Poll: Founding, Conquering or Developing Cities?

[Ralf]

Reading Cannes quote below, in the Punishing for lots of cities? Ponder this... thread, made me rather curious about what most civers here at Apolyton actually priorities?

- Expanding your empire mostly through founding new cities.
- Expanding your empire mostly through conquering enemy cities.
- Concentrating mostly in developing the cities your already have founded/conquered.

How many cities do you usually have then the game ends (on average)? How much of these have been peacefully founded? How much have been aggressively conquered? How much to you bother develop your cities/city-areas?
In what areas do you invest most time & energy?

CANNES quote:

"The upper bound before the cities began to become unhappy was 120 cities when having the virtual democracy government. With the mind controler city improvement it was possible to control about 160 cities. In my last conquest game on deity level huge map I was well above 250 cities at the end of the game and there was room on the map for at least another 500 cities!"

My own Civ playing strategy usually looks like this (if i have enough space available):

1: Found and develop 15-20+ cities. Develop these cities to at least temple, marketplace, granary, library, citywall -level. One city-area developing settler to each city.
2: Found another 5-10 cities, and continuing developing all my 20-30 cities maximally in all civil areas, in order to ensure Alpha Centauri-victory with 40000 passengers, under democracy.
3: Directly after the launch; switch production for quick & massive arms-race in order to conquer as many AI-cities (preferbly with Wonders) as possible.
4: Then its 2-3 turns left: maximising happiness-rate as much as possible, by luxury and entertainers. Having as many Wonders as possible.

The end-result in terms of number of cities, is often not more then max 45-60+ cities. 20-25+ was founded peacefully, and the rest was conquered aggressively.
I use to think that 45-60+ cities was pretty much, but after reading Cannes post, I start to wonder...

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 22, 2001).]

[JosefGiven]

Your game strategy does seem to follow my tactics, especially the starting rush to build and develop 20+ cities, and maintain a strong body of settlers.

However, I'm not too keen on the Space Launch mission, I tend to go for the bloodlust option of massive military conquest. Having said this, I am very eager to consolidate any cities won by conquest, and swiftly assimilate them into my Imperial Union!! Having done this, I treat my new subjects to the very latest improvements my civ has to offer in order to expand my new found colonies! I defend them more tenaciously than the AI does, too...But then, who doesn't?

I think Firaxis were hinting that there would be happiness penalties for freshly conquered cities...Fantastic! Very realistic...It'll give us warmongers something to worry about



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Josef Given
josefgiven@hotmail.com

[ajli@home]

I think conquest should be more relevant. When you capture a city, you can pillage it (which enrages the enemy) and steal like 80% of all its improvements +10% of the enemy's money. You can also capture it and not destroy any imrpovements. If you piollage it you enrange them so much that the enemy has 20% attack for 1 turn.

[- Groucho -]

I usually get to about 50-60 cities by the end game if I've managed to stick to my standard builder strategy. The ratio is probably 3/4 built to 1/4 conquered. If I have many more cities than that to look after, I start to get pulled in two directions. I enjoy micromanagement but find it overwhelming when there are too many cities to think about each turn. If circumstance makes me wind up with an overly large number of cities (like when you end up in a position which is hard to defend so you have to wipe out a larger neighbour just to get some peace) I tend to give up on the builder game and go for a conquest victory. It's not as satisfying to me, but I don't have the patience to tweak 80 cities and conquest is better than just restarting. Besides, at that point I usually have a massive army which would be a pain to demobilize so I end up crushing that little jerk who keeps flooding me with diplomats and ... ... more cities.

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Echinda
"That which does not kill you, will likely try again."

[Nikolai]

I have two different playing styles; one for Civ and one for Alpha Centauri.

In Civ I usually builds some few cities on the continent/island I start on, untill I reach other civilisations; then I starts to develop these cities, and I usually don't expand unless the other civilizations attacks me. When I have reached modern ages, my cities are well developed, and ready to build on my spaceship!

In Alpha Centauri I uses to expand as much I can in the beginning, and when I have filled all the land I can settle on my continent(it are always a continent, I don't know why) I builds "secret projects" in my best cities(after I have garrisoned them), and units/improvements in the other. I always uses many formers. Then I usually wins by trancedence or conquest.

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Who am I? What am I? Do we need Civ? Yes!!
birteaw@online.no

[Cannes]

In the particular game from which you quote me. My starting continent had two other civs which I erradicated in the renaissance(sp?). I had about 50 cities on the continent. They were all fully developed when I started my final conquest of the world. I tend to play perfectionist style with my cities. Starting the development of newly conquered cities immidiately. In that particular game none of the conquered cities or the new space/sea cities I founded during my conquest ever played any military role. I just like developing them . My deity level games are very rarely as succesful as the game in question, cause I am not even close to being amongst the best civ'ers on these boards. I do however still hate being limited by mechanics.

