How many tiles between cities?

[Adalbertus]

I have left playing Civ3 (for a while at least) after 3 half-played games. And as terraforming is not as flexible as in SMAC, it is not so easily comparable. But in SMAC, when I switched from a city every 3 tiles on the diagonal to every 2 tiles, it made a reeally huge difference. On the highest level, Transcend, I used to every other early game Secret Project (=Wonder), now I miss usually only one of them. As IIRC the corruption model of Civ3 is distance based, this should give even more advantage -- but the relative ease with which you can combat unhappiness by use of luxury resources might speak against. And securing resources, and the roads to the civilisation's centre, of course is a special thing.

[cassembler]

My goal is to utilize as many good terrain squares as possible. Especially on islands, I'd rather have two cities that overlap by 3 tiles than to only have one city with three unused squares.

I like bannanas as well.