How to pick city locations: Discussion

[Heroes]

About city placement, the huge difference from civ 3 is now a city must be far from any other city by at least 2 tiles. So no more cxc ICS!

You still get the choice: cxxc ("tight packing"), cxxxc ("loose packing"), and cxxxxc ("OCP"). Same as in civ 3, I still prefer loose packing. The ideal is to use every good tile (or waste as few as possible), catch as many resources as possible (but avoid settling on resource like a sin, unless it's the only option), and overlap as few tiles as possible. And, every city should have the potential to at least feed itself (a shame for civ, how does Las Vagas exist?).

There are often some water resources which can be reached only from 1 tile, or it's so in practice (the only other option is another resource, for example). Therefore you determine some cities' locations. From these, applying the above rules, you can in most cases determine where to put your cities, -- and where to raze enemy cities.

[Datajack Franit]

I usually build cities following this order of must have

-river access (commerce-religion spreading)
-water access (shipyard base)
-resource access (so that the AI doesn't monopolize)
-strategic placement (aka freshwater-sea "channels", between mountains in order to resist under siege)

[Moose357]

I have a slightly different question. If you have a city in the wrong spot, like if you capture a city and want to move it can you abbandon a city in Civ 4. I civ 3 you just built a settler with a city size of 1 and you could abbondon the city. This didn't seam to work for me today.
Is there a way to abbondon a city?

[Drachasor]

The only way I can think of to abandon a city is to give it to an enemy. Then take it back and raze it. There's no other way, sadly. Perhaps in a patch that will change.

[Yosh]

ok so I am posting a screenshot of the current game I'm in, and my proposed city sites.

Tokugawa is to the southwest, and he was silly enough to leave a worker near his border, so I swooped in and stole it hee hee! We made peace 5 turns later, me no worse for the wear

edit: forgot to add the paramaters for the game -

Aztec
Prince
Terra, Large map, Epic speed

And oh yes, I'm sort of thinking of making beelines for swordsman and taking out tokugawa and freddie, then preparing for a conquest victory




thoughts? Ideas? Discussion? Criticism?

[Drachasor]

The city you want to build to your lower-right should be production-focused. You need a coastal city that can make ships quickly, especially on terra.

The city to the lower-right of that city should be placed a few more squares down. That way it has some more river squares in its radius and fewer desert squares (which are useless). 2 squares down would work, I think.

I'd consider moving that production city near Kyoto up one. I don't think you lose any hills and you can put watermills on those grassland river squares (and I hate wasting grassland river squares).

And take the Japanese cities, of course : )
(It's my policy that you should always control your entire continent..it's just safer that way)

Otherwise it looks pretty solid.

[Yosh]

=) thanks!

I think I'm going to have to abandon this game though... Not only do I have Tokugawa and Freddie breathing down my neck, but Isabella and Catherine are *right* near there... Washington is a bit further away, but still nearby; I don't see how I will be able to get the upper hand in the land-grab race now, since my strategy didn't account for so many close neighbors!

[Drachasor]

Even if you only get 5 or so cities (or even 4), just use conquest to get more. You can Isabella on your side if you adopt her religion, by the way.

-Drachasor

[Yosh]

yeah I haven't gotten a religion yet, I have to hope one spreads to me lol

good point about the cities... now I suppose the question is when a good time to turn over to mili production -- some would say wait for cats, others would say do it as soon as you get axe/swordsman - thoughts?

[Drachasor]

Early on axemen can take out archers pretty easily. You'll take losses, but you can do this much, much earlier than if you wait for Cats. By the time you get catapults you will need them, but early on the culture in each city is small. Your enemies probably have a 20-40% defense bonus from the city. Axemen or Swordsmen made with a barracks and focused on city attacking can take on a city. Often you only need about 1.5 attackers per defender (and sometimes you only need one attacker per defender). Make a few axemen with the general combat upgrade for combat outside of cities, you can upgrade them for anti-melee later.

Just mass your troops before you declare war. Preferably you want about 10 people in the field to invade. If they have two cities, send 6 to the capital and 4 to the secondary city. Split it based on the defenders and their bonuses of course. If you find you probably won't be able to take a city (e.g. you get right next to it, find even odds and they have as many or more defenders than you have attacks), then do a little pillaging and forifty some attackers next to their city (in a forest or on hills). Then when reinforcements come take the city. Ideally though, you should have a force that can take 2 or so cities pretty easily in the first few turns of war. You'll need more than that, twice as many with more being produced, if you want to be constantly taking cities. If you have 20 attackers then you can go 10-10 on the first two cities, then have those that just attacked heal while the rest go on to the next city.

Anyhow, axemen and swordsmen early on are quite effective. Heck, if you get ahead in tech then the Knight can handle archers and spearmen pretty easily.

-Drachasor

[Yosh]

Very good points!

I decided to keep on trucking with this game; I founded my secondary city one tile to the east of the elephants; hopefully I can beeline to war elephants and start taking some cities!

I figure I'll spit out 5-7 elephants, and then 3-4 archers; the elephants will kill the defenders while the archers hold on to the gains

Edit: NVM on the elephants for now (I'll have cats then too!) - beelining for iron working since I don't have any copper in my territory!

[Yosh]

Disaster! No iron OR copper anywhere I can reach! Damnation!

*sigh* horse archers it will have to be I suppose

[Drachasor]

Well, focus on a city or cities that will give your iron or copper then. Horse Archers have a hard time with spearmen, so hopefully the AI doesn't have too many of them.

-Drachasor

[Yosh]

Tokugawa didn't have iron either, but he must've traded for it because he got spearmen/swordsman

Despite that, managed to capture 1 of his 3 cities before I had to make peace... Construction in 7 turns or so... here come the cats and the Elephants!

[The diplomat]

Something that I try to do if possible, is not place a new city too close to another civ's borders. If you do, you'll get negative diplo points for border tension and the city won't get the max city radius which will reduce its growth. I find it's better to found new cities 2-3 tiles away from the civ's borders so that your borders have some room to expand.