City Spacing

[DrSpike]

Generally I agree wholeheartedly. In defence of the perfectionist 5 spacers if you have bags of land to expand into it can work. The optimal number of cities in civ3 is pretty fixed, and it you can reach that number with 5 spacing then fine. But most of the time you can't, especially if you play above Monarch. Add in the fact that it's easier to defend tigher empires, and the fact that any disadvantage from tighter spacing comes pretty late in the game and 5 spacing looks a little unnecessary.

[dikwhit]

spacing on cities i find to be much more situation related than as a constant number. Generally all things being equal 5 spacing is nice but 4 spaces offset 1 resulting in 2 overlaps is almost as good.... the overlapping doesnt become an issue even if all cities are set up this way until after hospitals are built. Various situations arise that make spacing at different intervals much more beneficial:
1)resource control no explanation necessary
2)cultural- if going for flipping proximity in spacing to your own cities is irrelevant the closer to AI city more important than spacing to your own
3)stopping ICS- well not stopping but "controlling" to some degree... if your spacing on cities must be altered (bigger or smaller) to slow down the uberexpansion of AI by all means alter it.
There are other situations I'm missing I'm sure but generally while its nice to have an "organized" map building on the always 5 space theory leaves an unworked area 2x2 on each four city "square"