From what I remember, the overhead of high city counts in IV can be prohibitively high. It makes more sense to scale vertically rather than horizontally. Unless, of course, you employ the State Property civic (apt!). Interestingly, China has been switching to the Free Market civic for the last couple of decades... More trade routes and more incentive to support corporations, but higher overhead for the huge city count. There's a reason why you go through revolution when you change civics.
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Is the world more like Civilization III or IV?
From what I remember, the overhead of high city counts in IV can be prohibitively high. It makes more sense to scale vertically rather than horizontally. Unless, of course, you employ the State Property civic (apt!). Interestingly, China has been switching to the Free Market civic for the last couple of decades... More trade routes and more incentive to support corporations, but higher overhead for the huge city count. There's a reason why you go through revolution when you change civics.