Super Expansion Strategy: How to Build 100+ cities By 10AD

[DrFell]

I wrote up all this for a thread on civfan... thought some people here might like to see it too. It outlines my basic super-fast expansion strategy, and might help some of you achieve the same kind of results some of the massive-expansion-with-ICS people achieve. The basic expansion idea was taken from the 'Expansionist Chariot Gambit with ICS Topping' thread by Aeson, which is a good read. I've just focused on the ICS part in this thread Anyway, here goes:

Well... getting tons of cities is more difficult that it might first appear. It's not all about just building as many settlers as you can. Other factors like city positioning, when to not bother defending cities, where to build terrain improvements (and not to bother generally with city improvements BTW) all factor in.


Settings
The easiest setting to try this on is huge pangea, 60% water, but it works on all map settings. On this setting you can expand fastest though.

The General Goal
Basically, you need to time each city's production to be pumping out settlers as often as possible, whilst trying to fit in warriors/scouts to explore and to keep the cities out of disorder. You also want your settlers to be building cities on the same turn as they are built, or the turn after whenever possible. Later on you want to be producing chariots to upgrade to horsemen/knights/cavalry. If you can't get access to horses, that's still OK, and you can get iron instead, in which case you should build more warriors to upgrade, and then go capture some horses. But you need to get horses ASAP. And remember, highly corrupt cities will not be able to produce units, and should focus on settlers only, unless you have enough luxuries to do some pop-rushing (depending on the difficulty level you want one or two luxuries per pop rush, and you may pop rush every 20 turns, so for example a city with 4 luxuries on deity can pop rush twice in 20 turns, a city with 6 luxuries can pop rush 3 times on deity every 20 turns). Remember though, despotism is not so good that you should avoid switching to republic/monarchy for an extended period of time.


City placement
In despotism, each city should at least have two squares producing 2 food and 1 shield each (shielded grassland, irrigated plains, etc). The actual city site should be placed on poor food terrain such as jungles, hills, tundra, etc, because you automatically get 2 food and 1 shield for building on this land. If there is no poor food terrain then put the city on unshielded grassland if possible. Try to get bonus special squares like cattle and wheat used early on too, at least in your productive cities as this will help your expansion no end. Aim to expand in the 'sweetest' direction first. You can really hinder your expansion if you head off into a desert before filling up a nice patch of grassland with cattle. As for the city spacing, that varies with terrain, but generally you want cities early on to be close together. I have no problem spacing cities one space apart, and generally one or two spaced cities are what you aim for.

Workers
Balancing out worker production with settler production is a tough one. Ideally, you want to be producing as few workers as possible and buying as many as you can off of the AI. You need to get a feel as to the number of workers you need, and that is hard to show in writing. You need workers for several things, especially irrigating plains or mining grasslands. But what you really want your workers to be doing is building roads. Lots of roads. Build roads to hook up luxuries primarily. Build roads to hook up resources (you can sell off excess resources and luxuries for a big profit, but beware who you sell resources to). Build roads to speed up settler movement (road up potential new city sites so you can get your settlers there in one or two turns, although don't bother roading hills unless there are resources/luxuries there). Eventually, you will want all you productive cities to have mined grassland/irrigated plains with roads, but that can wait.

City Improvements
You don't want to build many city improvements in general, but there are a few exceptions. You may want to build barracks, especially if you are militaristic and want to engage in early war. You may want culture improvements if you want a cultural victory, and when you have enough units a temple here or there can prove helpful if you are a religious civ. You also may wish to start building improvements in cities which will eventually become production powerhouses (see late middle ages/industrial era). Make sure you don't build worthless improvements though, it is up to your own judgement as to weather an improvement will be worth it or not, or weather a settler, worker, or unit may be more beneficial to you.

The Late Middle Ages/Industrial Era
OK, all those small cities may be very powerful in the ancient age, but what about later in the game when units begin to cost a bomb? Well, initially you can solve that problem by saving up your cash and upgrading lots of your chariots/horsemen to knights/cavalry. But after that, you may find yourself in difficulty. One strategy I like for early industrial conquest, is to beeline for replaceable parts, and then nationalism. Get railroads everywhere, and mass-produce infantry/artillery. Go wartime mobilization too, to get golden age level unit production in all of your cities. This works very well if you can conquer the world or achieve a domination victory before tanks and other more advanced units become the standard. If you can't, or you want another victory type, then you can go for a more long-term strategy. First, select a few of the best placed cities in your productive core. Try to give each of them 21 squares each. Now, disband the surrounding cities by building workers and either add them to the productive cities or send them out to do terrain improvements elsewhere (you can also use the 'abandon city' option, but I don't like it as it wastes some population). Rush buy city improvements/disband military in the productive cities to develop them up. Use your discretion as to picking the improvements to build and in what order. You'll quickly be able to develop up big, productive cities useful for making expensive units, wonders, or spaceship parts!

Summary
Generally, using this strategy, you should be able to get 100 cities or more by 10 AD (I don't have any exact figures as I've only once played a huge pangea game up to that stage). Although this is only a small fraction of my game, it should give you a good idea as to how to get a huge number of cities by an early date, and how to super-expand. The more cities you get, the faster you can expand, and this is roughly the strategy used by all the huge expanders. Once you get used to it, the sky's the limit. Have fun!

[The diplomat]

Just one question: with the corruption you would have, what good would it do to have 100 cities by 10AD? The player would have 80% of their cities unable to produce anything.

