Vertical/horizontal

[jammerculture]

This is probably a stupid question but one I had to ask. I read a lot on this forum about vertical vs horizontal growth, when to use each etc but I don't really know what they even mean. Can someone explain?

 

[Abegweit]

Both refer to growing your population. In horizontal growth, you add new cities and expand your cultural borders. In vertical growth you add new pop points to existing cities. Most new players understand the former but have very little concept of how to do the latter.

 

[Keilah]

vertical growth = higher pop cities
horizontal growth = more cities

 

[Keilah]

very little concept of how to do the latter.

whoops.

 

[jammerculture]

Both refer to growing your population. In horizontal growth, you add new cities and expand your cultural borders. In vertical growth you add new pop points to existing cities. Most new players understand the former but have very little concept of how to do the latter.

Can you elaborate? I'm thinking food and happiness, but if I was confident in what I knew I wouldn't be asking

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Both refer to growing your population. In horizontal growth, you add new cities and expand your cultural borders. In vertical growth you add new pop points to existing cities.

I think it's usually a bit more general than that:

Horizontal: more land/cities
Vertical: better land/cities

Horizontal development is typically about units (settlers, workers, garrisons, stacks), where vertical development is typically about infrastructure (libraries,markets,universities).


Most games will feature both sorts of development, and they may even both be happening simultaneously. For instance, it's common to concentrate the opening on founding cities #2, #3, #4 as quickly as possible, but once that is done, the capital begins to invest in itself, while letting 2,3,4 worry about the problem of expanding into 5,6,7....

Rapid Expansion strategies are normally about pushing a horizontal opening to the limits. You usually end up behind in tech (because with lots of unimproved cities, your economy is pretty inefficient), but as long as you are close enough to defend against your neighbors during the recovery phase, you can correct the inefficiencies and win with a larger base.



Domination games tend to have lots of horizontal. Cultural games tend to be very vertical.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Can you elaborate? I'm thinking food and happiness, but if I was confident in what I knew I wouldn't be asking

I think you got it, but generally new players wait till it's 1000 ad to wonder why their cities are size 8 (exagerating on purpose). It's should be an obsession from the start. It also implies you understand when to whip, when it's important to avoid it. It also implies some focus with the micro (and actually micro your cities), since u have to work those food tiles (how many 4+ food tiles do we see unworked on some screenies here? way too many )

 

[Lalabunny]

Regarding Vertical expansion...

You are heavily limited by happy/health cap. Techs that raise caps should be prioritize. You are also heavily dependent on resource trading with AIs.


It is almost always superior to expand horizontally in early game because you will reach your happy cap very fast. Once you reach mid game where you have access to various cap raising buildings/techs, you can concentrate on vertical expansion in selected cities.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Good standard play does both. Every city node you lay down adds at least 4 population points to your empire, and usually costs a semi-mature cottage worth of maintenance. Each population point contributes hammers and commerce to your empire, and hence you want to have as many population points as possible. This will only grow as more happy resources and technologies come in. Until then, the best way to add population is to settle more city nodes, though of course you need to balance that against maintenance.

Another way to think of it is that each city is an investment, and you are claiming that land in anticipation for things that will raise the happy cap.

 

[MarigoldRan]

A general guideline:

1. Big cities make Wonders, workers, or settlers.
2. Starting cities make granaries, lighthouses, and possibly libraries.
3. Middling cities make missionaries, and forges and courthouses.

You can keep worker counts low with a bit of micromanagement and whipping. A starting city needs only two tiles improved for a long period of time (since 2-3 pop points will be whipped away to get the granary, lighthouse, and possibly the library).

Also, making a bureaucracy capital is a very important part of vertical growth. I.e. cottage the capital, build a library there, try to get a Great Library there, build universities and Oxford, and if you have more wonders in the capital, get a National Epic too. In the meantime, run bureaucracy.

But the easiest and most important rule of all:

IMPROVE ALL THE SPECIAL TILES AND FLOODPLAINS ASAP.

 

[jammerculture]

cool, thanks for the answers, lots of good info

In my games I tend to try to grow to the happy cap before starting to limit food with whipping or settler/worker production. I have been going through a few of the exercises in this forum and I am starting to think that this might not be necessarily such a good idea, at least as a hard and fast rule, so to speak. There seems to be an optimal balance between growing cities and building new ones that I am not quite getting.

Most games will feature both sorts of development, and they may even both be happening simultaneously. For instance, it's common to concentrate the opening on founding cities #2, #3, #4 as quickly as possible, but once that is done, the capital begins to invest in itself, while letting 2,3,4 worry about the problem of expanding into 5,6,7....

VoU touches on this here and in his NEWB and FaE threads. i have recently been doing just this using the capital to produce worker, warrior, warrior until size four, then alternating settler worker for cities 2, 3 and 4 before starting on capital infrastructure. This has really improved my early game but once I get these cities up I tend to flounder. One of the problems is that by now many more techs have opened up which allows more options for infrastructure and unit builds. I think I may be not optimizing the first stage of vertical growth and then not getting back to the horizontal at the right time.

Can anyone comment on this with some guidelines or tips?

I usually play monarch and can win although more often then that my games are abandoned as my road to victory tends to be a grind. I think I have missed some crucial skills that would allow my wins to be more decisive and less like work lol. I get destroyed at emperor.

Thanks again.

 

[MarigoldRan]

If you have nothing better to do, beeline to Alphabet.

How often do you hit the "f4" button? The Immortal+ players hit it two or three times every turn.

 

[yanner39]

<BUMP>

How or if should Heredity Rule garissons should play a role in vertical expansion? I am asking because I play on Emperor and it seems that the AI is very slow at getting resources hooked up? In my last 2 games, I just can't trade anything because nothing is available.

I know there are diminishing returns the more units you build but is it a good idea to say garisson the crap out of the capital to take advantage of Buro?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I know there are diminishing returns the more units you build but is it a good idea to say garisson the crap out of the capital to take advantage of Buro?

Ish. A bureaucratic capital is a great retirement for all the warriors you were using to fogbust in the early game.

I'm not entirely sure that you want to push much further past that point, though. Base hammers get a buro bonus too:

 

[jammerculture]

I had a game last week were I wanted to really exploit HR. I kept a low production/high commerce city that I was cutting out of the jungle off the trade network and built a TON of warriors for cheap military police. It worked pretty good.

What you mean by diminishing returns?