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Spreading the cities out....

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  • #16
    I usually try to cover as much useable land as I can with my cities with the smallest amount of overlap and the smallest number of unworkable tiles. I make exceptions to this to allow maximize coastal cities and to grab certain resources that I wouldn't normally get otherwise. The most annoying cases are things like marble or stone in the middle of a desert with no rivers.

    Sometimes this means that it's better to build 2 cities in good spots rather than 1 city in a "perfect" spot. Other times it's better to build 1 city in a perfect spot than it is to build 3 cities in crappy spots.

    Sometimes you can use the bonus for the city center to basically erase an otherwise useless tile like a desert too. Like a lone desert tile surrounded by plains or something. I'll found on the desert.

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    • #17
      I use a policy of "Where Room, Put City" - I might let a single grassland tile go to waste, but I'd definitely found a city just to claim 4-5 grassland tiles.

      Here is my city founding strategy:
      1) Quickly found the best possible cities. These are cities working multiple strong resources, they are good candidates for National Wonders. If they get a good national wonder they may well end up crowding out nearby cities. A city with good national wonders can nearly double the yield from the land.

      2) Found less powerful cities where there is open land. As long as there is open land, I'm going to keep founding cities to claim it. The placement of these cities will depend greatly on the AI, they might be a bit food starved, or might claim resources like ice silver - important, but these cities wont be a candidate for national wonders.

      3) Found filler/rubbish cities as economy allows. These are cities that don't claim any resources. They probably don't have a food resource. The land is already culturally mine. But there's a gap, so damnit, I'm putting a city in it. Nearly any city will eventually be profitable.
      "As economy allows" pretty much means as mature cities get courthouses which helps to mitigate the additional city-count upkeep.

      I really enjoy playing Organized leaders because it moves the whole city founding timeline forward, I can really spam out cities and at size 4 they get a courthouse whipped in. In a way Organized makes city placement less important as you can afford to just found cities everywhere, you don't really have to wonder how a city will be profitable, because between reduced civic upkeep and cheap courthouse it will be profitable. I'll still try to have optimal National Wonder cities of course.

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      • #18
        I am another who tends to spread cities to cut off the AI geographically. Later, after 1000AD, I tend to fill in any gaps where a viable city may be built, and am often surprised by how useful a city with only 10 or so workable tiles can be.

        I often use these smaller cities to keep cranking out military units while my big ones go for culture, wonders or space ship parts.
        ...and I begin to understand that there are no new paths to track, because, look, there are already footprints on the moon. -- Kerkorrel

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        • #19
          Much has been said already so I’m probably repeating a lot here. Ideally, you want to minimise overlap and avoid gaps but, as Vel suggests, you don’t want to let this weigh too heavily as a decision-making factor. This would be particularly true of your second city and still important with your third and possibly your fourth. If there’s a whole patch of nothing next to your first city then move on to where there is something rather than found a city that will be still be a minnow 200 turns later. This is the “economic” dimension to city-placement which simply looks at how productive (hammers and commerce) the city will become.

          The second dimension to city placement is “strategic”. The most obvious example being to found an early city near to copper or horses but this dimension shows up in many other considerations: founding a city on a nearby island to claim control there, building cities close together to help security, getting a coastal city, blocking off a larger area from rival settlers, the rare opportunities to open a “Panama” city.

          After this there is simply the question of filler cities. These are ones in marginal areas which cannot compete with your powerhouse cities for production and commerce and serve not significant strategic benefit. You probably don’t want to start on these until you have some courthouses up but after that it’s simply a question of “when” rather than “if” you settle those areas. With currency and trade the city should make you some money so the thing to consider is how the settler compares to other builds for your existing cities.

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