I'm still looking for solutions to help players have enough tools to play tall if they want to.

One of the big issue with big cities is the inflation of district cost. Here a simple idea to try to remedy it a bit:

Each attached territory give a 2% reduction in the cost of districts, capped at a total of 90% and excluding wonders.

See, this is something that I feel Infrastructure should actually do! Things such as postal service, trolleys, and highways could all be reflected by infrastructure and lower the cost of building more districts. 

EsoulBoy wrote:

I haven’t done total research, but it seems to me that 3 cities will provide more production, science and money. 

I'm eager to know the reasoning that led to this point of view.

With few rare meaningful bonuses benefitting only the capital, like the Mughal's LT for example, there's no real advantage a big city holds over a small one. The increase Food and Industry coming from attaching outposts get negated quite fast by the increasing cost for population growth and districts.

Playing wide, ie having many cities, is made slower by the city cap, that doesn't allow to go over it with more than 2, then 3 cities, and the expense of creating new cities, which can be reduced by capturing or assimilating some. Furthermore, if this influence limitation is sensible for the first cities, it then becomes easier to overcome, while attaching outposts becomes more and more a pain.

There are two important things that two cities do better than one:

1. doubling infrastructure, which a single city obviously can't do. It, of course, means you have to build or buy it twice but if you do it once, it surely is because it makes sense. So you'll get more of those benefits and some are static ones, like those given by horses or copper. If one city gets +25 food from horses, two will get each the same amount, leading to your empire getting double the value, helping population growth a lot more.
2. And that's the real heavy part. A single city can only grow one population each turn, so having one limits you to a +1 per turn, if you have enough yields for that, while 2 cities might lead to get a total of 2 population during the same time. If one city can grow faster, it'll inevitabily reach a limit due to the increase in food cost being exponential. The same applies to 2 cities, that will have to stop a bit lower but they'll reach a lot higher than half of the unique city, the player with 2 cities will get a lot more population overall.
   1. And population does not only provide agrarian stars, it also helps filling jobs in cities and therefore helps with industry, money and science production. 
   2. The higher the population, the higher also the amount of influence produced. Furthermore, if one city will benefit from the embassy or more wonders than two cities, that will have to share those one time special district and their stability bonuses, adding more and more territories to a single city will end up costing more stability. And you need a settled city to produce more influence. I already mentionned the higher cost of attaching territories, which means less influence available for civics or city states.
   3. The military is also made of people and the more of them you have the bigger you can make an army. Two cities, that's two lines of production. If they can be a bit slower, they produce more together and will be able to regenerate population faster (see 2) and thus keep more jobs (2.1) and produce more influence (2.2)

What is working better for 2 rather than 1 city does also apply to 6 rather than 3, or 10 rather than 3 in most cases.

The goal of my proposition is to be still able to produce districts at a decent pace in a 30+ territory city as it should be easier to build stuff in it than in a 1 territory brand new city. It is however the opposite in the game.

Yeah, after trying to play "tall" a few more times recently (especially with encouragement from "Together We Rule"), I agree there definitely need to be some ways to mitigate growth of districts, but I don't think it feels natural for territories just automatically lower that value by 2% each.

I still think Civics would be a good tool to let us decide "wide vs tall" (although new culture's LTs and EQs could give boosts, too).

• The Leadership civic is currently a choice between +1 City Cap or +25 Stability on Capital, and while that stability boost is useful if you're planning to play tall, that bonus city is nice.  Would +1 City Cap actually be fairly balanced against -20% or 30% Discount on District Industry Cost?  And before you tell me that's way too powerful, remember that the Army Composition civic is +1 Combat Strength on all units vs -30% Discount on Unit Industry Cost.
• Alternately, the Leadership evolution civics are underpowered and potentially great positioning for district discounts: Currently on the Autarch tree we get -20% discount on Wonders or -20% discount on EQs, +1 science and money on Commons Quarters, -20% unit buyout, -20% district buyout, and +20% money on grievances and surrender.  Those district discounts choices are probably the strongest in the tree, but still aren't super strong.

