I want to shoot the AI :)

[Diadem]

Such a perfect spot for an insanely good GPP pump city. And what do they do?

It's insulting! How dare they place their cities so badly!

[chuckdelicious]

I'm not sure I would have placed Sparta any differently. If you need the copper immediately, it's a good spot. Also, if you have some settlers brewing, you can make 3 money making cities.

[MasterDave]

I don't think that placement is so bad either- 7 floodplains, a copper, and two forests on plains for production. The two rice spots only produce one extra food over a flood plain and no bonus commerce.

[Dis]

what would be the ideal spot?

I'd rather place several cities. .

[Diadem]

Oh come on.

If you place that city one tile to the south-west you get 13 floodplain, and you still have the copper and forests. Or you could place it 1 further south, for 12 floodplains, copper *and* gold on a plains hill.

Those city placements have the additional benefit of grabbing more land from your rivals, who are expanding from the south and the west. Though I can understand the AI not properly assessing rival expansion, it should at least be able to effectively use floodplains.

1 city with almost only floodplains in its fat cross is much, much better than several cities with a few floodplains. Build full farms, slam a national epic and a globe theatre into it and run 13 specialists, or 22 once you have biology. That's a lot of GPPs.

Or spam cottages everywhere and 136 raw commerce from that one. Combined with a Oxford University that's enough science for your entire empire.

[Jaybe]

Bah!! The way the AI minimizes hammer acquisitions for their cities, they would never get around to completing a national epic or globe theater, and all those floodplains would result in little hammers and a disease-ridden city.

[Blake]

I'm really not sure what's so bad about the city placement.

It's not where I would place it - assuming the rice is unworked I would place the first city "9-6" of Sparta - above the river where it has Rice and Copper and 2 floodplain, along with plenty of hill (good unit pump or whatever)

Altough other AI's would fowl up the plan, this is probably how I would place the cities.


But there are many valid ways to partition up that floodplain between cities.

The one place I wouldn't put a city is the 13 floodplain dead-center spot. A city can't easily use +13 food surplus - for specialists, that would require it be size 20, which with the illhealth would be difficult. Much better for several cities to have a ~ +7 food surplus and for a GPP pump to be based on food resources (since you don't need nearly as large a city as for FP GPP pumps).

I believe my city placement code improvement would also ignore the central floodlpain site - since it's programmed to disregard any food surplus over +7 (i think) and the combination of ill health at the middle and the other resources would cause it to place cities around the edges.

I think the highest priority spot would be the one on the coast which grabs rice, pigs, copper, gold and it'd also go for the Horses+Rice+Floodplains site at the top of the river.

[Diadem]

Well after I saw that city placement I knew that Alexander had to die. So I killed him off and razed sparta. Kept some of his other cities of course.

This is a screenie of the current situation. Athens and Chartres were originally his, and the new city Huamanga is mine, of course.

I built Versailles there, giving me an excellent 2nd capital once I start conquering the Romans, and glove theatre and national epic.

A stupid bug in the game caused the site where sparta was to no longer be floodplains, and one other floodplain is still under Roman control. Still though, my city is starting to become a great GPP pump.

[Diadem]

Forgot to add screenie.

[Diadem]

As you can see there's barely any wastage of tiles. Only one plain plain, one plain grassland and a rice resource are wasted. But the rice was wasted on the old spot as well, anyway. Furthermore there's only 2 tiles overlap and the Roman cities to the west and south add nicely into my pattern once I capture them (they are a bit too close, but AI always builds there cities too close anyway, so you learn to live with that on captured cities).