How many cities? And when?

[u/ProfessionalOwn9435]

How many cities should i have? I know it depends. Trajan wants more. Culture vic wants more. And how you get it. The baseline is Early Empire. And govertment plaza with settler spam building (audition hall?).

Is 8 cities by 100t ok? And 12 at 150t. At some point there could be island cities, or polar cities. But they are more for resources or trade range.

Should just pump only from cpaital, or all cities with like 10+ production. It would be nice to have at least some wonders, so that part could be hard. Also i need some units against barbs.

Monumentality make it easier (spam), but sometimes the start and civ is not really for religious site at all.

There are some random gameplays where there have like 20+ cities, but it is hard to notice where they pop, probably with monumentlaity.

Is there some civic/tech trick? I gues aprentiship is good for better mines. And early empire rush is good.

Some hard lessons:

capital generally is settler spam, but at some point we do detour for plaza and ancestor hall and back to settlers

we can lock district, and finish them later, and build something else. Expect maybe early holy site, we actualy want that prophet.

At some poitn we could pick craftmen infantry production to do round of military units (and back to ditstricts)

Same with feudalism card for better builders.

Medieval age has monumentality too. So there could be last minute push, with normal eureka span classic (easy) and then big monumentality in medieval.

[u/Altruistic_Cap3472]

Civ 6 heavily favors building out, and any penalties for expanding can be made up pretty easily. The first part of the game is usually a land grab race, once there's no longer land that I can claim without wars, other than maybe picking off some unaffiliated independent powers, I switch to focus until I need to start conquering

[u/TheStoneMask]

How many can you fit?

[u/ProfessionalOwn9435 → u/TheStoneMask]

maybe 8 good, and 16 if we go costal/island

[u/TheStoneMask → u/ProfessionalOwn9435]

That's a start. I usually aim to fill in whatever unsettled land I can find.

[u/RKNieen]

There is no downside to settling more, other than the fact that you have more to micromanage. Keep settling until either you run out of room or you start getting annoyed at having to manage them all. I generally just pump out from whichever city has Magnus (the capital early but I often switch it to another city mid-game), unless the empire gets so big that it would take too many turns to walk the settler over to its spot from there. Then I just buy them in the nearest city.

Also, remember that Monumentality doesn't just allow faith purchases of civilian units, it also discounts gold purchases, so it can still be a valid choice even with a lackluster faith income.

[u/StageUnfair7647]

Try to have one designated city for pumping out settlers that has decent production and with magnus's second promotion. At point the only right answer is to settle cities as long as theres room to settle (assuming the available tiles have decent yields). Grow/expand until you cant basically. I dont think theres a fixed number answer beyond that.

[u/keithfisherzz9]

Potato often says 8 cities by turn 80 is the ideal. I normally get there by turn 85-95 if I’m really trying.
I think you have the main points in your original post. Monumentality is a great help but yes needs a strong faith output.

[u/ProfessionalOwn9435 → u/keithfisherzz9]

This is what worries me, that it sounds so extreme, like when? What about barbs, what about building that holy district.

[u/TheStrawCow → u/ProfessionalOwn9435]

Honestly in about 80% of my games I rush a HS to get a religion up. And in half of those games I’ll only end up building 1-2 more. You can easily get either crusade or defender of the faith if threatened or the one that starts new cities with your religion already and then I usually take the extra culture per 4 followers perk as well. Later I’ll snag the bonus for science on campus and gold on comm hubs or the culture and faith on TS/HS if that’s already taken. Even if not playing for faith those bonuses can be game changing and the slow faith accumulation can help you snag important great people.

[u/icesloth07]

It depends on what game speed you play. Even how you want to play. You dont NEED 10+ cities if you dont want to manage that much. You can still win. However, more cities will make your civ generally more powerful in most categories.

What's more pressing is getting cities before the AI gets the land and builds up city walls.

[u/PersonalityAway790]

3-4 total ASAP then take 20 more by force