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When to stop building cities

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When to stop building cities

from Stardock Forums

Edit: Warning, I am pretty sure the following is not correct.

Edit2: It is definitely incorrect. See Post 11

Hi,

I am quite new to the game and started to wonder at which point I should stop building new cities. As building a new city increases unrest there is a point where this extra unrest will be more harmful than the relative benefits of a new city.

I should stop building new cities when I reach this point. So I tried to develop a formula to describe this with x being the amount of cities.

 

 

On the left part is the extra unrest per city, on the right part the relative benefit of a new city. Example: if you have 4 cities and build a fifth, the relative benefit is

 

 

If I solve the first formula x is about 5.77. That means I should not build more than 6 cities.

Of course for this simple example I am ignoring any improvements that reduce unrest, traits and heroes and the secondary effects of new cities (roads, new resources). On the other hand a new city is not as productive as an older city (so the right part is too optimistic, too) and the cost of a settler is also ignored. My guess is that this more or less evens out.

Am I wrong? Do you have any comments or advice?

 

74,118 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

By the time you've reached the later stages of the game the math kind of goes off the rails.  For each Fortress city after your first (super unit producer with a Great Arena) that you level up to 5, you can add 10 more new cities to your empire with absolutely no detriment with your Onyx Thrones.  Include prisons in the mix (which granted makes it harder to subsequently hit level 5) and those extra cities can take you even further.  Or recruit lots of commanders and level them to 8.  My current game, I've got henchmen which makes it even more wacky as they're trivially easy to get to level 8 for only 20 fame up front.  That means I can station a -45% unrest unit in each city with the added bonus of his -5% unrest to all cities ability more than making up for the 3% unrest penalty caused by founding the city.  Once I've seen who's available at my 800 fame milestone I'm going to start cranking these guys out and see how big an empire I can make with brutal taxes and no unrest :D

 

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

I have been using the same strategy off and on lately.  I get the henchmen maxed out on the gold and the -unrest lines and then make another one.  I had 9 or 10 of them one game.  500 gold each, plus 6 gold per turn or something each, and the huge unrest reduction each, both in their own city and empire wide.

I was thinking of trying to win a 2 city game with 9 henchmen each packed into both cities with both the gold and research lines maxed out.

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Second try - and I didn't save the first to a text editor because this site hadn't logged me out without telling me before (first time for everything)...

Some thoughts on why cities are good even if they are production/etc. stalled:

- They still generate mana

- Almost as good as outposts at claiming land, they defend themselves to an extent, and can grow when you fix unrest later

- I want to push my borders to touch other civs - every city site I have is one they don't

- If someone goes to war with me, I want their target as far from my core as possible to give me the most time to react

- And if they take a city that's stalled, there's minimal infrastructure for them to capitalize on

Truth be told, like a lot of others I find that even in the low to mid teens I have minimal problems, and would be surprised if there was a crash point at one or two or three more.

Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting elmuneco235, reply 28


[...] I [...] would be surprised if there was a crash point at one or two or three more.
End of elmuneco235's quote

It is the very opposite. It is more of a steady decline. At least with my simple formula that ignores a lesser value of newer cities. This also means that 17 is not exactly a "sweet spot". It's a spot where a very small improvement changes into a very small decline.

 

Cities Production Improvement relative Improvement
1 97 97 -
2 188 91 0,4840425532
3 273 85 0,3113553114
4 352 79 0,2244318182
5 425 73 0,1717647059
6 492 67 0,1361788618
7 553 61 0,1103074141
8 608 55 0,0904605263
9 657 49 0,0745814307
10 700 43 0,0614285714
11 737 37 0,0502035278
12 768 31 0,0403645833
13 793 25 0,0315258512
14 812 19 0,0233990148
15 825 13 0,0157575758
16 832 7 0,0084134615
17 833 1 0,0012004802
18 828 -5 -0,0060386473
19 817 -11 -0,0134638923
20 800 -17

-0,02125