Matrix Games Forums

I have only seen DAS create a new city. Everyone else seems to only capture cities, and when they do.., all Heck breaks loose.

My questions are:

(1) is it better to create your own cities or is it better to capture enemy cities?

(2) what is the advantage of creating your own cities?

(3) what are the disadvantages of creating your own cities?

(4) sort of related, but not really -- in CIV 6 if it is near the beginning-ish of a game, it is better to found your own because of all the problem with taking a somewhat small city. But if it near the end (it is possible) it might be a good idea to capture a city if it is huge and has a bunch of stuff.

Thank you.

PS - I think this is going to be the best game in the universe.

Related to the above; is it better to attack an unaligned area and build a city.., or is it better to attack a region with a city. Not sure how many ways I can word this, I think most of you know what I am asking. Thanks again

From what I've seen capturing a city is better since you take over all of that new population and all those already constructed buildings, if you can keep troops in it to pacify it that is.
Creating a new city requires you to spend IP to build it, spend colonists to grow it (and spend pop to get colonists), spend logistic points to supply it, spend more IP for it's self sufficiency and so on.

You do need to get new cities somehow tho, if you expand your starting zone without doing so your administrative strain will kill it, reducing the output of all of your buildings.

As for unaligned area or a minor / major with a city, I guess it depends on your position: Do you have enough forces to start and win a war? Do you even have the cards to start it without nuking your happiness, do you have the cards to end it?

Depends on the planet, the amount of Zones that are populated in world-generation, and the circumstances in-game.

You're generally going to be taking cities from the minor and major regimes, but that's not always possible in every game. Some of the minor regimes can be very powerful indeed. sometimes more powerful than you can handle in the early game, especially if they've got a terrain advantage.

In my games I've found that you often take a huge amount of territory at the start, and as you start taking over minor regime territory, and the non-aligned areas too, you're over-stretching to get to the resources you want, or to be able to supply defending troops on a critical border. Then building a new city becomes important.

It takes a lot of colonists to get a new settlement going enough to be able to work the assets around it. However, the earlier you do it, the more you benefit from its natural growth. There is a Strategem called Boomtown which can help get more population in quickly, and I'd advise saving those cards for new settlements.

I suspect preparation may be key:

Have the resources to build a large, pure inf., garrison, have the IPs to build or improve roads to the city, have discovered the barracks and have the IPs to build it, have cards and PP to play immediately, perhaps have workers/colonists ready to move to it.

Just going in empty handed and hoping to improvise seems risky!

Generally it is much better to take existing cities because population is so important. The only real time you should consider making your own cities is if there are assets that are beyond your Administrative limit (and so are not as effective). If you start a new zone it is vitally important to make sure you safely control 4 to 5 hexes around where the city will start. Enemy units within 4 hexes cause Danger in the city and that is really bad and hard to get rid of.

When conquering a city the biggest tip I've found is to only allow cities to grow to the next stage if you have a really good reason to do so (such as need to build a larger asset than the city limit will allow). Rebels appear much more often with larger cities and Quality of Life in cities is divided by the city size - so small cities are much easier to make happy and much less likely to rebel. If you do have large Unrest in a city then you need a lot of troops in the city. I generally try to have an Independent Regiment of 3600 soldiers to sit there as a garrison until everything has calmed down. And also try to choose Autocracy events to raise the Fear in cities that have Unrest (Fear nulifies Unrest).