what about moving prestige from early techs to later techs?

I disagree.  On all points.  But the last one I would probably give you cause I just don't have champs down the governor line. 

Next beta release they are removing prestiege from the hero techs. Don't know how much that will impact growth...

I very much disagree.  If anything, cities never grow fast enough for me.  I usually have the growth spell on every single conclave, and often on the fortresses, when I am not building units at that very moment.

[duplicate post]

yes but thats bring the balance even more on the civ techs, it is ok in the balance of the magic tree itself i surely agree but im more focused on civic compared to others

but you are also right that generally hero techs are taken quite soon and this might solve partially the excessive growth of cities

I disagree too. Prestige is about the only mechanic which benefits small empires of big cities over large empires (and it is only a small counterbalance, large empires are generally still far superior). If you reduce the effect of prestige then you are comparatively increasing the benefit of the growth spell and saying the player may as well settle as many cities as possible to get the most growth spells active.

I agree with ddd888.

I'd like to know who actually builds those growth buildings in your Towns?  Because I never do.

There's way too much prestige in the civilization tech tree, and way to much prestige from sovereign leveling.

There needs to be real choice when you think about building that next city. 

Currently, it's always better to have more cities.

I have to say, either the logic of ddd888 and mqpiffle escapes me, or they are playing a very different game than me.

I can never have too much growth.  Usually by turn 100, I have 10-15 cities of level 2-3.  Usually 2/3 of them are towns, there's at most one native fortress and the rest are outposts and conclaves.  At that point, my towns build wells and inns like crazy, second only to the grocer line, and all conclaves have a growth spell.

I think that even my worst enemies won't accuse me of having too low of a prestige, but I never see that 'too much growth' situation.

Now, if you guys (ddd888 and mqpiffle) expand slowly, and have two-three cities with prestige in the 20s, that is just your style of play.  I do not see why you insist on slowing down the game for those with a different style.

And, because I do not want to be accused of exaggerating, here are sample points from my playthroughs, Note that some of them had house rules restricting expansion, number of cities or use of sovereigns...  By the way, N~G [P] means N cities with average growth G and prestige P

1. House rule - single city                 Turn  56:  1~8 [7]     Turn 98: 1~19 [18]

2. Everything goes                           Turn 47:   2~6 [8]     Turn 73:  10~5 [36]      Turn 84 19~4 [43]

3. House rule - pacifist                     Turn 47:   6~3 [12]    Turn 59:   8~4 [17]

4. House rule - heroes stay home        Turn 43:   6~1 [5]      Turn 66:   10~3 [15]

5. Standard Resoln                           Turn 23:   3~2 [6]      Turn 57:   7~2 [13]

So tell me, where is the out of control growth? Note that I have been posting these playthroughs for months, and I have not been designing them to prove you wrong.  Except for the first one, at any time my cities have an average growth of 2-5, and are mostly growing slower than I would like them to.

lol?

turn 100 10 15 cities lvl 2 3?

you basically saying at turn 100 your empire is at its 60% and then you claim its not fast?

sry i just didnt understand much your point here

prestige affect growth yes, but cities most of the time DONT grow at all because there is food bottleneck

growth is a fake stat because it works not 100% of the time

anyway you are right there could be differences but what i have in my cities is cities most of the time full pop idling waiting for the next town food building or tech research

maybe is the map empire, do you play on max size ?

if you want to keep track of things you should check this thing in your next game

check at what turn your cities lvl up and if you have spare time check sometimes when they foodidle

It might be that you misunderstand each other because you are talking about different phases of the game.

In the first turns, growth is great because it lets you reach level 2 pretty fast. But then you usually hit the food barrier, and that actually encourages city spamming, since you don't lose so much growth with every additional city you got. The punishment for having too many cities only kicks in at mid-game.

In the mid to late game I never can have enough growth (my last game e.g., I tried to take it a bit slower on a large map to actually research the whole tech tree, around Turn 300 I had 34 settlements with an average growth of just about 1 by prestige. My capital (a town!) got level 5 around then, and it was my only level 5 city).

The whole prestige is a bit unbalanced in the tech tree imho. Right now, you gets lots of it with the early civ techs, and those actually mean something then, since your whole prestige isn't that high yet. So you actually notice a +1 prestige. Later, you basically only get prestige by building wonders and by leveling your sov (if you aren't heroic...). And with a prestige of 20 or more, +1 doesn't do much anyway. So I would move some prestige increases to the later techs, and actually make them matter (so not just +1, but +3-5 or even more).

Level 2 comes very quickly and level 3 isn't too bad either. Level 4 and 5 come much more slowly.

I think Tuidjy isn't a typical player (rather better than most I would guess) but I'm with him on this one.

