City placement

[Ellestar]

It seems that at the start of the game resources are the most important thing to consider when placing a city. One resource square with improvements is as good as 2-2.5 normal squares with improvements (if you count food+production+commerce minus 2 food per square) plus it gives an access to a resource. It's especially important with resources that boost production. Food and commerce seems to be less scarce at the start of the game.

[DeepO]

No, production resources are not the best and only option. That's something from Civ 3... they are well balanced, all resources are equally important. In CIV, commerce is just as important as food or hammers are, especially early on.

DeepO

[lethe]

You need to fill a few demands with your cities:

1) You need to grab resources.
2) You need fresh water.
3) You need coastlines.
4) You need a good mix of food and shields.
5) Overlap is usually bad.

Now that is what the city itself needs.

Your empire has a few needs as well.

1) Grab chokepoints. In Earth terms, holding Latin America or the Sinai Peninsula is beautiful.
2) Box in territory you can't/won't use yet just to deny the AI growth.

Lets say you have a small Pangaea map that happens to be a figure 8 in shape. You are alone on the northern half. A properly placed city or two in the middle will deny the AIs from the south the land route north. Then you fill in the shoreline with cities, making a seaborne peaceful invasion impossible. As your economy expands you can then at your leisure fill in the interior of your continent.

This is also very important when it comes to the 'Terra' maps. If you are first to a decent sized continent settle the coasts first. If you can box in an entire continent you're basically home free. At your leisure you clean out the interior barbarians and settle their lands as your economy expands. (Keeping peace with the AI during the expansion is a good idea. Once you control the entire shoreline you can rely on the AI still being pretty weak at seaborne invasions. An old failing of the AI, and still going weak it seems.)

[The diplomat]

Too much overlap is bad. You want cities to have as many useful tiles as possible so that they can grow to high pop as possible. Small pop cities are bad in civ4 because they will be a drain on your economy. Small pop cities will not produce a lot of commerce or culture but will still cost a lot of maintenance.

[joncnunn]

More importantly, there is no hard size limit of 12 pre-hospital nor a limit of 6 pre aquaduct.

And with unproductive cities not even pulling their own weight, [literally costing your empire more gold than they are bringing in], it's prefered to get culture from a productive city 3 tiles away to expand into it than found a stagnet city on it.

I wouldn't recommend 3 tile placement except where you can't found that city 4 away due to that tile being under water.

And if you have your cities near desert concentrate on building culture, the oil should appear in your cultural raidus.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by lethe
You need to fill a few demands with your cities:

1) You need to grab resources.
2) You need fresh water.
3) You need coastlines.
4) You need a good mix of food and shields.
5) Overlap is usually bad.

Cool, lists to add to

6) border cities: look into the defense situation! Try for hills...

7) galleys can sail everywhere within borders. Cities on peninsulae can mean a galley is able to reach an island off coast early on

8) You need commerce! One of the biggest changes from Civ 3 is that you need a lot of gold, because you're not getting a flat amount from all the roads anymore. Commerce can only be built where there is enough food, or with coastal cities.

9) forests. Deforesting a city site can create huge profits when used well. Try having 5 workers clear out 20 forests, all used on barracks and units, and you will have enough units in 20 turns to conquer a small city with. It won't let you go to war on it's own, though, but will be a very nice bonus. Also, forests--> wonders... yum! (oh, forests within your border will go to the nearest city, also if they are farther away: a forest at distance 3 or 4 to a city can be used as well)

Your empire has a few needs as well.

1) Grab chokepoints. In Earth terms, holding Latin America or the Sinai Peninsula is beautiful.
2) Box in territory you can't/won't use yet just to deny the AI growth.

3) Back filling: move your first cities a bit farther away from you to block civs, while you leave out open spots for hundreds of years until the time your empire can support it

4) a good mix of resources can be more important than a monopoly.

5) strategic resources are still the prime reason for chosing a spot to settle

6) Specialisation! One could write books just talking about how specialisation works in Civ. Before choosing a spot, try to get 1 or 2 high food spots for GPs. At least 1 city should focus on science (hence built only cottages or otherwise adding to commerce. No hammer or food things!). At least 2 cities should focus on units (thus be high production ones, with hills and food if at all possible). If you like wonders, you need an extra high production one. Also, have a backup possibility: the game can play tricks on you by e.g. choosing your barracks city for a holy city. You should be able to adapt such a city to its new role (commerce), which means some other city needs to start over the barracks-duty)

DeepO

[Metaliturtle]

Thanks DeepO, your little blurb on specialization is extremely helpful, but could you elaborate on point 3 a bit more please?

[DeepO]

Well, it was already in Civ 3, but now it's a better tactic because of the closed borders. It's related to chokepoint grabbing: build cities nearer to your enemies first so they can't pass you towards the good sites close to your capital. Only later go back, and fill the open spots (hence backfilling).

This works very well with closed borders, but also simply because of distances involved: eventually, AIs will settle everywhere, but at first they will favour the closer cities. Which means that before they get around to settle in between your capital, and your second ring so to speak, your capital's borders might have expanded enough to cover for the sites until you can afford to settle those locations.

DeepO

[Jon Miller]

you don't want to pack cities in...

as having large cities is prime, and you can' t move arround cities boxes like you could in earlier games (I think)

at leas *** seems to me, that a new city can not use stuff another city can, even if that cicty isn't using them

JM

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
at leas *** seems to me, that a new city can not use stuff another city can, even if that cicty isn't using them

Do you mean you can't set citizens to tiles other cities are using? You can: just click on it to make it 'yours'. Click on it again to allocate a citizen to it.

DeepO

[Sartaq]

I woulden't space cities out too much unless you have tons of gold bearing resources. As I'm finding, inflation due to having a lot of land, kills your hopes of having any big gold stockpiles around mid game.

[DeepO]

Inlfation can be important, but it only starts to really bite you once you start conquering. It's not a big issue when peacefully expanding.

DeepO

[Sartaq]

Get courthouses ASAP if you plan to be expansive.

[alva]

forests within your border will go to the nearest city,

Chopping in neutral land will return hammers as well (though not as much, the further you go, the less reward).

[lethe]

You want lots of land. The problem is you can't build lots of cities early on. So a good old ICS/REX strategy is going to buckle over. I play mostly normal maps, and in my first expansion phase I usually build ~10 cities.

But these 10 cities hopefully create something of a 'hollow middle'. On a Pangaea map they might form an O, with cities only on the ring. The interior has room for 10 more cities, which I can't build as they'd push my research from 60% to 10% if I built them. (Or even to 0% research and still losing money!) But with a few more techs, a couple of big cities with a good mix of villages and farms as well as better civics choices I can add those 10 cities, as well as start conquering neighbours.

For continent starts I find building along the shores to be the most efficient. With sailing ALL your border cities are instantly hooked up to the trading network!

On Terra maps this can be frightfully good if you reach the New World first. You can box in an entire continent, and fill it at your leisure.

Really, really ponder the power of closed borders. You can abuse this in ways the AI can't even begin to comprehend. Please do so.