How many cities max?

[Captain]

We've had fairly thorough discussions so far about how many Civs there should be, but not-so-thorough discussions on the total number of cities.

Q: how many cities do you think should be allowed in the world?

My preference is for the maximum natural limit to be about 200 on a large map.
The natural limit means there is space for 200 cities to be placed in "good" spots. More land will exist but the land will be crappier. Those additional cities will be more like outposts. You can built as many as you want, but naturally a good player will limit him/herself to building cities where useful.

So if we start with 16 civs, if they're all equal (rare), we'll have about 12-13 cities each (plenty for a diverse world). There will essentially be no remaining "good" spots for planting cities (you can plant cities in deserts and mountains, but they'll be puny), so to gain more cities, you must conquer, bribe, negotiate, etc... or instead build up your cities into supercities.

Of course, as time goes on, you'll conquer your neighbours, and the stronger civs will overpower the weaker ones, so that 2 or 3 superpowers will have 50-60 cities each (more than enough), and others will have fewer.

By limiting the "good" space for more cities, conflict is forced upon the player at a certain point. No more limitless "free" expansion. This doesn't necessarily mean war, it just means competition for limited resources like land -> hence more excitement, more fun!

For a normal medium map, I say 120-140.
For a small map, 60-80.

[KrazyHorse]

Exactly. Civ II was all about grabbing as much land as you could for the first little while, and then improving the resulting cities. It's always been too easy to expand and expand and expand without even so much as running into your adversaries. Some people seem to think that it's necessary for every civ to have 50 city empires; I don't.

[Henrik]

In civ 2 the city limit is 225 cities for all maps, while I never managed to reach that limit except for when I made scenarios I think it is a good one.
There is no limitation to the amount of cities in the real world (except for space).
No limit is necesary, if someone wants to fill the world whit cities let them do so, they will all start revolting pretty soon...

[Grumbold]

Space and communication delay based on distance from the capital should be the only limiting factors. I don't want to be told that a huge expanse of lush farmland and verdant hillside cannot be built upon just because some damn counter has reached overflow. The same goes for units, max pop in a city etc.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Henrik
In civ 2 the city limit is 225 cities for all maps

I think it was 255.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Space and communication delay based on distance from the capital should be the only limiting factors.

Have you actually read some of the developing-info released from Firaxis and game-magazine previews lately? "Space and communication delay based on distance", was infact the ONLY limitation (besides the 255-limit) in Civ-2. In Civ-3 however, they have added an whole array of new built-in empire city-expansion limitations.

I don't want to be told that a huge expanse of lush farmland and verdant hillside cannot be built upon just because some damn counter has reached overflow. The same goes for units, max pop in a city etc.

I think that generally smaller map-sizes (Firaxis have announced that "overcompressed" gameplay is one of the design goals) combined with powerful anti-ICS; anti-BAB (bigger always better) and Rise-and-fall features implemented in the game, is more then enough, to counteract any ideas of ever reaching the max 200- or 255 cities limit (or similar max unit-limits).

Managing unproportionally diarrhea-sized amounts of HP cities and HP combat-units is simply not feasible anymore. Besides; it just becomes inflationary in the end. In this respect, Civ-3 is promised to be a very different game, then the two previous games in the series. Many Apolyton-civers still dont seems to completely realize this.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


I think it was 255.

yes you are right, stupid typo

[Seeker]

255 This can be a problem with some gigamap scenarios. Try showing the world as it was in 1888 and you'll run into problems with the British and Russian Empires.

I'd prefer 355.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Seeker
255 This can be a problem with some gigamap scenarios. Try showing the world as it was in 1888 and you'll run into problems with the British and Russian Empires.

I'd prefer 355.

255 is a computer limit. If they shall rise it, will the next step be 512. They may also remove the limit, but that would cause ä game slowdown, as it is no fixed size city list.

[Inverse Icarus]

why bother limiting the number of cities in a game (assuming it causes no system resoucre issues)

[KrazyHorse]

What I never understood in Civ II was why they limited the number of separate land masses allowable. If you tried to put more on a map, you would get an error message.

[Captain]

To recap, I don't think an arbitrary limit should exist, but there should be limited "good" space to place cities. The player can litter the map with hundreds of cities, but only some of those will have good enough terrain to support a thriving city - so most players will naturally place fewer cities. That's what I meant by natural limits.

