When to expand?

[TheBlackRanger]

Ok so Ive had this game for a while ill get into it then ill leave it alone. So im not quite the expert at it. What i want to know is a rather noob question. But how do you guys generally know when its time to build another city or when should you? I feel feel the constant need to cover more land than my ai can grab but In turn i feel like im spreading my civilization thin when I do so.

[Ghostlight]

As soon as you can, is the answer.

The moment you think you can safely make a Settler, do it. The moment you can make another
Settler safely, do it. The moment you have the Civic card that gives 50% production to Settlers, use it and spam them!! In short, aside from Traders (which are *the* most urgent unit to build, always), Settlers should absolutely be your next highest build priority, always (while there is still a site they can settle on ofc).

Some reasoning for this....

1) Unlike Civ 5, in Civ 6 there is very little penalty for going wide (i.e. building a LOT of cities, fairly close together). In Civ 5, this was difficult because the Happiness mechanic (replaced in Civ 6 with Amenities) actively prevented you from spamming cities because the Happiness/Amenties were global across all cities. In Civ 6, you can city-spam away and it very easy to keep all your cities happy and productive.

2) Unlike Civ5, production of a base resource (such as Science) is purely linear per city in Civ 6. Barring an unusually good adjacency bonus, all cities will eventually produce the same amount of Science. This means a player with 5 cities will absolutely out-perform a player with 3 cities in terms of Science production (for example, but also true of all other resources).

3) The earlier you get something that does something for you, the bigger the positive effect of that thing. Put another way, an extra +2 Science in a city is much more powerful on turn 20 than it is on turn 200. Seems obvious, right? But this translates to....the earlier you plant a city, the better.

4) Since internal trade routes are super OP in Civ 6, especially early on, you can take the risk planting "average / poor" cities early and still grow them super-fast, thus adding to that overall linear production (per city) I already discussed in (2). [In Civ 5, planting crappy cities just for the sake of it or to fill up the map, was very counter-productive to your overall empire.]

What all this points to is this simple rule for Civ 6.....get as many cities planted, as early as possible.

In term of build order. If I was left alone without Barbarian hassle and with no war-like neighbour Civs (which does happen!), my "ideal" build order would be something like:

Scout
Slinger
Slinger
Builder
Settler -> new City
Trader
Granary (assuming capital has been growth-capped by now)
Settler
Settler
Settler
Settler
etc

Of course you are rarely left alone and will have to slot some kind of military into the above order, but you get the idea. Also note I typically play Rome and will have the 50% Settler discount by the time I am spamming them above.

[cerberusiv]

I would agree with the above for the base game. The R&F expansion adds loyalty as a factor so you ideally need to expand placing your cities next to each other. Planting an isolated city away from your others to grab a resource is not really a problem in the base game however with R&F you may have difficulty preventing it flipping to an AI through the loyalty mechanic.

[Ghostlight]

Fair comment. I play only the base game.

[Exemplar]

I usually make 2 or 3 cities and those make the units to capture 5 or 6 more before or just at medieval era, then work up some infrastructure and defense.

I don't reroll maps or save/restore unless I really need to close the application. I don't often use mods and those are generally workshop civs/leaders. I know there are more efficient methods were I to reroll til I got some continental "corner plot", or if I took the benefit of reloading games 15 turns prior because of a mistake.

That said, with mild variations, first settler comes after 2 military units and a builder, second settler after capital's first district. After that I might not make another settler any time soon from my capitol, because capitol generally wants to focus population growth. So generally, it seems, the better idea is to focus military, take early lands, and should have enough military to effectively defend it. This as opposed to a size 4 capitol with 6 satellite cities and 3 archers, I think it's pretty apparent.

[Maya-Neko]

I usually don't build settlers and invest in military first, as that's way more effective at higher difficulties, where the AI civs already start with settlers and an army able to get you in serious trouble and where the barbarians already have pretty high stats and can get really annoying in the beginning.

That way you outmatch their military pretty fast, so you can then just conquer the cities and steal their settlers instead of just building them on your own and the AI might also already build some districts and tile improvements, making a strong military even more valuable. This will almost everytime lead to a superior military when you invent the bombards at 7th difficulty level.

But there are some exceptions:
- If you find a place with high food AND production values (like some swamps or rice around the city and a good amount of hills or bonus ressources), then it can be good to get there as soon as possible to get a second high production city fast
- Having much money (just if you've just only one city, so it's not too expensive)
- If you've a pretty big dessert in near proximity, you might want to beeline a city in there to get the Petra. Building a city here as fast as possible is pretty important, as cities in deserts tend to just grow very slowly, so you want it as big as possible once you're able to build it.
- If you're alone on an isle/continent you obviously need to get cities on your own, while military isn't as important in the early game. This might also be true if you've plenty of space between you and your next enemy civ, as it would take forever until they reach your empire
- And all of this doesn't matter if you're playing at 4th or lower difficulty (propably also at 5 and even at 6 to some degree), as the AI expands to slow to make real use of military units, especially because you can defend yourself with just a few units for quite some time.

