City placement

[The diplomat]

I am finding that civ4 encourages players to space out their cities rather than clump them together like in civ3. Since you have less cities than in civ3, you'll need to space them out a bit to grab more land and those precious resources. Furthermore, since it is easier to produce culture (especially once you get the culture slider) it seems like it is advantageous to space out your cities and use culture to really spread out your borders.

thoughts? What's the optimal city placement in civ4?

[conmcb25]

Re: City placement

Originally posted by The diplomat
thoughts? What's the optimal city placement in civ4?

form what I saw last night its map and resource dependant.

You are much better off going out a couple extra spaces and grabbing those bonus resources.

I dont think we are going to have an optimal placement number in this game, it will probably be more of a "range".

Thats my take so far

[Dominae]

You're definitely rewarded for greedily chasing resources with your expansions in CIV, moreso than in Civ3. However, have a tight-knit core still has some significant advantages.

I think CIV defies a "cookie-cutter" city-spacing strategy. I sometimes build them 3 tiles apart (the minimum), sometimes up to 6. Upward growth is much more important in CIV than in Civ3, so generally speaking a looser "pattern" is more viable now (OCPers, rejoice!).

[rs1990]

I just cannot stand how the computer still places cities right next to eachother for no good reason. So, their tiles end up overlapping eachother. Then, when I kill them, I have to raze the city instead of trying to use it myself. You would think that they would be smarter than that at this point.

[Metaliturtle]

Razing is FUN! plus if you make some extra settlers you can capitalize on all that developed terrain.

[Japher]

Is there still a maximum number of tiles that a city could possibly ever work (never mind control)? Would that not indicate the best spacing strat as to not waste workable land?

[padillah]

Originally posted by Japher
Is there still a maximum number of tiles that a city could possibly ever work (never mind control)? Would that not indicate the best spacing strat as to not waste workable land?

They are still going with the "fat cross" for workable tiles. But now, with Settlers being a little more prescious than before, it may not be the best idea to just "waste" one on a site that may turn out good later.

But, on the other hand, with all the advancements to Workers you won't find many tiles that will never be any good.

NOT in the middle of a bunch of peaks or ice but other than that it really depends on what you are trying to do.

TomP .

[Eogen]

Can anyone explain to me the method that CIV (I assume that's a shortcut for CIV-IV) uses for determining what a good place for a city is?

The settlers "blue circle" tiles never seem to make any sense to me-- they move away from rivers, they overlap my other cities 'fat x'.

What's the deal? Is the blue-circle reccomendation poorly implemented, or am I just missing some fundamental concept?

[Dominae]

Overlap of workable ("fat cross") radius is sometimes a smart move.

The AI is coded to select positions with overlap when necessary. Otherwise it would get stuck building too few cities when next to an expansive neighbor, or when on an island.

Aesthetically-speaking, overlap may be annoying, but strategically-speaking, there's nothing wrong with it.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Eogen
Can anyone explain to me the method that CIV (I assume that's a shortcut for CIV-IV) uses for determining what a good place for a city is?

It's heavily weighted toward grabbing resources. It also likes fresh water locations. Beyond that I'm not 100% sure how it works.

The blue circles are only suggestions. They're certainly not perfect, but far from sub-optimal, too.

[Atahualpa]

I haven't got any problems in Civ4 spacing out cities. I haven't noticed any such thing as a distance penalty so I try to grab as much land and as much resources as possible with as few cities as possible.

It's however a great pain when you have to place a certain city in a lonely region just to get that one iron...

[John-SJ]

"(I assume that's a shortcut for CIV-IV)"

NOOOO!

CIV = Civ-IV

If CIV = CIV-IV

then it becomes recursive and people with minds like mine begin to automatically expand them in their minds until their heads explode!

You wouldn't want to be responsible for that, now would you?

[Azuarc]

What Dominae said. Resources and water are the two big things. It places very little emphasis on other strategic qualities, like whether or not a city is actually on the coast for boat-building or the actual resources that come from the square of the city proper. Oftentimes it picks a good spot, and often is highlights two spaces that flank the one I was going for. I trusted it at first since I had no idea how to pick good city spots in 4 with so much changed, but I'm getting away from instantly flocking to blue circles. (Especially with workers.)

[DeepO]

When it comes to the blue circles for settlers, they are suboptimal in the mathematical sense of the word. They will (and can) only take into account resources and fresh water, they do not (really) take into account possible overlap or the needs of your empire.

This creates a few problems: only settling on the blue circles will sometimes be the best for the city itself, but not necessarily so for your empire (e.g. you might end up with resources which fall in between cities, or you could overlap a resource twice). Also, as the algorithm does not take into account which resource or type of tile you need, it is a flat calculation putting the same preference on all resources. Same goes for the resources vs fresh water ratio.

That can't be changed. Don't expect the blue circles to take into account your global situation, often you need to settle right in between blue spots to get the most out of your land. That's because you value a certain aspect (e.g. being on the coast, or being on a long river) more than the algorithm does (as coast means less resources, and settling on a river means less commerce/food opposed to working the river tile and getting the flat bonus from your city square)

This also explains why the AI will not outperform humans in settling cities, but only give a reasonably well performance. They take into account the blue spots, and they will take into account the global situation (so not too much overlap just a little, and a race for the best spots first just to avoid anyone else settling there first). They do not change the blue-spot-algorithm depending on situation.

One major advantage of the blue spots, is that they can give you an idea of resources in the FoW. If you see a blue spot at the start of the game (settlers will always start on one), and don't see any resources, or see a spot which very obviously would be a better choice, there is a good chance there is a resource right out of your line of sight influencing the algorithm. In many games, I thought the blue spot I started on was rubbish, and started to explore with my settler. After 3 turns, I settled on the starting spot as I found more resources close by. Instead of trusting Soren's algorithm, I just wasted 3 turns wandering around

Same goes for blue spots for workers, BTW. They might not seem optimal to you, but that is only so when you have long-term plans the AI can't know about. E.g. if you plan on keeping forest for later lumber mills, you will loathe that the AI will suggest it each time for a cottage, while right now that is the best choice.

DeepO

[Atahualpa]

I was wrong, there is a distance penalty, though well I wouldn't call it "corruption" as in the manual. Cities further away just cost more maintenance.