34 ? 

ok now i get whats the difference i never get so much stuff, unless i conquer a big enemy ai

yes you are right in your analysis, moving some early prestige to late and  buffing it might be even better

Well, I conquered 4 of my 7 neighbours . I could have had even more, but I left out some bad spots...

well ok but then, after you conquer more than 50% of your opponents is pretty much game over

Yea pretty much

To me prestige doesn't matter until you have conquored atleast 1 enemy players, since I personally can only find 2-3 spots to settle (small or medium maps) or 3-5 spots to settle (large), these cities fill to the food limit "almost instantly", they grow very quickly and then I spend tons of turns looking at my growth not being used for squat.

That said prestige coming from techs might be a better idea than prestige coming from the sovereign, right now to me its a weird system with no real point, so I try to ignore it, no reason gaining more prestige anyways since I usually have level 2½ cities with no more food left.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

yes this is exactly my normal playthrhough

i dont find more than 3 4 spots for cities and they are always full pop, so i dont care of prestige

then i start exploring questing and killing monsters gaining even more and not needed

i try not to fight war because i consider it exploiting at this stage

after only dragons and epic quests are left i make some war (but usually they declare on me sooner)

at this point i might have 10 cities after war but i dont care of their growth really, doubling your cities improve so much research and money that the rest is irrelevant

..... Stop trying to fix the wrong problem. Unless you are Altair, prestige is pointless. At the early game even small ammounts of prestige is enough to fill your cities to the food limit. During the later phase of the game, 20 prestige is unlikely to net you more than 2 growth per turn - out of 800 possible food. This forces a very annoying micromanagement mechanic - spaming outposts and consulates.

The problem is part A: Initial food is too low, and part B: Prestige does not scale into the later stages of the game.

Part A can be solved one of two different ways.

• The first is to make city growth and size a function of the civ tree, while the warfare tree takes on production and unrest
• The second is to increase initial food so cities don't fill up so fast regardless of your research priorities

Part B has several solutions that are not mutually exclusive or required of one another

1. Prestige that has filled a city does not count against other cities (this will also help city spam)
2. Prestige benefits scale as you research higher level techs
3. Prestige benefits scale with city level
4. Remove consulates

There are probably more here.. but just lowering prestige across the board does not address it's pointlessness at later stages of the game.

Even still, you must have been playing on a large map.

Imo, normal map should have an approximate maximum of 30-40 cities to be shared by all factions.

Agreed.

This one I never understood. How does an outpost, a structure dependant on a 'mother' city, give growth to that city?? If it's giving growth, it should also have a queue....

if you follow the whole thread someone proposed to move it from starting tech to end game tech and increase and i agreed with him it seemed the best solution

but anyway ill update the first post so newcomers can have a TLDR

I always thought that it is very weird how city growth is handled. When there is enough food in one city, but none in the other, people could just move there, so your suggestion would make a lot of sense to me.

What I also think is that the amount of excess food should play a role. If the people of a city are living in paradise (so to speak) with gazilion of food left over (in the above mentioned playthrough, my capital could support around 1300 when it hit level 5, because I couldn't be botheres spamming consulates...), the city should grow faster.

Sorry but this is definitely a problem.  If you want to have 10 -15 cities by turn 100, then they should not grow without infrastructure. 

I don't have a problem with buildings, traits, city level-up options, or city enchantments that offer solutions to this issue because they are a choice to be made.  Getting easy prestige from techs you would otherwise research and/or sovereign levels is absolutely ridiculous at the current rate.

Just to be clear, the problem I have with this unmitigated expansion is that it is always better to have more cities in terms of research, taxes, and production (queues.) Prestige and growth are the natural limiters to overzealous expansion.  Currently this mechanic is deeply flawed, as in there is basically no mechanic at all.

Here's your problem!  You decided to take on 34 settlements.  Do you really expect them to reliably grow without the proper infrastructure?

Says who?  These are villages spread out in a large area.  My sovereign is kicking ass, getting famous, and survivors are flocking to the settlements that have sworn fealty to him.  They will flock more when they hear there's grub, education for the kiddies, and a town watch.

And who says that my settlements do not have infrastructure anyway? They grow because of a combination of city quality, demonstrated civic capabilities,  and sovereign fame.  I.e. buildings, research and sovereign achievements, i.e. infrastructure and prestige.

Anyway, I'm done with this thread.  The mechanic works, it fits the fluff, and different play styles seem to work with it.  I do not have any interest in discussing how someone feels that X cities by turn Y is "too much", "too little", or "just enough".

I reach the food barriers so often that growth matters little.

Some of this may be due to production being comparatively slow.

I'd suggest a twin solution: move the prestige techs up in the tree like you suggested, but also reduce the construction costs of the bakery/butcher.