Overlapping BFCs

[rah]

Even more silly, I was looking in on one city and the spot was grayed out, but the other city wasn't even using the square.

Whenever I place a new city close to another, I make sure a square is not hijacked that I don't want.

[snoopy369]

The AI will swap which city gets which spot, by the way, if it decides one city is using it better, if the governor is selected. I don't know if the governor is in one city but not the other whether it will or not, though.

[rah]

Yeah but you have to pay attention. I had a new city steal the high food square from my GP farm and remove a a few specialists from it since it was at the caps already. *sigh* My idea of optimal use was considerably different

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by Hauptman
Are you friggin kidding me... How long has this game been out and i was unnawares? lol.

That's funny.

Rah, snoopy -- I've never had an adjacent city steal a tile from an adjacent city that I can remember. If I manually assign a shared tile to one city, the other will starve is it takes away enough food. Under what circumstances is the game switching for you?

[rah]

Always on a city that's near the caps and fully developed. Build a new city that reaches one of the older cities food squares. The new city will steal the food for faster growth if the old city doesn't need it.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini


That's funny.

Rah, snoopy -- I've never had an adjacent city steal a tile from an adjacent city that I can remember. If I manually assign a shared tile to one city, the other will starve is it takes away enough food. Under what circumstances is the game switching for you?

AFAIK, the "stealing" of a tile only happens when the second city is founded. After that, switching tiles from one city to another has to be done manually.

RJM

[Nikomakkos]

Yeah, in my experience, the only time a city steals a tile is when it is found and the tile is closer to the new city. If the tile is equally close to both cities, it'll remain in control of the older city.

[Blaupanzer]

Snoopy was right about cities stealing from one another post founding with the governors on. I had set overlapping cities on different priorities, one financial, one production. I had tiles wander between them no matter how often I went and reset them manually. The financial city can use a spices tile more effectively because that city has all the money buildings, and that tile would leave the production city sort of on its own. (I wanted the food.) Likewise a gold tile kept going to the production city without my volition. (There, the gold was more important than the hammers to me.) So, rjmatsleepers, I suspect you are not fully informed as to the AI "assistance" provided to two overlapping and growing cities. (The switches would happen when one or the other of the cities added a new citizen.)

[DirtyMartini]

I've never had that happen (switching tile assingments between cities)post founding, and I monitor/micro my tile assignments pretty closely. I generally run most cities with emphasize production and emphasize commerce checked. I don't use the production queue governor -- is that the difference?

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
So, rjmatsleepers, I suspect you are not fully informed as to the AI "assistance" provided to two overlapping and growing cities. (The switches would happen when one or the other of the cities added a new citizen.)

I'm afraid the list of things I'm not fully informed about is too long to go into here.

However, there is one thing I think I've noticed. The governor seems to be less likely to change the tiles used by a city when you have set them manually. For example it will normally switch to a better tile that has just been improved, but seems to be less inclined to do so if the player selected the tiles being worked. Somewhat apocryphal at the moment, but I'll look for evidence.

RJM

[Theben]

Hauptman might've been confused b/c there are time that, in the city screen, a tile in a city's BFC will be darkened and have no value. You usually have to click on it twice- once to bring up the value and another time to assign a citizen. In this case you can 'steal' the tile if another city is working it.

[rjmatsleepers]

Here is an example of the governor's behaviour. If you found a city in place and start building a settler, the governor will initially chose to work the three food tile. When the border expands, the governor switches to the flood plain, which also has three food but one commerce as well. However, if you manually choose the three hammer tile, the governor does not change it when the city border's expand.

RJM

[ColdPhoenix]

The governor from one city will steal food from another based on "Hauptman's Law" whether or not the new city is using the tile or not (don't know about using maximise growth etc). Unfortunately I also believed that was the way things worked and didn't know you could double-click to take the tile back...

[Nikomakkos]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
Here is an example of the governor's behaviour. If you found a city in place and start building a settler, the governor will initially chose to work the three food tile. When the border expands, the governor switches to the flood plain, which also has three food but one commerce as well. However, if you manually choose the three hammer tile, the governor does not change it when the city border's expand.

RJM

If you click a tile to manually change which tiles the city works, the automated governor gets turned off. There's a button to turn him on/off, and it is highlighted when on. If you click a tile manually you can see the button stop being highlighted. If you click that button and turn on the automation again, the tiles being worked will change back to how it was before you interfered. Generally it is better if you can use the emphasize buttons to achieve the desired effect.

[TriMiro]

I always assign tiles to cities as micromanagement. Everything is manual for me.

Initially everything is about capturing as many resources as possible. Gaps can be "filled" later. The amount of overlap depends on the type of economy one is running. For example for specialist economy, a lot of people would be working in the city as specialists and the city would need fewer workable tiles. In cottage economy, one needs a lot of land to build those cottages.