Maximum City size?

[Cabbagemeister]

So I was wondering, what's the biggest city you can practically get?

Say it's late in the modern age. You're playing on Noble, so you get some decent innate health bonuses. You're on great terms with everyone, so you have access to all the happiness and health resources, including musicals, singles, and movies. You're running environmentalism (for the health bonus), beauacracy (for the happiness bonus), and free religion, with all or nearly all the religions represented in your big city, for lots and lots of happiness. You've built all the happiness buildings you can (including all the temples for all the religions), and all the aquaduct/granary/supermarket/hospital/whatever health buildings. Your city has a really good amount of food resources--nothing absurd, no 4 corn tiles or anything, but say a couple of food resources and some flood plains, with no hills around.

So how big would this city get? I really have no good sense of it. Size 35? 40? 50?

[Aeson]

Well... settling a Great Merchant gives +1 food. Researching each Future Tech gives +1 Health, +1 Happiness... so it could get very high.

If you count the food available in the 20 tile radius, and divide by 2, that is the "max" size of the city otherwise.

[thanakar]

Originally posted by Aeson
Well... settling a Great Merchant gives +1 food. Researching each Future Tech gives +1 Health, +1 Happiness... so it could get very high.

If you count the food available in the 20 tile radius, and divide by 2, that is the "max" size of the city otherwise.

What about the tile the city is sitting on? Does the food from that tile get counted in the total?

[Aeson]

Yes.

[Addled Platypus]

my best 27

are you building more cottages than you need?


I have seen the AI surround a city with cottages and still have a large pop?

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex



I have seen the AI surround a city with cottages and still have a large pop?

Because cottages dont' take away food. If you build all those cottages on +2 food tiles, the city can grow quite a bit.

[lethe]

If my fevered mind is working right I get the maximum size being 41. (The entire city radius is filled with 4 food tiles. Genetics or somesuch tech makes farms +2 food instead of +1. The city tile itself is 2 food.)

[MattPilot]

lehte - i think its biology that makes it +2 food (farms), but thats besides the point.

The problem you will be running into is health. 1 sick face = -1 food.

41 population is quite high and will generate quite a lot of sick faces. You'd have to have all food resources - all health improvements. You would need to run environmentalist civic and have a couple of Future techs (+1 happy, +1 health for each future tech).

[joncnunn]

I generally recommend click the "avoid growth","emp production", and "great person" flags on any city that have grown to balance between health and unhealth until additional health issues can be resolved.

[Cabbagemeister]

Of course, if you get enough future techs, both health and happiness become nonissues. I just finished a space-race game where I got to future tech 13 before I finally finished the thrusters. None of my cities were even remotely close to unhappy or unhealthy.

I think you could get higher than 41 if you had some food resources in your radius (6 or 7 food with farms and biology), or if you had a bunch of floodplains (5f with farms and biology). I bet you could get to 50. I wonder if that would be worth doing for OCC (as long as you have Universal Suffrage and don't need any hammers).

[Ennet]

You could settle some great merchants into the city too for even greater food production

[kimmygibler]

The max pop is potentially unlimited in this game. With great people and future tech.

[MattPilot]

I think we need a building improvement that would boost food production