Founding the first city on a hill...

[wodan11]

If your capitol is vulnerable to pillaging you're seriously in trouble. I can see a border city, but your capitol?!?

Wodan

[wodan11]

Oh and by the way, I agree access to the sea is good, but it's also bad. It means you almost certainly have no option of your capitol having a solid 5-6 what I call "core" cities with the lowest city maintenance.

Wodan

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by wodan11
If your capitol is vulnerable to pillaging you're seriously in trouble. I can see a border city, but your capitol?!?

Wodan

Certainly when I get the splendid Barbarian Uprising event, which is pretty frequent.

And yeah, I have also been pwned early by the AI on higher difficulty.

[couerdelion]

Any +1 city tile can be a good place to settle the first city and even more so for IMP civs who can leverage from extra production into a fast settler build. Do be careful though because, as a rule, moving gives you a slightly weaker fat-cross.

I will also go for the commerce bonus tiles of riverside silk or wine, particularly if I am financial.

More often than not, the loss from an improved tile is low in most of these cases and, in the case of wine and silk, also a long time distant. Compare a 2/1/5 improved riverside wine tile with a 2/1/3 city site. That +2 commerce can be generated just by placing a cottage on a riverside grassland tile.

On the food bonus tiles, sugar is usually the only one that I would tend to settle on. Rice sometimes but probably only for later cities and for when it is overgrown with jungle.

All of these can be worth a few lost moves at the start of the game – I’d say 4 at the most though.

[albucc]

Originally posted by wodan11
Oh and by the way, I agree access to the sea is good, but it's also bad. It means you almost certainly have no option of your capitol having a solid 5-6 what I call "core" cities with the lowest city maintenance.
Wodan

I agree with you in the topic that access to the sea is good, but also bad. But I don't agree completely with the argument about it.
About the solid 5-6 core cities: If you start near the sea, you will already be doomed. You cannot build those 5-6 core cities. Live with it... or regenerate your map.
About maintenance costs: The number of cities are by far the limiting factor of the maintenance costs.
I play on prince, on standard map sizes, with BTS 3.13. On monarch or emperor, and on small maps, the distance maintenance cost could, yes, be a real problem, as maintenance cost are higher with level, and distance costs get more significant with map size.
I usually research Code of Laws quickly: confucianism + the courthouses, that on BTS are good because of the maintenance cut and the espionage bonus.
It will, of course, depends greatly on the terrain that you have, and on the starting civ.
Also, with 6 courthouses and 8 cities you can build the forbidden palace at a complementary location.
And the banking trail can also counter the effects of the maintenance costs: more trade routes, banks at strategic locations and, at least on prince, you can now have a maintenance payable with only 20 or 30% gold income, maybe less.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by albucc

I agree with you in the topic that access to the sea is good, but also bad. But I don't agree completely with the argument about it.
About the solid 5-6 core cities: If you start near the sea, you will already be doomed. You cannot build those 5-6 core cities.

Unh... that's what I just said.

So, I don't see what you're "not agreeing completely" with. Care to elaborate, or did we misunderstand each other?

About maintenance costs: The number of cities are by far the limiting factor of the maintenance costs.
I play on prince, on standard map sizes, with BTS 3.13. On monarch or emperor, and on small maps, the distance maintenance cost could, yes, be a real problem, as maintenance cost are higher with level, and distance costs get more significant with map size.
I usually research Code of Laws quickly: confucianism + the courthouses, that on BTS are good because of the maintenance cut and the espionage bonus.
It will, of course, depends greatly on the terrain that you have, and on the starting civ.
Also, with 6 courthouses and 8 cities you can build the forbidden palace at a complementary location.
And the banking trail can also counter the effects of the maintenance costs: more trade routes, banks at strategic locations and, at least on prince, you can now have a maintenance payable with only 20 or 30% gold income, maybe less.

All those things are true in either case, thus they are of no bearing on this point.

The question is whether you have all those things PLUS you get an extra 1-2 cities adjacent to your capitol. Or, whether you lose those two cities, period, because there's a friggin ocean sitting in the way.

Wodan

[albucc]

Replying to the replying of Wodan:

What I'm saying is that if you *already started* near the sea, you are doomed: probably you won't have those pretty 5-6 cities as core cities. That is, if you already are in this situation, start next to the sea will probably be better than start near the sea, but away of it.

Of course, if you are at the center of a big continent, you may be in better situation (of course, depending on terrain).

[wodan11]

Originally posted by albucc
Replying to the replying of Wodan:

What I'm saying is that if you *already started* near the sea, you are doomed: probably you won't have those pretty 5-6 cities as core cities. That is, if you already are in this situation, start next to the sea will probably be better than start near the sea, but away of it.

Oh, okay. Well, in this case I don't think that's a given. All it takes is to move 3 spaces inland and that will do the trick. That will give you 2 cities catty-corner and oceanside.

And, before you bring it up, if you're on a peninsula you're screwed either way. So that's not an issue.

Wodan

[Theben]

I have to ask: 'doomed' in what sense? That I will lose? Hardly. That I will have higher maintenance costs? Probably, but that doesn't 'doom' me.

Bear in mind being at the center of a large continent also means more borders to defend. A coastal start gives you an early natural barrier.

[johnmcd]

I hardly ever found a city that's not on the sea, it's got to have a role as a pure production town to persuade me or offer access to a strategic resource.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by johnmcd
I hardly ever found a city that's not on the sea, it's got to have a role as a pure production town to persuade me or offer access to a strategic resource.

I find this is generally the case for me as well, but it depends on the map settings you choose.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by johnmcd
I hardly ever found a city that's not on the sea, it's got to have a role as a pure production town to persuade me or offer access to a strategic resource.

Really? That's odd. What advantages are there besides the already stated ones?

Personally I see ocean or even coastal tiles as suboptimal (resources aside). They aren't good at food, they aren't good at commerce, they certainly aren't good at production. If my cities could have a 1 tile access to the sea without any other ocean or coast tiles, that would be ideal.

Wodan

[joncnunn]

Playing a Financial civ, the coastal tiles are much better (for commerce) than non-Financial

[wodan11]

We're not talking Fin vs non-Fin. We're talking coast vs land.

Wodan

[Starfarer]

Originally posted by wodan11

Really? That's odd. What advantages are there besides the already stated ones?

Personally I see ocean or even coastal tiles as suboptimal (resources aside). They aren't good at food, they aren't good at commerce, they certainly aren't good at production. If my cities could have a 1 tile access to the sea without any other ocean or coast tiles, that would be ideal.

Wodan

Personally I prefer to have at least a FEW cities on coasts, because if I'm going to settle across an ocean later, I need multiple trade routes to ensure that my "colony" gets necessary resources for expansion.

Also, I tend to find that cities on rivers that lead to oceans make the best trade cities.

I tend to start my expansions along ocean coasts, for easy early trade routes (my workers, the few that I have that early on, can do better than building roads), and expand inward once I've finished exploring the area with my early unit.