Too many cities!?! HELP!!!

[fittstim]

I'm playing on a HUGE map, 16 civs. My civ is a custom civ (Sweden).

I totally lucked out and got placed on a big continent with no other civs and no jungle. I start expanding like crazy.

Around 840 AD, I try to settle a new city and the "Too many cities" window pops up. This new city would be my 41st city. Argh!!!

Does anyone know the rules concerning max cities? I looked in the editor but couldn't find anything.

I've played Germany and had over 100 cities no prob. Is this something with the new patch or is it something with custom civs? Anyone???

What really gets me is that I can't just change the .bic file and continue my game. Now I have to start over.

[Robert]

I guess it's to sum of all cities of all civilizations.
I never had it.

[fittstim]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean...

Does this mean that there is a max number of cities allowed on one map? If so, this would be a horrible change from CivII (max cities = 256 per civ, I believe).

I'll have to go check and see if other civs found new cities. And also to count the total number of cities on the map.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by fittstim
I'm not sure I understand what you mean...

Does this mean that there is a max number of cities allowed on one map? If so, this would be a horrible change from CivII (max cities = 256 per civ, I believe).

I'll have to go check and see if other civs found new cities. And also to count the total number of cities on the map.

AFAIK, there is a maximum of 512 cities allowed in the game. I think I have seen this info somewhere around here. Is it possible that there were so many cities in your game? If you are playing with 16 civs on a very huge map, this may be the problem...

[fittstim]

Grrr...

This limits the playability of HUGE maps but maybe the game would cease to function if more cities were allowed (it's already SLLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWWW).

Can anyone confirm the 512 max city limit?

Is this number hard wired or can it be changed somehow?

[Robert]

You should try to not play huge maps with large continents. I think that will avoid the problem since it's impossible to build that many cities.

[Grumbold]

I can remember a discussion on this point from shortly after the release. IIRC the 512 is a hard coded limit and is primarily for performance reasons. You're already noticing slowdowns and its only going to get worse.

[fittstim]

OK. Thanks for the info...but I still love to play on huge maps. Half the fun is exploring, discovering the goody huts and meeting new civs through discovery (rather than trading "communication with ...").

I guess I'll double or triple the cost of a settler and make it tougher to reach the 512 limit.

[fittstim]

Hmm... was that last comment directed at mine?

What I mean is that if it costs 2-3 times more to build a settler, then all the civs won't be pumping out settlers left and right at the beginning of the game. At least in principle...who knows how the wacky AI would respond.

But maybe a better solution would be to change all the expansionist civs to something else...

[Moonsinger]

Re: Too many cities!?! HELP!!!

Originally posted by fittstim
Around 840 AD, I try to settle a new city and the "Too many cities" window pops up. This new city would be my 41st city. Argh!!!

Does anyone know the rules concerning max cities? I looked in the editor but couldn't find anything.

The max # of cities on the map = 512 according to the latest patch. In fact, I usually have more than 400 cities in all my games without any problem. Just remember that the total of all AI cities + the total of your cities must be equal or less than 512.

[Jaybe]

And, of course, make sure that you have the latest patch (1.29f).

[Robert]

And, of course, make sure that you have the latest patch (1.29f).

does that have anything to do with the city limit?

[Willem]

Originally posted by fittstim

Can anyone confirm the 512 max city limit?

Yes, there is a max of 512. IIRC, the very first patch increased it from 256 in fact. That's always been a limit in the Civ type games, which has been my biggest beef playing them. Colonization was the worst. I really wish they could just allow as many as you want, but I guess there's some sort of programming limitation.

One way around that would be to uncheck the Allow Cities flag for certain terrains, like Desert and Tundra. That would no doubt mean much fewer cities in the game.

[Moonsinger]

Yes, I'm positive about the 512 limit. In one of my game, I remember conquering the whole world and had about 511 cities in my empire. I let the AI live with 1 city. Since I was playing on a huge map, there are plenty of land out there, but the AI was unable to build any more city. No need for me to worry about them expanding no more; it was just a perfect.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by fittstim
OK. Thanks for the info...but I still love to play on huge maps. Half the fun is exploring, discovering the goody huts and meeting new civs through discovery (rather than trading "communication with ...").

I guess I'll double or triple the cost of a settler and make it tougher to reach the 512 limit.

Alternately you could go into the editor and make more terrain types unable to support cities. I've modded the game so the cities can only be built on plains, grassland and hills. That helps limit the number of cities and leave more map for exploration/exploitation later in the game when you can clear forests/jungle quicker.

Also I modded Exchange Maps/Exchange Communication to be available with Astronomy instead of Map Making so that the map remains covered that much longer except for what you actually explore. I should probably bump up the Explorer to some tech prior to Navigation and Astronomy to give that useless unit some use, but I'm not sure what tech is a good fit. maybe Invention??