Appropriate City Placement

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I place my cities all 5 squares apart unless they are in bad lands (aka desert/tundra/rainforest) then i place then 4 squares apart.

[star mouse]

I prefer quality over quantity.

One factor to consider is that corruption is determined more on the number of cities rather than their distance from the capital or forbidden palace. Once you have the maximum number of cities, all the most distant cities will be very corrupt, no matter how close they are.

If I have a city that's only working 7 of 21 tiles, so what? It's likely to be working the best 7 tiles of those 21, and those 7 tiles could be better than the other 14 put together.

Spacing your cities also allows you to claim more territory with fewer cities. More territory means more squares that could contain resources, and CIV3 is a resource game.

I try to space my cities about 5 tiles apart in one direction and 4 tiles apart in the other, such that all tiles are covered with the least overlap. I cannot get troops from one city to another in a single turn, but if you maintain constant vigilance of your borders and plan carefully this should never be necessary.

[Nakar Gabab]

I generally don't worry about spacing, and focus more on placement (like that settler factory I built on a hill adjacent to a river with flood plains. ).

However, in one game as China (on Regent), I was forced to turtle by necessity. It was a Small or Standard map (can't quite recall), and I had a VERY small amount of rather hilly fertile grasslands and a TON of jungle... and on the other side of the jungle, the AI. I had so little land available by comparison I figured I had pretty much lost the game already... but then I started backfilling where I'd already settled.

Bottom line, I crammed in at least as many cities in that little bit of land as the other civs had, and they were just as productive (how many squares can early cities work, after all?). So I build up the swordsmen and knights and went to town, conquering better land for myself. I believe I won that game via Space long after flattening my continent.

So never dismiss small-scale spacing out of hand. You need to know how to work it, because you never know if you're going to HAVE to do it.

[King of Rasslin]

I actually see less corruption in packing cities close to each other. If they are big and far apart, the distance will create corruption. And the optimal city number doesn't hurt you as much as the distance, especially after the optimal city number was raised.

[MiloMilo]

Rasslin: you make very good points. It's just so hard, when I see all these "perfect city cites" on the map, to ignore them... (I know, whine whine whine...)

Anyway, with a strategy of high numbers of closely-packed cities, it seems you'd do best going with a commercial civ. +1 commerce in each city center means the more cites, the more benefit. And reduced corruption (it's actually noticeable) means you can more easily exceed the "optimal cities" limit.

[DrFell]

I build cities 2-4 squares apart, aiming for hills/deserts/other crappy land as the actual city site, and early on I like a couple shielded grassland for each city. I only space cities 1 space apart when I need to get a resource or fill in some land the AI might build on. Also, there is no use spacing cities a long way apart unless you're doing it to stop the AI claiming land.

[alexman]

Originally posted by MiloMilo
Anyway, with a strategy of high numbers of closely-packed cities, it seems you'd do best going with a commercial civ. +1 commerce in each city center means the more cites, the more benefit. And reduced corruption (it's actually noticeable) means you can more easily exceed the "optimal cities" limit.

Don't get me started again with the commercial trait! The +1 commerce kicks in for size 13+ only. If you pack your cities that close, it's not worth even building a hospital to get to that size.

Also, commercial increases the optimal number of cities by one. This is barely noticeable (maybe 2% increase in income for a city in the middle of the pack) on small maps, and next to useless on large ones.

I really hope they fix this trait...

[MiloMilo]

alexman: Is this really true? I thought the official literature says +1 commerce in center square. I share your frustration with the relative weakness of this trait. Personally I think it should be +1, then another +1 at size 13, plus cheap markets, plus decent corruption reduction.

[Txurce]

King, I'm not sure whether I'd build the three hospitals necessary for your "three size-13 cities is better than two 20s" example, but building close makes a lot of sense, especially if you're playing for domination, and won't even reach the modern era. My feelings parallel Arrian's, but I'm going to make a big effort to ignore them in my next game.

[King of Rasslin]

Building hospitals to make size 13 cities is really a desperation move for the metropolis defence bonus. I would only do this on the border, not in the main cities.

Yes, commercial is very, very weak. It will probably be strengthened in a later patch or in PTW. I used to be really good when corruption was so awful in the early versions of Civ 3. Now, it is probably the worst.

[King of Rasslin]

(absolutely a shameless bump here)

[jshelr]

I'm a little surprised that the warmongers don't universally adopt the packed cities strategy. Early wars benefit from getting front line troops created ASAP. They also benefit from leaving the AI plenty of room to overextend themselves, building settlers instead of military units. I love to see a modest patch of green with a horse on it somewhere large enough to start four to six cities. Closely packed cities, with expansion stopped early, can churn out the MWs in time to win control of the home continent. Winning the land grab just does not matter. So, anything that slows down creating and connecting the core cities is just bad, period.

[Geekinstein]

I tend to pack my cities more densely towards bad guy territory, build walls, and clear out all the brush so they (bad guys) don't get any defense plus up. Those cities are always two-three squares apart (usually two). Fun thing about this is, if bad guys rush me, they typically don't attack the cities (but go after the workers I leave naked a square or so back), and then I mop up with massed catapults/horsies.

I tend to think of this (packed cities) as just a technique to deal with the overbearing AI especially at Deity (who can't find its posterior with both hands even at that elevated level). Later, I just grind down a less "optimally" placed city in favor of a 20+ monster by popping out settlers/workers.

BTW, this type of "defense" was used by the Romans along their boarders; i.e. forts and/or defended cities linked by good roads. If bad guys penetrated behind the defenses, they marched out and kicked a$$...at least until the late 300s AD when the leaded water kicked in addled their collective brains. Our modern warriors call this an "archipelago" defense and use it frequently to set up kill zones.

[ShuShu]

Ethical discourse...

ICS - Infinite City Sleaze
In Civ I & II is clearly the most efficient strategy because game mechanics improve efficiency given the greater impact of the free square.

Three questions, one philosophical, one ethical, one theoretical...

Philosophical: Did Firaxis succeed in rendering ICS inefficient?

Ethical: Since the philosophical answer is clearly 'No' , does not any theory that claims smaller cities are more efficient suffer from the same ethical problem as ICS? Smaller cities for tactical (road networks, archipelego defenses) reasons don't have the ethical taint. Smaller cities for strategic (resources, cultural boundaries) don't have the ethical taint. But doesn't the smaller cities for 'Efficiency's' sake suffer the same ethical cunundrum?

Theoretical: Is the King's 3 city strategy more efficient than ICS? Thus relieving it of ethical taint?

PS. my answers would be No, Yes, No but I am not sure about the two No's.

[SABRA]

is the placement of city not going to be optional in the new editor ?