Ideas for City Plans

[Bloody Monk]

City Planner appears to have a multi-variant pallet of possible choices. What to build in the cities, which is getting more interesting; where and when to build new cities; whether to build new cities or roads, etc, first; where to place workers in the cities, food or shield tiles; these are some of the choices. What other questions should we look into here??

Monk

[Bloody Monk]

Will someone please change the Subject line of this thread from "Poll" to Ideas for City Plans, or some such title. I will try again to make an actual poll.

Monk

[cavebear]

Changed as requested. That much, at least, is within my "mini-Ming" powers.

[cavebear]

I think for now that ships will be our easiest way of connecting cities. Building Settlers to connect them with roads would be a luxury we can't afford yet. We may have to consider improving terrain. That's one reason I was very reluctant to use our NONE Settler to establish a city, but we needed the city, too.

We need to watch the cities carefully to make sure what we build will pay back the costs (initial and continuing). I'll admit I tend to build Marketplaces and Libraries before they are really cost-justified.

I don't like pre-set building queues, and we don't have so many cities that looking at each one individually is a burden.

I think we want to emphasize population growth in the new cities at first. It is frustrating not to build structures/units quickly, but pop growth pays off in the longer term. But even then, some balance can work out best depending on Specials.

Now that we have a few new cities, we should focus on really quality locations. I'll take a Whale anywhere, but we should try to find the 3 or 4 Specials sites when possible. The delay in establishing new cities is worth the return from multiple Specials sites.

I know this is obvious to all of us, but you asked and we get anxious for cities and I wanted to set out some major points to focus on.

[Bloody Monk]

I question whether we need to have cities with 3-4 specials. First, there is not much time left; and second, 3-4 is the size limit with a temple and elvi and we don't have the cash to build n-1 colosseums. In a cluster of ten new cities, one or two might be all we can support at larger sizes. It would be different if it were 1836 BC.

As for Markets and Libraries, because of ongoing maintance and the initial cost, it will be cheaper to increase trade arrows by building more cities.

This game is still winable I think. If we can quickly stand up 30+ tightly built cities, drop in some barracks, and crank out a horde of vet Crooks, we might be able to take over our island, catch up in tech, and go hunting for the rest of the AI. We have at least two civs with some of their cities close by, Egyptians and Suefolk, so there appears to be a target rich environment to play about in.

Monk

[cavebear]

We need more discussion on this. I inherently dislike ICS, but I will carry out the wishes of the Citizens.

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by cavebear
We need more discussion on this. I inherently dislike ICS, but I will carry out the wishes of the Citizens.

Well, I agree. As a general rule, I would not ICS either. I just don't see any other way to, in the time remaining, get the critical mass to compete in THIS game. Perhaps you could give an outline of another path. My vision has become too myopic, I fear.

Monk

[MrWhereItsAt]

Does it have to be ICS? Couldn't we cluster cities close together so that their radii overlap without going all the way to ICS? This is accepted as just what you should do in Civ3 if you are a serious player unless you are prepared for a much harder time.

I guess I'm swinging for a Many City Sleaze rather than an Infinite City Sleaze.

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
Does it have to be ICS? Couldn't we cluster cities close together so that their radii overlap without going all the way to ICS? This is accepted as just what you should do in Civ3 if you are a serious player unless you are prepared for a much harder time.

I guess I'm swinging for a Many City Sleaze rather than an Infinite City Sleaze.

Great name!! And this is exactly what I had in mind, but didn't know what to call it. With a roiling ball of size 7-8 cities, each pumping in 7-10 shields/turn, we will have a good base from which to take over the world.

Monk

[cavebear]

Sounds good to me. As I posted elsewhere, I sometimes overlap Specials to assure they are always in use among 2 cities. I do it in games where the cities aren't likely to all need to grow to full size. I would never do it in a Democracy (government), trade, Spaceship game.

[Bloody Monk]

I have not done this before, so I hope I get it right. If all comes through properly, the red squares are suggestions for the first three new cities, all canals. The blue squares are the next two fill in cities.

What do you think of this??

Monk

[Sparrowhawk]

I like all but the one southwest of Utica. I think that one could be even better if one square to the southeast (still a canal, less overlap with both Utica and the one Blue site). I realize it is on a shielded grassland square and I think that you lose the benefit of gaining a shield, but I still like this site slightly better then the one proposed.

Great Map though! I like it alot

[rjmatsleepers]

I like the red ones, but I'm not too sure about the blue ones. There may be good land to the south west and south east of the land we have explored.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
I like all but the one southwest of Utica. I think that one could be even better if one square to the southeast (still a canal, less overlap with both Utica and the one Blue site). I realize it is on a shielded grassland square and I think that you lose the benefit of gaining a shield, but I still like this site slightly better then the one proposed.

Great Map though! I like it alot

Thanks!! I was middling amazed it came out; but, having seen Straybow do that sort of canal propaganda for years, I thought I'd give it a go.

I am reluctant to use up a shielded grass but your modified proposal works too.

Monk

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
I like the red ones, but I'm not too sure about the blue ones. There may be good land to the south west and south east of the land we have explored.

RJM at Sleeper's

Well the blue ones are meant to fill in the area we now know. I assumed these five would be just the begining of city planting in this general area.

But, I would be reluctant to even explore to the southeast for a while yet. There is a good chance that the Suefolk live in that direction--remember Killdeer??--and I hope we don't meet anyone locally until we can defend ourselves. Our need to get Poly, then Mono is why I think that Salt van should be delivered rather than continuing its walkabout. Ditto for Apolytonia pushing out the Gold van. The extra beakers from those deliveries will get us Crooks all the faster.

Monk