city spacing paradigms

[Dimension]

I've seen several threads which mention city spacing. Some people space their cities so that every city has access to the full 20-square radius. A lot of people try to keep cities spaced apart 3 squares diagonally in every direction, giving each city 16 workable square (4 overlap), and leaving some unworkable squares between cities. There is a thread (which I can't find now), about using all size-6 cities, which has its merits. There is another thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40280

where Nakar says it would be a good idea to make many small cities to win by culture, and mengo76 gives several examples of tessellating city placement patterns.

City placement is an important aspect of the game, but there is a problem with all discussions of it I've seen. Most people either don't worry about it (certainly not optimal), or they try to stick to a specific pattern. Let's look at a standard map with all standard settings (except raging hordes is on):

[Dimension]

The player has a good starting spot on a river with a shielded grassland, and will be able to work cattle as soon as his culture reaches 10. Using the simplest size-6 city pattern that tessellates, you could fit many cities in this area:

[Dimension]

This is a great pattern that gives you seven cities in a very small area. There is only one road separating cities horizontally, so the turn a settler is made, a new city is founded, and then you only need one more tile of road to branch out to the north or south. The problem is that you don't want your capitol only able to work six squares. With no corruption, it would be nice to make your capitol large and productive, able to build a few wonders and possibly even give you a cultural win. Since you have a river next to your capitol, you would have no problem being fully productive at size 12 if you got the Sistine Chapel and a few luxuries. So, reconsidering our placement, here we have the simplest size-12 city pattern that tessellates:

[Dimension]

Here we see that seven cities spaces you out pretty far if you want them all to be size 12 eventually, and there is some wasted space on the right side of the continent. Obviously you don't need to start founding cities in the middle of mountain ranges in the early game when there is still room right next to you. The best thing to do is to use mixed spacing.

[Dimension]

That way you get big cities, and then small cities to fill in the spaces. Most people are going to do something like this automatically, but some specific thought on the subject would be nice. Of course, I might just make the left part of this map two large cities, but that's not the point

[Arrian]

Here's what I would do, assuming you found your capitol where the start position is (and I would):

2nd city gets built 1 square southwest of the northern cow.
3rd city gets built 1 square northeast of the iron.
4th city gets built either on the forest south of the ivory or on the ivory, I'm not sure
5 city gets built down to the south, near the furs... can't see the rest of the land so I don't know exactly

-Arrian

[ktaek]

Currently going with the city & suburbs placement style myself. 2 main cities of max size, your capital and another city with good shield potential designated to house the forbidden palace. Build exactly 6 suburbs of size 9-12 in 2 rings around the 2 main cities (one time i expanded like mad building 14 or so cities, the corruption made it all but impossible to even construct the forbidden palace).

The lowering of corruption in the suburbs was incredible using the 2 ring formation. And of course the 2 main cities with almost no corruption is nice as well.

The main problem is i don't know if this will give you enough cities to effectively outbuild the AI's for the duration of the game. At final count i have about 12ish in terms of cities, mainly because there are always some geographic irregularities that stop you from fully populating 2 rings around your 2 capitals.

The problem with adding more cities to the placement is that each city causes yet more corruption. With just 8 cities, a city only 9 tiles away from my capital is halved in production due to corruption on all standard settings/Republic (regent). 9 tiles is not very far!!

It also ends up not taking up enough landmass on standard settings. Less landmass = more landmass for AI = badness.

I'm considering spreading out full throttle landgrab, and just giving away all the cities outside of my pattern to an AI civ that is *very* far away, just so my nearest neighbor wont get the land. More people to trade luxuries with is never bad.

[Aeson]

Seeing the whole map kinda makes it easy to make an optimal placement pattern. Building from a blind start I usually would build where I was placed. In such a case, Arrian's suggestion sounds about right. I would move southeast one tile if starting with foreknowlege of the map though. As you can see I like to keep the number of cities down, while claiming the most land with minimal overlap.

[Arrian]

Aeson, nice layout... that would be pretty optimal. Of course, your point about knowing the map is pretty important. I also am unlikely to move my starting settler because 1) I usually don't know that moving it will help - if I'm an expanionist I do, and 2) that's wasting a turn, and at the start of the game 1 turn can be crucial.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

I agree that waiting to build your first city is usually a bad idea. One of the only times I do is when a gold hill is right next to me, I will build my city on the hill. This gives very good commerce at the start of the game, and can halve the time needed for the first few researched advances.

Sometimes with an expansionist Civ, the scout finds a city site a space or two away that just can't be passed up as well. With an expansionist Civ on this map, I would have sent my scout north to the mountain, and so would have missed out on seeing the coastline to the east. If the mountain wasn't there, it would just be a 25% chance that I would see it, so still unlikely.

[DaveV]

The much-maligned ICSer's perspective

I've been having pretty good success with ICS, especially when I have good food at the start. I don't stick slavishly to a pattern, but try to put cities where they will improve the terrain the most. Building a city on desert or tundra converts a worthless square to a good one; building on plains gives free irrigation; building on non-shield grassland gives free mining; building on forest/jungle gives free clearing (without the 10-shield bonus from forest, but I can live with that). I like to build on hills because I'd rather have the square yield two food and one shield than one food and two shields (after mining). I try never to build on shield grassland.

[Arrian]

I have definitely been paying attention to building on marginal terrain if I can, like DaveV says. Building on tundra or desert makes sense, provided the surrounding terrain is better. I don't really do patterns, but I do kinda "see" the city radius' in my head, and try not to overlap. I accept the waste this sometimes creates, with squares left unused for the entire game. Heh, my best game (scorewise) so far had a bunch of unused land right near my capitol. If I played that game again, I would probably have built a couple of cities to use them, but it all worked out just fine. I guess that makes me the anti-ICSer, huh?

I try to avoid building on hills (unless it's a gold hill for one of my early cities, of course), because I want the 1 food/4 shields with RR's later in the game.

-Arrian

[Trdi]

Almost exactly like Arrian: 4th city SW from Ivory and 5th W from the northern Hamster. So you don't like spacing 6 size cities, too? I hate that. In Civ 2 I used to win with 5 cities (3 is maximum on regent), I had to make major changes in my strategy for Civ3, but I still have only 25 cities in 1000 AD. But these cities are 18-20 sized cities.
2 things I care:
Building on marginal terrain, too
Strategical sites - so I prevent AI building cities on "my" islands/continents. I build libraries and temples like crazy.

[barefootbadass]

The mix of 'size 12' and 'size 6' patterns works best, keep in mind that the cities on the coast that are drawn as 'size 6' actually can grow by using the sea. Of course this is something you would do in game without thinking, but it is worth noting when comparing the merits of different patterns. I always go for as many sea squares as I can(doing appoximately 12 spacing inland).