When to stop growing your city?

[drubell]

I am a King level player and lately have been practicing Domination games, but unhappiness has become a commonplace issue for me. Puppeting captured cities and TPing them to drop their pop is easy enough, but my big problem is that the few cities that I build on my own (including my capital) get too large in population; as a result, I suffer unhappiness too quickly and spend way too many turns at around -5 unhappiness or so. I scramble to get to happiness SPs or wonders just to stay in the green for a few more turns.

I see players who build wide empires use settled cities that have significantly less pop than mine, yet the cities are just as able to pump out whatever benefits are to be reaped in those cities, yet I don't always see how they can pull that off.

What is the tipping point for you where you do not personally feel that having a pop in your city is worth the point of unhappiness?

 

[NotSure]

I don't think there is a way to avoid small periods of unhappiness if you're going to puppet everything in a domination game. There are some cities that have very little production potential that you should probably burn down. Puppets don't really prioritize happiness until you are unhappy. I always see short periods of unhappiness as the games way of pacing your conquests and just something I have to live with. As far as my own city size, it depends on a few things but I usually switch to production focus after about 4 pop. I'll try to grow each city a little more when the next happiness building becomes available and I try to grow my cities before puppets get a chance to grow. I never get more than about a dozen citizens in my cities in this type of a game, but I do try to grow my capital as large as possible.

I avoid policies that don't have much to offer in the way of happiness such as Patronage. Order is good all the way down to Communism (+2 & 10% construction) because it helps the puppets build faster. Honor, Liberty, Piety, Order, and Tradition are the ones I use. Some may not agree with tradition, but you get around 10 or so happiness from Monarchy by the end game and Aristocracy gives you one for every 10 citizens in a city so that's also good in the later game. On harder difficulty levels the cities are a lot bigger and stronger and you need a larger military, so Autocracy seems to be better than Order under those circumstances.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

unhappiness from -1 to -5 actually helps in its own way with pop growth. but after puppeting the next city it gets too deep. there is an avoid growth check box for each of your non-puppet cities. some people dont like anything over 10, some less than that (6 or 7). if properly managed, puppet empires generate tons of gold. some players use that gold on CSs for luxury happiness or culture benefits for policies that help happiness.

if you get the garrison policies from honor and tradition, then each unit garrisoned is free/+1 happiness/+2 culture. it can add up a lot when you get 10+ puppets. buy a scout for 140 (or train one in usually 3 turns or less) and garrison them as you take puppets.

 

[Tokira]

I am a King level player and lately have been practicing Domination games, but unhappiness has become a commonplace issue for me. Puppeting captured cities and TPing them to drop their pop is easy enough, but my big problem is that the few cities that I build on my own (including my capital) get too large in population; as a result, I suffer unhappiness too quickly and spend way too many turns at around -5 unhappiness or so. I scramble to get to happiness SPs or wonders just to stay in the green for a few more turns.

I see players who build wide empires use settled cities that have significantly less pop than mine, yet the cities are just as able to pump out whatever benefits are to be reaped in those cities, yet I don't always see how they can pull that off.

What is the tipping point for you where you do not personally feel that having a pop in your city is worth the point of unhappiness?

Do you tend to build a lot of farms? In order to avoid growth, you should choose tradeposts insteads. Also you'd better not to ally too many maritime cities.

It is also good to minimise the number of cities that you build yourself. Even two cities can be enough for world domination since you can purchase the units once you have a few puppets to boost your income. Also, as Hammer Rabbi said, there's always the "avoid growth" box that you can tick in the city menu.

 

[General Tso]

I have found a system that works well for me.

Acquire the following social policies: The one in Piety that causes monuments, temples and monasteries to give +1 happiness. and the one in Honor that causes walls, castles, and arsenals to give happiness. In the process you will also end up with the one that causes garrisons to add +1 happiness.

Once your armies reach the level where you can start to take large numbers of enemy cities you should be in a good financial situation. When your happiness starts to go south annex a city or two and immediately purchase courthouses. Each time you do this, you will immediately receive +3 happiness per city annexed. Then order the cities to build the buildings listed above. Each city that you do this to allows you to conquer at least one new city.

The only real negative to this system is that as soon as you start to annex a large number of cities you will not be able to acquire many new social policies. To get around this I try to acquire the needed policies before I start warmongering.

 

[drubell]

Do you tend to build a lot of farms? In order to avoid growth, you should choose tradeposts insteads. Also you'd better not to ally too many maritime cities.

Aside from resource tiles, I generally I farm all tiles in my capital (except for non-riverside hills which I mine). My other cities get farms on riverside, mines on any hill tile, TPs on plains. My capital's growth is probably a primary reason I run out of happiness, but since the capital can pump out so much science, I don't really know when is the point where it's not feasible to have another pop point.

Acquire the following social policies: The one in Piety that causes monuments, temples and monasteries to give +1 happiness. and the one in Honor that causes walls, castles, and arsenals to give happiness. In the process you will also end up with the one that causes garrisons to add +1 happiness.

I haven't considered using Honor or Tradition for the happiness bonuses, but maybe that's a good plan. I usually go Liberty->Piety and get some Patronage SPs but maybe I should skip the Patronage SPs and if I'm really in happiness issues and consider the other SPs.

 

[Brichals]

High population in the capital is a good thing I would say as you will have more modifier buildings here generally.

Just don't work tiles that you don't need in outlying cities. e.g. If you have a city that you want for army production you don't need 15 pop there. Just enough to work the mines. If you're pumping army from this city all game long you don't even need a library, uni, bank etc, so high population or working gold will not yield you anything valuable there when you don't have the modifier buildings. (of course later you can get the libraries etc for national wonders but they are not the priorities in specialised cities). I think more specialisation of cities is key, just trying to make each like a capital city where you have all things will cause mass unhappiness.

Other happiness issues come down to being fixed by choice of policies mainly and perhaps wonders but you can't count on getting them.

 

[Ranos]

It all depends on how the game progresses and how long it lasts. By modern era, my non-puppet cities are 20-25 pop usually and I typically have 5-7 of those cities.

Early game, I build 3-4 cities and grow them to 5 pop. If I have access to more luxuries, I'll grow them bigger earlier. After that, it just depends on what policies I choose, what wonders I build or capture and how many luxuries I acquire.

Ancient - Classic = 5 pop
Medieval - Renaissance = 10-15 pop
Industrial = 15-20
Modern = 20-25 (sometimes more)

When conquering, grow your main cities when you can, hitting 5+ unhappiness isn't bad as long as you don't go over 10. Just befriend CSs and trade for luxuries (if anybody is still talking to you). If you can and want to take the time to build happiness wonders, that helps, otherwise make the civs that do build them your next target.

You don't have to puppet every city either, raze some of them. Keep ones that are strategically placed, give you access to resources you need or ones that have good production capabilities that you can annex later if needed.

For warring, Honor, Piety and Autocracy are the main policy trees I go after. I would go for Rationalism instead of Piety, but Piety just comes earlier to help with that happiness boost.

Hope that helps.

 

[joncnunn]

Instead of using the "avoid growth button" which just wastes food if your not careful, I just lock workers onto tiles producing less food and more hammers & gold than the default.

And make happiness structures a priority. But a main key is using those social policies; there's a good reason every tree contains some way to manage happiness.

If your conquering and not after a cultural victory, annexing as you can afford court houses will help a lot. But the AI does found too many cities so razing the unneeded ones help as well.