Overlap City Tiles When Land is Scarce?

[Dr. Trespasser]

Recently I've been playing a Standard world sized Custom Continents Map with 6 Continents, each Civ with their own little continent. Well as you might know these continents cant support that many cities on "totaly favorable" tile sets. Even when placing cities on unfavorable starter tiles I can only seem to fit like maybe 8-9 on each continent with no overlapping tiles. I thought I was doing well until I cruised over to my rivals continents and saw they were plopping cities down all over the place making maximum use of available tiles with no consideration for tile overlap. They were getting like 10-16 cities per continent and nearly every tile of the continent was being worked. Is this a good or bad strategy? How would it affect your civs growth over time? Should I avoid overlap at all costs or is there an allowable amount of overlap? Should I not overlap so I have room in my empire for conquest cities?

[Sabre2th]

Personally, I almost never overlap cities unless I really want/need to get a particular resource or want to cut my opponent off from a piece of land. Considering the maintenance costs, I would say stick with your smaller number of cities and pop out a couple of extra workers early to really get them developed quickly. 8-9 big, developed cities is much better than 16 crowded, smaller cities. Use the time they're expanding to develop your land and build units/buildings rather than settlers.

I'm sure other people will have different opinions, but I think 8-10 cities is plenty on a standard map

[Blake]

I believe when space is limited you should aim to be working every tile possible, except maybe the ocean ones which only give 2 food and 1 commerce.

Overlap is never really bad, at the start it means your cities are closer together and reduces distance upkeep. On higher difficulty everyone tends to overlap quite a bit because it's very hrad to get a size 20 city, at least before the game is effectively over, so maximizing tiles worked requires overlap.

Btw there is no "Optimal City Count" or anything, you don't need to leave room for conquests. In the long run new cities will add a maximum of about 6-12 upkeep, assuming running State Property and having courthouses. Consider that a typical city by then will bring in about 4-7 raw commerce in trade alone and you can conquer holy cities to further pay for conquest.

It's really not a problem to cover the map in cities if you want to, the main thing is that it takes a while to get the economy and civics to support that kind of sprawl.

[CerberusIV]

The AI doesn't pay the maintenance costs you do so it can afford more cities early.

I regularly overlap my cities on standard maps. However I don't position cities so that one can work any of the eight tiles immediately next to another city if I can help it and try to ensure each city has around 12-14 (out of a possible 20) tiles exclusively to itself.

Obviously this is affected by the shape of the coastline and whether there is a desert area where the tiles can't be worked anyway.

[nbarclay]

The way cities are shaped, the only way to completely avoid overlap is to leave gaps where there are tiles that can't be worked by any city. My general rule is that I want to work every land tile with a good value that I can, every seafood resource I can, and as many coastal tiles as I reasonably can (especially if I'm Financial). So I overlap cities however much is necessary to do that, but preferably not any more than is necessary.

[Robert]

I do overlap quite regularly if that's needed for a good city spot. Most cities don't grow to size 21 anyway, so not overlapping is morely just a waste of tiles.
(and if they grow to size 21, it'll be only late in the game)
(not to mention that most size 21+ cities use a lot of great persons anyway)

I'd say: overlapping is a must.

[Robert]

Besides that: the further your city is away from your capital: the higher the upkeep costs.
Not to mention the fact that your units should travel further if a city needs reinforcements, and your settlers take more time to arrive at the spot where you want to found the new city, which is quite a waste of time.

Thus: overlapping is not even something you should do with little space, but with a lot of space as well.

[The keeper]

If you can position the overlap so that it overlaps in a forest square (or 2), then both cities will get the health benefit from that forest.

[sabrewolf]

i especially use overlapping if i'm in a resource-scarce area/map. for instance the pigs on plain-hills, or that banana... or horses.

i know it's a lot of micromanagement... but that one turn difference can be quite important in tight games...

[Blake]

sharing the +5/6 food tiles is indeed good, especially if yuor happy limits are extremely low so cities can quickly reach their happy cap then work all grassland cottages or whatever, no longer needing the +6 food tile until happy caps are raised. Loaning it with a new city is good.

[LordShiva]

I prefer acquiring my cities pre-built rather than doing it myself (I'm lazy, what can I say?), and those usually always come with overlap. You know how it is, the city-building industry isn't particularly strong at quality control...

[Dr. Trespasser]

thanks for all the input , I'll experiment with some limited overlapping on my standard map

[Senethro]

I always overlap. Its just stupid not to. Even cities that are 2 squares apart only "lose" 6 tiles out of 40ish.

Having said that, I am too picky about placing cities in places where they will grow large and find myself counting the max possible population that city will eventually support with the available food, and over lapping accordingly.