Why build farther out than immediately around your Capital??

[barefootbadass]

Re: "Optimal" number of cities

Originally posted by mengo76
In the editing tool you will see there is an "optimal" number of cities defined for each map size. As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), this means the number of cities you can have before you start getting 1shield/1gold cities no matter how close to your capital they are.

Question is: is there any way of getting more than 1shield/1gold out fo these "excess" cities? Specialists is one way as described by several ppl.

How does a courthouse or police station affect such cities? I haven't paid attention, but I would guess that they wouldn't do anything. Ironikinit seems to imply that courthouses dont give you more shields but give you more gold, but i'm not sure if he's talking about "excess" cities or just cities that are totally corrupt because they are very far away.

And the Marquis mentioned the FP - how does that affect "excess" cities? Does building the FP double the "optimal" number of cities you can have? If not, all it does is cluster your best cities around two centers instead of one (but these will be slightly less corrupt because they are on average closer to the capital or FP than before).

I don't think the increase in corruption in new cities is that sharp once you cross the optimum number of cities, although it is noticable.

FP I think doubles or at least increases(maybe more with greater distance between FP and Palace) optimal number of cities. And of course it gives you a new center.

[Jaybe]

Hawkx9, the trick is to let go of your "perfectionism". Play out a game to the end, just for the 'adventure' of it. Be OKAY with totally corrupt cities (this took some time for me too). If they are not in danger of culture defection then they serve you even if they are rioting (worst case scenario).

Ya know, I have recently read on this forum of some people playing Civ3 more as an adventure game than to get a high score. I relate to that somewhat. Who knows what kind of high adventure (triumphs, tragedies, and anxieties) may arise in the next dozens of turns? The hardest part of this game is often in the later eras when it may be just turn after turn of 'boring' caretaking -- nothing happening but taking care of pollution, workers, and the 'end turn' button.

Note: My games generally last 6 weeks to 2 months or so, on a huge map. I am currently on my fourth game since game launch.

[Willem]

Re: Re: "Optimal" number of cities

Originally posted by barefootbadass



FP I think doubles or at least increases(maybe more with greater distance between FP and Palace) optimal number of cities. And of course it gives you a new center.

No the FP doesn't alter your optimal cities, that number is fixed. It only reduces the corruption in cities around it, just like the Palace does.

[ktaek]

Depends on your strategy for winning.

With a culture victory every town is another opportunity to start making temples/libraries & generating culture points and start pushing your borders out.

Military, far placed cities are necessary as staging bases for assaults.

Science victory, don't build out there. You don't need anything beyond your core commerce producers.

But in any case, one of the more important functions of landgrab is denial. A city location may be too corrupted for your own use, but it could be very functional for the AI. That's bad. Grab, stick a temple in it to start generating culture, and garrison it.

If you're so hard up on cash you can't afford to garrison the outer cities, give them away to another civ, preferably someone who could start a war with the closer civ. Just make sure that land is doing nothing useful for anyone, if it can't do anything useful for you (terrible philosophy, isn't it?).

[Marquis de Sodaq]

ship chains!

One way to defend those outlying 1-shield towns is to never build units there. Only (rush) build culture buildings or barracks, depending on the situation. Use ship chains to sail in scores of bad guys from your core cities. They can't all be building wonders and universities - use them to pump out units. 8 core cities can fill a galleon with pikemen and knights every turn. Load them on ships and sail to the marches. After a while, you can have the FP make the area very important to your empire.

On a marla map game as France, I had an easy time filling south america with frenchies. The Aztecs made it as far as the amazon, the rest was mine. Each town was defended by several units. As a republic bringing in ~1200 gold per turn, rush building improvements was just a matter of budgeting. The ship chain was also handy for pouring in piles of workers with nothing more to do in unified europe. While settling and expanding into the continent was expensive - maybe 12,000 gold for rushbuying - I ended up with a hugely productive continent with luxuries and strategic resources to trade away. Land that would otherwise be Aztec and American.

[Calvin Vu]

Re: Why build farther out than immediately around your Capital??

One use I have for those 1-shield cities is to build workers and reserve settlers (in case I need to raze some enemy cities and build new ones). It takes a while to build them but at least I don't lose population points in my more productive cities. Since it takes just as long for those cities to build a worker as to gain one population point, they can be a steady source of workers. BTW, those workers are yours so you can add them to the population of your productive cities as well.

[DaXX]

yes i think this has already been mentioned but definitely force yourself to play until the end of the game. even if you're getting trounced, you learn invaluable information by struggling to survive.

as far as expansion goes, you must reverse all of your views. built EVERYWHERE take EVERY resource take EVERY good square before the enemy. build improvements cause you know things will eventually make money

fight tooth and nail, even in the face of total defeat, a single settler on a single boat can start a whole new civ somewhere else!! never give up!

[Ironikinit]

Hardcore.