Not enough food...

[Mylon]

There just aren't enough ways to make _big_ cities in Civ 4. There is only one tech that increases food output, and the future technologies don't help at all since by the time I get them the big cities have plenty of health and happiness.

[Sparo]

You're right. This isn't Civ 3 and the 30 pop cities are gone, gone, gone. That said, you can work to improve your health and raise your pop caps. I've found that this is usually my limiting factor, not food problems.

Nonetheless, I've found that super-large cities are no longer neecessary. Most 15+ pop cities have more than enough production to compensate.

Eliminating giant city sprawl was one of Firaxis' goals. I'm still pretty fresh to the game (aren't we all?) but it seems that city specialization is a winning approach.

The one tech you're talking about is biology, right?

[Mylon]

Yes, it's biology.

As it stands, I really don't see any incentive against giant city sprawl in Civ 4. In every game I've played so far, there has always been financial incentive for more cities. I even put a city on a tiny 1 square plot of land because the water tiles ensure that the city would grow and they all produce commerce.

[goha]

It might also becuase of the new tile improvements you can do. Where as in the previous versions if it wasn't a hill/ mountain you generally just put a farm. Now is not the case. It would be interesting to see how large of a city you could get by just putting farms in the city radius.

[TheDarkside]

I think I've had a size 27 city so far as my biggest. It was built beside river with some flood plains.

Also look for resources like wheat, fish, bananas.. they give huge food boosts.

[Mylon]

I know that food resources give huge boosts, but I just find it odd that there's only one technology that increses food. One would think that a supermarket would give +1 food for each food resource due to a centralized distribution point getting more fresh food to people faster...

At least some other technologies to help make metropolises. If you take out research, there's nothing stopping a classical era city from reaching near-metropolis levels.

[TheDarkside]

Buidlings like supermakret do sort of increase food- though indirectly. By increasing health they can remove a penalty your city might have on them from overcrowding and such, which may result in lowering that city's food.

[Fried-Psitalon]

A city that is only on one tile of land probably will NOT be a financially wise move. Remember, you're not only paying for the maintenance of that city - you're moving one step closer to paying another GPT of maintenance empire-wide, as well. On higher difficulties levels (guessing you're playing low since you're not running into this) maintenance becomes quite brutal.

[alva]

At least you now can have large cities, at least now they're are a good/viable tactic. In Civ3 I hardly ever had a city past size 12.