City size?

[NightMan]

How many tiles can a city occupy? I can't find anything in the tooltips. The AI is dropping cities right on my border. Should I be packing cities together, or settling 10 tiles away?

[Tandis]

The AI is putting them on your border to block you. Cities can have up to around 25 or so regions eventually.

[Elhoim]

There's no hard limit?

[Gorgeous_Joe]

the tiles around your city within 3 regions cost 1 expansion slot and then beyond 3 regions it costs 2 expansion slots. Depending on the size of the map, i'd say if you kept 4 or 5 regions between each city you will be fine, haven't played late game so who knows though.

[Dead Goat]

Bah ai builds lines of cities to the human player. Kills the gameplay. AI city spam is not fun, and is not hard. It's just annoying.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Dead Goat:

Bah ai builds lines of cities to the human player. Kills the gameplay. AI city spam is not fun, and is not hard. It's just annoying.

There's no "city spam," considering there's a fairly low starting city cap.

[Dead Goat]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Dead Goat:

Bah ai builds lines of cities to the human player. Kills the gameplay. AI city spam is not fun, and is not hard. It's just annoying.

There's no "city spam," considering there's a fairly low starting city cap.

You clearly have not played much. The ai will city spam right to your border every time. They will ignore building in good strategic locations in favor of bum rushing cities in a straight line to your door.

[hannibal_pjv]

Originally posted by Dead Goat:

Originally posted by Astasia:

There's no "city spam," considering there's a fairly low starting city cap.

You clearly have not played much. The ai will city spam right to your border every time. They will ignore building in good strategic locations in favor of bum rushing cities in a straight line to your door.

That sounds good defensive tactic!
So AI seems to be playing smart in that way.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Dead Goat:

You clearly have not played much. The ai will city spam right to your border every time. They will ignore building in good strategic locations in favor of bum rushing cities in a straight line to your door.

I'm guessing you are unfamiliar with the term "spam" and are confusing it with something else. What you are describing is called "forward settling" and is certainly an incredibly annoying strategy. It's effective, but is not a fun experience and the AI really shouldn't be so aggressive with it. This is definitely one of my main complaints with this game so far.

"Spam" is related to quantity, "city spam" is slapping out dozens of cities as fast as possible and basically filling every valid location. You start this game with 3 max cities, you should obviously get 2 more out quickly, and then there's a fairly gradual increase in city slots as you progress. At no point is any of this remotely similar to "city spam." Calling the act of dropping a couple cities on your doorstep "city spam" is like calling 2 scouts "a horde of scouts."

[Lexi]

Originally posted by Dead Goat:

Originally posted by Astasia:

There's no "city spam," considering there's a fairly low starting city cap.

You clearly have not played much. The ai will city spam right to your border every time. They will ignore building in good strategic locations in favor of bum rushing cities in a straight line to your door.

Thats called forward settling and its.. A really common tactic in civ like games. Its done to deny access to resources, areas and the like. If an AI is settling too close, kill them. There is a cassis bell for that very thing you should get if they settle at your borders.

[Jeff]

OP: The cities can expand far and wide, I know someone else stated a limit, but I cannot confirm, it keeps expanding based on population. You can expand like a snake meaning, you just keep going in one direction (north/south/east/west) and you don't have to expand radially. As others mentioned, the AI does try to forward settle and gobble up spaces. So your expansions should do the same and go towards them first and then take the rest later.

There is a bit of a balance in regards to how much you should space your settlers. (By the way, your cities are limited by government type). Initially, you can have 2 or 3 and by middle ages, I think you can have 5-8. You gotta be pac man and gobble gobble

[Akadai]

I'm actually wondering what a good tile/region distance is for each city, seeing that things are done a bit differently in Ara. I don't know how much space each really needs. Civ 6 there's a max working distance, so it's easy to determine. In Millennia, I ended up going mega wide. I have no idea what a good region size is yet for Ara

As for forward settling AI, this is a great way to get killed when it comes to my play style. I'm typically a war monger and will use anything as an excuse to go to war. Forward settling me is the fastest way to death