City placement

[buzz]

I was reading one of the posts regarding city placement and I just wanted to repeat what I think the post was saying. Set me straight if I don't have this right.

When first starting out, I should place cities fairly close to keep corruption down. And I should build lots of cities early on to a) get more territory and b) build more military units. Is that the general consensus?

Problem is, how do you determine how close to place them, and what happens later on as the cities' cultural influences overlap a great deal? Is there any way to raze your own city without giving it away, then attacking it and razing it?

[punkbass2000]

Re: City placement

Originally posted by buzz
When first starting out, I should place cities fairly close to keep corruption down. And I should build lots of cities early on to a) get more territory and b) build more military units. Is that the general consensus?

Yes, I'd say that's generally a true statement.

Problem is, how do you determine how close to place them, and what happens later on as the cities' cultural influences overlap a great deal?

PLace them where there a good places like fresh water for free aqueducts, resources and militarily strategic locations (chokepoints, etc.) The strongest spacing is cxcxcxcxcxc, but this too close for many and means much more MM plus is often viewed as an exploit. I like cxxcxxc personnally. The overlap isn't that big a deal. Cities can generally reach size 12 even if they're quite close. If they can't then the terrain is poor enough that spacing them further apart wouldn't help anyway. It saves on having to build + maintain hospitals too, as well high food cities will need them and you'll still be producing about the same amoount of shields in total anyway. There aren't a lot of advantages to metropolises except unit support which isn't a large difference in many governments (often 0 or 1) and possibly a small bonus dependent on trait.

Is there any way to raze your own city without giving it away, then attacking it and razing it?

Right click on the city and select 'Abandon'. I think it's just above the civpedia entries.

[vmxa1]

You can often share tiles in a few of the earlest core cities. I am doing that now.

I take a citizen off a given BG tile and let the other city use it for a time. This is not need often, but can wring out that growth or build one turn sooner.

I am giving the BG mined tile to another city now as the captiol is size 12 and is not making any wonders right now. So it does not need the extra shield and can spare the extra food.

Sharing tiles is most often done for the bonus food.

As to the when and why of spacing, I think it just becomes aparrent what is best for a given game as you gain more experience.

Actually you do not face all that many valid choices after you get to emperor. You probably will not do all that well at CxxxC or size 21 at emperor or higher. If you are doing a regent game, then you can use a number of plans.

I see a lot of games where if I do not use CxxC I will not be able to get my border to be contiguious. This will allow scouts to pass by and get a look at the area. It will be long time before I can get temples in that string of say three cities and grow my borders.

I have used the spacing to shut off gaps and keep the AI out of large chuniks of land, until they get a galley out.

[Dry]

Originally posted by vmxa1
... CxxxC or size 21 ...

Could you explain what exactly CxxxC means.
I always thought C=city, x=tile in whatever direction, even diagonal.
So, when I draw CxxxC on a squared map, I got 16 tiles per city; 8 tiles for CxxC; 5 for CxC.

I like the 16 tiles cities (monarch, huge, 12 civs), because it allows a mixture of cities (12) and megapolis (20+).

On huge, emperor, 12 civs, I have tried an 8 tiles cities expansion. But when I do that too strictly, the AI is faster than I to grab territory and resources.
So far, my best success - well, in fact, my least failure - was with a 16 tiles city territorial expansion (same as for monarch) and adding extra internal cities only after reaching the AI territory borders. So, I indeed end up with a mixture of 12 and 6- tiles cities.

In short, I think that the city placement depends also on the map size/number of civs.

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Dry
On huge, emperor, 12 civs, I have tried an 8 tiles cities expansion. But when I do that too strictly, the AI is faster than I to grab territory and resources.

You may be expanding improperly then. You need to grab the resources etc. first, then fill in the rest. You don't need to settle immediately around your capital. I usually do 3 or 4 cities very close to my capital to be settler/worker pumps and one military camp, then go and place cities to block opponent's expansion and grab resources.

In short, I think that the city placement depends also on the map size/number of civs.

Although the map makes a difference, I think that close city placement is pretty much always preferable.

[vmxa1]

Here is size 19"

[vmxa1]

One city view:

[vmxa1]

Now we see that if you go CxxxC you cannot get all 21 tiles, unless you move pop off of tiles in the surrounding cities.

So when I said CxxxC or size 21, I meant CxxxC or larger spacing.

Looking at this CxxC we see that the capitol lost two tiles to Orleans. One other tile is denied to Orleans from the cap.
It has not yet lost tiles to the next city over, but will eventually.

You should rarely have less than 12 tiles for any city and you probably will slip the cxxc at times for terrain and border purposes.

After you move out from the core you can lossen up the spacing, IF you do not have space constraints.

[Dry]

Ok, thanks a lot for the explainations.