The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
If your cities aren't going to be growing up to near 20, then overlap is okay. If you don't overlap, you can build alternate improvements (to switch between hammer, growth, or commerce emphasis).
Personally, I prefer to place my cities at good locations, so there may be 1-3 rows of unusable tiles between cities sometimes. I don't buy that "make every tile produce" philosophy. Even if it IS free.
Edit: On the other hand, early game some cities may have some overlap so I can make optimum use of needed resources.
I've had success with twin cities before, given an abundance of workable resources for the second city. There was still a bit of an artificial growth barrier, but only very late in the game and the city was still rather productive.
Yes I know what you mean about unused land between cities. I get that too sometimes. Especially on larger maps, I dont want too many cities to manage so I just pick spots that are decent. (resource bonuses... no desert... etc)
For the vast majority of the game, your cities won't be anywhere close to size twenty anyways. This happens in the late-middle game (at the earliest) to the late game (more generally).
All the turns and all the thousands of years prior to that, your cities won't be using but a fraction of their workable tiles, so from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, making sure each city has 20 tiles to work is relatively inefficient.
Land is power, yes....but only insofar as you USE it by assigning population points from your cities to work those tiles. Simply having land (controlling it with your borders) is powerful indirectly, at least from the standpoint of denial (if you control a resource, then even if you're not working it, at least your opponent does NOT control it), but this represents only a fraction of the power of the land itself, and you'll be much MORE powerful by working as many tiles as you can.
As ever, there's no "one right answer" here, and by and large, it's a matter of personal preference. If you can win a game with your cities five or eight or even ten tiles apart, then I don't see that you need to change your thinking in the least, but understand that there will be times when you may want (or need) to put your cities closer together than that, and if you do, there's certainly no harm in it.
One measure of efficiency that is currently NOT used is the ratio of tiles used/tiles controlled. IMO, it would be a useful measure of efficiency, as it would give you a land use ratio that would be a good benchmark, but it would, by default, favor those players who spaced their cities closer together.
Me personally, I shoot for 3-5 tiles between cities (4 being the norm, sometimes three, and occassionally 5), and I do this for pragmatic reasons.
1) Cities closer together create a more compact, more easily defended Empire...it's easier for individual cities to support each other during wartime with cities close together.
2) Less travel time for my workers. I don't like building scads of workers, which means they're always busy. If I keep my cities close together, then my workers are always one tile away from something that needs to be improved.
3) More efficient land use. The only tiles in my Empire that go to waste are tiles I can't work anyways (mountains, deserts, ice). Everything else gets improved and put to use, sooner rather than later.
4) It naturally promotes at least limited use of specialists (less than twenty workable tiles in a city makes you take a look at specialists long before you otherwise might).
And so on.
-=Vel=-
The list of published books grows. If you're curious to see what sort of stories I weave out, head to Amazon.com and do an author search for "Christopher Hartpence." Help support Candle'Bre, a game created by gamers FOR gamers. All proceeds from my published works go directly to the project.
I notice a big difference in city placeent vrm Civ3 to Civ4. It seems to me to be much more important to give each city the best location possible in terms of terrain and resources then it does to get every tile worked. The emphasis in Civ3 was on more cities. The emphasis in Civ4 seems to be on better cities. It is a subtle change and I like it for gameplay feel and decision challenge.
It is still a problem to me to avoid falling back to old Civ 3 habits of counting tiles to put that next city just where it belongs. So I count tiles and then look for the best place near there. The best part is when my decision differs by one tile from the blue circle suggestion. That always stops me and puts me in a mode of deep thought for a while. Do I trust that blue circle or not?
If a game designer can get a game player to stop and think hard and really care about a particular decision, then the game designer has won, regardless of the victory outcome of the game player.
Originally posted by eris
Do I trust that blue circle or not?
It's usually worth considering, but it does tend to go for spots one tile off the coast, which is not good. I tend to disagree with it more often than not, though I like it when it agrees with me.
Land is power, yes....but only insofar as you USE it by assigning population points from your cities to work those tiles. Simply having land (controlling it with your borders) is powerful indirectly, at least from the standpoint of denial (if you control a resource, then even if you're not working it, at least your opponent does NOT control it), but this represents only a fraction of the power of the land itself, and you'll be much MORE powerful by working as many tiles as you can.
And so on.
-=Vel=-
I have an answer and then a question:
I like to spread my cities out, situating them where I can block off a large open area between cities. Like say between cities 1, 2 and cities 3, 4 and try to squeeze the AI's out by not allowing them to enter my borders, at least in the early game, during the land grab phase.
This strategy works best on a narrow continent or a land mass that is constricted somewhere. For example say I have a long narrow land mass running north and south like South America, which leaves me with an ocean to the east and the west. Assume that I am starting on the south end of the continent and my scouts have made the outline of the continent clear to me. After founding cities 1 and 2 near Cape Horn, I try to move maybe a 1/3 of the way towards the middle, maybe the north tip of Chile, with a settler to found city 3. Once I found my third city on the west coast I begin to grow another settler, which will found a fourth city on the east coast. Soon both cities 3 and 4 begin to grow and their borders will connect (I might need a fifth city to fill this large of a gap) this should leave me with about 1/3 of the continent with a large open space that I can develop with new cities at my leisure, installing courthouses ASAP.
