When to start developing

[Jim W]

Like the Subject line says.

On many previous posts regarding general strategy, one thing said by many people was that continual expansion was very important, always send out Settlers to found new cities.

However, I have found that often times I get cities that can barely support themselves, let alone send out new settlers.

So at what point do you start developing the land around existing cities?

Jim W

Serious development of outlying lands should start no earlier than your monarchy. For ultra-expansionist, building one road for increasing trade per city is sufficient. You capital is usually your wonder city. It's very good to have one or two mining squares there. For other cities, it's your choice to develop mines or ICSing.
4 or 5 developed squares per city is sufficient for early-mid games. For cities with 5 or more population points, use specialists taxmen or scientist. This allows better happiness management in deity level.

[DaveV]

Jim W - it depends on your goal. My personal answer is "never". I keep building cities and settlers until I discover Gunpowder. It is also possible to win with one well-developed city. And people report good results with any number of cities in between.

One of the keys in building additional cities is to know the "breakpoints" in unhappiness. At Deity level, on a small map, you can build 4 cities in despotism or 6 in monarchy with no unhappiness penalty. Unhappiness increases each time you pass a multiple of those numbers. Because of a quirk in the way luxuries are treated, the Hanging Gardens or Elvis will turn a very unhappy citizen into a happy. This can mean that more cities will actually make your cities easier to keep happy. Once I reach 24 cities under Monarchy, I can keep them happy with HG and one unit per (size 2) city. A second unit will make the city riot. Probably a bug, but you can learn to work around it...