City Placement Strategy

[notyoueither]

For the purposes of this topic spacing should refer to the number of blank tiles between cities. ie, it does not include the tile of either of the cities in the measurement.

Hense 4 spacing would see c x x x x c as c being a city and each x being a blank tile available for improvement(s).

[DeepO]

As there is little chance we will get to hospitals, 4 spacing seems a waste. My choice would be an adaptive 3 spacing, so that cities can have 12 worked tiles each without problems.

And adaptive, in that this is no fixed pattern, but can vary a little to go for resources faster, to block other civs, to build inbetween conquered cities, and things like that.

DeepO

[notyoueither]

The Benefits of 2 and 3 Spacing in MP.

It may not please some people aesthetically, but crowded cities have major benefits in MP.

I have been experimenting with the capitol having 2 cities with 2 spacing and the rest with 3 (distances to cap). This reduces corruption for the initial build period, makes each city easier to defend, and results in more cities getting the benefits of a close capitol. The combination can result in a late ancient power house ready to take on larger threats than could be handeled otherwise.

Cities after the first ring would then use 3 spacing for the most part, except where 2 spacing could squeeze in an extra city or two in difficult terrain or on coast lines.

[alva]

I agree that there will be no need for +12 cities.
(damned, looks like this isn't going to be debate afterall )

but crowded cities have major benefits in MP.

I assume you mean 'no' major benefits

[DeepO]

Yeah.. I too was thinking on the 2 space paradigm, the problem of which is you can't really make all your cities 2 apart. But it has a lot of advantages military, and diplomatically: with 2 spaces in between, troops can move from city to city in one turn, thus unseen from the outside. And you can shuffle defenders: move 1 defender to a border city, move another one to the now undefended city, move a third one to the next, etc.

I would strongly look out for rivers, as these can mess the shuffling up in the early game, and make our 3 space cities close to rivers (with the added advantage they don't need aquaducts). This if there are going to be rivers closeby, of course.

DeepO

[Randolph]

My perfectionistic tendencies be damned, close cities is the way to go... I'll have to look into it to see how close (I can't bring myself to make close cities in SP, one reason why I'm not a top grade SP player)

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by alva848
I assume you mean 'no' major benefits

Oops. I suppose that is open to two meanings. I was referring to crowds of cities, not crowds of people in cities.

Yes, DeepO the 2 spacing is good in some places, but I tried an empire entirely based on it and found it difficult to get enough workable tiles.

Of course, I tried it because I was stuck in very difficult terrain with not very much space. A lot of desert and jungle outside of my core of 10 or so grasslands and 10 or so plains. I would say I got the worst starting spot out of 8 (easily).

In my small space I did build the mightiest empire though. Boy did I make an impact when the coiled spring sprung and the knights poored forth to swamp my competitors.

[DeepO]

Well, we should always take terrain and situation into account, so if we see a human civ we can block, and go for an AI on other side, I would use 3 spacing on the AI side (secrecy is the least of my concerns there), and try 2 space for the human. Also, if we have enough food and little open territory, using intermediate cities can be done as well: make cities that are only meant to gro to size 2 before they build workers, spears, or settlers. This can be very powerful, but in SP games it is an underused tactic as you normally can just build it 3 space apart, and take another AI city if you need more room.

But I too like at least half of our cities to be able to grow to size 12.

DeepO

[Meshelic]

Never tried any of the city spacing ideas presented here, I always tried to maximize the number of workable tiles in each city, with as little overlapping as possible.

But your comments on better defensive city spacing DeepO really got me thinking.
That's a reason i'm not an economist. I do well in SP mode, but online I've got nothing on you guys.

[FrustratedPoet]

I agree that a city having any more than 12 workable tiles is pointless. Our cities will never reach size 13.

2 or 3 spacing (whatever is best in the situation) gets my vote.

[Arrian]

Yeah, as much as I'm a perfectionist type in SP (mostly 4 tile spacing, some 3), I totally agree we should crowd our cities more, because Hospitals just ain't gonna happen.

I suggest mostly 3-tile spacing, with modifications for terrain, of course. I think 2 is too little in most cases. NYE has experience here, though, so I trust his judgement.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

I think we should try to get as close as we can to this pattern:

        a
      a a a
    a a O a a b
    c a a a b b b
  c c c a b b O b b
c c O c c d b b b
  c c c d d d b
    c d d O d d
        d d d
          d

"O" being the cities and "a", "b", "c", "d" the tiles worked at.

Benefits:

• Each city has 12 tiles to work with and will not be hurt by the overlaps till Medicine.
• Each city can be reached from a number of adjacent cities in one turn of a one-move defender (with roads, of course). This could be very important.

[DeepO]

Very good layout, Sir Ralph... it is what I was looking for: defense, and still the 12 tiles per city.

There are of course exceptions here: some of the terrain won't be fertile enough, and in some cases your a,b,c and d's will be mixed because all the a's would be food tiles, most of the b tiles hills, etc.
We should be able to shift cities a little: those 12 tiles can also be reached when the city is moved one position to either direction (but this will create defense problems)

DeepO

[Meshelic]

DeepO has a point....

So the question seems to be do we sacrifice our defensive posture to take advantage of better terrain, or do we sacrifice better terrain for increased defensive capabilities?

We still don't know our geography yet. If it's all grasslands and plains then this should be no problem, but if we're in very hilly terrain with deserts wouldn't that present this strategy with some operational problems?

Just a thought. Good work on the chart Sir Ralph, all this is making alot more sense to me.

[DeepO]

Meshelic, SR posted to be as close as possible to that layout, so of course tile restrictions might apply. There is no point in giving up a cow, just to be able to defend our selves better... but even then, we could generally keep each city close to other cities (just not all of them) to have that advantage. Again, closer to a human border needs more defense, closer to an AI doesn't have such rigid demands.

As to terrain: those 12 tiles SR has coloured for one city do not restrict overlap: you could excange an 'a' and a 'b' without running into problems at all, this was more what I had in mind with my previous post.

DeepO