I'm a perfectionist by nature so I suppose I should limit myself to a certain number of cities and stick to it. How many cities do you usually build? Hell, it must take the ICS guys a week to finsh one game. I don't have that much patience. I think OCC has proven that the number of cities doesn't matter so what's the motivation to building a ton of cities? Isn't shooting ahead in tech and producing superior units what it's all about? I mean, if I can race to Democracy, build the SoL, and switch to Commie or Fundie and flood the enemy with a superior unit, isn't that just as good as doing it with 20-50 cities, just taking less time? The fact is, the more cities you have the less time those cities will be spending on infrastructure and caravans. Instead of producing the settlers to expand, you could be making caravans while allowing your cities to grow.

Speaking of caravans... when everyone talks about making a million caravans, are you forming trade routes right away? And with whom? your SSC? Do you keep re-forming the routes to get the initial bonus or are you using most of them for WOW construction? Early in the game, the bonus for forming a route is pathetic considering the effort it takes.

I've found that going for an early republic with the happy wonders and a small number of cities gets me ahead in science farther, faster. Six to eight seems to be about the right number of cities when I'm ready to switch governments. Any more and I'll have to delay the change because of support issues. Having a nice defender and one settler supported by each city, switching to Republic, and envolking WLT*D, racing all your cities to 8 is damn nice. Science'll go thru the roof - straight to SoL. Personal preference can take over after that... either shoot for a certain unit and switch to Fundie or "AC, here we come."

Caravans go make trade routes, it is very little money but the science bonus is good. Say a caravan makes you 40 gold in revinue thats 20 science. A city that early makes about 7 per turn. Thats isn't bad. Also the value of trade routs grow over time so the meager 4 trade arrows turnis into 30 eventually. In the SSC ICS days in my civ career I built my capital (SSC) and then I built my 200 cities around it, none of them invading it's space. I had one good city. All my pet cities made caravans and sent them into forts near my capital. They helped build wonders. When I wasn't building a wonder I "homed" the caravans in my capital and made routs. I did this becouse the city that made the caravan is level 3. That is a very and bad trade rout. If I home it in my capital level 30+ it is a huge trade route and a very big science bonus. Then I send out my spies and but Spain! HAHAHAHA.

I hope I helped, feel free to ask any more questions.

Alex v4.6