How Do You Like Your Cities?

[Jon Shafer]

Size-wise, that is.

At the beginning of the game, I nearly always boost my cities up to around size 5 to turn them into über production centers, then hover them between size 3 and 4 building Settlers. This is mainly with MP games though, since the AI will suck up all good land within sight and pound you into dirt later if you don't expand quickly.

What does everyone else prefer?

[Cruddy]

Hmm... I'll rarely go up to 4 till I've got a luxury reource hooked up. I'll almost never go over 20, because I like a little overlap between cities - smaller cities are generally happier.

But right at the beginning, most cities are size 1 or 2, unless they're about to pop a settler.

[epics]

At the begginning about size 4-6, only popup settler/worker cities remain 2-4. Later I try to get them to 20, almost never smaller then 15

[Don Giovanni]

Basically, I want every tile within reach to be exploited -including surrounding water (who don't ). Usually there is not enough space for every city to reach size 20, so decisions must be made, obviously. Typically these decisions simplify to : "Should this city grow larger than size 12 ?", and more often that not, the answer turns out to be "no" for coastal cities and "yes" for inland citites. This is partly because I want to have some production in coastal cities also, but most important it's a consequence of my playing style (small maps, tight city spacing, etc.)

[Rasbelin]

I use my old Civ II expansionist strategies, which means that my cities are mostly fairly small. I usually keep my capital and several key cities abit larger.

[alva]

At first, I try to keep my cities as big as there are tiles improved, with some flexibility possible, once that isn't a problem anymore, I try to keep pushing size 7 (Size 6 with foodbox almost full), for maximum production and gold.
I hardly ever go over size 12, I will build a couple in order to get Battlefield medicine? But even those will not get to be much bigger, to many happiness problems and production waste.

[Arrian]

During the REX phase, no city is likely to cross size 6. From that point on, I'm looking to get them all up to 12. In the industrial age, I tend to get them into a range between 18 and 25. After that, it's hard to keep them in WLTKD, and any new population is going to be a specialist anyway.

One thing I don't do is change all my mines to irrigation to boost population for score. Once I get a city up around size 20, I leave it be (the 25s are usually cities with floodplains or lots of bonus food tiles).

-Arrian

[Jon Shafer]

I have to admit that before not too long ago I fell into the trap of Settlers at size 3.

It wasn't until recently that I realized the power that you can gain from keeping your cities larger, especially at the beginning of the game. At this point I never let my capital city fall below 2 or even 3 if possible early on due to all the shields you lose from a smaller capital.

[Theseus]

Yep, I go for larger towns early one too... even bigger if I've got some fresh water around.

I also, since the city placement debates, have been muuuuch more focused on maximizing turn-to-turn utilization of my best tiles, especially in the early game.

Longer term, I do switch mined shielded tiles to irrigation. Not so much for score, just because.

[Nakar Gabab]

I prefer my cities foreign... and conquered.

[yxhuvud]

nakar gabab:

Personally, I tend to maximize my citites at about 13-14. This is decently close for the earlier parts of the game, and still enough to get the metropolitan bonuses.

[Jamski]

But bigger cities make more effective use of infrastructure. What's more effective, two size 7 cities producing 10 science with 2 librarys or one size 14 city producing 20 science with one library. Same for all the other city improvements. Also less defensive troops are needed, less problems with corruption, easier to build the big things. I'm building all my cities as big as I can as fast as I can. I don't care if the AI grabs more land this way - my land is better I'd rather have about 10-12 super cities of size 25+ and all improvements than 30-40 little villages. I build my first city on a river and get it up to size 12 as soon as poss - that means building one settler. The second city builds a granary and then pumps settlers. The first city builds wonders and improvements. With this method I can almost always get to the Pyramids first (except on Deity) and that helps a lot to get big cities faster.

Just my 2 cents

-Jam

[Inverse Icarus]

i usually end up building a wonder in one city, unless i have a formidable amount of land to conquer.

the "wonder city" just keeps growing until it's too unhappy to grow (i try to give it 2 defenders and a temple, plus luxuries).

mostly though, my main cities are around 2-4 for most of the beginning of the game,while my borders tend to be extremely-pissed-off-1's from all the poprushing

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Theseus
Yep, I go for larger towns early one too... even bigger if I've got some fresh water around.

I also, since the city placement debates, have been muuuuch more focused on maximizing turn-to-turn utilization of my best tiles, especially in the early game.

Longer term, I do switch mined shielded tiles to irrigation. Not so much for score, just because.

So that's why I'm no good at the early game - I did wonder.

[Daz]

Big is beautiful...

I keep my cities as large as possible, depending on happiness.

[Mountain Sage]

During RExing, my cities never go over 6, except for the 1 or 2 which I put aside for Wonder-making. These are usually near a river, so they can grow as fast as they can. With my fast Workers, all the tiles are worked anyway. Of course, they get a temple and 2 Warriors (under Despotism).

[peterfharris]

I want big cities, as big as possible. Later in the game I like huge monsters with populations of 30 or more. I know this is bad strategy because I irrigate grassland and plains even if it would be better to mine them as I want that extra point of population. I also place most of my cities so they can eventually expand to work all 21 squares when I would be better off with denser spacing. Strategy is thus sacrificed for tomfoolery. Umh, did I mention I like bige cities.

[Kuciwalker]

Medium Rare.

[Master Zen]

On standard maps and smaller I always go 3-tile and usually do not feel the strain from potentially smaller cities as long as I build up some good infrastructure.

On huge maps I've found Ralphing (coupled with massive ancient/medieval warmongering) to be very effective as in the industrial age I disband my military camp cities and en up with mammoth production centers OCPed.