I think it'll add more fun and realism too, since there will be large tracts of uninhabited land (like deserts, mountain ranges, deep jungles, and the icy north) and cities will be concentrated in certain fertile zones. (Most of Ontario's population lives in the tiny but fertile St. Lawrence valley, not in the much larger northern shield lands).

What is this space and communication delay? Can someone explain to me how that works?
Does it mean that if I issue a command to a distant unit, it won't be carried out til next turn?
I don't think I've got the right idea here.

[DarkCloud]

-512 should be the minimum needed for the maximum;

-I have hit 255 too many times to be satisfied with the low allowance for cities.

[Rasputin]

with city number limit in place , you can utilise that tio your advantage by putting citys anymore , on moutnains etc, just to prevent your opposition from placing another city..

In recent games on gigaworld map we run out of citys and a number of civs had built citys needlessly simply to stop others building citys in better lands...

why limit city numbers, computers are way mroe powerful than civ 2 ones so lets utilise this pwer and allow unlimited city numbers, but make it harder to loo kafter many citys, bring in city civil wars etc !!!!

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Gramphos

255 is a computer limit. If they shall rise it, will the next step be 512. They may also remove the limit, but that would cause ä game slowdown, as it is no fixed size city list.

Or they could switch to 16 bits and have 65536 as the limit. It's no use fiddling around with single bits, esp. in a game like Civ.

[Provost Harrison]

Obviously unlimited. There should just be difficulties, not impossibilities, in controlling larger empires...personally, nowadays I find it totally unnecessary to control so many cities...and it becomes a micromanagement nightmare...

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by LightEning
Or they could switch to 16 bits and have 65536 as the limit. It's no use fiddling around with single bits, esp. in a game like Civ.

That is what I was getting at. Even if the out-of-the-box game settings would make 255 cities impossible or unwise, it will not harm the game to build in some redundancies like using 16 bit counters. The game rules should define what strategies are good or bad, not code limitations. 255 cities seems like a lot until you have all 16 players wanting to play on a map where 20 cities each is possible.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by LightEning
Or they could switch to 16 bits and have 65536 as the limit. It's no use fiddling around with single bits, esp. in a game like Civ.

I was just giving facts. I know that it's unusual to fill up with odd bits, if the remaining bits aren't used as a checksum ore something. But why would they like to use checksums to the city numbers?
...
Ok, they could use four bits for what civ the city belongs to, one bit for if the city exists or not. Now we have another bit to use...
...No, stop that you economic part of me, you should use 16 bits for the city-number, and 16 bits for the Civilization that the city belongs to. (If you would like to share a city with another civ, you would like to set more then one civ to own it) and 16 bits for the whenever it exists or not (all on means not founded jet, any thing else is the turn of foundation)...

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Grumbold
255 cities seems like a lot until you have all 16 players wanting to play on a map where 20 cities each is possible.

Is it likely that we can expect 16 players with 20 cities each?? In Civ-2, the AI emphasized 2-3 AI-civs, perhaps. The rest there often passive hang-around civs, that seemed to loose interest in continuing expanding and developing about halfway through the game.

With 15 AI-civs (HP being the 16:th) we are likely to windup with several "Lichtenstein-empires" with only 3-4 AI-cities in them. I just hope that the AI at least concentrates its efforts on at least 5 really strong ones this time. And that anti-BAB measures (bigger-always-better) are implemented, so that the remaining mini-empires becomes strong enough to play a worthwhile role, as well.

[Inverse Icarus]

firaxis just went to all the trouble of making ICS harder, and now you just want to go and put a CAP on the city limit?

jeebus, that work was not in vein.

and i bet you that i can handle a 50 city civ in civ 3.

gentlemen, place your bets.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Ralf
Is it likely that we can expect 16 players with 20 cities each?? In Civ-2, the AI emphasized 2-3 AI-civs, perhaps. The rest there often passive hang-around civs, that seemed to loose interest in continuing expanding and developing about halfway through the game.

I agree that in most games, the city count will not go over 255, since having lots of cities will be more difficult than before and not all AI civs will build huge empires. However, there are certainly situations in which you have more than ten large empires on a huge map (multiplayer, scenarios etc.), and I certainly wouldn't want to see Civ 3 limited in the same way Civ 2 was.

