8 or 9?

I didn't know where else to put this so I figured I'd throw it in here. I've been asking myself this question for months now and I can't make a decision, so I figured I'd just go and ask other people about it. I can't decide whether or not to go for 9 cities or stay at 8. I know it seems like a pretty simple decision, just go for 9 right? Well, with the food changes I had to drop pop, which set me back 5k-6k pop and then due to money issues irl, I haven't been able to afford to buy more prestige which I'm currently out of. So that's been a little discouraging.

Currently I need 41,143 more pop for my 9th city. Without prestige that amount of pop would take an incredibly long amount of time to get. I also have 3 cities running negative food (although it's reasonably sustainable) but without prestige I don't see a point in keeping them there. So I figure I have two options at this point.

1) I could drop pop in my negative food cities, re-balance them and stop at 8 cities. If later on down the road I want to go for 9 cities, I can make an attempt for it. I'm just sort of tired of having unbalanced cities and I don't want to balance them at their current pop knowing that when I get 9 cities, I'll drop pop and end up having to re-balance them a second time.

2) I go try to scrounge together the money for prestige and keep pushing for 9 cities. If I don't got for 9 cities now I'll probably end up dropping my total population by around 10k. That seems like an awful waste of building and prestige to have ended up gaining nothing out of it.

So yeah...Halp!

I hope that you choose the option that gives you the most time to hang around and chat and post on the forum.  Because I like seeing you!  Personally I find unbalanced cities to be way annoying, but I know it doesn't bother some people.  So I say ... do whatever is fun! It's a game! 

Rill wrote: If it's work, then don't do it.

This seems like good advice...*sets off to do as little work as possible*

And TD, I don't think I could manage to get 41k pop in any reasonable amount of time with prestige. It's totally possible but that's a lot of time spent.

Wait...now that I think about it, wouldn't not doing work equate to...not doing anything? O_o I can see this going in circles in my mind.

You must have misread, I've got negative pop in my cities that are at 17k-18k pop. I can't really afford to suicide any armies either as I'm in a...Let's call it a conflict. I may be able to get the money together for more prestige, I shouldn't need that much if I use it wisely...