How can I increase the city cap during early eras?

According to some online resources some science research can increase it. One of them should be foreign outposts, but it didn't. 

Searching the game encyclopedia doesn't bring up any results and apparently other online sources are incorrect.

Frankly, the cap sucks and feels like an afterthought to artifically prevent fast exansion. 

You can find all the cap sources on the wiki here. You can expand via outposts and then attach them to an existing city. That way you can have bigger cities that make use of different regions and their strengths.

The game encourages you in many ways to attach territories to cities. You can also merge cities later when your research a specific technology.

Each era except ancient era have one technology that increase city cap by 1, except contemporary in which the increase is 3. You can also get one city cap if you choose small council civic in your government path, which you should get maybe a few turns after founding your second city. Classical era Persian also increase city cap by 2 and you can sometimes get an event that allow you to increase the city cap by 1.

It is possible to ignore the city cap at an influence cost, if you don't feel you have any more use of influence, and is willing to suffer the small stability penalty for negative influence, you can go as far as you want above the cap.

Melliores wrote:

You can find all the cap sources on the wiki here. You can expand via outposts and then attach them to an existing city. That way you can have bigger cities that make use of different regions and their strengths.

The game encourages you in many ways to attach territories to cities. You can also merge cities later when your research a specific technology.

Unfortunately, that's incorrect now. Some of the techs no longer increase the City Cap .  

As far as quick ways to increase city cap the fastest is to grab the Achaemenid Persians since its part of their legacy trait 

Adine wrote:

Melliores wrote:

You can find all the cap sources on the wiki here. 

Unfortunately, that's incorrect now. Some of the techs no longer increase the City Cap .  

Exactly, I sort of rushed one of those techs to get +1 on the cap but it didn't raise it.

Im now in early modern I am 2 over the cap and still gain 230 influence points. I think I need to raise the difficulty on my next game.

I understand I can attach and grow a region but I wanted extra cities to pump out extra units or share on building wonders while still having other cities pumping out units. 

Keep in mind negative influence is only -1 stability per turn, which is very little and given that most use of influence can be replaced as the game progress you can at some point simply ignore the city cap and go deep negative in influence.

Dalenn wrote:

I really like the cap, it prevents brainless expansion and city spam. 

Btw you can go above the cap by 1 for very little penalty, by 2 for a moderate penalty, and if you have a lot influence income then even above (although the penalty climbs up very rapidly).

Fully agree! It's one of the most annoying things in Civ when all the AI are crowding you with tiny cities and no potential for expansion.

This game lets you breathe and actually develop a city. Maybe people are not familiar with the attaching outposts yet, but I think they should learn the game mechanics before complaining.

CoconutTank wrote:

I'm not sure which techs lost their city cap increase, but a consistent element is that any tech that has the little mayor-ish admin symbol grants a city cap increase.

Here are some examples:

The one exception to this is Space Orbital; the symbol for Space Station on that tech has a coin instead of a mayor (I guess the money bonus takes precedence in presenting information?):

Yeah, I noticed that too, thanks! The confusion set in when the wiki had outdated information on techs that once increased the cap but now don't so I wasn't sure which techs increased and which didn't. It seems they (almost?) always have that symbol except for the space station as you stated.

They removed all additional city cap in classical and early modern in the last patch so they only have +1 city cap just like medieval and industrial.

Goodluck wrote:

Keep in mind negative influence is only -1 stability per turn, which is very little and given that most use of influence can be replaced as the game progress you can at some point simply ignore the city cap and go deep negative in influence.

Isn't it cumulative, like negative money? (so -1 in the 1st turn, -2 in the 2nd, ... -10 stability after 10 turns, and so on)

inflatablemouse wrote:

Dayvit78 wrote:

Dalenn wrote:

I really like the cap, it prevents brainless expansion and city spam. 

