How many cities in an empire?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Andrew1999
The civs expanded pretty much evenly (looks like 10-15 cities each).

I was quite happy when I noticed that. I don´t like the 8-civ-limit, but I can live with it if in a typical late game there are 4 or 5 opponents that have to be taken seriously.

[Aco]

I like the idea that your empire can grow enormously in size by putting much excess population into new cities. In Civ2 it was a too powerful 'weapon' to neglect. You either kept on expanding early or get squashed by the opposition. Period.

If Civ3 will allow the same possibility for mass expansion, I feel they should do so NOT at the beginning, but once your empire gets more advanced (tech/culture/wealth wise) gradually the penalties for having lots of cities should be lowered.

That way you would need to stay relatively small in the first part of the game (which often is more about building and exploring) and when you have a solid base then you could think about expansion. Whether this comes from conquest (the conquered cities of other nations) or your own creation.

Because in CTP that was a bother (imo).. when you conquered some pesky cities from your adversaries you got a problem with the happiness/corruption.. so you would have to disband some of them..

In the end it doesn't matter how quickly or not we can expand into a giga empire.. its the possibility to do so (with all the drawbacks it causes) that counts.

Aco

[campmajor!]

Originally posted by hexagonian


Sorry, but larger empires do not necessarily mean better empires. (Look at Rome, 18th-19th century England, 16th-17th century Spain - and the problems they had maintaining a far-flung empire once they became huge) Having restraints on your empire based on size is a good thing, because it forces a player to not just ICS, or roll over smaller empires because he now has double the production capability of the next ranked civ in place due to the fact that he has just conquered a lot of cities. Don't get me wrong, if you like to play the game as a conqueror, so be it, but there should be consequences to that approach. (It may mean that you build less cities during the course of the game to take into account a militaristic bent.)

Well, personally I think bigger empires are most of the time better empires. Do you consider Liechtenstein a great empire? Of course being a large empire means you have to deal with size-problems. In civ2 that is handled by extra corruption and waste if your cities are further away from your capitol. I think that is more realistic than just being able to build 10 cities without all of your cities getting unhappy...
Also 10 cities in a small map or 10 cities in a huge map is a big difference!

[Shteven]

I hate limits on civilization size. i like making a large empire and don't like to be stopped by a superficially imposed rule like if you're monarchy you can only have 20 cities before you start losing happiness for each new city
I think it takes away from the gameplay. :banned:

[Shteven]

You can win by diplomatic and cultural victories. Both of which don't necessarily require a gigantic empire to use. It doesn't really matter i believe how big you are to be friends with everyone and to win by a diplomatic victory. And the only real benefit for a cultural victory as a large civ is production a larger base of cities. But i believe that there our advantages for going to a cultural victory from a smaller civ as well cause you can concentrate on a smaller number of larger cities that don't have to worry about a bunch of smaller cities increasing their corruption or about building and sending reinforcements to your just brand new conquerored cities instead of building a new libary or temple. Besides the easy of defending small civs i don't think that they should be able to have any advantages over large civs in respects to conquest. And there shouldn't be drawbacks from expanding to very fast besides extended time to get to the front. Science is another thing that bigger civs should still hold all the advantges to cause there really isn't any benefits to being a smaller civ in regards to science