Making the most of Specials

[Scouse Gits]

There are many strategies for the positioning of cities in this wonderful game of ours - they vary from Ming's "if I see a gold mountain, I build on it" to the search for the perfect 4 trade special site for an OCC game. In my opinion, a satisfactory strategy for most games is simply to maximise the potential of any available special tiles. This task is rendered easy if you choose to use utilities such as HutFinder, but many players eschew such artificial aids - and to be honest I find that despite my vested interest, I too find that it introduces an unwelcome artificiality into my game play and am using it less and less.
So let us look at an alternative approach. We all know that the specials are found in 'clumps' of eight arranged either as 1-3-3-1 or 2-4-2 as illustrated below:
1-3-3-1
2-4-2
and that the four special 'sweet spot' is characterised by a 'Knight's move' from the City site to each special. Note, however, that it is not just any 'Knight's move', but specifically the left hand move which can be characterised by the letter 'L' as in the diagram below:

Not quite so obvious is that the only way to obtain more than two specials within a city site is to ensure that any special is an 'L' away from the city site.
My strategy is then simple - given a visible special strive to build your city so as to preserve the 'L' relationship - if you do this you have an expectation of 2.6875 specials in your city radius and one chance in four of being on a four special sweet spot.

Good civin', Stu

[Grigor]

Excellent summary. Note also that the the 1-3-3-1 and 2-4-2 patterns are just the same pattern turned on its side.

[La Fayette]

Re: Making the most of Specials

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
My strategy is then simple - given a visible special strive to build your city so as to preserve the 'L' relationship http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/wittgenstein/gits.gif[/img]

Now, this is civ2 as I understand it!

Congratulations

[debeest]

Hey, I'd like to keep the strategy forum open. I'm kind of attached to it. Let's put interesting questions like this one there, so people will keep using it, OK?

[Scouse Gits]

Fine by me

Ming, rah - could you move this to Strat?

[Scouse Gits]

Thanks

[rah]

Ming got it.
In 2x MP, if they are water based specials, I'll try the l pattern. For land based, protection is sometimes quite important, so I'll find myself building on or next to one with one other in range. A four pattern will usually mean two cites for me. Early on, trading off between cities can help.

[War4ever]

Yes, i remember strategies in the old days, one city as many specials as possible. Nowadays, one finds the happy medium.

If i should come across a site with four specials for my capital, i will build it in the perfect pattern as scouse gits has so eloquently stated.

However, i am notorious for adding 3-4 cities around those specials to work them early in the game when my capital is spitting out sets.

Protection of valued specials is a must in small map games, especially in the likelyhood of meeting an encroaching neighbor.

I only build on gold if i have too. While a viable strat and virutally unpenatrable, growth can be an issue and maxing out beakers in your capital can suffer.

If its not the capital, building on it or beside it is usually a must unless i know i can protect it with other cities.

[rah]

During some of our OCC MP games where you have to build in the middle of the 4 pattern, protection of the specials becomes your primary goal.