Is it a BAD mistake for your empire to expand beyond the optimal # of cities?

[Artifex]

How bad of a mistake is it if your empire goes beyond the optimal # of cities? What detrimental effects does this cause?

I was told that optimal cities for standard map is 16. I believe if a commercial civ then it is 4 extra = 20. Lets say you have 22, 25 or even 30? Does the penalty scale in response to how far over the limit you go?

What sort of penalty? Corruption? Waste? Does it hit all your cities once you go overlimit? Or just the new cities? What part of your empire gets hurt/penalized and how bad?

[DrFell]

It basically just affects new cities... they all produce one shield and one trade each. No other affects really.

[Artifex]

For example in my current game on a standard map I have 35 cities. I have a pretty big Empire and own half of the largest continent atm.

I wonder if I placed my forbidden palace on the other end of the empire. Those are nice big cities farthest away form my capital (they were aztecs..but I conquered most of his empire). But by your reasoning they are only going to produce 1 shield? So no use for me to build a forbidden palace around new cities? Should you only produce it around cities that were in your empire before you hit that 16-20 city threshhold? I am also considering communism, I'll ask about that in another thread.

[Aeson]

The 'total' corruption happens at 2x the number of optimal cities doesn't it? Then Courthouses and Police Stations can help extend it a little more. The Commercial trait also extends it, by 50% now.

The FP will create another ring of productive cities. It serves as a second Palace when determining corruption by distance, and changes the ordering of cities affected by corruption by number of cities. It should always lower overall corruption, as corruption by number of cities stays the same, but corruption by distance is lowered.

It's always a good idea to build it.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Aeson
The 'total' corruption happens at 2x the number of optimal cities doesn't it? Then Courthouses and Police Stations can help extend it a little more. The Commercial trait also extends it, by 50% now.

The corruption due to number of cities maxes out at twice the optimal number of cities, but in practice overall corruption tends to top out at about 1.4 to 1.6 times the optimal number (varies depending on how closely you pack you cities together) due to the additional distance corruption.

The FP will create another ring of productive cities. It serves as a second Palace when determining corruption by distance, and changes the ordering of cities affected by corruption by number of cities. It should always lower overall corruption, as corruption by number of cities stays the same, but corruption by distance is lowered.

It's always a good idea to build it.

AIUI It decreases optimal-city corruption as well. If the spheres of influence don't overlap, you can get 1.5x optimal number around the palace, and 1.5x optimal number around the Forbidden Palace as well. I might be wrong, but that's how it seems to me. Otherwise, by building the FP, you'd notice an increase in the middle-production cities around the initial palace. Building the FP never increases corruption in any city.

And to answer the initial poster, there is never any 'penalty' for exceeding the optimal number of cities. Additional cities captured/built are just hopelessly corrupt, and will never produce more than 1 shield and 1 trade (which still makes them good for 3 gold per turn each in principle, if you set it to produce wealth and make someone a tax collector/scientist). If you start bulding extra cities in the core of your empire, cities further away will start showing more corruption.

The exception to this is communism, where if you build enough cities then eventually they all become completely useless. If you have a huge empire, avoid communism.

[frostycreep]

I disagree. Communism can make all cities produce quite well if you build lots of courthouses.(one in each city)

[Aeson]

Just to illustrate the difference between Democracy and Communism in a huge empire. (about as big as they get granted)

Here is the city in Democracy.

[Aeson]

And here it is in Communism.

[player1]

Originally posted by DrFell
It basically just affects new cities... they all produce one shield and one trade each. No other affects really.

Not exactly.
It's just that corrution effects increase more rapidly after that.
(that incdues old cities too, but in lesser extent since they are closer to Palace or For. Palace)

[Cort Haus]

Communism can be effective (v1.21) as a short-term measure in modest-to-medium-size empires with, say 6-10 heavily corrupt cities and a strong core.

By diverting shields to the periphery from the core for a while, the weak cities can get some faster building done on their temple, (harbor), mkt, courthouse package - with the possibility of pop-rushing. As there aren't too many poor cities to spread the core's wealth around, the core won't be as weakened during this period as for large empires like Aeson's example.

With this 'remote-infrastructure' in place or well on its way, the govt can be switched back to Dem/Rep, and the remote cities grown to 6 for WLTK and good morning productive cities!

Obviously the religious trait is most suited to this, otherwise you might lose ~12 turns in revolution. (I wish they'd lower the crippling penalty for not being religious, I find it imbalancing.)

[alexman]

I started typing a reply, but then I relized I had typed the same answer about ten times before. So I typed a bit more and made it into a FAQ in the general forum.

[Jaybe]

Is it a BAD mistake for your empire to expand beyond the optimal # of cities?

A: NO, it is not a mistake at all.
It may take some time for the new outlying cities to be productive and they may siphon resources (e.g., gold) away from the rest of the empire, but if you build any culture in them your borders will continue to expand. As you expand, your opponents have less opportunity to expand, which may or may not be relevant depending on your victory objectives.