Expansion vs Corruption. How many cities max for your empire? 20?

[Roulette]

I've played the better part of a game and only got 1 leader. It was for defending a city with a lone elite pikeman against like 40 attacking units. My fault, but it was before I realized the AI wlould strike at the week spots in your civilization (kinda frustrating, but I like that a lot.)

I'm the Russians and I got Ivan the Terrible. One question though... Is every leader the same for that civ? For example, if I get another leader, will it be Ivan again? Or do they have a list of names for each Civ?

Last question (because I'm not big into the editor) if you create your own civ, can you provide names for the leaders? Ex: "you created a leader" "Roulette the Chump" Or some such?

[teknokrat]

The leaders are civ specific and there are a number of them. Also if you play a militaristic civ or get the heroic epic your chance of getting a leader increase.

later

[Grunthex]

And yes if you create a Civ there is a section to enter Leader names. I seem to recall most civs have 4 to 8 names now, no real need for more.

[Peoux]

Originally posted by encyclodoc
Problem is with forbidden city is that corruption is too high to build it in a reasonable time at a location far enough away from your capital to effectively double the size of your empire. for instance, it took about 50 game turns with mining to build forbidden city across a sea from my civ (english warlord 8 civs). about half of the city was lost to corruption, and while it did help the overseas expansion, by then the other civ's in the game we way ahead of me in total number of cities. im beginning to think that expansion sux unless you are trying to aquire resources.

Well, here's a neat little trick then: Build the Forbidden Palace in your capital! No corruption/waste giving you any delays in building it, you'll have it ready really reasonably quickly. What good does that do, you ask? Well - when it's built - go build a Palace where you wanted to build the Forbidden Palace instead. The palace is an ordinary building, so you can rush buy/force build it!

[RobRoy]

Originally posted by Peoux
The palace is an ordinary building, so you can rush buy/force build it!

Sorry, you can't rush build the palace; and it's even more expensive than the Forbidden Palace, IIRC.

[Wisdom]

The benefit of expansion in spite of the corruption problem is that you are "taking away" city/city locations from competing empires. Granted, a city distant from your "home" empire wont garner alot of tax revenue and such, but you will deprive someone else of that city. So you arent likely adding alot of tax revenue to your empire.

But consider that this far-away city addition is likely close to someone else's capital and thusly would be more efficient under his control, you are doing more damage to him than you are directly benefitting yourself...and thereby in a roundabout way improving your relative standing vs whomever you've robbed this city/city-location from.

And if you're doing well enough at home, a little bit of cash to build a few cultural enhancements at this location will help ensure that it not be gobbled up in a cultural battle.

Wisdom

[Sentinali]

Corruption and Cost/Benefit

The key to corruption is to look carefull at each city on a cost benefit basis. I have an empire of about 30 cites, 25 of them are kick butt producers within a central core that contains my palace and the forbidden city. Outside my core continent (South American and Mexico), I have Australia and the Vietnam penisula. There cities aren't doing great, BUT, the resources they provide make the people back home very happy and I'm in WLTKD all the time.

The moral of this story, don't expand without thinking. Plan your cities and know to stop if planting that next city will not do one of the following:

a) Make money
b) Block a chokepoint
c) Give you access to a resource

Personally I think under depotism, before you can build a FC, the max is somewhere between 8 and 15, depending on the lay of the land. As I move to democracy I can increase this to 30, BUT always watch your cost/benefit.