Is there any reason NOT to build cities as fast as I can?

Not that I can see.

It's frustrating to keep track of them all but there seems to be no inherent downside.

I thought they added a maintenance cost for cities. Capital would be free, first city would be 1, then second 2 etc etc. This isn't the case for sovereigns with the civilized traight though, they basically get a second maintenance free city.

At least I thought it was supposed to be taht way, I'm not even sure as I haven't really played a lot x.x.

Incremental costs don't make any sense and are nothing but cheap&dirty way to do restrict something. I think it would be better to use for example static amount of food as maintenance. Maybe 2 foods per city?

And well, there should be no restrictions on how many tiles city can use. Its just stupid how after 60 turns you can't build anything in your capital because you run out of tiles(!). Also it would be better if population would help with research/gildars/materials. Its just stupid that level 5 city adds as much research as level 1 outpost.

Well food shortages and city level requirements but i really agree that there should be more buildings with city level restrictions. Also, houses are more efficient per food then shacks (or whatever its called).

There are techs that massively increase the amount of Arcane and Techical research a city outputs. They are restricted to city levels 4 and 5. You would need to have an awesome starting location to level a city to 5 without satellite cities.

As for running out of tiles, you are better off specializing your cities in one or two resources, if only to have room for the higher level buildings.

I think the downside to city sprawl is having units around to defend them all.  Having to build the defense boosting buildings in each one does cost, and i think walls cost upkeep.  atm the monster AI isn't aggressive enough to warrant worrying about this, but it will be, and i think that should solve this.

What are for example those technical buildings?

Lets see what kingdoms have.

School +15%

University +25%

Hostens Library +8 (Only one per game)

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So with school and university level 5 city tech output without libraries would be...

1*1.15*1.25 = 1.4375 ... uhm? That is actually less than what 2 new outposts can do.

And for running out of tiles and 'specializing'. This is what happened in my last game. So... Theres two choices? Use resources and have a small city or build a bigger city and don't use those resources. Err...

http://picasaweb.google.com/Deneidez/Random#5510370550366019522

I've had empire cities with over 40 research because I maxed research upgrades, got the buildings (empire has a tier4 that gives +100%) and built next to a resource. Similarly, I've had cities that give over 80 gildar per turn. These cities weren't even level 5. In ludicrous world games, it becomes impossible to defend more than a few villages anyway (world mobs will walk over any city without a channeler defending).

by "without satellite cities"... do you mean that you can build two cities near each other, then eventually build them in a way that they connect, forming one city?

In my most recent game I went a little spammy with cities vs my earlier games where I'd just do a handful of killer cities.  I ended up without a lot of food resources for once and it kinda hosed my overall growth for a while, and in this game, the AI sovs were suiciding left and right - out of 7ish of them on a small map I conquered one and took a few cities from another before he self destructed on another AI, and none of his cities had food surplus either.

So, one potential drawback is that if you want to grow them at all, or want to grow a few leveled cities, you need to have plenty of food.

You're also at higher risk if enemies attack or from wandering mobs.  Better city defenses are only available to leveled up cities.

A lot of city imrovements, particularly barracks, command posts, and other really helpful buildings require leveled up cities.

Nice thought that doesn't work - at all, IMO.  I do specialize a little in that I usually don't build everything in every city, and I (and this sucks) don't build a lot of the uniques in my capital, I build them elsewhere to save space because the capital is usually flooded with tile wasting resources.

Resource distribution is horrific.  Resources usually appear in clumps and then you have barren nothing.  Unless you wanna spam filler cities or have long roads outside your influence with random mobs owning your caravans nonstop, you need cities reasonably close together.  It'd be nice if there were game options for resource distribution so you could get clusters vs even spread and whatnot (almost like galaxy creation in GC2!).  I would prefer a more even spread for better distribution between cities - ONLY because of the stupid arbitrary tile limit - if it wasn't for that, clumped up resources would be rockin'.

You would have to forgo adventure/domination techs that reveal resources to build clean cities, because every nicely started city has a good change of getting "mugged" by having resources pop up all over the place, disrupting your plans, linking in stuff to burn tiles you didn't see to begin with, etc.  The reveal resource techs seem to mostly cause your capital to get flooded.  To me, it's pretty silly to need to destroy and rebuild buildings to try to maintain a city that won't get hosed by the arbitrary tile limit.

I still contest that the 50 tile limit is arbitrary and stupid, especially for your capital, which should be a monster city featuring every damn building and wonder and whatever you can pack into it if that's what you want.  At worst, tile limit should be tied to some kind of civics tech, city level, or something reasonably logical instead of just some arbitrary number pulled out of someone's (insert word for tuckus here).

People say the tech tree is too lean, right?  Well here you go, add city planning type techs to the civics branch that control tile limit.  Boom!

As a side note, I'd like to know what influences which tiles you can build on when placing new buildings.  I've seen and had some really whacked out cities that were like snakes because you'd never get the option to fill in.  Does make for some very unique looking city sprawl, that's for sure.  And I've had cities that had lots of empty tiles around them that would never get the option to even build (and they were at less than 20 tiles consumed, probably less than 12).  I was a city I founded last game in fact, I could never grow the sucker - buildings remained dimmed, because it would never give me a tile to build on.  It was really odd.