Btw you can go above the cap by 1 for very little penalty, by 2 for a moderate penalty, and if you have a lot influence income then even above (although the penalty climbs up very rapidly).

Fully agree! It's one of the most annoying things in Civ when all the AI are crowding you with tiny cities and no potential for expansion.

This game lets you breathe and actually develop a city. Maybe people are not familiar with the attaching outposts yet, but I think they should learn the game mechanics before complaining.

Maybe you hadn't discovered those military units in Civ with which you could simply destroy whatever city you felt was useless, or claim them for yourself?

I simply feel different about the city cap, is that allowed without having people slinging phrases at my head like needing to learning stuff becoming here?

Okay okay, there is a lot to unpack here:

1. which Civ iteration are we talking about? V? VI? (I'm assuming the game-franchise)

2. which military units are you thinking about?

3. if I deem a city is useless, why would I want to claim it?

4. just because we have opposite view on a subject, that doesn't mean your opinion worths less than others. We are discussing things, exchanging ideas and opinions in a civilized manner, that's what this forum is about.

5. nobody is hurting you, so don't get offended. We are not lecturing you, we are trying to help.

Dalenn wrote:

Okay okay, there is a lot to unpack here:

No there isn't. I was being cinical. No need to analyze that.

Dalenn wrote:

5. nobody is hurting you, so don't get offended. We are not lecturing you, we are trying to help.

Telling me not to complain and go learn game mechanics instead is really not helpful and actually is a little offensive from where I'm standing. No damage done, Im just letting you know I didn't like that.

Dalenn wrote:

Goodluck wrote:

Keep in mind negative influence is only -1 stability per turn, which is very little and given that most use of influence can be replaced as the game progress you can at some point simply ignore the city cap and go deep negative in influence.

Isn't it cumulative, like negative money? (so -1 in the 1st turn, -2 in the 2nd, ... -10 stability after 10 turns, and so on)

Maybe you hadn't discovered those military units in Civ with which you could simply destroy whatever city you felt was useless, or claim them for yourself?

I simply feel different about the city cap, is that allowed without having people slinging phrases at my head like needing to learning stuff becoming here?

Yes but a -100 penalty after 100 turns of negative influence seems very small, all you need is 10 wonderous luxuries to counter that stability problem. I have suggest the penalty work like this -1 for first turn -3 for second turn -6 for the third turn and so on which ramp up much faster and thus make it much harder to stay in negative stability for a long part of the game.

On tiny and small maps the citycap is ok. But on large or huge maps it is impossible to conquer all cities. I can ransack all other cities an build an outpost but then i need more influence to attach these outpost. It is to expensive to attach the 8th or 9th outpost.

There must be a different in the citycap between tiny and huge maps.

Sethos1323BC wrote:

On tiny and small maps the citycap is ok. But on large or huge maps it is impossible to conquer all cities. I can ransack all other cities an build an outpost but then i need more influence to attach these outpost. It is to expensive to attach the 8th or 9th outpost.

There must be a different in the citycap between tiny and huge maps.

Makes a lot of sense

Sethos1323BC wrote:

On tiny and small maps the citycap is ok. But on large or huge maps it is impossible to conquer all cities. I can ransack all other cities an build an outpost but then i need more influence to attach these outpost. It is to expensive to attach the 8th or 9th outpost.

There must be a different in the citycap between tiny and huge maps.

Yes the city cap should take account for map size, a small map and a huge map require very different amount of cities or you end up with something like this on a huge map if you want to say under the city cap:

Those mega cities are the ideal cities though….with the right EQ you get massive yields.  The only problem is the influence/money cost of attaching the districts (That should probably be adjusted for map size)

Krikkitone wrote:

Those mega cities are the ideal cities though….with the right EQ you get massive yields.  The only problem is the influence/money cost of attaching the districts (That should probably be adjusted for map size)

Depend, only certain cultures can really make good use of mega cities, however everyone can benefit from just spamming as many cities as possible.