When to create a new town?

[dycu]

What are the rules to follow while deciding on creation of a new city? I've never done that, and I'm thinking when it's worth doing.

[Maerchen]

I founded one every five hex on a radiated forest world. Only way to keep the infantry alive at 700+ rad.

5 is the minimum distance between cities. It allows you to get an insane amount of IP production early on, BP as well and you have 0% of admin strain all the time.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: dycu

What are the rules to follow while deciding on creation of a new city? I've never done that, and I'm thinking when it's worth doing.

Build a new one if the Admin Strain in one city is to big.

Admin Strain is caused by assets being more then 6 hexes away from the city running the zone, but anything below 10% can be ignored.

[Daza99]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

ORIGINAL: dycu

What are the rules to follow while deciding on creation of a new city? I've never done that, and I'm thinking when it's worth doing.

Build a new one if the Admin Strain in one city is to big.

Admin Strain is caused by assets being more then 6 hexes away from the city running the zone, but anything below 10% can be ignored.

At what Admin Strain percentage would you start thinking about doing that? would 24%+ sound about right?

[licker34]

I build them more for supply considerations. The Admin issue gets resolved this way as well.

But yes, you can get a lot of IP and BP by 'spamming' them, assuming you have the time to set them up, so YMMV depending on the world and neighbors and such.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Daza99

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

ORIGINAL: dycu

What are the rules to follow while deciding on creation of a new city? I've never done that, and I'm thinking when it's worth doing.

Build a new one if the Admin Strain in one city is to big.

Admin Strain is caused by assets being more then 6 hexes away from the city running the zone, but anything below 10% can be ignored.

At what Admin Strain percentage would you start thinking about doing that? would 24%+ sound about right?

At 24% founding a new city is overdue.

First you should fight the stain by changing zone borders and transfering assets to other cities, but at some point even that stops working. At that point only a new city can do it.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: licker34

I build them more for supply considerations. The Admin issue gets resolved this way as well.

But yes, you can get a lot of IP and BP by 'spamming' them, assuming you have the time to set them up, so YMMV depending on the world and neighbors and such.

I am not quite sure what you mean with "supply considerations" here?

Do you mean sending food to the workers? Because splitting those workers over multiple cities would propably make this worse.
Do you mean you can only build logistics assets inside the cities? Because there is no such limitation.

[Sieppo]

In my recent game I have built new cities at least 16 hexes afar. Sometimes more, sometimes less, location matters (defense, logistics etc). I think 8 hexes goes without admin strain. If admin strain starts to go above 10%, I try to make adjustments. I'm a bit skeptical about city spamming because you only have that much work force, which in most cases is the most important resource.

[Maerchen]

After finally understanding this post from @Dampfnudel https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4920923

I gave it a try. 5 hex is difficult, but rewarding. Your conquested cities interfere with this strategy though and the worker constantly rebelling is somewhat problematic. My democratic turned meritocracy can work with it quite good as I have the income to pay them off, but I am puzzled by the migration that happens through my 25 zone empire. It really helps to have good advisors.

[licker34]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

ORIGINAL: licker34

I build them more for supply considerations. The Admin issue gets resolved this way as well.

But yes, you can get a lot of IP and BP by 'spamming' them, assuming you have the time to set them up, so YMMV depending on the world and neighbors and such.

I am not quite sure what you mean with "supply considerations" here?

Do you mean sending food to the workers? Because splitting those workers over multiple cities would propably make this worse.
Do you mean you can only build logistics assets inside the cities? Because there is no such limitation.

I mean that I don't see a downside to putting up a new zone on a truck asset, so I basically just pick the spot based off of logistics (and resources if I have knowledge of them). The admin help is a bonus. But extra slots for government buildings and industry don't hurt any either.

[KarisFraMauro]

The first time I beat the game (on easy of course) I didn't build a single new town, capturing ones worked out well enough. Now that I've slightly upped the difficulty I'm starting to appreciate their role. Still don't entirely understand incorporated / unincorporated though.

[Maerchen]

Unincorporated gives conquered cities time to calm down, unrest removal, military occupation, etc. They don't pay taxes, benefit from public budget allocations etc. When happiness climbs over 55%, you can try to give it a regular status. They will pay taxes now, and slowly become accustomed to your lifestyle and after some time they will become 'your' people.

[Rekm41]

Where do you find the Administration strain?

[Rekm41]

I found it.

[springel]

Everybody should take some time now and then to browse all the panels in game just to see what information is available where. That can be even more useful than reading the manual. Also, discover all the tooltip information.

[KarisFraMauro]

Good advice for most games, but especially this one. And thanks for explaining unincorporated / incorporated Maerchen.

[Maerchen]

Always happy to help. Merry Christmas everybody!

[KarisFraMauro]

Happy Festivus too In a way I'm dreading the point (still far away) where I've really grasped the fundamentals of the game because then I'll no longer have an excuse for my shortcomings. My latest complication is how long the AI takes for their turns, I've timed it at six minutes in my current game. Three different explanations of varying plausibility. Firstly and most obviously is that my laptop is ancient. So not the games fault! The other two I might have some control over and thought I should ask. Does removing the fog of war slow things down, because the AI moves are shown? And the big change from my other games is that I was experimenting and tried the "lots of different opponents" mode. I think that in particular doesn't help but a second opinion is welcome. All this is on a small world, so I can only imagine how long turns would take on something larger.

[Uemon]

First replies have told you the rules that allow you to build new cities.

To the question of WHEN you should build them, the answer is a bit complicated.

Cities tend to grow slowly when they are small. Their size also limits the level of production buildings they can create. And they also build things much slower than large cities. So you have to consider a lot of factors here.

Overall in 9 out of 10 cases, you will be much better off keeping city sizes as small as possible, and then building up and focusing on your capital, so that the excess population eventually moves there. As your city grows, with every upgrade, it gives you + building size, which means you produce far more and sometimes more effectively as well. This starts taking off especially around building level 4-5 and +.

So with all of that in mind, there are really 2 cases where you should build new cities:
1.) if you have one or multiple cities where you have huge unemployed population;
2.) if you have ruins with whatever color pyramid gives you cloning GR card (there is also a card you can play for like 5 fate points that might give you cloning facility). These cards are OP as hell as each one gives you +1000 population EVERY turn. So logically if you have a bunch of those cards, it makes every sense to found as many cities as you have cards, because after a while you will obtain incredible population sizes.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: KarisFraMauro

Happy Festivus too In a way I'm dreading the point (still far away) where I've really grasped the fundamentals of the game because then I'll no longer have an excuse for my shortcomings. My latest complication is how long the AI takes for their turns, I've timed it at six minutes in my current game. Three different explanations of varying plausibility. Firstly and most obviously is that my laptop is ancient. So not the games fault! The other two I might have some control over and thought I should ask. Does removing the fog of war slow things down, because the AI moves are shown? And the big change from my other games is that I was experimenting and tried the "lots of different opponents" mode. I think that in particular doesn't help but a second opinion is welcome. All this is on a small world, so I can only imagine how long turns would take on something larger.

It is a general rule for strategy games that overall AI turntime increases exponentially to the number of players (inlcuding AI) in the game.
Personally I rarely play on something bigger the small.