City distance rom capitol

[KeiserSose]

Is there a good rule of thumb for how many tiles to place between your first city and second city, etc?

I usually get a scout exploring and build a settler right away. The temptation is to take the settle and place him next to some important resource the scout located (horses for example). But how far is too far to go away form capitol with this first settler?

[Deity Dude]

Others here may have a different opinion since I only play MP. I personally like to build my 2nd city pretty far away from the first so that I control more land early. Later on you can backfill the space with more city/cities.

[spammurabi]

I typically build at the nearest really nice spot available, hopefully one which will keep the borders of the two cities from overlapping, but 1 or 2 squares of overlap isn't a problem.

If there's a really, really nice location or one with a key resource nearby, I'd build my second city up to 7 or 8 squares from the capital, but any farther than that and I'll likely save that spot for my 3rd city.

Getting my second city up sooner usually means getting my 3rd city up sooner as well, since I'll often have my new city make a settler as one of the first few things it builds, augmented by chopping in most cases.

[Fallenhero]

From a SP perspective I usually don't go too far. Copper is always tempting especially if it might go to a neighbor but what I look for is a good site that compliments the capital. A slight overlap or a slight gap between fat crosses isn't critical to me. If my Cap is high on food then I'm looking for Hammers. But it's kind of like a sports draft in that often you take the best athlete available.

I do, if at all possible, expand in the direction of the AI's and try to go coastal if my Cap is inland.

City location puts a premium on resource revealing Techs like Bz Wrking and An Hsbd. Nothing worse than copper just out of reach. I reall miss colonies then

[couerdelion]

What are the "distance" costs?

I was rather surprised when a recent game seemed to be giving me lots of city maintenance costs due to distance from capital. Has anyone managed to work out the mechanism used to determine this?

I just wondered also because I ran into a recent game that just seemed to stall at a fairly early stage with more than 50% of my costs coming from city maintenance.