city cap system is just plain stupid

[Davien]

It limits us from conquering more cities as we like, and rather need to wait for slow research to keep increase it. Seriously why is this system in place?

[Davien]

we can go past the limit by 1 as that would only -10 influence, go past by 2 limit and see your influence get sucked into a black hole.

till this day I don't understand it. Civ 6 doesn't have this so I don't get why this game put this system in place. How did Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great conquered lands so fast if this system was in real life?

[F.Bolli]

City Spam is boring

[Moby D1СК The SЗМЗН Whale]

You have to merge your cities, to go above city cap, this is its main purpose

[DNLH]

Originally posted by Davien:

How did Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great conquered lands so fast if this system was in real life?

You can do just what they did, going over the cap will eat your influence, so once you run out and need some, you just liberate some cities, making your great empire fall apart into few smaller states. Sounds about how it went for the gentlemen mentioned.

That aside, you can relatively safely go two cities over the limit, unless you neglected your Influence production completely. Most cities I ever was over the limit was four. The system is in there to prevent just unlimited growth trumping anything else. It still is better to just keep as many cities over the limit as you comfortably can, but at least giant, unwieldy empires stagnate and have hard time competing for Wonders, introducing Civics and ignoring Congress due to being strapped for Influence.

[Davien]

Originally posted by Moby D1СК The SЗМЗН Whale:

You have to merge your cities, to go above city cap, this is its main purpose

yea I read about this after posting this thread.. will try out the merge cities (military tech) to see how it goes. Guide here:
https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/humankind-merge-cities-absorb

Once you reach the Medieval Era, you can research Military Architecture, which grants you the ability to merge cities in Humankind through the Absorb City action.

Some research and civics does +1 to the cap too. Just felt it's so slow using this method. Merging cities make more sense.

[Elhoim]

Originally posted by Davien:

Originally posted by Moby D1СК The SЗМЗН Whale:

You have to merge your cities, to go above city cap, this is its main purpose

yea I read about this after posting this thread.. will try out the merge cities (military tech) to see how it goes. Guide here:
https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/humankind-merge-cities-absorb

Once you reach the Medieval Era, you can research Military Architecture, which grants you the ability to merge cities in Humankind through the Absorb City action.

Some research and civics does +1 to the cap too. Just felt it's so slow using this method. Merging cities make more sense.

Yes, the idea is to keep a more or less stable amount of cities throughout the game to avoid city management fatigue (like in Civ which is fun when you have 5-6 cities but by the endgame managing 20+ is too much).

[DNLH]

Just as a heads up for merging, on Endless speed it feels like anything above 5 territories in a single city slows any district building to a crawl, due to increasing industry cost. 3-4 seems to be optimal to keep any building going. Not sure how it goes for other speed setting, HK seems to play out very different depending on the set speed.

[Davien]

also found out the general strategy is to build 2-3 outposts nearby your starting cities and merge them into 1 big city region. Cost of doing so is low and biggest impact is to stability. Heck I got to know this too late.. will need to plan ahead on my 2nd play-through.

[Moby D1СК The SЗМЗН Whale]

The general idea is not in just mindless attaching nearby outposts, as it will increase production cost dramatically. Also try to avoid building resource extractors INSIDE city for first several eras, as it will increase district cost too much.

You have to understand that districts get bonuses from adjacent tiles (therefore is a tip, that you can get food and production from one river, if you put makers and farmers quarters around it but not on river itself). Also makers quarters get huge adjacency bonus from other makers. Science quarters get adjacency bonus from other science one in end of early modern era (so best place to place them at the beginning is next to strat resources). And finally market quarters are best to place next to harbours and luxury resources and mix them with common quarters due to low adjacency bonus of these. Farmer quarters don’t get any good adjacency bonus, so you can put them near the plentiful food tiles.

So the idea is to build huge production cluster of makers quarter, and when it get near border then attach that outpost, or if there are no place for such cluster anymore, then attach outposts to begin new one.
When your city will have enough production (you can built any infro in 2 turns) then you can develop other districts for a while, and when you grt powerful production then you could mindlessly attach outposts. Usually by the end you can have around 6-7 big cities with 10 territories, that dont suffer from production penalties

[SanityBasket]

Humankind designed and 'balanced' to be a multiplayer war game with a Civ-like skin. The idea is that city management is boring, so the player shouldn't spend turns developing. Instead they should be pumping out troops and genociding their war across the countryside. Empire development is kind of a side project.

In short, if you ever find yourself frustrated or boggled by a Humankind design choices, just ask yourself if you can commit an atrocity. If you can, do.

As example:

How are you supposed to integrate the cities of the empire you just steamrolled? You are not supposed to. You have a button that wipes them from existence. So kill them all, heal up, and move on to the next conflict.

And don't let too much time pass between atrocities. This game only has one win condition, and that is fame. The only time an empire stops accumulating fame is if you kill or cripple it.

[Davien]

Originally posted by SanityBasket:

Humankind designed and 'balanced' to be a multiplayer war game with a Civ-like skin. The idea is that city management is boring, so the player shouldn't spend turns developing. Instead they should be pumping out troops and genociding their war across the countryside. Empire development is kind of a side project.

In short, if you ever find yourself frustrated or boggled by a Humankind design choices, just ask yourself if you can commit an atrocity. If you can, do.

As example:

How are you supposed to integrate the cities of the empire you just steamrolled? You are not supposed to. You have a button that wipes them from existence. So kill them all, heal up, and move on to the next conflict.

And don't let too much time pass between atrocities. This game only has one win condition, and that is fame. The only time an empire stops accumulating fame is if you kill or cripple it.

true kill and raze.. best strategy for this game. Such inhumanity..

[SanityBasket]

Do not worry, if Humankind last long enough on game pass, it is possible other play styles will get accommodation.

[SanityBasket]

Originally posted by FilipinoFOX:

I dont know about speed of conquest, but considering the largest empire in history the British Empire only had about 1/4 of total land mass conquered, its good to have systems in place to limit empire expansion.

There are four million unique cities on Earth. The British Empire conquered 1/4th of the planet. So you are saying Humankind players should be capped at a million cities?

[SanityBasket]

Given how close you can settle cities, that wouldn't really be a limit. On the largest maps that would be triple digits easy.

[Davien]

tried siezing and razing as recommended during battles, end up still not enjoying it. Basically have to pause my troops to brainlessly raze cities/outposts. Wasting of turns when they could be conquering more.

After razing cities, I'd then build an outpost immediately (provided they are near to my other cities for me to absorb later). Seems dumb tbh. Prefer Civ's system more in this area. Even absorption sucks at times when the opponent could have built many upgrades on the land and would leave so much impact to stability if I were to absorb it.

There's no consequences in razing too, I mean those are human lives we talking about.. destroying people's homes and the global community doesn't respond? I'm already in the modern era btw.

Ended up at 6/9 of my city cap, losing about 200+ cultures a turn. At least my main opponent's score went down after I absorb 2 of her cities with many wonders in them.

I'm allied to another player. Strange that doesn't count as victory condition.. need to make him my vassal still in order to win.