Doh!

[Patryn]

Well, I have played 4-5 games of CTP2 now, and it is mostly good except for one thing.

I can't stand being limited to such a small amount of cities. It just seems so arbitrary to be limited to 20 cities in the ancient/midevil times. I mean the roman republic had far more than 20 cities.

And later in the game, how can you play a game into later stages and expect to conquer anyone without having to destroy every new city you conquer?

How can you even take advantage of a giga map when after you finish expanding(which 60 cities, even if all 8 civs had 60, just isn't enough to fill a giga map), you can't even conquer other nations because your populace will go up in arms to the fact that you have more than a certain amount of cities? Nevermind the fact that you just launched a preemptive nuclear strike on your nearest neighbor and conquered all of his cities, your people will all revolt on you because you have too many cities.

I am an expansionist at heart and this kills it for me. CTP1 had twice the city limit this game does, and it capped the unhappy limit. CTP2, it will get worse and worse the more cities you add. CTP1 they would only get unhappy to a certain point, and then no worse. That was manageable. You would have less capabilities in CTP1 if you went over the caps, but you could still go on and tough it out until the next government. In this game, you might as well give your cities to your enemies if you even think about going over the limit.

CTP1 also has that wonderful invention called mind control which would fix this problem in the end game, and allow you to really build an empire. As it stands in CTP2 you are limited to small-medium sized empires. It is almost as if "empire" was taken out of the game. You just can't afford to to conquer in this game on anything but a small map. I conquered all the AI on a small map, and my citizens were beating at the gates to my capital with a mountain of complaints. I had every single happyness improvement and wonder and they still weren't content.

I guess you could say make some entertainers. However, conquering 2 cities, and there goes an entertainer in every one of your other 60 cities to keep them happy. 60 population just so you can have 2 more cities.

Is there a mod to fix this? Otherwise I am just going to tinker around until I can fix this.

[Maquiladora]

You have to remember CtP2 cities continually expand their borders and so (in theory) you should end up with less cities on the terrain you have. This is how it should be anyway, if city growth was balanced properly, but war usually takes place when you have cities with radius of 2 border. Also the fact that you can actually expand beyond 60 cities at the end says to me the AI is too easy, not that the rules are wrong. Try getting 60 cities in a MP game on a giga map, or even 35.

Thats all beside the point anyway, youre playing the game like it should be CtP1 and use those rules. In fact i think almost any limit on cities isnt realistic, even civ2 had a limit in despotism before people become unhappy at more cities.

There is a 10 city limit in Tyranny, but with good play and organisation of martial law you can get 15 easy, even 16 at a push. Whats more interesting, continually building cities 2 spaces apart towards a city cap you know youll never reach, or knowing that a cap exists and with skillful play, dealing with it?

[bernhj]

The most cities I have ever had was 120-130 in a CTP2 Original game, Gigantic Map, with only 3 other empires though. The AI could never defend against my huge stacks of tanks

[Patryn]

Well, I have been playing a bit differently than I would normailly in CTP1. In CTP1 I would build my cities at about 2-3 spaces apart until I got roughly 80-150 cities. In CTP2 they are all at least 4 spaces apart, as far as I can help it, since they can have a 3 space resource influence rather than 2.

However, on a giga map, playing on hard, the enemy doesn't even see my cities by the time I have 40 cities, and it can't get a force to me until after I have reached 60 cities and am ready for their assault. The map is just too big to have such a limit on cities. Especially with conquering in mind.

I changed the government files to allow for more cities(twice what it currently allows, with some exceptions), and I am playing a game on the 28 civ world map scenario. Playing as america, you only have to take down the canadians and the native americans, and either conquer the mexicans, or just blockade the ithmus, and you are pretty much set for much of the game so long as you pay them off and keep the peace.

I have expanded all the way out to the west coast, into alaska, and halfway up to the northpole on the canada side, spacing my cities 4 each. It is a giga map, and I have 125 cities. I am in a facist government that allows 100 cities, and the only thing that is keeping me popular is the feat I got that gives me +5 happiness for 15 turns.

Well, I have the american scene set with just about what it would have in real life, had we conquered canada, and half of mexico. But I can't go any further, at least until I get technocracy which I made allow 150 cities. Even then, I will only be able to conquer the rest of mexico, down into maya, inca, and brazil and that will be it for any imperialistic visions.

At least if they had left mind control in the game I could hope to conquer the world, but since they didn't all I can hope to do is nuke the world into a desert. I can't even put any sea cities in, because there is no room.

Had I spaced my cities 6 spaces apart intsead of 4, I would have maybe 80 cities, instead of 125, and that is still too much to be able to add in the rest of the world as well.

I think I may alter the virtual reality improvement to serve as a sort of mind control device, that would give an insane amount of happiness so I can conquer and expand to my heart's desire.

[EPW]

Originally posted by Patryn

Well, I have the american scene set with just about what it would have in real life, had we conquered canada, and half of mexico.

Actually we did conquer half of Mexico

[Patryn]

True, but I conquered another half

[bernhj]

4 Spaces apart! I usually put them 2-5 in the beginning. It is really hard to defend your cities in the ancient age until you have your road network complete and then I start taking any territory that is avaliable on my continent .

[Patryn]

Well, on a giga map you have all the time in the world to prepare for an invasion. If this were civ 3 or CTP1 2-3 spaces is more than enough for most of your game. But in CTP2 it seems you need to make your land count, at least on the larger maps.

Smaller maps, I would still say build far apart just so you can do some land grabbing, and when you have as many cities as you have room for, begin pumping out archers and hoplites, and start conquering.