly, it's essentially something you could do to infinity even without luxuries, and then the answer to your question is really just "as big as possible".

That's not even a remotely "ideal" strategy for any victory type other than pre-modern conquest. Once the tech costs, policy costs and building costs skyrocket your 16 beakers-per-turn cities won't be a match to a 100 beakers-per-turn "normal city" for that era (reseach lab), you can also forget communism and all the other stuff that comes with culture, and your cities will struggle with 15 hammers per turn (even with railroad) trying to build a 600-hammer stock exchange. Not saying that having a lot of small cities and several large ones is bad per se.

 

[Thry]

@ the above post.

Spam trading posts like they're the cure for cancer. Only build +Culture buildings.

Enjoy triple digit GPT, use the "purchase" option to buy anything.

 

[pi-r8]

get whatever SPs you want, and then get as many cities as possible.

 

[aimlessgun]

@ the above post.

Spam trading posts like they're the cure for cancer. Only build +Culture buildings.

Enjoy triple digit GPT, use the "purchase" option to buy anything.

How much is triple digits? Like 100gpt triple digit (easy without building a single TP) or 600 gpt triple digit (extremely good and far better than anything else).

 

[Roxlimn]

More cities. Bigger cities.