
Since I am trying to go for a beacon victory, I need at least four cities so I can construct a beacon in each and racial governance XP depends on the number of cities owned by the race and the racial happiness. I also notice that I am too slow to construct a second city and in my current game I did not establish one till turn 70 which seems too late. Recently however, I have not been graced with such luck and I never encounter any independent cities near my starting location anymore and my income is never enough to recruit a large army or have a lot of heroes. With 1-3 vassals adding to my income, I could recruit a large army and get a second and third city quite fast. Since I always play good and focus on diplomacy, I was able to easily vassalize these smaller cities and they would add their income to mine. I usually play as a human theocrat and in the past I have been able to almost complete a random map game, but that seemed to be only because I started close to many independent cities and dwellings (one of them was a dragon dwelling).
