Why go wide?

[Freger]

I see a lot of reasons to go for a tall empire. Less unhappiness, gain politics faster etc.
But I cannot see what is good about a wide empire which isn't with a tall empire.
The only two i can see is more points, and it is a lesser setback if I get a city invaded.
It is properly just because i'm not good at it, but what is the benefits of a wide empire.

 

[Unresolved]

You'll get more science, more gold, more faith, more resources, and more cities to produce units from. The downsides are more unhappiness, worse diplomacy, slower social policies, and possibly a slower start. All that said, I'm primarily a tall player, but going wide has very potent advantages if you're able to take advantage of them.

 

[Justice1337]

Mostly it's for two reasons 1) production and 2) space. With all of the other linear inputs in the game, there's either other ways to get them or you get very little added beyond 4 or so initial cities.

You get more Production right away. The city tile itself gives a few, then you also get to work another tile for free. Not only in more raw hammers, but you can also split among different projects, building an archer in the other city while continuing to build a Wonder in the Capital, for example. This has great practical benefits, even if they're not as measurable in hammers per turn per civ.

Space is the other key thing, whether for strategic, economic or religion reasons. Strategically, it's easier to defend the 4 or 5 cities of your empire that really matter when the AI is off taking some outpost on a second Continent, or stuck on your borders taking fire from your Archers. It's also easier offensively to have a point of retreat and a place to heal that's closer to your objective. Also economically, sometimes there's just a plot of land that you want to hold rather than surrender to the AI. You wouldn't want to give up a prime food locale to an AI, because that city will grow super fast, and then the AI might produce Settlers there and come in for even more. Giving up marginal terrain would be ok though. And for religion, it's increasingly easier to keep and spread a religion for each city you add. You might care very little about the follower benefits in that city, but the Pressure keeps your core cities safe, and helps your own spread too.

Another thing is just raw Faith. Without a powerful faith generating Pantheon like Desert Folklore, you've basically got Shrines and Temples and that's it. There's no Faith specialist or higher tier Faith buildings that you can build. So, the only way to do it is more cities.


Other linear inputs are not helped as much.

With Gold, players will just puppet captured cities and spam them with TP's. Also in general, gold earned by tile yield in 5-6 pop cities is quite low unless you focus on it somehow AND you manage to have a good deal of the multipliers like Markets and Banks. Meaning that for the relevant portion of the game, most of your gold output is going to come from your 4 core cities, particularly river tiles and luxes there, then some from trade routes, some from trading luxes, and some from added puppets/cities. As as for trade routes, the formula for yield actually looks at the size of your capital, if I'm not mistaken, such that there is little benefit to adding an additional city after a certain point. Then again, there is always some marginal benefit.

Same with Science. You get one National College, and only a few Academies during the course of the game. Universities are helpful, but it is hard to build them in your 10th city at a decent time for a Science win. If you do have enough money for multiple Maritime allies and to rush buy Universities in new cities, you are probably about to win anyway. Before then, it's hard to staff the 2 scientists in a 6 pop city before you hit Freedom. Which is why wide-Science isn't really a big thing. I've seen some Korea games with 8 or so cities, but that's as wide as it gets.

And then obviously, Culture is directly curtailed, and there's the diplo concerns of trying to overrun the map.

 

[lolzipepz]

As as for trade routes, the formula for yield actually looks at the size of your capital, if I'm not mistaken, such that there is little benefit to adding an additional city after a certain point. Then again, there is always some marginal benefit.

If it hasn't changed since vanilla, adding more cities actually becomes more beneficial the higher pop you have in the capital.

As of 2011 the formula was seemingly:
(city population * 1.1) + (capital population * .15) - 1

As you can see, if this formula holds true still (I doubt it does), a 27 pop capital will pay for 4 tiles of road to a 1 pop city.

 

[digrosz]

Going wide as Inca is amazing. Those terrace farms will do the same as that left policy in tradition (forgot the name) and in the endgame you'll have a ton of cities all around 17 pop. Forbidden papace to deal with the unhappiness et voila, you just basically won the game

 

[Grubsnik]

There are a number of reasons to go wide:
Religious reasons: new cities allow you to build more shrines/temples and more importantly, another place to build pagodas/cathedrals/mosques, the new cities also help exert religious pressure, meaning the gain from your founder belief goes up.
Happiness: if founding an additional city allows you to get 1-2 new unique luxuries under your control, then founding and improving the tiles, while keeping population low will be a net gain for your empire happiness.
Strategic concerns: More territory = higher odds of gaining adequate control over horses/iron/alu/oil/uranium.

The key to going wide is to keep your "wide" cities from growing. Instead of letting them grow continually, limit them to the size their local happiness will cover for. Don't build all the buildings, but focus on a specific aspect, if it's next to a mountain, build library, university and observatory, assign 2 scientists and suddenly you are getting decent science for a filler city.

If you've got freedom/rationalism policies in place, you only need 10 food to sustain a size 6 city, the city tile gives you 2 food, so that leaves 4 pop to secure 8 food, grassland/trading posts will give you the food, and a city outputting 6 (pop) + 3(library) + 4 (trading posts) + 10 (scientists) = 23 raw science, after modifiers +50% from uni, +50% from obs and +15% from happy empire ~ 50 science pr. turn while still giving you positive cashflow (even more if you are within 5 tiles of your existing trade-network).

