Growing your portfolio of cities

To hone your Ludopolis strategy, consider how you have managed your portfolio of cities during the game:

• Did you have a broad portfolio of cities? 4-10 cities is a good number of cities. Spend the early game placing your cities, and the middle and end game tending them.
• Did you broaden your portfolio early? Cities take a while to grow culture and score.
• How much are you getting from your investment? Look at the country overview to see how much time ("gems") you are investing in each city, and what the city's score-to-gems ratio is.
• Did you adopt your portfolio strategy as the game progressed? It's good to periodically review your portfolio to see which cities to work more on and which cities to ignore.

Generally, it is a better idea to have a wider arrange of cities, for the following reasons:

• if citizens are unhappy in one of your cities, they have better choices to move to
• cities that are overpopulated or underhoused or underfed can move to other cities with extra room
• some cities just seem to take off better -- so by having a couple cities, you'll have a better chance to getting some great cities
• your traders will have more markets to trade in
• you will hold more land that other players might otherwise claim

A common mistake is to think that fewer cities are easier. On the contrary, too few cities can make the game extremely difficult. Cities flourish for many reasons, including their placement and their neighbours. If you have fewer than four cities, you won't have enough options to work with.