Perfect number of cities in Civ V BNW

[fredbujo]

My favorite type of victory is cultural and I always wonder if I should settle new cities or keep their number minimal. I know too many cities hampers both science and culture, but on the other hand they can produce large amounts of those resources and others. What are your advice for each victory type?

[Maxwell Sinclair]

I play Domination. A lot of domination. Currently I am conquesting the mongolians. My strategy for that is to tech up as quickly as possible. Science is important in a military Victory. Currently I out tech the remaining AI (only on Chieftan currently) by several tiers. They have artillery and anti aircraft guns. I have jet fighters, stealth bombers, battleships and nukes and such. My strategy is to steam roller with a large force, lately I have been annexing every city I came across. (see screenshots for what I have) I am earning +2124 Science, +630 gold, +425 Culture and have a happiness of 130. I am a few turns on from the screenshot now, but still have the same amoutn of cities, just new buildings.

Having large amounts of cities is ok, even for culture. But it helps if you have alot of gold. Specifically so you can purchase the courthouses and then all the culture or Production structures. It works best for science, On account of the sheer size of the income. I have not set them all to produce science yet either, that is going to be... crazy.

[Burbot]

Halfway through my advice I realized you didn't specify what version of the game you are asking about. If you specify you'll get more spot on advice.

[Matthew]

Game can be beat with 1 city or 20+, even on Deity. From my own experiences, the most comfortable for me seems to be settling 3-4 cities at start while getting up infrastructure and popluation while teching to Education, then expanding to about 8-10 cities in the mid-game (conquering or settling). Whenever I expand beyond that, the additional cities don't seem to contribute anything extra. Too late in the game for them to pop a great person, won't get any great works filled (BNW), tough to get key buildings up and running that late, etc.

If I have some overpowered city locations (lots of astronomy, river, food potential) then I may stick with fewer cities. Around 4 or 5.

If I am playing a domination game, I prefer to systematically conquer the map--no capital sniping. Although I don't consider puppets to be the same as expanding beyond the 8-10 cities. They won't increase policy costs, you don't want them to pop GP (will probably be a merchant), and the science penalty isn't a big deal since you don't really need anything past artillery guns, battleships, and bombers.

[Mountain Man]

I find it hard to build more than 4 cities in the early game (BNW) because there are just other priorities. For most civs I start with Tradition policy for that reason. The main reason I build cities after that is to acquire resources. I haven't worked out the answer yet as to which is more efficient, to get resources by city state relations or to get them myself. Probably it depends on my civ and the victory I am pursuing. Before BNW I would have said less than 4 cities for a cultural win and just get resources from city-states. But I haven't noticed an effect on tourism from number of cities. In fact more cities means more museums, hotels, broadcast towers, etc.
But it also means fewer policies and more vulnerability to others' tourism. So there probably is an optimum number of cities for a cultural win but if you can figure it out please let the rest of us know!

[Burbot]

In BNW for a cultural victory, which is really a tourism victory, if your great work slots are close to full then you are probably at the optimal number of cities. If they are full it might be time to take or settle. If you are not likely to fill what you have, more cities probably won't move you towards your victory. Of course there are other reasons to found or take cities.

[mss73055]

I usually go with 5 cities because 5 cities can store the amount of bling bling I get from digsites.
You dont need a lot of policies for tourism and science doesnt suffer until you get a dozen of cities. Aestetics is a pile of junk and Exploration ... 7 policies for +18 tourism IF you declare war on the entire world ... really?

Sure you can snatch a Louvre or Uffizi. But also these are just nice to haves, even when you aim for tourism. That's not a good balancing of traits, but that's the way the game is at the moment.

[Maxwell Sinclair]

I've been playing Base game, domination, no city states. Systematically conquering the map. I do not try to capital snipe, sometimes the capital winds up close to the front lines and gets knocked out early on. The systematic conquering of polynesia was... well it was lovely. Lots of glorious fire and slaughter. I dropped an atomic bomb on Aotearoa. for those of you that don't know. Aorearoa is "land of the long white cloud" AKA New Zealand (My homeland) and it was the first place to feel atomic weaponry. The atomic bomb was all they got. Just one... Mongolians however... I broke down all the walls. Ironically the mongolians completed the great wall wonder first. So I broke it. With nuclear missiles. Lots of them. Mongolia killed rome you see.

Speaking of which... I broke the game because of cities. The liberate option appeared on a city that used to be roman, AFTER the romans had no cities left and had been eliminated from the game. I liberated and now the romans are back in the game, and made peace with mongolia...

Basically. it doesn't matter what you do with cities. As long as you treat them right. I have at least close to 50 cities at the moment and I am running just fine. Literal tonnes of income. A;sp because I took Autocracy (Fascism WEW) all strategic resources are doubled. I have like... 200+ oil. 65 uraniam and such. So a lot of cities can be handy. But as I said. you have to treat them right and make sure you put the right buildings in the right places.

[fredbujo]

Originally posted by Thanter:

Halfway through my advice I realized you didn't specify what version of the game you are asking about. If you specify you'll get more spot on advice.

Done ;)

[fredbujo]

Originally posted by Kodasa Sinclair:

So a lot of cities can be handy. But as I said. you have to treat them right and make sure you put the right buildings in the right places.

AND each turn lasts 15 minutes because you have take decisions regarding all those cities, unless they're mostly puppeted. :)

[Maxwell Sinclair]

Originally posted by fredbujo:

Originally posted by Kodasa Sinclair:

So a lot of cities can be handy. But as I said. you have to treat them right and make sure you put the right buildings in the right places.

AND each turn lasts 15 minutes because you have take decisions regarding all those cities, unless they're mostly puppeted. :)

It takes me 15 minutes to move my army about. It takes me 30 seconds to stare at a build list and pick the building the city needs. I prioritise happyness and such, on account of having all the tech already. Sadly I play enough to know which buildings have which which function without reading the tooltip.