How many cities max?

[Provost Harrison]

Obviously unlimited. There should just be difficulties, not impossibilities, in controlling larger empires...personally, nowadays I find it totally unnecessary to control so many cities...and it becomes a micromanagement nightmare...

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by LightEning
Or they could switch to 16 bits and have 65536 as the limit. It's no use fiddling around with single bits, esp. in a game like Civ.

That is what I was getting at. Even if the out-of-the-box game settings would make 255 cities impossible or unwise, it will not harm the game to build in some redundancies like using 16 bit counters. The game rules should define what strategies are good or bad, not code limitations. 255 cities seems like a lot until you have all 16 players wanting to play on a map where 20 cities each is possible.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by LightEning
Or they could switch to 16 bits and have 65536 as the limit. It's no use fiddling around with single bits, esp. in a game like Civ.

I was just giving facts. I know that it's unusual to fill up with odd bits, if the remaining bits aren't used as a checksum ore something. But why would they like to use checksums to the city numbers?
...
Ok, they could use four bits for what civ the city belongs to, one bit for if the city exists or not. Now we have another bit to use...
...No, stop that you economic part of me, you should use 16 bits for the city-number, and 16 bits for the Civilization that the city belongs to. (If you would like to share a city with another civ, you would like to set more then one civ to own it) and 16 bits for the whenever it exists or not (all on means not founded jet, any thing else is the turn of foundation)...

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Grumbold
255 cities seems like a lot until you have all 16 players wanting to play on a map where 20 cities each is possible.

Is it likely that we can expect 16 players with 20 cities each?? In Civ-2, the AI emphasized 2-3 AI-civs, perhaps. The rest there often passive hang-around civs, that seemed to loose interest in continuing expanding and developing about halfway through the game.

With 15 AI-civs (HP being the 16:th) we are likely to windup with several "Lichtenstein-empires" with only 3-4 AI-cities in them. I just hope that the AI at least concentrates its efforts on at least 5 really strong ones this time. And that anti-BAB measures (bigger-always-better) are implemented, so that the remaining mini-empires becomes strong enough to play a worthwhile role, as well.

[Inverse Icarus]

firaxis just went to all the trouble of making ICS harder, and now you just want to go and put a CAP on the city limit?

jeebus, that work was not in vein.

and i bet you that i can handle a 50 city civ in civ 3.

gentlemen, place your bets.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Ralf
Is it likely that we can expect 16 players with 20 cities each?? In Civ-2, the AI emphasized 2-3 AI-civs, perhaps. The rest there often passive hang-around civs, that seemed to loose interest in continuing expanding and developing about halfway through the game.

I agree that in most games, the city count will not go over 255, since having lots of cities will be more difficult than before and not all AI civs will build huge empires. However, there are certainly situations in which you have more than ten large empires on a huge map (multiplayer, scenarios etc.), and I certainly wouldn't want to see Civ 3 limited in the same way Civ 2 was.

If there really is a hard-coded city limit of 255 or so in Civ 3, it certainly won't be long before some players hit the limit and will start complaining about it. I think the Civ engine should just adapt itself to huge games as well, if somebody really wishes to play them, so a higher maximum is required. The same goes for the number of units; although the game mechanics will discourage creating huge numbers of cities and units, somebody is going to succeed in doing it anyway, by changing the rules file if not else.

[Wazell]

I don't see any problem here. They'll just put the limit to 65535, or more likely 32767 cities, and everyone's happy. 32K cities is more likely, after all the population limit of 327 million in Civ2 was 32767*10000. That number has to be higher in Civ3, though.

[Deathwalker]

I believe that there should not be any limit to the number of cities.

[Theben]

I rarely hit the 255 limit but then I never sleaze. Firaxis has also stated that civs that started near each other IRL will start near each other often in civ3. So unless human players willingly back off from each other in a 16-player MP game (and there has still been no official endorsement of 16 civs at once) conflicts and lower city counts will be in place early.
But I can see how- if 16 civs are allowed at once- difficult a 255 city limit will be with scenarios. It shouldn't be too hard to up the limit, and it will only affect a small percentage of players- those who will want higher limits anyway.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Deathwalker
I believe that there should not be any limit to the number of cities.

It's implicit in data structures and game programming to have to put limits: they can only be as far as rarely or never a player will hit them, but given too large limits puts strain into others are (e.g. system resources).

Now I suppose we are all speaking about limits "wide enough"

This is more a matter of game dynamics, a thing that can only be truly tested by playing lot of games. Playtesting is the key here, but as large will be the number of playtester involved, Firaxis will never have the hope to have considered any game combination in a game born to span for some years of thousands of avid players

The programming trick should be subtle: add soft "bumpers" to game structure, so you can't hit a "no more city slot available", you get the game put harder obstacles to your plan to add more cities the more you come near the hard limit.

Efficiency drop, Unhappiness raise, Special Events related to huge number of cities, Growing risk of empire splitting... You can't have the feel of have reached "The End Of The World", because you are gently deviated into another direction, to another challenge.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
Efficiency drop, Unhappiness raise, Special Events related to huge number of cities, Growing risk of empire splitting... You can't have the feel of have reached "The End Of The World", because you are gently deviated into another direction, to another challenge.

I think all these things will already be included in Civ 3 standard rules, to prevent ICS... however, since there will be scenarios and rules modifications and some players will manage to build huge numbers of cities nevertheless, I think the maximum should be so high that the player could never reach it, no matter what.

[Vrank Prins]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
and it becomes a micromanagement nightmare...

Maybe this problem can be overcome by giving new possibilities of dealing with micromanagement during the game because of the advancements you've discovered. The more developed you are, the more you can "automate" things, the less you need to care about micromanagement.
That means that being advanced also gives you a playability bonus.

[Scouse Gits]

I admit to being fatalistic and to follow let's wait and see what we get philosophy about Civ3 - but can someone tell me just why there seems to be such fanatical zeal about stopping ICS in Civ3 - the only snippets that have reached me (hiding in Civ2-Strat) seem to be the rather gloating announcements of yet another impediment to the ICSer?

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
I admit to being fatalistic and to follow let's wait and see what we get philosophy about Civ3 - but can someone tell me just why there seems to be such fanatical zeal about stopping ICS in Civ3 - the only snippets that have reached me (hiding in Civ2-Strat) seem to be the rather gloating announcements of yet another impediment to the ICSer?

I believe the majority of Civ fans would prefer the rise of your civilisation to supremacy was more dependent on other factors than your ability to found new cities and the luck of starting on a substantial landmass. The need to develop a culture rather than just spread it until it can spread no further. Nobody is suggesting it should be more advantageous to play 1 city rather than 10+, but expanding to 10+ as fast as possible should not necessarily be the optimum route to victory in every game.

[Scouse Gits]

Thanks for that Grumbold - although it is rare for a non-ICSer to describe ICS as "the optimum route to victory in every game".
I would not disagree with you altogether, but as an unrepentant Rabid Aggressive Rodent who likes playing 100 villages rather than 30 cities, I can't help feeling somewhat discriminated against.