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Originally posted by Yosh
Thanks for the input. I've been reading Sulla's walkthrough, and also S & G's Cuban Isolationist Variant game, and that's yielded a WEALTH of knowledge!
I suppose what it comes down to, like most aspects of Civ, is a balancing act; in this case it's between how much effort you have to expend to create a new city, between what you can do with the time spent NOT founding a new city (and improving, etc)...
So all things being equal then the wild card that would have the greatest effect on your *civ* (NOT the city!) would be timing then? I know there are other threads on this board discussing timing of when to build cities, so I won't go into it much
Where did you find Sulla's walkthrough and the Isolationist variant game? I'd like to read them. it's probably some place obvious (like Apolyton), and I haven't noticed it. sorry.
I look for places good for specialization. Rich coastal areas for my Big Money & Science cities. Areas with good production potential become my wonder and unit-building cities.
So if cities use specialists and rarely get much over size 20 what's the point of optimum city placement? I've only been placing cities that far apart because the manual and game recommends it. Plus I'm always in the hunt to get as much territory as possible.
I'll probably stick with the spaced out approach though. As getting territory is important to getting resources. The real question is whether to backfill every single location and how many cities to build.
Originally posted by Dis
So if cities use specialists and rarely get much over size 20 what's the point of optimum city placement? I've only been placing cities that far apart because the manual and game recommends it. Plus I'm always in the hunt to get as much territory as possible.
I'll probably stick with the spaced out approach though. As getting territory is important to getting resources. The real question is whether to backfill every single location and how many cities to build.
My rule of thumb is: use as many good tiles as possible, have as few overlap tiles as possible, put a city either coastal or >= 2 tiles away from sea, and every city should have at least 1 resource.
Oftentimes I place my cities just 3 tiles apart primarily for defensive reasons, although this is more effective on higher difficulties. Overlap is also good as you can share more productive tiles reducing the number of worker turns to get a city up and running. I also prefer to place cities behind rather than across rivers, on top of hills at chockpoints, ie strategical reasons tend to override going for maximum available tiles. Funnily enough I think the max tile placement looks quite ugly so tend to avoid it, preferring a more "organic" approach. (It could be argued this preference is irrational). If I have a choice between a grassland tile and a plains tile I choose the one with a higher food value. I place a city to claim two resources within a 1 tile radius, then as many resources within the fat cross as possible.
I've been trying a slightly different strategy, with some success. It is most appropriate to larger continental maps, where initially there is plenty of land up for grabs.
I contest that your first four or five cities have a far greater impact on how the game plays out than anything you build in the middle or late game. Assuming there is a late game. Personally, I struggle at the start, because there are so few options for managing your early settlements (few if any Civics, little scope for extensive use of specialists, and so on). Later in the game placement is far less critical, both because you have far more options for balancing everything out, and because cities placed late in the game rarely have the opportunity to grow sufficiently to use all surrounding territory.
So I place a lot of emphasis on getting the first few locations ideally suited for whatever role I envisage the city will perform (normally Wonders/Great People, commerce, research, military production). If this means leaving a gap of two, maybe three tiles of quite reasonable land between city catchments, so be it.
Short term, a combination of culture and early-game "skirmish" warfare (where one aims to damage, rather than eliminate a neighbour) will keep the territory free of other civilisations. Long term, in the middle-game when I have enough income to expand, I back-fill to create a series of secondary cities. These theoretically overlap with my neighbouring early cities, but this is not normally a problem, because they don't reach a particularly high population by the end of the game. In spite of their size, they can be quite effective at providing little boosts to the mid-game economy. Often such cities are far easier to develop mid-game than they would have been early-game (primarily due to the greater variety of terraforming options).
So unless playing in very restrictive space, I suggest focusing on getting the best possible early cities, rather than carving up the land into neat crosses.
Once you get biology you can rapidly grow your cities. Tell the AI citizen manager to focus on food production in each city. This can often turn a 20+ wait for growth into a 6 or 7 turn growth period (I've even seen larger changes than that). Some cities will even have 10+ surplus food from this, when before telling the AI to emphasize food they had almost stagnant growth.
Short term you'll lose some commerce and production in your cities, but within 20 turns you'll have a much, much larger population. The boost is well worth it.
You can do this to a lesser extent earlier, but without biology and with fewer techs and resources happiness and health can be much larger issues.
-Drachasor
"If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work." - Barack Obama
Originally posted by Dog of Justice
"Exactly outside the fat cross" -- you're not even willing to accept one or occasionally two squares overlap??!!! This forces you to simply not use quite a few solid tiles in your own territory. Even a perfectionist should be willing to employ (4,2), (4,1), and (3,3) spacing.
Generally I try to space cities as far apart as possible while using 98+% of the decent tiles in my territory (and I even count grassland-jungle here). As the difficulty level increases and the health/happiness limits become more constraining, it might be reasonable to use slightly closer spacing.
Maintaince due to distance from capital is also important. That means there is an optimal point where the cities aren't so close they're stunting each other but not so far apart they cost to much to maintain.
Even if at any specific point in the game you aren't using all available 20 tiles in the fat cross, you don't want to be unable to use them when needed.
I have always felt that the optimal placement in Civ II and Civ III was created by moving 3 diagonal away from the city, then turning and moving 1 on the perpendicular diagonal, either left or right. This pattern, if used as a pattern, would result in only 4 overlapping tiles for each four-city system, and left only one unused tile in the middle. However, because it is vital in those two games to found new cities quickly, I sometimes would eschew the move along the perpendicular and simply go three diagonally and found the new city. This pattern would result in 8 overlapping squares per 4-city system, and only one unused tile in the middle, but saved you a turn per city to found, a significant advantage especially early.
Of course, if you don't want overlap, you can do the 3 diagonal and then move one more tile after a 45 degree turn either left or right. That system eliminates overlap, but it leaves four unused tiles in the middle of a 4-city system. That was of less concern in SMAC, because you could simply have a supply crawler use the resources from those tiles, but in Civ II and Civ III, unused tiles were not a good idea, unless they were fairly unproductive tiles.
And all of this is with the obvious caveat that you never end up with a 4-city system that is perfectly placed because of resources, terrain, etc.
But in this game, I think the diagonal 3 then diagonal 1 perpendicular is VERY attractive, because you can get there in 2 moves, not the four it took in prior games. Absent some good reason to avoid that spacing (like the dreaded desert or mountain tiles), I think I'll be using that spacing a LOT in this game.
I playEuropa Universalis II; I dabble in everything else.
That in turn depends upon weather you feel the AI was crowding into your territory by founding that city in the first place.
But be sure to make culture a high priority for any city close to another civ's city, while assigning a higher shield city to build the military defenders for your city.
Originally posted by 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.
1st C3DG Term 7 Science Advisor 1st C3DG Term 8 Domestic Minister
Templar Science Minister
AI: I sure wish Jon would hurry up and complete his turn, he's been at it for over 1,200,000 milliseconds now.
Sorry -- this may be a basic question (but I didn't see an answer elsewhere in the forums): If you settle a city on a resource (like marble or dyes), do you lose that resource? If it is horses, since you cannot manipulate that square, I imagine that you cannot gain access to the horses. Does the resource go away?
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