Diplomacy overexpansion penalty?

[Ryzel]

Hey!  Was watching Seravys playthrough and he mentioned having too many cities without getting penalties and seemed to have a very good idea of how many that was.  I’ve been searching through the CoM documentation on diplomacy as well as the MoM 1.50 wiki on it and can’t find anything.  If you could let me know about this I’d really appreciate it!

[Seravy]

I'm pretty sure the amount and exact behavior is different in Caster of Magic and MoM 1.50 by now.
I found the CoM version in the changelog at 5.28 :

-New overextension warning formula for diplomacy.
Players are allowed to have 5 cities plus one more per year elapsed in the game without any effect on Fair land size. This amount increases/decreases by 25% for each level of land size setting. Players exceeding this amount will receive a warning from all other nonallied, contacted wizards, that has a strength of (3+difficulty), plus 20% for each additional city they exceed that amount by.
-Overextension warning chance is now rolled separately for each enemy wizard instead of one roll triggering the warning from all other wizards at the same time.

So it was 5+years, I wasn't sure if it's 3 or 7, well, neither.
One thing that's not specified here though is WHEN this triggers, I mean how often. Obviously it's not every turn, it even mentions that.

[Ryzel]

Ah got it, thanks a lot! Helpful when planning peaceful strategies. Searched for overexpand and not overextension.

[namad]

Followup, does the overextension penalty round up or down? If I'm playing on small and it's year 4, am I allowed to have 6 cities or 7 cities? 8*.75=6 then 9*.75=6.75 I ended up spawning near two neutral cities and it's made this overextension penalty thing seem kinda bad, although weirdly all the ai's attacked me without declaring war or warning me about overextension (until after the first battle was fought)... may or may not be overextension penalty related, could just be because I'm trying to defend 7 cities with 6 swordsmen.

[Seravy]

Rounded down on both divisions and number of cities has to be less than the number. Equal already triggers the warning.
So you can have 5 cities safely.
Hostility rolls that cause attacks are independent of warnings.

[namad]

Ahh, hmm, I didn't get warned until I had 7cities, despite the limit actually being 5, I wonder.... do outposts not count as cities until they upgrade into hamlets? That would explain my incorrect observations entirely. I think the ai all got mad randomly right around the time my 6th outpost turned into a city.

[Seravy]

Outposts are counted as cities.
The penalty is proportional to the amount of excess cities you have. The AI won't always talk to you and give you warnings, it might decide not to (but the penalty is applied anyway). The chance for silence is higher if the penalty is lower or the AI is friendlier.

[namad]

Is the overextension penalty city limit per plane or total combined?

[Seravy]

Total combined.

[mercy]

Hehehe! This is why I'm constantly warned by my opponents about having 10 cities in April 1405! :D :D On Lunatic difficulty these warnings are FUN!! :D