We could have "Tall" cultures with Legacy Traits or Emblematic Quarters that help us build tall also:

• The Persians give us a -20% discount on all constructables, which includes districts.  It's not explicitly "tall" but it definitely helps.
• The Mississippians' EQ give us -50% discount on adjacent districts
• Future Cultures could have
  • An EQ that gives -33%, -50%, or -66% district cost on future districts within its territory
  • A Legacy trait that gives a discount on certain districts (-50% Industry cost on EQs, -40% Industry Cost on Science Quarters), or some new and special rule like "Harmony with the Earth: Farmers Quarters do not count towards future district costs".

Finally, if and when we see a Tenet rework, it would be nice to have a Tier 3 or Tier 4 Industrial Tenet that grants a -30% discount on district costs, (or -1% per territory you own following your state religion), or something along those lines.

1. I already made quite a number of proposition. I know you know, you have probably upvoted and followed 98% of those.
   I got no real reaction to those many ideas.
   This time I thought to give a very simple option to help the gameplay, as my one-city tests have been quite painful for the last two eras (and I was really eager to play Singapore, but it seems I may only be able to do it fairly well with multiple cities and I want it to be a single one with this culture).
   
   
2. I strongly agree with the possibility to use the civics to help it. I complained already about the unbalanced I felt between the two Leadership's choices (and actually offered propositions for almost all civics during summer). I don't remember what I wrote back then, I think it was more of global stability ; I had then other propositions for Tall, like the 10% FIDSI bonus per unused city below the city cap; but my small bonus to autarch got not much love, was deemed too strong, etc.
   I do like you proposition. And, frankly, it might be very strong in a 6 vs 7 city scenario, the 6 getting the 30% discount. But in a 1, 2 or 3 cities scenario, it might be far from enough. I'd like to see something scaling. Why not make it 10% reduction by unused city cap?

There are very little »tall« traits. They also feel too weak.

1. I don't play Persians but think it's 25% reduction, nope?
2. The Mississipians get their discount only on rivers, I believe.

I understand your propositions but they feel off with the issue. I don't want 3 or 4, or even 12 cultures »allowing« to play tall. I want to have the choice with almost any of them to play wide or tall and to have it as a choice.

Cure_off wrote:
I already made quite a number of proposition. I know you know, you have probably upvoted and followed 98% of those.
I got no real reaction to those many ideas.
This time I thought to give a very simple option to help the gameplay, as my one-city tests have been quite painful for the last two eras (and I was really eager to play Singapore, but it seems I may only be able to do it fairly well with multiple cities and I want it to be a single one with this culture).

That's very fair; I shouldn't have taken one of your new ideas about solving the tall problem and bent it back to my (and our) earlier ideas.  I had some doubt after posting it, so thanks for the correct feedback.

I totally agree that I want to play tall with most cultures.

Cure_off wrote:
I do like you proposition. And, frankly, it might be very strong in a 6 vs 7 city scenario, the 6 getting the 30% discount. But in a 1, 2 or 3 cities scenario, it might be far from enough. I'd like to see something scaling. Why not make it 10% reduction by unused city cap?

Oh, I like this, and it feels like a very worthy balance to include "per city below cap".

Cure_off wrote:

1. I don't play Persians but think it's 25% reduction, nope?
2. The Mississipians get their discount only on rivers, I believe.

I don't recall the Persians, but I know the Mississippians get their -50% discount when building anything adjacent to their Sacred Mounds EQ regardless of rivers (their Legacy Trait gives bonuses to districts placed on rivers).  It's a pretty neat culture, and I'm a big fan of it!

I know we're preaching to the choir with each other over tall empires; though it feels like instead of preaching to a choir, I'm having lunch with the Tall Pope himself!

RedSirus wrote:

Cure_off wrote:
Blabla

That's very fair; I shouldn't have taken one of your new ideas about solving the tall problem and bent it back to my (and our) earlier ideas.  I had some doubt after posting it, so thanks for the correct feedback.

