Three family opinion terms depend only on how many cities each family holds: Most Cities, Fewest Cities and Envy. Pick your families and your city total below to rank every split, starting with the one that upsets your families least.
Breakdown of
Every way to split 8 cities
Splits are ranked by their unhappiest family first, then by the total across all families. If you favour a family, the table shows one row per city count it could hold and marks the recommended row: the most cities you can give it before another family drops into Angry. Click a row to see the breakdown.
How Envy grows triangular
The penalty is triangle(lead − yours − 1) × -20, where lead is the most cities any one family holds. Being one city behind is free, and after that each further city costs more than the one before.
| Cities behind | triangle(n−1) | Envy |
|---|---|---|
| level or ahead | 0 | — |
| 1 | 0 | — |
| 2 | 1 | -20 |
| 3 | 3 | -60 |
| 4 | 6 | -120 |
| 5 | 10 | -200 |
| 6 | 15 | -300 |
| 7 | 21 | -420 |
How ties are handled integer division
Most Cities and Fewest Cities are each split between the families tied at that end, rounded toward zero. When every family is tied, neither applies, so an even split pays nothing to anyone.
| Families tied | Most Cities | Fewest Cities | …as Landowners |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +40 | -40 | +80 / -80 |
| 2 | +20 | -20 | +40 / -40 |
| 3, all of them | — | — | — |
How each term works
Most Cities +40
- Any family with at least as many cities as every other family gets it, so a family tied for the lead still qualifies.
- It pays +40 plus the class's own bonus, divided by the number of families tied at the top.
- Nothing is paid when all families are tied. A young empire where every family holds one city collects at neither end.
Fewest Cities -40
- It charges -40 to any family with no more cities than every other family, split across everyone tied at the bottom.
- A family with zero cities still counts. Losing its last city leaves it at the bottom of the table, not out of it.
Envy -20 × triangle
- Each family is compared to the largest family, not the average, so one oversized family angers the other two at once.
- One city behind is free, which is why a 4/3/3 split is so much cheaper than 4/4/1.
- The cost grows on a triangle: two cities behind is -20, three is -60, four is -120 and five is -200.
- Ties and family class don't change it, so every family reads the same ladder.
Family class modifiers
- Landowners are the only class that changes these terms. They add +40 and -40, which doubles both ends to 80 at the top and -80 at the bottom. Envy is unchanged.
- Champions have the same mechanic for units: 40 for the largest military and -40 for the smallest. There a tie pays nothing at all instead of being split.
- Every other class uses the base values.
Which bracket each family lands in
- Furious ≤ -200 : -20% Civics, -20% Training, +50% Maintenance, Cannot hurry production, +10% Rebel Chance, -20% Unit Strength
- Angry -199 / -100 : -10% Civics, -10% Training, +20% Maintenance, +5% Rebel Chance, -10% Unit Strength
- Upset -99 / -1 : +10% Maintenance, -5% Unit Strength
- Cautious 0 / 99 : no effect
- Pleased 100 / 199 : -10% Maintenance, +5% Unit Strength
- Friendly ≥ 200 : -20% Maintenance, +10% Unit Strength
How to read the result
- The city terms are only part of family opinion. Leader traits, council seats, laws, luxuries, wonders, religion and memories all add to the same number, so the bracket shown here is what the cities alone would earn.
- Opinion is recomputed, not accumulated, so giving a city away fixes it immediately. There is no decay to wait out.
- When you found a city, its tooltip shows each family's Envy, Most Cities and Fewest Cities before and after.
- Families also like their own cities close together; Traders are the one class that wants them far apart. That distance term is only ever a bonus, and the calculator doesn't model it.
See Families for the rest of each class's opinion modifiers, and family opinion for the bracket effects in full.