There is a population growth penalty for building lots of cities, but I do anyway because inns and such that add growth make up for it by enough, in my opinion.

Wouldn't it be nice if a few large cities could match the value of many cities? This part of the game has yet to achieve anything more than spam benefit. That will eventually change.

I am playing a game on hard now with dense monsters. I have three main cities that are around l4, and just settled two new ones. Has worked out fine. Those two new ones get rushed buildings that makes them get going faster.

Currently city spam is the way to play because of how easy it is to get growth buildings like inns that make prestige splitting irrelevant. However the devs have said they are aware of the problem and are making them harder to get.

That said I don't think that will be enough. I would like to see a unrest penalty that increases as you build cities. You would be able to reduce this penalty through tech and improvements. This would prevent players from spamming right off the start and make it an actual strategy while still providing bonuses to players with only a few cities.

Another problem that is tied in with city spam is city steam rolling. Acquiring cities through conquest has no downside as is and allows players to steamroll and build huge empires incredibly quickly, this overemphasizes conquest. Grabbing as many cities as possible is always the way to play. Peace has no real benefits  as the easiest way to increase population, research, and gold is go take some cities.

Paraphrasing the Original Poster (OP): Humility -- One, or Two, or Many Cities ??

Here's One View:  I have played three complete games on a small map.  (I have begun three other games that I either couldn't complete (too many crashes) or was un-inspired to complete.)

I have routinely founded three cities early, and usually a couple more (smaller) settlements in the course of the game.  However, I have routinely used a relatively large number of outposts.  If I build say 5-6 cities, total, my number of outposts by game's end is routinely 6-10.  So, I am running about 1.5 outposts for every city/settlement that I create.

I really like this aspect of the game.  I think outposts are a really good feature; for capturing resources, AND for helping to unite your kingdom, by spreading your network of roads.  (Also, it reduces city micro-management -- Hooray !)  I often garrison outposts, especially those on the "frontier", but routinely find (as my kingdom grows) that I can free up some of the early garrisoning units, for other tasks.  (A lot of the randomly generated maps have enough "choke-points", that some "frontiers" are naturally created, in the course of the game.  BTW, the random map generator has created some GREAT maps!  I really like that aspect of the game too!)  When I do free up early garrisons, I usually take the occasion to seriously upgrade those unit's weapons and/or armor, before assigning new roles to them.  Most often, those units join my "front-line" armies.  Occasionally I de-activate a unit, especially if the population that it adds to an existing city, is enough to cause a key city to "level up" at that point.

I think Stardock has got the city-spamming issue nearly mastered.  You  CAN  still spam cities, if that's your prefered style of play, but the existing dis-incentives mean that you really don't have to.  As for steam-rolling (capturing) enemy cities, I still think that Stardock needs to tweak this issue a bit.  Steam-rolling enemy cities is still too attractive -- no real dis-incentives.  I also think that the flavor of the game would be better served, if it were a tougher call, to absorb enemy settlements, or raze them completely.  In my conception, I would rather keep less than half of captured enemy cities.

I liked your question about which upgrades are preferable to select, when cities level up; but I can't really give a good answer at this point.  For one thing, few of my cities have ever reached level five, as yet ...

I would really like to hear what strategies other players are adopting in this regard, especially on the larger maps ...

lost of almshouses and never build a city where food + production don't equal 8 or more. if you conquer such a city, raze it. outpost are way to good and easy.

they need to add up, so 5 food and 3 materials would be fine. but 3 food and 2 materials is a waste of resources. influence is precious, since you want high lvl cities.

i prefer 5 food, 3 materials since those are the easiest to get to lvl 4 and 5, 4food 4materials is double as well with the backery but a lesser option. everything that gives food is great. i've never seen a tile that goes over 5 btw (so 6 food or six materials).

low materials are easier to fix with lots of improvents and your population bonus, low food is very hard to fix.

I've always been a city spammer for as long as I've been playing 4X games (which is...as long as they've been around). It's not the best strategy for a lot of games, but I really like the first three Xs (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit). I also tend to be a non-fighter in 4X games when possible; that is, I'll try to make myself strong enough to discourage the AI elements from attacking me, they chase after a non-conquering victory condition (if one exists).

(The interesting thing with EFE 0.86 is that it's made me a bit more bloodthirsty. Since the AIs seem pretty stuck on an arms-race/attack mindset, I've gotten more preemptive about attack them. But I digress.)

I like the outpost concept (which is straight out of FFH2 -- one of the factions there could only build a few 'real' cities but could build as many outposts as it liked). It's a good counterbalance to the "where the heck are any grain squares?" problem of founding cities, and, as noted above, outposts are generally zero-maintenance, and losing one doesn't generally set you back any more than the loss of those resources.

I'll be interesting to see how EFE plays with one-square cities, though I'm plenty used to that from FFH2.  ..bruce..

Personally I like a lot of cities and am against artificial mechanics that try to limit this. 

I think that it should be a tactic to choose between a lot of cities and a few cities, because I do not like having 1 trillion cities that I need to keep track of, I want to "Slowly" expand my empire, also I am not in favor of game mechanics that favor extremely quick expansions, due  to it leaving out most of the options, the current mechanic at least favor you wait a few turns before expanding, but after turn 50 the game mechanics tells you to just build cities everywhere, especially since you have so low prestige in the start of the game, but so "many" buildings that improve growth in other ways, that is per town and free of maintenance.

It is a walk of balance between what the players want and what the developers like, and someone is always going to be unsatisfied

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Basically you can choose to stay at one city for a time ....

but once you build your second city, you should be prepared to city spam like hell, because after you build your second city, spamming is definitely worth it

---------------

If diminishing returns is even possible, that would be a good way to do it.

So building a second city increases your overall power by 50%, while going from 10 cities to 11 cities only increases your power by say, 9%.

Whereas now its the reverse ... that the penalty is a diminishing return.

I would far rather have the benefit to be a diminishing return, but alas this would be hard to do I think

Perhaps simply have the "Growth mechanic" the opposite of what it is now?

Perhaps having growth penalties starting out really lOW ... and then increasing somewhat exponentially ... would create diminishing returns?

More cities should always have *some* type of benefit though, so this is a very dangerous and narrow path we seek

I think that the taxation production penalty is essentially the same as an unrest penalty, so it seems as if adding unrest is really adding an additional production penalty as the number of cities incresaes.

I think that the growth penalty for city spam can become mroe effective if the growth boost buildings like inns, instead of adding a concrete number of growth like 0.5, adds a percentage increase over the base prestige 'growth' rate. Thus, maybe inns add 50% prestige instead of 0.5 prestige.