So I began expanding in modern era with colonists assuming there might be city cap increases through tech tree, I mean why else would this unit be offered?  Long story short.....there is no city cap increase in the tech tree after the modern era (maybe 1 or 2 but not much).  I am now in a MASSIVE Influence deficit of over 2K a turn with a total negative Influence debt of 116K by now.

Obviously it didn't start like this.  I had balanced the expansion for quite some time to maintain Influence but there is a wall I hit where I either couldn't expand, or accept a deficit.  Problem is that once you accept a deficit there is no way out!!!!

Once I got the ability to merge cities, to potentially break this issue, guess what, you can't merge because it costs Influence!  The game literally presents a scenario of an irreversible Influence deficit.  I can't even change my civics now because I have no Influence.

Anyone else experiencing this?  It is a terrible design issue.  I am still going to win my game through sheer industrial/military might but half the game was shut off to me because I can take no action that uses Influence.

Lame.

Maybe you could ransack one or more of the cities?

Not ideal, but it would be a way out of the influence deficit.

I guess at the moment the only way out of the deficit is to get rid of the cities or increase your cap via science (if some tech that increases the cap is still available).

Since the penalty bis so harsh I tend to go max one city over the cap.

I'd chalk it up to learning the game's mechanical pitfalls and start a new game...

Not exactly the same issue, but I was wondering how the cost of merging cities is actually desinged? I could not quite work out why it is cheaper for some and more expensive for others. And the cost increases at a rate that makes it hard to ever build that large sum of influence fast enough, i.e. I had a turn-based increase in influence of around 600 but really struggled to get to the many thousand needed. 

Reicha wrote:

Not exactly the same issue, but I was wondering how the cost of merging cities is actually desinged? I could not quite work out why it is cheaper for some and more expensive for others. And the cost increases at a rate that makes it hard to ever build that large sum of influence fast enough, i.e. I had a turn-based increase in influence of around 600 but really struggled to get to the many thousand needed. 

It costs more and more influence to attach an outpost to a city the more it has. I'm entirely certain part of the cost of merging cities is what adding the second city as however many outposts it would comprise. So if you have two cities with 3 territories merging them would cost the outpost attach for the 4th, 5th and 6th on a city. This is obviously a perfectly reasonable cost but its also going to be a very high cost.

Reicha wrote:

Not exactly the same issue, but I was wondering how the cost of merging cities is actually desinged? I could not quite work out why it is cheaper for some and more expensive for others. And the cost increases at a rate that makes it hard to ever build that large sum of influence fast enough, i.e. I had a turn-based increase in influence of around 600 but really struggled to get to the many thousand needed. 

The difference in infrastructure buildings is the most important factor for the cost: you pay influence for every building that's only available in one of the two cities. It's quite clever imho. Otherwise, detaching a territory and upgrade it to a city would be the easiest way to gain infrastructures in the second half of the game, when new cities start with pre-built infrastructures. Number of territories is a factor as well, but often negligible at that point of the game.

WorldlyBoar wrote:

So I began expanding in modern era with colonists assuming there might be city cap increases through tech tree, I mean why else would this unit be offered?  Long story short.....there is no city cap increase in the tech tree after the modern era (maybe 1 or 2 but not much).  I am now in a MASSIVE Influence deficit of over 2K a turn with a total negative Influence debt of 116K by now.

Obviously it didn't start like this.  I had balanced the expansion for quite some time to maintain Influence but there is a wall I hit where I either couldn't expand, or accept a deficit.  Problem is that once you accept a deficit there is no way out!!!!

Once I got the ability to merge cities, to potentially break this issue, guess what, you can't merge because it costs Influence!  The game literally presents a scenario of an irreversible Influence deficit.  I can't even change my civics now because I have no Influence.

Anyone else experiencing this?  It is a terrible design issue.  I am still going to win my game through sheer industrial/military might but half the game was shut off to me because I can take no action that uses Influence.

Lame.

How on earth were your cities not all at 0% stability. I went 2 over the cap early on and got -120 influence penalty. That put my influence pool in to the negative after a few turns and each turn you have a negative influence pool you get -1 stability on all cities. Even after you are back in positive influence per turn you keep getting the negative stability until your influence pool returns to positive.

I agree, only 1 city over cap for most civs, or 2 cities over cap for aesthetes. After that, the penalties ramp up quick.

countcb wrote:

Maybe you could ransack one or more of the cities?