My question: I see in my city screen the circles around the resources that I am benefiting from and other resources not circled that I may not be benefiting from. I also see that changing the emphasis to hammer or gold or bread changes the locations of those circles. I know I can create a worker and send him to develop a mine or farm or cottage and I assume that creates a new circle that will appear in the city screen (I really should try observing more). How do I assign population points from my cities to work tiles? And what significance are the cottages with regards to population points?
I am still trying to figure how you use micromanagement to your best benefit.
I tend to spread my cities. With a limited number of cities I can support, I try to claim as much territory as possible although I cannot work the tiles themselves. In the first place, it's about denial and it's about resources (even potential resources that may or may not appear later). I agree that this is only a fraction of the land's power, but it seems important to me. There is also an advantage in having more tiles in the city's radius than the city can work because I can shift my workforce as needed.
I don't think the "waste" argument is entirely convincing for the land grab phase when most cities are built. During that phase, the economy (mine anyway) is not yet strong enough to support large numbers of cities and the cities themselves do not have sufficient infrastructure to support large populations. With a limited number of cities and a limited city populations only so many tiles can be worked and by spreading the cities I can at least pick the best ones.
Eventually, I run out of room for expansion, but my economy keeps growings and allows me to add more cities. It's only at this point (usually late classic/early medieval period) that the "waste" argument becomes relevant. Whether I give in to that argument depends on my plans for the immediate future. If I have plans of conquest, I don't build additional cities because I know that I will need the money to support those that I plan to take. If I plan to remain peaceful, there's indeed no point in wasting any tiles and I build additional cities (usually on coastal locations, but sometimes even inland if my earlier cities have left enough space). This process is often occupied by a major rearrangement of the workforce in the original cities and the creation of specialists.
My question: I see in my city screen the circles around the resources that I am benefiting from and other resources not circled that I may not be benefiting from. I also see that changing the emphasis to hammer or gold or bread changes the locations of those circles. I know I can create a worker and send him to develop a mine or farm or cottage and I assume that creates a new circle that will appear in the city screen (I really should try observing more). How do I assign population points from my cities to work tiles? And what significance are the cottages with regards to population points?
I am still trying to figure how you use micromanagement to your best benefit.
The population works the central city square plus one square per population point -- up to 20. The squares marked with white circles are the ones being worked. You can manage this square selection by clicking on one of those squares, then clicking on another square more advantageous to what you are trying to accomplish in that city. The display changes instantly to show you the effects of this redeployment. You can also click on squares to free up population to be specialists, as displayed to the right on the city screen. Improving a square does NOT cause it to be worked automatically. The amount of population limits the number of squares to be worked. If you improve five squares for a population four city, one of them cannot be worked. Further, the "governor" (actually the AI programming) may elect to work certain squares independent of what has been improved. I personally do what I call a "city walk" every 10 turns or so on marathon to make sure that each city is being worked properly. In this I start in the capitol and then click on the right arrow at the top of the city screen to go to the next city and so forth until every city has been checked. I check happiness, health, and defenses as well as worker distribution and production queue. It is worth the extra time, especially in the early game and in wartime.
No matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai
"I played it [Civilization] for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD." Iain Banks, author
I tend to spread out cities in order to deny land as much as I can. (But then I rarely build more than 4 cities and play small maps.) I usually build a city if I'm interested in geting a resource, or if it's just a place you can't leave alone (like 2-3 flood plains + 2 food specials).
The result is I build cities near interesting resources and that's all. A city which doesn't provide resources or an interesting border increase or a lot of immediate hammers/commerce will get razed, leaving room for more cities.
My view is that cities cost a lot in terms of maintainance, so it's better to have as few as possible (but big), while preventing the other players (ais in my case) from having too much themselves, particularly near your borders where they could challenge your ability to work tiles, get resources, or simply be attacked one turn later.
Clash of Civilization team member
(a civ-like game whose goal is low micromanagement and good AI)
web site http://clash.apolyton.net/frame/index.shtml and forum here on apolyton)
CHOKE, choke and then choke again. What you control your opponent does not. Why force yourself into poor city placement because you want to get every drop of power from the tiles? Why not build to make sure you are the only one who will control key cross points on the map and dominate the resource game. Go ahead and waste those desert or crap tundra squares all day long. As long as you are not overextended and thus an easy target for the steamroller push those borders as far as you can manage!
as I feel. Yes those unworked tiles aren't doing you any good. But I still like land area.
You just never know where the coal and oil is going to show up. Yeah you can always fight for it later. But it's nice to have it from the get go.
So as much as I hate useless tiles, I do try to have cities in a wide variety of terrain. I like to include desert for the possibility of getting oil, tundra for the same reason. And enough hills to have a decent shot of coal.
Tweet
Comment