In modding Civ 5 years ago one of the things I struggled to contain was ICS, or Infinite City Spam. At launch the game greatly favoured a style of play where you completely ignore terrain and pack cities in as tight as possible, covering everything with trading posts. Every city built the same buildings (Monument / Library / Market / Colosseum) and you went to infinity because every city improved your empire and brought in tons of money. This isn't necessarily a failure from a strategy standpoint as there was still lots of decision making but it sure didn't feel as immersive or fun as actually picking your city locations and empire expansion based on situation / terrain etc.
I am doing the same thing in Civ 6. The mechanics aren't identical of course because the game is different but the fundamental problem is still there. In Civ 6 there is no reason to stop expansion. Having a few core big powerful cities is good, but after that you should just keep on slamming down small cities in every nook and cranny. Every city can build a Commercial Hub to get a bunch of gold and a trade route, and then a Campus to power out science. After that you don't even care, and in fact you should probably prevent the city from growing so it won't use up valuable Amenities from the rest of your empire. A carpet of featureless, identical cities stretching to the horizon!
Not great.
It is made even worse by later game buildings that affect all cities in a radius. This encourages cramming cities in tight to fit them into the effects of Factories and Zoos, and means that every city starts off with a huge benefit, but still ends up being entirely interchangeable.
There are a bunch of ways to tackle this, but here are the major problems:
1. Tiles.
Tile expansion cost in a single city scales up dramatically. Getting a lot of workable tiles into your empire is a struggle, and requires immense culture output. However, if you build a Settler your new city instantly grabs 7 tiles when founded, and can build a simple Monument and grab 3 more pretty quickly. If you want more luxuries or strategic resources, same thing. Spew out tiny cities to coat the map and you get everything easily. Waiting for your big cities to expand enough to grab things is futile.
2. Growth.
Growing new citizens in big cities has a ludicrous cost, easily getting up to 20 times as much as the cost of growing a citizen in a starting city. If you want to work more tiles, you are far better off spewing Settlers for new cities that will grow quickly than trying to get citizens in big cities. Growth also requires investment in Housing, and new cities get a bunch of Housing for free while big cities have to build things to get their Housing up.
3. Districts.
Making science (and other resources) is best done with district production. But each city can only build one of each district no matter how big it is. Want that 18 science from a Campus, with Library and University? (Counting a science CS and civic bonus.) Well, you can get that from a size 2 city. Your size 15 city already has a Campus and can't really do anything to get more science, because getting new citizens (see above) is painfully slow.
4. Amenities.
The first 2 citizens of a city don't cost Amenities. That means you absolutely want to have as many tiny cities as possible because they can still produce stuff but they minimize your Amenity cost. Adding 2 citizens to a big city costs 1 Amenities. Adding a size 2 city costs 0 Amenities. That is easy math to do.
I don't object to building lots of cities! I like empires. But what I want is two things: First, that city site choice be highly relevant. I want to pick my sites carefully, and for terrain to matter a great deal. I don't like the idea that you just put cities in a grid, I want to choose based more on rivers and resources and such. Secondly, I want expansion to come at a price. Sure, I can build new cities, but I have to get infrastructure in place first. If I just keep on slamming them down I should have problems, and it should negatively impact my empire. Simply put, I want to have a situation where sometimes you expand because you are in good shape to do it, and sometimes you have to focus on building up infrastructure to support a later expansionary period.
In order to do this I have to address all the points above. I can't do much about districts directly. Districts is a core part of Civ 6 and changing that would derail the game too greatly. I would be pretty much starting from scratch, so I need to just let that go. There are plenty of things I can do though.
First off I increased the rate of tile acquisition from culture. I want big cities who invest in culture to be able to collect a lot of tiles so I dramatically reduced the cost of later tiles. The early ones are the same, but you don't have to slam down a ton of tiny cities to get your stuff.
Secondly I increased the rate of growth for big cities. The amount of food required to grow still rises, but it rises dramatically less. A size 15 city requires 53 food to grow, whereas a size 1 city requires 20. That is still more, but it means that you can realistically grow big cities instead of completely relying on spamming tiny ones. (The base value for a size 15 city is 440 food to grow.)
I couldn't totally change Districts, but I could change the way the buildings work. Currently all the buildings in a District mostly offer flat returns. Library gives 2 science, University 4, Research Lab 5. This means that small cities can get nearly the same output as huge ones. But I changed Research Lab and all the other top end buildings to add to tile yields instead - The Research Lab puts 1 science on every tile in the city. That means that huge cities working more tiles get a massive benefit from the Lab, while a tiny city gets very little. A huge city can build only one Campus, but it can still get paid off for having a ton of people.
Lastly I altered the Amenities formula. No longer do you get 2 free citizens that don't require Amenities in each city. The city immediately needs an Amenity to get started. I gave the Capital 2 extra Amenities to keep the early game working, and increased the Amenities from an Entertainment Complex from 1 to 2. That means that long term you can absolutely build a huge empire but it requires investment and time to get there. You will need to build up Entertainment Complexes to keep your cities happy, and you can invest that happiness in new cities if you like - or just grow existing ones.
Expansion is still good. You want to hold more territory, find more resources. But with my adjustments you will have to consider when to expand and make sure you support your expansion. If you have resources to spend, you could expand or you could invest in established cities, and the quality of that expansion site will really factor in. In the base game it doesn't, really. Always expand, never stop. With my modifications it becomes a real question, and that is my goal. Take those juicy spots and fight to keep them. Build cities in prime locations. But don't just slam them down in deserts or tundra without a thought. Balance infrastructure and expansion. Those considerations will make the game more fun for me, I am sure, and given the comments I have read on forums I think many other people feel the same.
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