Largest cities?

[axisworks]

Most of my cities tend to be in the 15-25 population range, but there was one game where I actually had a city get up to 45 population. It was one of the first Civ4 games I played, so I couldn't tell you how it happened. What have been some of the larger city populations you've encountered?

[JackRudd]

I've seen a few get over 25, but they're pretty rare.

I suppose if your city were surrounded by 20 flood plains squares, and you farmed them all, then Biology would eventually get you 5 Food/Square, and thus your city could support 51 population (31 specialists - nice.) Of course, you'd probably only be able to do that at stupidly high Future Tech levels.

[unamablebuiler]

i regularly get up to size 30 and sometimes size 34 just by irrigating half the squares . the rest are town or mines.

you would have to run caste system to get the most out of those 20 specalists imo

[lange17]

With supermerchants providing one food each your city size is theoretically unlimited, right?

[JackRudd]

Well, limited only by your rate of production of Great Merchants. (With a 31-specialist city, Pacifism, and a Philosophical leader - could be quite large.)

To get the most out of a supersize city, you want to run Representation for the extra 3 beakers/specialist. Caste System shouldn't really be necessary late on - you should have enough infrastructure that you don't need to break the specialist caps.