Where to place Wittlich Ost

[HarryH]

South of the cow or on the hill.

Both can be reached by galley from Wittlich in one turn.

South of cow:

• No defensive benefit.
• Does not provide double protection of the straight.
• More adjacent land tiles means it is harder for an enemy to blockade the city.
• Better production capability and able to grow right from the start.
• Less overlapping tilies with Wittlich.

On hill:

• Defensive benefit of hill.
• Coupled with Wittlich it provides double protection of the straight (once we build coastal fortresses and/or put bombard type units in the cities).
• Only two land tiles makes it easy for an enemy to blockade the city.
• Low production capability and slow growth until the border expands. Either it stays in the low production/growth state for a while or we will need to spend resources rushing things.
• Only two tiles from Wittlich so there are lots of overlapping tiles.

[HarryH]

I think the biggest difference between the two is the trade off between the defensive benefit and the production/growth capability.

I would hate to lose a city when the war comes. As long as it doesn't come right away we will have a little time to put up defenses (more cities?) on what appear to be the hills to the west and northwest.

We are behind other teams and falling farther behind as we go. We need a productive city, not one that will be a drain on our resources for a while.

My vote is for south of the cow.

[Beta]

Thanks for the poll Harry. Much needed given recent discussion. I do see a third option though - which is west of the cow - on the northen most hill of that string of hills we can see. It will benefit from the cows tile, and whatever is on the other side of the hills.

I am still leaning towards the hill first - build walls - get a worker over - build a road to the next site. Have a spearman do a bit of a local walk around to pick out the best terrain.

And I still like the benefit of controlliing the strait - even at the cost of a low growth city. I know this is a benefit we could still claim via a city there in 15-20 turns.

So - still thinking about it.

[argha]

Strategically putting across the chanel would be great. But, would would the other civs think, I think that this would be an open invitation for invasion, they would be foolish to let us have two cities across from each other dividing the strait with two potentail bombards each pass through. I have found that building too close to other cities to be dis-advantageous to civ growth, the key i find to growth is to have large cities that can support multiple taxmen/scientists. This helps especially later in the game.

[Dis]

I would still like to build on a hill. I'd have to check the screenshots again. I don't think other civs can complain too loudly at us building on both sides of the straight. If they aren't at war with us, it wont' matter

I would like to get 2 cities up quickly over there. The first defensive city, and a city that can immediately utilize the cows. I'm ok with these 2 cities sharing tiles. For defensive purposes we want them to be close.

[Beta]

Yup - makes sense. And that's why I like the second city on the hill west of the cows.

[mjmacy]

I say first city on hill top . second city on tile west of Cow.

[Wittlich]

I too voted for the hill (I know, no big surpirise! )

I am not worried about Wittlich Ost having poor growth - That's not why it's there. It will be there as a "fortress" of sorts (Yes, the first thing for its build queue should be walls). The other cities after Wittlich Ost is emplaced can and should concentrate on growth - along with some sort of defense.

[Wittlich]

Double Post

[HarryH]

I don't mind some overlap but I do like my cities to grow. We need to get some cities up to size 10 or 12 using land tiles so they can be powerful builders. Otherwise it takes to long to build anything. On the hill Ost will take 20 turns to grow to size 2 and it will remain there for at least 30 turns after that, unless we spend money to rush a building and we have other uses for that same money. Lots of little cities that are poor producers will increase our corruption rate and may cost us more than they contribute.

Last night when I was reviewing the save I noticed our power and culture graph is shrinking compared to the other civs. We need cities that will help us, not stagnate for 50 turns.

[mjmacy]

I agree with Witt. the next city is more a fortress than a city. But the ones after this will be along the lines that you talk about Harry

[statusperfect]

South of cow.

Production = Military units. We might be better off defending ourselves with a productive city than a tactically well-placed city.

[Dis]

hmm you may have a point with that.

We can probalby get city walls up quicker with the other city. How about the other hills site that can utilzie the cows? I'll have to check the screen shots again.

sure would be nice if we could post them here

[Eli]

On the hill.

This city is only a foothold, we'll build productive ones later.

[mjmacy]

the city is there to control the channel, and start a foothold, nothing else.