When do you stop expanding?

[Exsanguination]

At what point doy ou stop expanding? Like, how many cities/land area/ time/tech? what should influence that? It seems that if one goes beyond ten or 12 cities early on, valuable growth is lost and therefore your techs are slowed and many other valuable opportunities. Then again, the more cities, the faster tech. It is very hard to get 4 or 5 fast growing cities that porduce at least acceptable produciton, so building like 30 early on seems a little extreme. Am i wrong? What sort of factors should you put into play?

 

[eyrei]

The main factor for me is manifest destiny. Once I have filled an area loosely defined by geography I stop expanding and begin building on what I have. Of course, if someone picks a fight I may end up with a few extra cities.

 

[Marzipan]

When do you stop expanding?

Never! :slay:

 

[perryrutherford]

The optimal numbers of cities in the patched version are:
Chieftan:
Tiny 12
Small 14
Standard 16
Large 24
Huge 32

Warlard: *.95
Regent: *.9
Monarch: *.85
Emperor: *.80
Deity: *.70

i.e. , if you're playing on a tiny world on chieftan build or conquer 12 cities... if you're playing on a huge map on the hardest setting you are best off holding it to 22.

Once you grow out, grow up!

I find that if you're forced into war past this limit it's best to just defend or raze the rest of the enemy's cities unless you're going for world conquest.

 

[Civilizator]

What are the effects of having more than these number of cities?
More corruption? How much more?