[Synavix]

The number I've seen thrown around a few times on the Civ subreddit was to try and aim for your first settler around population 3 or 4 and then an average of 1 new city every 20 turns until you run out of good spots to expand.

Of course, like most people have said it depends on how the game is going. Sometimes fewer settlers and more military can give you more cities in the longrun, but sometimes you'll have a high production city that can't build anything else so you can just use the settler governer and chain build new ones.

My favorite way to expand quickly in R&F is to get the dedication for building settlers with faith, assuming you have a pantheon or relic to generate some faith with (and you aren't going for a religious victory). Will let you expand extremely quickly.

As long as you aren't having loyalty issues there isn't really a point where too many cities is a bad thing, even if half your cities only have a single district. Just make sure to keep up with amenities too.

[solidap]

You always want more cities. But I would say any chance you can conquer another faction's city is better than making a Settler and forming your own. The best time to do this is early game when there's no or little warmonger penalty and city-states are more plentiful and easier to take by force

So, my advice is before making a settler see if you can't take a nearby city state or a weaker faction city. The bonus to this is when you do take the city you'll also have a handful of experienced troops. Capturing other Settlers is also a good feeling. Well worth going to war with another factions early game. They'll probably negotiate for peace after a few turns of fighting and you might even be able to negotiate ANOTHER city out of them.

[Despiser]

As you can see there are many ways to expand. I generally settle 6 cities in the first 100 turns on a small map, placed to maximize resources and growth. Ai cities placed to close I swallow with culture. I then expand with a mix of culture and conquest while growing my original 6 tall. Lots of holy sites to claim great people and harbours for growth and trade. In the mix are two science districts and one encampment. After comes theatre districts. Most victories are cultural with the odd domination if faster playing immortal (deity is very hard to build wonders)

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by Despiser:

I generally settle 6 cities in the first 100 turns

Exactly what I aim for.

[[̲̅PNDA]]

On average, you should attempt to get a settler or city by conquest every 10 turns.

On higher difficulty settings against an NPC on a non-huge map, you should focus on military unit production to conquer cities (including city states). This is in large part that the bonus given to the NPC outweight your ability to ever catch up employing expansion by settlers only, particularly in the late game.

The Warrior/Slinger/Slinger/Settler opener is fairly a safe bet. By the time the settler is produced, you should have enough gold and have researched archery to upgrade the slingers to archers. Two warriors and two archers should be enough harrassment to take a city, if played properly. Although, it's not unusual to follow up with re-inforcements.

[I Am Atomic!]

its not to hard to go 1 slinger then spam settlers from capital, use the govner whos 2nd ability makes it so settlers dont use up a population + every new city you make get them building military + gold to pay the maintenance,

1st that military will keep the enemy players and barbarians out of your hair, then once youve built it up a bit you can start captureing city states or killing a weak neibour.

sooner or later you will reach a point where more military will start to take you into negative economy, this is the time you want to start building science, culture, entertainment and the like. also helps if your 1st conquests have some of this stuff so you dont have to build any of it early.

[zeeter]

I always try to build twosettlers as soon as I can, but without lowering my starting city below 3. However I never send the settlers out without an escort; usually a slinger in the early game.

[zeeter]

My build is this:
Scout
Scout
Slinger
Warrior
Slinger
Settler
Builder

[hopsblues]

Originally posted by michael_s_davis:

My build is this:
Scout
Scout
Slinger
Warrior
Slinger
Settler
Builder

What level are you playing?

[I Am Atomic!]

Originally posted by hopsblues:

Originally posted by michael_s_davis:

My build is this:
Scout
Scout
Slinger
Warrior
Slinger
Settler
Builder

What level are you playing?

indeed, on immortal and deity it tends to work best to either go slinger, then settler spam from capital and warrior and archer spam from all founded cities then add commerce hubs markets and trade routes when you can to pay the maintenance.

or if you want to beeline say knights or xbows do the same but only for 3-4 cities and rush science districts and libaries then turtle up + build the unit that upgrades to what you are beelining while getting commerce/market/trade route when you can after science and saving gold to upg ur unit of choice when it is time. also for culture techs aim for the 50% reduced upg cost after you 1st government ones.

3rd effective tatic is slinger settler then spam military from both and conquer either a close neibour or better yet if none are very close as many city states as you can, afterwich you use them to also add to military build up and conquer a neibouring civ.