Yes, on harder difficulties, sometimes having four brand new cities next to nice resources can mean a jealous neighbor that notices you put all your money on fast expanding instead of building guards.

I doubt that infinite city sprawl will be anything but optimum unless and until a fair number of both mechanical and AI changes are made.  It's just so much better, in general, to have access to more resource sites than to have fewer high-level cities.  In terms of effectiveness, going beyond level 2 is a luxury.

Not that you actually need to play optimum with the AI in it's current state of non-aggression.

You sure Corbeaubm? The AI has seemed pretty aggressive to me in all my games.

I've never had it attack any city that I didn't originally take from them first.  And even then, never early.  Someone also did a test of the AI to see whether or not it would take ungarrisoned cities (thread is on the forum somewhere), and found that it flat-out didn't.  The AI has diplomacy blustered quite a bit against me when it has a military advantage, and they spend fair amounts of time wacking on each other, but never on me.  So I don't know what to say other than the AI has been really passive against me.

What do you mean by AI? The wandering beasties will take cities, but their wandering is somewhat random at best. I've had cities taken by them though. Bandits in fact seem to beeline for them if they're within their region.

 The faction AI will not take cities unless it's at war with you, and it assesses your defensive capabilities as a whole before deciding whether or not to declare war. It's not going to declare war and make a grab for a single undefended city if your forces elsewhere are far superior to it's own.

no i think its fine

if you take 100 random ppl around you are they able to build a rocket and go on the moon?

no they need education and structures

same with a city you dont need just population, you need to research facilities and make able to produce what you need

You run out of tiles after 60 turns?
Try building your city on an open field, both forests and nearby cliffs (even if they appear to be 1 square away, you cant build there).

As for city spamming, there should be a -1 food cost to founding a city, so in essence if you want a tiny outpost with 1gold 1materials 1arcane/tech you should have to pay at least 1 food for it. This would also increase the further city levels by 1 food ofc, which imo is just a good thing. Slower expansion = more epic game. Perhaps even make this exclusive to the "epic" setting when starting the game? That way ppl who like fast games dont have to whine about it

I would imagine if you are smart you have the outer cities more protected than inner cities.  imagine a classic pyramid where the top tip is your capital, below that are two cities, below them 3 cities, below them 5 cites...  if the enemies can only attack from the capital side.  Why should I have troops on the base side or in the middle?  As an example.  Choke points, is where you want your troops.

But yeah, I have not seen disadvantages to creating allot of cities yet.  I am a civilization player and my first few games had me behind the curve on creating cities because I thought they would hinder me.  Correct me if i am wrong, though.

I will state that in my game of normal, I found the AI to build up and take advantage of resources nearby it.  Myself, I rushed pioneers out with a peasant guard to several good locations.  Not only did I found cities early,  but I was able to take advantage of at least 2 different resources by positioning my base city tile between and building out so the influence 'covers' them soon.  I would also point out I used the largest or giant map from the mods section too. 

Before I got around to it,  one AI wiped out anothewr AI.   Then I really got scared and started building up my military and defences.  By capitalizing on my stockpiles was able  to make partys of some nice units, no more single units.  In addition to the summons that had been with the Sov from the beginning, traded out some forward observers for the new parties of soldiers in light plate that I designed.  After that I was a wrecking ball.  I took 6 cities from one empire, including their capital then the Sovereign's stack.  I found the capital lightly defended but the Sovereign was a challenge in comparison.  Almost was a fair fight, LOL.  Well my combat rating and defence was above his by 100 or so.  So he lost.  

This is how 1 game went.  Remember it was normal and not even in terms of AI. 

So next game will up the AI and see.

It's better to have resources than not, so I'd get them before someone else does.   The only 'downside' I can see so far is food.  You'll limit yourself to having lots of little outposts instead of well developed cities. 

Uhh, why on earth would you build a school and university in a city without a library?

The only downside to city spamming early on is that it's taking resources you could potentially use for other things, like leveling up your capital and building the more advanced buildings, building a decent early army to go conquer your neighbour, or even equiping your heroes. Generally though I think rushing to a good resource site is always worth it. However, if the city is going to be a filler location with poor resources there is no rush, except maybe if you need to block the AI from building nearby.

ok, I agree that some things regarding city improvement need a little tweaking (i.e. cost to create and maintain new settlements), but I don't get the people who want to steer it back completely. City building and developing is probably the best and most polished feature of the entire game, simply because it is very different from most other 4x games and requires you to be cautious of where and how to build them.

I think it is a terrific concept that you have to decide whether you want a mega city with lots of improvements but in return have to steer it away from too many resources, or a city that is planted right in the middle of several resources but you will have to sacrifice building space and city levels. Yes, the free tiles dilemma can be frustrating at times, but I take this occasional frustration over any boring city improvement in many other TBS games where you just have to mindlessly build everything until the city's maxed out and you switch it to continuous gold production etc. Boring...

I do think there should be some sort of maintenance cost the more cities you have. Currently I don't think anything like that has been implemented, or at least I haven't been able to detect one.

No, I mean a city built just to farm a particular resource, food for instance, just so your capital can expand. I'm sure you could build two cities close together and join them by snaking buildings, but I'm almost certain the game would see them as two separate cities.

Is there any sort of "influence takeover" of other kingdoms cities that are near your borders?  Can you flip them?