 

[Arachnofiend]

Going wide as Inca is amazing. Those terrace farms will do the same as that left policy in tradition (forgot the name) and in the endgame you'll have a ton of cities all around 17 pop. Forbidden papace to deal with the unhappiness et voila, you just basically won the game

Have fun banking on getting the Forbidden Palace anywhere above King. The AI prioritizes Banking big time and it's off the path of where you want to be going (Civil Service->Education->Acoustics or down into gunpowder).

 

[adwcta]

Like how puppet-ing generally gets you X amount of gold? When you go wide, you trade social policies for being able to control which direction your city goes... which means you really do have to give it a direction, and that at least a significant amount of your cities won't be going for gold. This basically leaves science (and you'll be more efficient at producing gold). After BNW, I'm guessing tourism would be included here also since it is a raw number.

Then, of course, there's the strategic aspect of being able to build/buy troops from that location, heal, prevent enemy scouts/armies from crossing, denying enemy expansion, etc, and having real cities lets you expand borders much quicker to grab resources/strategic land.

Of course, there's always the raw power of more faith, although to sustain wide, you also need more happiness, which you'll need more faith to support, so net- your gains here aren't as big as you think (your net gains will most likely be from one belief only).

Finally, the diplomatic impact is rather large. On the downside, you will make enemies as you expand. On the bright side, your score will also disproportionately rise, so that if you play nicely with the rest of the world (and do not lead outright), you will wield disproportionate influence. Your armies will also likely be larger, due to a larger treasury and more land to protect, which gives you even more influence.

So, for domination, this lets you pick off "one at a time" other civs while maintaining diplomacy with others and preventing yourself form being overwhelmed by a runaway or over reliant on one relationship/resource (especially when BNW's world congress comes out). For science, if played right, you can achieve a higher (although more difficult to defend) total science output. For diplomacy, you will have more gold than any other playstyle. And now that tourism becomes an aggregate it looks like there will be two ways to go, either tall w/ more art from GP, or wide with more archeological sites and +tourism buildings.

The only problem is that Tradition gives you such a better/safer start than Liberty right now (and setting up a great start is so important for winning in immortal/deity). Maybe it will be more balanced after BNW. Even in G&K, if you are forced to open with Liberty/Honor (or some other tree in advanced start), then wide is a perfectly competitive way to go with most civs.

 

[OwlRaider]

The question whether you're going tall or wide should depend less on your victory condition of choice and more on the map and difficulty. On Immortal/Deity you rarely have the space to really go wide since the AI expands so rapidly and so aggressively, on Emperor you have more time and more space so you can go marginally wide but usually not full ICS, anything below Emperor you can do whatever you want basically.

Now, taking your actual strategy and victory condition of choice into consideration, there are benefits for going wide for all victory conditions, even culture. The question is how wide you want to go and whether you want to REX into ICS or start normally into a NC start than go semi wide. For diplomatic victories you only care about the city states, which means you need minimal culture to finish either tradition or liberty and than patronage, and you need a lot of gold to keep paying the city states to maintain alliances. Unless you're going all out ICS you will have no problem finishing the patronage tree regardless of what you do, which means that as long as you can continue creating profitable(gold wise) cities you should continue to do so. For science victories you simply want a lot of science and a lot scientists and great scientists. More cities means more libraries, universities, public schools and research labs, which means more raw beakers and more specialist slots. As long as you don't neglect the NC early on and continue to grow your capital, there is no reason to stop expanding as long as you can get your new cities with at least a library and a university ASAP and than ease towards a public school and even a research lab. Also if you took the Messenger of the Gods pantheon, each new city that you connect to your capital via a trade route gives you a free library's worth of beakers, that also adds up very nicely. For the 2 previous peaceful victory conditions the victory condition itself wasn't a limiting factor at all to your expansion, this isn't the case for the last peaceful victory condition: cultural victory. For a cultural victory you can still go wide, but not ICS. You want to be expanding as long as your new cities can generate enough culture to overcome the increasing policy costs. The math behind it is quite complicated but the 6-8 city range is a good place to aim for in a wide culture game. Of course you can mix and match your strategy to fit your number of cities, for example getting Representation(on the liberty tree) ASAP going with Opener->Citizenship->Representation->Republic->Collective Rule, preferably after starting with the tradition opener for a jump start in culture. With the above mentioned policy order you can perhaps stretch yourself a bit further towards 10 cities, as long as you do it fast enough to milk every last bit of culture out of your last cities. For domination, well, you just need to capture capitals, there are many ways to get there and it really doesn't matter whether you go tall or wide, that's up to your specific civilization and strategy on achieving world domination.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

Lots of good reasons listed, religion being among the most prominent. @Unresolved spelled it out pretty clearly, (GPT/BPT/religion) vs. (Happiness/SP's/diplomacy)

However I find that one of the most prominent reasons for width is strategic resources. With the exception of playing Russia or being really lucky by having "guessed" where they would be before discovering the tech, I often need to add another city to acquire one of these resources, sometimes several more to get an adequate amount