City Placement

[BigFurryMonster]

What are your thougts on City Placement? By this, I mean the number of grid spaces between our cities.

I think 2 spaces in between is a minimum, but we must consider this. It might not be very good in the long run, but it can gain us a (huge) advantage in the short run. Due to lower corruption, of course, but also easier defense possibilities.

Maybe we should 'backfill' our land from our borders?

All depending on the terrain and resources, of course.

[WarriorPoet]

BFM, it all depends, doesn't it?

Seriously, I often place cities close together, especially due to terrain, but also for strategic reasons.

I believe initial expansion should be near the capital, and then far flung towards future resources/potential borders.

Sometimes cities need to be only two spaces apart, because of the shield/food bonus locations, and rivers...

I vote for a two space minimum, with the added sentiments expressed above, also in support of what BFM also stated.

[Jon Shafer]

Our cities should be fairly tightly packed, but not extremely so. Benefits are both early and later, compared to dense packing or perfect spaced.

We should definitely aim for getting the good city spots though first, even if they're not close by. Just don't take it overboard.

[WarriorPoet]

Yes, exactly!

[BigFurryMonster]

OK. I am currently calculating the optimal growth speed :-)

[Zero]

When cities are packed densely together, it may have a Negative strategic purposein Civ III. Using temporary cities to push back cultural border is a popular strategy to do. When cities are packed together, The cultural border between captured city and adjacent city will be far shorter due to the guarantee of adjacent squares control of city owner(rare exception) as well as the actual distance being closer.

[WarriorPoet]

Yes, I can foresee the Interior and the Military being firmly bonded to the hip so to speak...So much of our strategies are so intimately entwined.

[BigFurryMonster]

Originally posted by Calc II
When cities are packed densely together, it may have a Negative strategic purposein Civ III. Using temporary cities to push back cultural border is a popular strategy to do. When cities are packed together, The cultural border between captured city and adjacent city will be far shorter due to the guarantee of adjacent squares control of city owner(rare exception) as well as the actual distance being closer.

Could you rephrase that? I don't think I quite understand...

[WarriorPoet]

BFM, I believe that he is trying to say that your city placement needs to also consider optimizing the growth/size of your cultural borders.

Conversely, the tighter you pack in your cities the less benefit you get from cultural expansion.

However, I would like to add that cultural expansion is realy only a big concern in two areas:
1) Resource acquisition-If you can't build a city in a difficult piece of terrain (jungles, desert, mountains) or if it wouldn't be profitable to do so, then a better option may be to depend on cultural expansion (don't want to be more than 2 squares away) to acquire the resource.
2) Maintaining your borders

Remember and plan on using culture border synergy. Adjacent cities will link up cultural borders and give you additional coverage than you would have from isolated cities.

[Zero]

Originally posted by BigFurryMonster


Could you rephrase that? I don't think I quite understand...

Ok BFM, to make scenario simple, lets say we built a city after every square like this, B representing City.

B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

This is as tight a pattern you can pack a city, since you have to have one square space difference between civ. If that is the case and one city is captured: (bold one)

B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0 B 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

That city is one square away from adjacent cities. We can't enjoy the advantage of territorial border as much if the enemy has easier time entering and exiting it. We want to enjoy our road network to flank and rapidly meet up with our enemy as much as we can, while our enemy experiences slow sluggish movements. In this scenario, enemy can enter terrain attack city and exit in one turn with 3 move unit. Units with 2 movement can launch an attack as well, leaving them stuck in our territory if they dont suceed in destroying all unit in the square they are attacking.

Now we are not gonna pack the cities that much, but you have to be aware the more you pack, more suceptible the adjacent cities are to rapid assault of mobile troops once the city next to it falls.

If I can only post an attachment, I can post a screen shot of example, instead of drawing Bs and Os... but no, my attachment is still not working!

[CiverDan]

I'm personally not a fan or borg-style city placing, as it can hurt you later in the game unless you are basically winning to go into all out war, which a don't think would be smart against humam players. I think 3 squares would be better.