Question on Dotmap Planning

[darrelljs]

When I plan out my dotmaps, my sole objective had been to optimize the usage of avaiable tiles, with the minimum number of cities, and the highest % of cities on the coast. Having read a number of game reports, I now question this strategy. It seems that a better way would be to arrange the dotmap based on optimizing individual cites for specific roles. You still want access to as many good tiles as you can, but optimizing tile usage for the overall empire won't necessarily optimize the overall empire.

Is there any consensus yet on this topic?

Darrell

[Kinjiru]

What is a dotmap?

[Ari]

Presumably zooming all the way out so you can use the drawing tool and manually draw in fat crosses which represent places where you'll found cities.

Oh Firaxis, please, please, please let those lines be included in a savegame rather than being erased whenever you reload. And a tool to actually draw the damned things automatically wouldn't hurt either (say, is that latter suggestion moddable somehow?)

As for the original post, in SMAC, I always took great pains to get as much land as possible in each city. I've used the same strategy here (kinda like a weird game of tetris or something), but I'm not actually convinced it's the way to go. The AI seems to inevitably found cities that will have less than a dozen usable, non-overlapping squares. Less still if they're near a resource. Even with an organized civ, I'm not capable of supporting stuff like that, but given that that seems to be an AI paradigm, maybe the programmers *want* them to do that because it's actually better (like the way they're so cottage-happy).

[Hermann the Lombard]

With Civ3 the layout of pop 11 or 12 cities was theoretically very efficient due to several factors: the speed at which tiles could be brought into production, the need for hospitals to grow larger, and even the ability to swap bonus resources between cities as needed. Maybe the coding of the AI reflected some of that theory...though I suppose it could be an unintended outcome of the algorithms.

[Mr Justice]

i think its better to optimize the city tiles as opposed to using all the tiles. i say that cause the first couple of cities build are usualy built with the best location and most reasources.imo it works better cause with those better cities early it enables you to build/reaserch/wage war to carrry out your strategy rather than worrying about land usage and contenting yourself with sub optimal cities for which you dont fully recieve the benifit until well after half way thru game.

[darrelljs]

I think you are right. I'll try to find an islands map or isolated start continents map on Continents and play until a fixed date using both approaches, then post the comparison (assuming real life doesn't continue to get in the way)!

Darrell