Question out of Ignorance -- cities vs outposts

1. You cannot build a city everywhere, you need grain tiles.  These aren't very common.

2. Cities cannot be built too close to each other.

3. Outposts can be erected with spells.

4. Outposts begin with a greater range, and sometimes you want to exploit that to deny a resource or a passage to the enemy.

5. New citizens are drawn by your factions' prestige.  More cities means the influx gets split more ways.  You may not want that.

Outposts give you 2 square tiles of territory and with a late game tech build a road to your road network. There is no cost to build them other than the pioneer  they can be built on any land type.

Cities start out at 1 square tile of influence and form a road network with midgame tech. Each city takes an equal portion of your prestige, which is the driving force of population growth. They can train units, build buildings, and be enchanted. They can only be built on certain land types. 

Tuidjy and Seanw3 have given excellent technical  answers to your question!   I'll offer one other.   Both cities and outposts add to the territory and resources that you control.  But outposts (while not as useful) don't require the city-type micro-management that so many 4X games have traditionally wallowed in.         I, for one, am very grateful to Stardock for creating a game that removes a lot of that onerous burden -- it allows me to concentrate on other aspects of the game, that I find more interesting.                      

Spam outposts; not cities !       

Incidentally, if you haven't already read it, I would suggest that you check out the Discussion thread, started by Humility, back on April 6, 2012, entitled:  "How many city you would build?  One or few or spawn as you can?"

As the system works now, more cities are always superior from a game mechanics perspective. True, the prestige (growth per turn) pool is split into more parts as soon as you found a new city, but wait some turns till the city becomes lvl2 so you can build an inn (+growth building) and you already get more growth out of the equation as a net sum. 

Besides, you can enchant cities heavily, multiplying their benefit. You have extra build queues, aiding to overcome the artificial 3-turn minimum build time. You get more options to situationally respond to sudden threats (rush building) rather than needing to ferry troops from afar - and you also get some free, always-respawning city defenders whenever you get attacked that are meaningful during the earlier to mid-game. 

In fact, the only reason I delay settling a new city is to scout a bit the terrain to see if I can fit two cities in a fertile patch. I often tend to choose to build two cities on each end of a fertile stripe if I can fit them in the 6-tile min distance, even if there would be a more fertile place in the center of the stripe - two mediocre cities tend to give more bang for their buck, especially considering how long it takes to level cities to the high levels and the lackluster options for special buildings you get each upgrade. 

This all may change in the upcoming city-revision patch, but as it stands, more cities is definitely better. 

Wow. Fantastic answers guys. Explains quite clearly the difference between a city and an outpost.

Would like to reemphasis an idea I read in an earlier thread:

Have outposts and cities built by different unit types.
The outpost would be built by a scout, thus allowing faster movement across terrain until a sutible boarder is found.
The city would be built by a settler, slower, yet with obvious benefit to expanding your empire.

Don't know if they do or not, (I don't believe they do), but have outposts level up as well....but only with experiance points coming from defence of that outpost. Hense, fewer levels to the outpost that take longer to achieve, yet an outpost that is well experianced in defending a passage or area would become better if it's ground is held.

Outpost << Stockade << Keep << Fort << Fortress

Each level giving some additional defense bonus...

Maybe a good idea...maybe not. Just throwing it out there.

I would bet dollars to cents that we will see some kind of outpost upgrading system. GalCiv3 had a wonderful upgrade system for its starbases. I can't imagine why this game would not follow suit. I count maybe 3 weeks until we see some news on the new features. Maybe sooner with E3 happening now.

Further considerations when dealing with the outpost and the city:

First, I would limit the number of resources that can be picked up by a nearby Outpost. An outpost is a defensible position. It should not have the same capabilities of resource collection compared to a city. This would give the added complication of building a city for the resources....or building an outpost for the defense. Spamming outposts to pick up every resource in the area seems overkill, and you should have to make stategic decisions as to what resources you want to use......else build a city to utilize all the resources in that area.

Second, I would also place 'too close' limitations to outposts, mutually exclusive to that of your cities so that you cannot build a 'wall' of outposts. Again, for strategic, choosing the best location for your outposts would become a large part of the game (ie: to block that pass or to gain access to that resource).

Lastly, building resources should take a passage of time to complete, limited to one at a time. I'm fine with queuing them, but it shouldn't be instant.

Thoughts? Comments?