Cykur

This is a very good point. In fact Civ IV has mechanisms to counter this form of exponential growth. The way they did it was by having cities be less efficient / have higher maintenance costs depending on how many total cities exist or how far they are from the capital. Higher level techs and forms of government made it possible to cost effectively grow your empire, but if you did it too fast at the beginning of the game, you could find yourself in a situation where you had