City placement

[Beatie]

Because the new system I don't understand how to place my city's! I've read about it that the city radius can be up to 3 hex far. That is pretty big. So far I think is safe to place a new city within 4 hex tiles space between them, if you planning for huge city's.

What you guys think about it?

[stbabylon]

It's

- - - C - - - And then make a nice hexagon out of that middle line So yeah, 3 hex west east, and 3 semi-overlapping north-south. That is big. I don't think overlapping is a problem, seeing that's 28 tiles. And I don't think you'll have enough turns to make use of all that food (especially when using SC's).

I personally use C - - - C

[Beatie]

within 3 or 4 is the way to go then I think. Depens also of the resources doesn't it?

[Nikolai]

There really is no definite answer. Few cities will be able to grow to use all its tiles, and if they do it will happen late in the game.

[Proteus_MST]

And if a city grows so large that it really could use all its tiles,
but has some of them blocked,
you could just assign some of your citizens as specialists...
so, really no big problem with partially overlapping city radii

[MxM]

It is a compromise between short term benefit and long term benefits. And as such it depends on your play style. But in general I can not recommend placing cities shorter than 3 hexes apart, and even 3 hexes seems way to short for my playstyle. Meanwhile, quite often I found myself placing a city at distances greater than 6. It ALL depends on terrain and resources. Luxury and strategic resources are uber important in this game, so I am quite often only look for those resources and try to position city to grab them either immediately or with first cultural expansion. Quite often I even position city far enough so that I have place to place another city between them (but you risk AI doing it, then you can war it and capture it, but if there is no AI nearby, it is usually save to "skip the city" if resources require so.)

Anyway, the short term benefits for 3 hex separation:
1) Roads are short (less$$ to maintain)
2) Easier to protect

Negatives
1) Less hexes to work in late gate
2) Probably not optimal in terms of grabbing resources.

You can also consider placing city really far, for resource reason and not being able to connect with capital for long time. I am not sure if it is good when you have just single unique resource there, (I did not play long enough) but I would say that if you see 2 different unique resources (luxery or strategic) that your empire does not have, then you must build city there.

Also, do not forget that you can connect your cities through the ocean, which sometimes allows you to have mini-empire of 2-3 cities separated from your capital, and if your capital has road connection to a coastal city (or is a coastal city itself) and have harbor in it and if one of the cities in mini-empire is also a coastal city and all other cites in the mini-empire are connected to it through road, then you have all of your cites connected to your capital in term of trade. While defending the mini-empire might be tricky, the fact that units can go through the sea simplifies a lot of things.

EDIT: The City placement decision is much more complex now, more factors have to be accounted (I did not touch distance to AI for example) and is example of another improvement from Civ IV. I really like the way it is now in Civ V! The fact is that there is no simple rule now what to do, which is great!

[MxM]

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