About on which turn should I generally build a 2nd city?

[Gilmore]

Title. All advice is welcome.

[chazz_play]

I'm curious, too. I'm on Turn 19 and realized that an opponent wizard has just set an Outpost on an island next to mine, so I'm thinking it's time to get to putting in Outposts and at least reaching my city cap. I'm about to absorb a free city, too. Not sure that helps OP, but it's what I know so far...

[Mkoll The Reaper]

I've done about 5 maps already at relaxed difficulty because good lord above. Just one AI opponent at turn 20 will have at least 2 cities a vassal and an outpost or more going. now it might be my settings or how i play but figure around turns 5-10 you should have your next city prepped and ready to be laid out or already going IMO. also fair warning AI's like to massively forward settle. hope this helps!

[chazz_play]

So the AI tends to build wide, and I'm way behind. Oddly, after a number more turns, I can see most of another empire, which is definitely bigger than me. However, I am second out of four in most of the victories so far on Normal. Perhaps building tall is viable?

[Gilmore]

I’ve been building “tall” hehe. My dwarven capitol city is underground right next to a passage, and my 2nd city is on the surface next to the passage. Makes it easy to defend both cities in a war.

[Arlen Tektolnes]

There's no reason I can find to not throw them up ASAP.

[Gilmore]

Originally posted by Arlen Tektolnes:

There's no reason I can find to not throw them up ASAP.

Yeah I like that there is basically no penalties for having more unlike in most 4x games.

[WebBowser]

You can and should throw down outposts fairly early and often, even if you have no intention of converting them into actual cities. You can always decide later to convert an outpost into a city if you find it worthwhile to do so, but having to march your hero back to setup a new outpost is a massive pain in the rear.

As for when you should actually make those cities, that's a bit more open ended. The game offers a lot of ways to expand your influence without actually making new cities, and making cities tends to be fairly committal due to the city cap. I will say you probably want to get a waterfront city relatively early in the game so that you can explore overseas, but aside from that it really is up to you.

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by Gilmore:

Originally posted by Arlen Tektolnes:

There's no reason I can find to not throw them up ASAP.

Yeah I like that there is basically no penalties for having more unlike in most 4x games.

until you exceed the city cap, then you have economic penalties on everything for each city beyond it.
And yes, you can get cities past the city cap, I just annexed (edit: I guess it's called Integrating now?) a vassal to put me over to test, then rebuilt some city ruins while already over (so I was over by two). Did not test upgrading an outpost, but I don't see why that would be any different. The economic penalties on your empire just get higher with each one.

[chazz_play]

I was playing that map on Normal. Even though I did not have any outposts or other cities on turn 19 on normal speeds, it didn't matter. I managed to win a magic victory without any fuss. I integrated the city state that was the same race as me, vassalized the other three city states, and built three other cities and three outposts by the end. This taught me to build at what is a reasonable pace for your map (i.e. if it seems hard to get out that fast, it probably is too fast), snag any magical materials you can with outposts and build cities where there's lots of resources. You can build taller, conquer other cities, or vassalize city states to make up for any "size" differences between you and your opponents. They could very well hurt themselves with the city cap if they spread to wide, too. Vassalized city states will give you almost a whole city's worth of income without counting toward the city cap - totally worth it.