The biggest problem I see would be culture. You would lose a chunk of those cities to culture flipping way before you ever reached 100!

I agree that expansion is critical, I just think that 100 is excessive.

[DrFell]

Well, the big advantage of having so many cities is that the AI fears you. You can renegotiate peace treaties every 20 turns and get techs/money or even cities if you use the 'declare war in negotiations' trick. This helps weaken the AI as well as strengthening you. Also, at least in the ancient age these cities will still be able to produce units every 20-30 turns, and can also pop rush too. You can support a huge military for free in despotism/monarchy/communism, and the amount of territory taken up by all the cities should ensure you get all the resources you will ever need. And it's really good for score purposes .

As for culture flipping - it happens less often than you might think. Any cities in danger of flipping can have temples/libraries rushed in them (depending on weather you are scientific or religious, if neither, go for temples). This reduces the chances considerably. Even if a city does flip, you will be building up a huge army and can easily take it back, with interest. The key to this strategy is a huge mobile army, which you can more easily field with many cities.

The 100 mark is for a pangea huge map game BTW.

[Aeson]

Very well written DrFell.

As far as why cities are valuable, don't forget the draft! Once a city has a marketplace (and the 8 luxuries) you can draft there almost indefinitely. Just wait until a city reaches it's population limit (or the point where population growth becomes too slow), draft, and then do it all again.

I usually end up drafting/disbanding to build almost all of my hospitals and mass transits. Done right you can keep your whole civ happy and even the most corrupt cities are worth 22 or 27 shields every few turns.

Plus specialists aren't affected by corruption. Each city can at least pay for it's own marketplace, aquaduct, hospital, and mass transit, often with a profit.

[WarpStorm]

I wouldn't do it quite your way (your way will definitely work, just not my style), but I find that lots of cities equals lots of culture if you build them up. This means that culture flips go towards you and you can get a Cultural Victory easily.

[punkbass2000]

Are there any specific civs/attributes you recommend for this strategy in particular?

[Panzer]

Interesting strategy, but not exactly my style. I usually have my hands full with 30 cities and since I'm a builder I tend to build lots of improvements in my cities. Oh well, to each his own I guess!

[DrFell]

Yes, this expansion style is not for everyone... but it is great for war especially, and is very flexible. Also, some of the stuff outlined here can even be used by the builder types to help speed up their early expansion.

As for civ attributes... any will work, industrious is the one which will speed up the actual city building most, for a few reasons. First, the faster workers mean you will get down the roads etc much faster than normal. Secondly, the workers you buy will work at the rate of non-industrious workers. Thirdly, you can build less workers in total and so focus more on settler building. Another civ attribute which might be useful for this style is expansionisnt, as you will be able to work out the best direction to expand and will be able to spot good city sites much earlier than a non-expansionist civ using your scouts. But the strategy works well for any civ.

[DrSpike]

I have experimented with this sort of build up. I think it is most relevant for conquest games, or games where you care about score. It is especially useful if the game is likely to be over before the AI gets replaceable parts. Another factor affecting relative usefulness is the difficulty level. For most deity games I'd go for early war over early expansion, but you have more a choice lower down the scale. Finally, I wouldn't follow this strat for diplomatic/spaceship games.

[WarpStorm]

DrSpike, how do you know what type of victory condition you are going to play for till you get somewhat into the game (assuming that you haven't turned some off)?

[DrFell]

Well, sometimes you can set a goal at the start of a game (say, spaceship victory, or something) and then head off to achieve that goal.

[Slax]

Whats your opinion about granaries? A what point, if at all, do you build them? Does it depend on the city placement?

Is the time saved in later faster city growth worth the lost settler production while it is built?

[DrFell]

Personally I don't build granaries... better to use the production to build warriors, scouts and chariots, and of course settlers ASAP.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
DrSpike, how do you know what type of victory condition you are going to play for till you get somewhat into the game (assuming that you haven't turned some off)?

This just reflects the games I play, which are all comparison games these days.

[planetfall]

The only thing that does not make sense, is how do you expand when you are on one of the smaller continents, with few civs but most civs and land mass is on large(r) continent(s)?

Sacrifice galleys and settlers to cross before navigation?

If wait for navigation, everything is already settled.

[jshelr]

Dr Fell. Thanks for the pointers. "The basic expansion idea was taken from the 'Expansionist Chariot Gambit with ICS Topping' thread by Aeson, which is a good read."

I'd like to read Aeson's as well if it's still around somewhere. Thanks

[DrFell]

The thread is on this very forum a few pages down now I assume.. use the search function, you should have no problems finding it.

As for a smaller continent start... conquer the continent after ICSing a few cities, then fill it all out whilst exploring the seas with galleys. Lighthouse may be useful if you can get it. Strategy is slightly different for islands.. you will need to do more conqering unless you start on a really big island.

[jshelr]

Just want to note that I played a game on emperor using this approach and it was fun / seems to work well.

I came to civ only in January and never played the earlier versions. I'm afraid shift-a is about all I know about workers and I'm also afraid that I've ignored the elements of city placement too long. You've got me interested in the kind of blocking and tackling it probably takes to be good at higher levels. Thanks.

[dunk]

Originally posted by DrFell
'declare war in negotiations' trick

And this is?

[DrFell]

When you are renegotiating a peace treaty with the AI, at the point when the peace treaty is up on the table, click 'never mind' and you'll be offered the chance to declare war, but you'll still be in negotiations. So you can go back to the bargaining table and get cities off of the AI for peace immediately, without several turns of war.