When to Expand?

[Arrian]

I tend to go worker-first and then grow to the happy cap whilst getting bronze working (obviously not beelining) and then whipping settlers out at happy +1. I do not invest in a granary right away. I'm sure Blake can demonstrate that it's suboptimal play in more ways that one.

I find that I want my city to take ~10 turns to grow back the pop I rushed off (say happy +1 is size 7. I whip for 3 pop, dropping to size 4. In a perfect world, I want it to hit size 6 10 turns later, grow to size 7 fast, and whip again) and in the meantime I'll be building other stuff - military, library, etc. Of course, if I build the granary and do some micro managing (including specialists), I could do that better than going no granary. But I'm also trying to fit in an Oracle CS sling, so my build priorities are all over the place.
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My most effective rush of late was a mass catapult rush. I had a couple of axes and a spear for cover (though I did replace the spear with a WE once I got ivory online). True, Construction is not really "early." But in this particular game I had very strong early research (5 cottaged floodplains + 2 gold mines between my first 2 cities). I built only 4 cities, scraped together about 8 cats, 2 axes and 1 WE and unleashed hell. Even if you replace the WE with a spear (and I had built one), my AI target could not have stopped me. I took very light casualties and absolutely crushed him. Catapults are really powerful. If one lacks a powerful early UU (WC, Immort, Praet, etc), I think they're the way to go. Hurry to construction and punch out ~10 of them, cover with a few counter units and go bonk some heads. Adjust for level as necessary, as YMMY

-Arrian

[zeace]

If the next tile you will work will add a significant number of food/hammers, then it's probably better to grow before you build a settler/worker. If your next tile is going to be a forest or something, you're better off building it now. That means that if I have a great capital location, I'll hold off on building the settler until my capital is big. But if my capital is marginal, I might go settler first.

[Olavi]

Four cities is usually my early expansion target. I try to get those four up as soon as ever possible. I usually play commercial civs and prioritize cottages, so economical reasons rarely force me to slow dowm my expansion.

After that, expansion depends on many things. If there are still sweet spots around, I may go for cities 5 and 6 quickly, too. If not, I may start developing my strike force and take cities 5 and 6 from a neighbor a bit later.

I've got a question, too: is there any means to know the maintenance cost of another city before actually founding that city?

[couerdelion]

It seems to me to be very situational but I’m loathe to offer much in the way of advice because my more recent efforts seem to demonstrate that I have forgotten how to play this game. Certainly the higher levels will leave you far less room to expand so there are two options

1) Hurry to grab the good sites
2) Get the strategic resources and then steal your rivals’ cities.

The second option is likely to be the cheaper means of acquiring a city - or at least relatively cheaper because your rivals suffer a loss. As long as you can get one of the strategic resources, option 2) will always be open to you.

But if you’re rivals are some distance away, then this will not only require a longer time to build up and move your armies but will also leave you will a rather disjointed empire that requires more units to defend. In this case, it may make sense to continue expanding until you meet and then consider expansion in another direction or move onto the offensive. In this case, unless your rival has some very juicy sites, I would opt for continued expansion into areas with some good resources or try to capture barbarian cities first and figure out an expected limit on natural growth so that you can plan for your first conflict.

Of course if you have Romans nearby and they have iron then you may want to go to war early. Also if your neighbours have ivory then you might also want to strike before they get construction. These are examples when you need a pre-emptive war which, in my book, over-rides any personal desire for peaceful expansion.