If there really is a hard-coded city limit of 255 or so in Civ 3, it certainly won't be long before some players hit the limit and will start complaining about it. I think the Civ engine should just adapt itself to huge games as well, if somebody really wishes to play them, so a higher maximum is required. The same goes for the number of units; although the game mechanics will discourage creating huge numbers of cities and units, somebody is going to succeed in doing it anyway, by changing the rules file if not else.

[Wazell]

I don't see any problem here. They'll just put the limit to 65535, or more likely 32767 cities, and everyone's happy. 32K cities is more likely, after all the population limit of 327 million in Civ2 was 32767*10000. That number has to be higher in Civ3, though.

[Deathwalker]

I believe that there should not be any limit to the number of cities.

[Theben]

I rarely hit the 255 limit but then I never sleaze. Firaxis has also stated that civs that started near each other IRL will start near each other often in civ3. So unless human players willingly back off from each other in a 16-player MP game (and there has still been no official endorsement of 16 civs at once) conflicts and lower city counts will be in place early.
But I can see how- if 16 civs are allowed at once- difficult a 255 city limit will be with scenarios. It shouldn't be too hard to up the limit, and it will only affect a small percentage of players- those who will want higher limits anyway.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Deathwalker
I believe that there should not be any limit to the number of cities.

It's implicit in data structures and game programming to have to put limits: they can only be as far as rarely or never a player will hit them, but given too large limits puts strain into others are (e.g. system resources).

Now I suppose we are all speaking about limits "wide enough"

This is more a matter of game dynamics, a thing that can only be truly tested by playing lot of games. Playtesting is the key here, but as large will be the number of playtester involved, Firaxis will never have the hope to have considered any game combination in a game born to span for some years of thousands of avid players

The programming trick should be subtle: add soft "bumpers" to game structure, so you can't hit a "no more city slot available", you get the game put harder obstacles to your plan to add more cities the more you come near the hard limit.

Efficiency drop, Unhappiness raise, Special Events related to huge number of cities, Growing risk of empire splitting... You can't have the feel of have reached "The End Of The World", because you are gently deviated into another direction, to another challenge.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
Efficiency drop, Unhappiness raise, Special Events related to huge number of cities, Growing risk of empire splitting... You can't have the feel of have reached "The End Of The World", because you are gently deviated into another direction, to another challenge.

I think all these things will already be included in Civ 3 standard rules, to prevent ICS... however, since there will be scenarios and rules modifications and some players will manage to build huge numbers of cities nevertheless, I think the maximum should be so high that the player could never reach it, no matter what.

[Vrank Prins]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
and it becomes a micromanagement nightmare...

Maybe this problem can be overcome by giving new possibilities of dealing with micromanagement during the game because of the advancements you've discovered. The more developed you are, the more you can "automate" things, the less you need to care about micromanagement.
That means that being advanced also gives you a playability bonus.

[Scouse Gits]

I admit to being fatalistic and to follow let's wait and see what we get philosophy about Civ3 - but can someone tell me just why there seems to be such fanatical zeal about stopping ICS in Civ3 - the only snippets that have reached me (hiding in Civ2-Strat) seem to be the rather gloating announcements of yet another impediment to the ICSer?

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
I admit to being fatalistic and to follow let's wait and see what we get philosophy about Civ3 - but can someone tell me just why there seems to be such fanatical zeal about stopping ICS in Civ3 - the only snippets that have reached me (hiding in Civ2-Strat) seem to be the rather gloating announcements of yet another impediment to the ICSer?

I believe the majority of Civ fans would prefer the rise of your civilisation to supremacy was more dependent on other factors than your ability to found new cities and the luck of starting on a substantial landmass. The need to develop a culture rather than just spread it until it can spread no further. Nobody is suggesting it should be more advantageous to play 1 city rather than 10+, but expanding to 10+ as fast as possible should not necessarily be the optimum route to victory in every game.

[Scouse Gits]

Thanks for that Grumbold - although it is rare for a non-ICSer to describe ICS as "the optimum route to victory in every game".
I would not disagree with you altogether, but as an unrepentant Rabid Aggressive Rodent who likes playing 100 villages rather than 30 cities, I can't help feeling somewhat discriminated against.