Not ideal, but it would be a way out of the influence deficit.

I guess at the moment the only way out of the deficit is to get rid of the cities or increase your cap via science (if some tech that increases the cap is still available).

Since the penalty bis so harsh I tend to go max one city over the cap.

Right, I considered this but was at my cap after conquering my continent (all cities have 2-3 territories attached).  I am playing on a large map and there are 2 other continents (one with countries, one a New World).  The reason I am hating the city cap design is that it wouldn't allow me to settle the New World, let alone conquer the other continent, without giving up on influence entirely.  Seems like a terrible design choice by Amplitude.

I came across this in an earlier era. The only way forward was for me to liberate some of the cities I took over or maybe even built. This corrected the penalty over the course of 7 -10 turns I begin to get out of the negative zone. This game is really well thought out especially in spaces where if you played civ it can be a handicap (that would be me). What I am learning there is most times a way to adapt effect of the cause but it just may take 20 turns before you figure it out. the algorithm in this game is really really good at keeping it interesting. which is cool for me. hope this helps. 

I felt similar with the city cap / merge city costs - It basically makes me not play on large / huge maps anymore because I can sit there with 10 cities on one continent give or take, pump out yields / district like mad, but have little interest in the New World as my city cap is maxed. I wish this could feel a little less constraining. 

Belechannas wrote:

WorldlyBoar wrote:..

I get that I am "learning the mechanics" as others say, but my point is that this is bad design.

You exceeded the limit by more than a factor of two, and it's "bad design" when heartbreak ensues?

OK.

Well yes, the map can clearly support far more cities than i have even now and yet I have no avenue to control them, even if i had maxed out city cap.

What's worse is now that I'm in this expansion hole, i have no way out except liberating my entire empire.

That's not just bad, it's terrible.  Unless the point is to not have an empire and just earn fame or science.  If that's the only end game here, I'm out.

Why not turn up the difficulty so the AI put up more of a fight? Or just attach more territories to your existing cities. 

But why did you go so far over the cap without checking if there were ways to increase your city cap? And why did you learn that there was a technology to merge cities that deep into the game? It seems like you just made an error in your decision because you are new to the game. I mean they could put more ways to increase the cap, but you building that many cities is definitely on you based on the game's current state.

hehee wrote:

Why not turn up the difficulty so the AI put up more of a fight? Or just attach more territories to your existing cities. 

But why did you go so far over the cap without checking if there were ways to increase your city cap? And why did you learn that there was a technology to merge cities that deep into the game? It seems like you just made an error in your decision because you are new to the game. I mean they could put more ways to increase the cap, but you building that many cities is definitely on you based on the game's current state.

I guess that's my point, this is a broken game from my perspective.  In retrospect, i definitely could have included many more territories per city, while also researching civics and techs to maximize city cap... But again that's just a bad game design.  How was i to know just how large the map and islands would be?  It's the game meant to be so low on cities that my production centers are miles away from the front and i should use forts only as spawn points (even though I get a much higher monetary/science/industry benefit from more cities)?

None of it makes want sense.  This would all go away if they made the city cap affect income, then i could run that deficit (maybe losing units and buildings a la Civ2), and yet i would still have influence to capture territories and rearrange/merge cities to manage it.

My point is that the city cap hitting influence breaks the game's core design. And from this thread it sounds like that is a take it or leave it option (no build tree the alleviates the issue).

You do have a point in the awkwardness of having fewer cities on a bigger map. They should probably somehow scale the cap based on the map size at the very least. But it seems like they did want to try to shy away from a player or AI crushing the other players and colonizing everything with the whole war support needed to actually take cities from an enemy player and increasing cost of influence and of course the city cap. It does seem like some of their other design decisions may be flawed or strange to most 4x players like forced surrender. Maybe they will alter the way the city cap works but that probably wouldn't be anytime soon if at all.

The game is designed so that you expand by adding territories to cities as much as adding cities.  I’d say a good approximation is cities should each have one extra territory per era… so Inustrial era cities should have about 6 territories each.   That said, digging out of the hole involves detaching the territories from excess cities and then either liberating excess or ransacking them.

Your best option at this point would be absorbing some of them assuming they are close enough 

Adine wrote:

Your best option at this point would be absorbing some of them assuming they are close enough 

You need influence to absorb (unless you activated the inherited land civic)…so once in the hole you can only get out through liberation or sacking.