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

Heres my strategy:

1. Build empire until 1900 A.D. When I reach that year, I have about 40-60 cities, so I am quite a mighty man.

2. Begin building my military armament. Explore the rest of the world, find enemies.

3. capture enemy cities until my military strength is ack to normal.

4. start developing my cities I conquered. Now I have about 100 cities.

5. about 2000 A.D., go out again and try to conquer until the game ends so I can get as high a score as possible.

p.s. I used this strategy last time I played, And I had nearly 150,000,000 population, I had built all the wonders in the game except collosus, and I had reached extra advance 25 by A.D. 2004. If that isn't proof that this is a great strategy, then I dont know what is.

[Shadowstrike]

Did you put an effort into trying to nab the Colossus? I think it is the most important early wonder, follwed by the Hanging Gardens.

[DarkCloud]

The Colossus? I thought that was the most useless wonder???

On a level of King I play the game without building any wonders, and I have 4 of the 7 civs within 10 squares of my civ and I am the second best civ by 1400AD so you dont really need wonders.

I think Colossus is useless, it makes trade, yes, but it really does not do much else except in the city it is built in.

---Myself, I build 75% of my cities; develop all of them and conquer the other 25% unless I am right next to other civs; then it is about 50% conquest.

[loinburger]

In Masters of Orion II (similar to Civ II) I would found between 5 to 10 colonies (depending on the galaxy size), build them up and advance my tech significantly (I would always play a Creative Democratic race and would make tech advances at an astounding rate), conquer Orion, and then send out about 20-50 colony ships (again, depending on the galaxy size) and build an unbelievably large empire. I would never occupy an enemy colony; I would either blow up the planet with my Stellar Converter (I'd only do this on Toxic planets, generally), bombard the planet with some Death Spores (killing all of the colonists but saving the buildings), or I would occupy the colony and commit genocide. My strategy in Civ was similar (I didn't play Civ as much as I played Masters of Orion II), but the greatest difference between the games is that in Civ if I conquered a city the population was mine; in Masters of Orion II the population was unhappy and alien, which was a real pain; I would typically play as a Lithovore race (my population would not eat food, but would instead eat shields), and would have no food production facilities or food technologies. My alien race would either starve to death or use all of their population points doing nothing but growing the food that they had to eat but that I had no use for.

Civ and Civ III will probably be different in that conquered cities will have humans that can be more easily assimilated into my empire than the stupid food-eating races in Masters of Orion II. This was not even a problem in SMAC, where a conquered city would instantly conform to the idealogy of its conquerors ("What? Zakharov has conquered us? We'd better unlearn everything from our previous idealogy and start cranking out research points at 150% capacity").

[Roman]

Hmm, this is a very interesting question. I usually follow what I call "the population boom" strategy. That means I try to maximise the growth of my population by founding many cities, building a lot of irrigation, always building pyramids, etc. with the understanding that this is the equivalent of building up potential in the game. I also try to build all wonders that cover the whole civ and never expire. For this purpose I have substantial research but it is only geared towards acquiring these wonder techs, the rest I steal. Initially I build aprox. 30 cities or so depending on when I get attacked. It is then very easy to get a large economy rapidly.
One area I totally neglect is the military - I have one unit per city plus a few more mobile ones. This is usually more than sufficient even on Deity, though, because my massive economy means that on being attacked I switch to military production and fight the war until the opponent is destroyed. I never start a war so my reputation doesn't suffer, but once at war I never accept peace - the aggressor must be obliterated. The reason why I can survive the initial computer onslaught with so few units is that the computer's use of units is wasteful at best. After destroying the opponent I continue with peaceful development until the next attack.
In the end I win through conquestand end up with all the cities there are, which is often more than 200.

That said I sometimes try different strategies - next I am planning to try to win the game by achieving AC victory and playing the game with only one city.

[Boracks]

Disclaimer: After a bad day at work, I wanted to take over the world so I started a game on Prince level.

Its 1795 and I have 100 cities, have done the Apollo project, taken out the Vikings and Zulus and am eating away at the others. Most of the cities I founded (going through the name list a second time), most of the rest I, err, bought. Actually, I only conquered 5 by military means.

Generally, every city I start builds a settler as its second item to do some quick improvements and then found another city. Where space is available, I try for something like exponential growth.


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"Treat each day as if it were your last. Eventually, you'll be right."

[Zeevico]

My strat would be founding/ perfecting my cities mixed together.