Oups, I seemed to have conveyed the wrong message. I got nothing against your reply. If something sounds off, it's probably out of a bit of frustration, as it seems that the tall issue is:

1. Well known
2. Identified for a long long time
3. More or less acknowledged by the whole community, creating a rare consensus
4. That I have already offered many ideas around the subject
   1. and I know very well I'm not the first, nor the only one
5. And got no real feedback on those ideas being more than seen.
6. So I tend to produce simpler content then and this was one of those only »gameplay-idea«, rather than trying to tie it well with a solid ratiocination to grounded reasons. It might end up working better.
   1. As an illustration for this issue: 
      1. I created two threads in the Idea section about two interesting things for all who are playing solo games (AI level set up & redo bad autofights), they got 1 and 0 upvotes. 
      2. My very simple and comparatively quite useless request for a »kill count« that I do only want to finally get the achievement, is the second most upvoted thread of the Idea section (16 people and thanks to them, I still want that one too)
         
         

RedSirus wrote:
I don't recall the Persians, but I know the Mississippians get their -50% discount when building anything adjacent to their Sacred Mounds EQ regardless of rivers (their Legacy Trait gives bonuses to districts placed on rivers).  It's a pretty neat culture, and I'm a big fan of it!

I messed them together up! You're right. But, well, I don't play builder cultures, that explains it.

RedSirus wrote:
I know we're preaching to the choir with each other over tall empires; though it feels like instead of preaching to a choir, I'm having lunch with the Tall Pope himself!

Thanks for that one, it made me laugh. I'll make it my signature on the forum.
Your ideas are helping mine mature, that's very useful.

EsoulBoy wrote:

Tall cities strategy is valuable only if 2 conditions are met:

1) Building new cities gives big penalty

2) Going into tall cities shall give you some advantage, or at least not punish you.

As for me, giving reduction cost by attached territory possibly can lead to abuse and snowbowling , so as mentioned many times before the best way is not to count extractors (or even administrative centers) as districts. Further, why do we try to build many cities? I haven’t done total research, but it seems to me that 3 cities will provide more production, science and money. So maybe it is good idea to give some 2% to money/science per attached territory. Also to provide first condition need to give some big stability penalty  to building cities over cap, as influence may not be enough.

But it will be ironic, if big city already overrides many small one from some era, but we don’t know it.
i will try to experiment with it next game, but hope someone will do it earlier… backrooms

Infrastructure might reflect postal service, trolleys, and highways, lowering district building costs.

I feel that the cost inflation of districts is relevant to balance the game, but it disregards the game strategies, like high cities vs many cities, as well as it ignores the size of the maps, which in the big and huge maps require both, to have many scattered cities as well as very large ones, which only accentuates the district price problem.

A few broad thoughts on tall vs wide:

1. It could be interesting to have a Civic (or even an ideology axis) to trade of additions or detractions from the city cap with modifying the stability malus from attaching territories. Imagine:
   1. Option A: +1 to city cap; cost of founding cities halved.
   2. Option B: - 1 to city cap; stability penalty cost to attaching territories halved; influence cost of attaching territories halved;
   3. (Related to that - and not option C - maybe the simplest tweak could be to make the current Autharc choice in the Leadership civic more like Option B above. Maybe it's my inexperience but I don't see all that much value in that choice early on when stability in the capital isn't really an issue. Something that affects stability malus from attaching territories would seem to add more sustainable benefits over the course of the game)
2. Should the cost of infrastructures be linked to the number of associated quarters already built, or the number of territories? Infrastructues like woodcutters camps can deliver quite a bang for the investment but the cost is the same irrespective of how many "woods" need to be supported. Not sure that makes thematic or gameplay sense. In return, maybe the costs of infrastructure over the eras could be lowered somewhat or even the inflationary increase in district costs.
3. This is one more extreme and I don't see much likelihood of it actually happeneing: but maybe infrastructure could be tied to the territory instead of the whole city. That is, you construct your woodcutters camp or fish market for a specific territory and it will only take effect there. The upside is that it could allow for more targeted development and fewer "build everything everywhere" (which tends to result from large cities covering a wide range of biomes and landscapes). The downside is that it makes the economic gameplay (much?) more complex and it may not even result in that much more specialisation without territories becoming more homogenous in their map characteristics.