Size DOES Matter!

[Harovan]

Originally posted by LordAzreal
Also, there's less free units supported under monarchy and communism. Remember that a metropolis under monarchy and communism supports 8 units, while a city only supports four. Pack your settlements too tightly, and they won't even make it to become cities, and hence only support 2 units each.

If I pack my settlements tightest (2-apart in every direction), each settlement has 4 tiles (the city tile and 3 extra) and will probably remain a town. A metropolis can control 20-21 tiles and supports 8 units. On the same 20-21 tiles I can place 5 towns that support 2 units each, making 10.

[Zachriel]

Purists<-----0----->Borgs

Somwhere in the middle of the spectrum, in a slightly different plane perhaps, is the "natural" expansion, which accounts for the local geography; some towns close, some farther away, hugging rivers, taking the best lands, contesting other lands.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


If I pack my settlements tightest (2-apart in every direction), each settlement has 4 tiles (the city tile and 3 extra) and will probably remain a town. A metropolis can control 20-21 tiles and supports 8 units. On the same 20-21 tiles I can place 5 towns that support 2 units each, making 10.

Why 20-21? All you need for a metropolis is 13. If someone averages 15 tiles per metropolis or less, that's more unit support per tile than even the densest pack.

Nathan

[Jethro83]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


If I pack my settlements tightest (2-apart in every direction), each settlement has 4 tiles (the city tile and 3 extra) and will probably remain a town. A metropolis can control 20-21 tiles and supports 8 units. On the same 20-21 tiles I can place 5 towns that support 2 units each, making 10.

How many units do you garrison in each of these towns? As I said before, that approach is a problem, since I tend to place an absolute minimum of 3 units in every city's garrison (since that is also the limit of units usable as police under monarchy), regardless of size. If I have a few metropolises (even if they're only size 13), each one can support the three defensive units I place in each one, as well as five more offensive units. If I were to try packing five towns into that same space, sure I'd have a total support of 10, but with three units in each town, I'd need to support 15 units, and that's just defensive units.

I don't mind a little bit of overlap, so long as there are enough food-producing tiles usable by each settlement to reach size 13.

[dawidge]

Bear in mind that closely-packed cities do not require as many defenders per city (I usually average 2-per for most of the game, including wartime). When a portion of your empire is threatened, you can ripple defenders into place in one turn in any age (rivers should be carefully crossed until Engineering).

[Harovan]

Originally posted by LordAzreal
How many units do you garrison in each of these towns? As I said before, that approach is a problem, since I tend to place an absolute minimum of 3 units in every city's garrison (since that is also the limit of units usable as police under monarchy), regardless of size.

I don't build that tight. My post was an "IF" case. Generally, I defend my cities with 1 defender, border cities may have more. If I own my own continent, interior cities are often undefended. Well... at least in single player . I avoid Monarchy and Communism (and prolongued wars), so police is not an issue.

[King of Rasslin]

This thread looks like a clone of my "proper city placement" thread!!!

J/K. Actually, gj Vel on explaining things a little more clearly than I did. I always make cities as close as possible to each other to reduce corruption. However, I might get rid of some cities by the industrial age so I won't have to make so many factories. I use the borg strat to get culture and troops early on but I switch to purist later on, like around the late middle ages or early industrial.

This switch from early borg to late purist is good for me because:

#1- I make banks and universities late. Because I don't want to pay a ton in maintenance later on, I disband a few cities by the time I plan to stop my middle age wars. I make workers with my cities I don't need and use them to clean up the pollution that will come soon.

#2- Production needs change. I would rather make 20 tanks quickly than 100 slowly. As units get more expensive, the purists gain more power. Although, because of shield waste and making more shields than a unit costs, the borg will always have a productive edge over the purists. I think the flexibility and speed of purists would be more useful as units get more expensive.

#3- Food. Cities can't break size 6 early in the game. It is very late in the game by the time they can break size 12. You should go borg when you are restricted in size and gradually advance as aquaducts and hospitials become available to you. Although the game is yours by the time you are making the hospitals That's why borg is so important, especially early on. The borg have the advantage of faster growth, however. Having twice as many cities amounts to having twice as much growth. It takes too long to grow a super city, even with granaries.

#4- Defence. You go borg early on to protect your cities! Sprawling empires have a hard time directing troops. However, railroads come with the industrial age. At this point, you can get away with sprawling super cities because your armies can "teleport" to a hot spot instantly! Use railroads liberally when they are available.

#5- Improvement costs. Well, this is the same as unit costs. But you get the idea. Making 10 factories in 10 super cities is easier than making 25 factories in midsize cities. This is the same as units.

So, there you have my take on the matter. However, I did succeed in staying borg in one of my games. 25 factories are very hard to make, but I had saved a lot of gold and had leader rushed the Hoover Dam. I became very, very powerful by using the Hoover Dam to make 25 fast hydro plants.

One thing you must remember is to make your border cities first, then "fill in" accordingly. A common borg mistake is to make your cities close together at the start of the game. Then they wonder why they don't have enough resources! Make border cities first to slow AI expansion, then go borg. This insures that you will have the resources you need to wage war. Borg rule.

[Theseus]

First, to dexters:

"The Goal" applied to Civ3?

[Theseus]

Second, GREAT thread. Vel, you gotta knack for getting the discussion going.

I have a thesis on this whole topic:

There are (or were... I'll get back to that) 3 types of players:

* Perfect Builders: 21 tiles per city, goddamnit.

* Borg: New concept, specific to Civ3... Aeson and Sir Ralph come to mind (no insult guys, I know you're more sophisticated than that, but Aeson's monster civ, and Sir Ralph's first mini-tourney are indelible).

* Flex Builders.

I'm the last, I think. Actually, most of us are becoming that... the game demands it.

Early cities: pack'em in. Take advantage of resources, rivers, flood plains, hills, etc.

Maybe you keep all those core cities, maybe not. As time goes on, spread out a little, taking advantage of the increase in territory you get from your early cities.

Maybe you want to abut a neighboring AI civ, and steal a resource through location. Maybe you want a chokepoint, or a forward military base.

Flexibility: As Vel says, read the game. There are times to Borg, there are times to be perfect. There are times to be both.

[Theseus]

Oops, sorry, didn't finish the thought.

I think there is still a lot of behavior left over from Civ2 and other like games.

Flames notwithstanding, Civ3 is significantly different and more complex / demanding than anything that at least I have seen before.

Vel, for example, broke apart the basic strats for standard settings... but stray from there, and all of a sudden there are factors and nuances that REQUIRE changes in approach.

I like watching what Aeson does... where does his cold game fit in the city spacing spectrum? Does the concept even apply?

[vulture]

It seems to me that the best approach changes significantly under different circumstances. In the early game, you set down a few cities. At this stage you can forget about optimal use of your land, in my opinion. If you have 5 cities working a total of 15 tiles, it doesn't really matter how close together those tiles are, except for corruption issues. In terms of using your land efficiently, it doesn't matter so much whether you build at 3, 4, 5 or (God forbid) 6 spaces. As long as you have no strong constraints on available room, then is doesn't make any difference. The important issues are corruption (possibly significant) and using good tiles (more important in my opinion). I will quite cheerfully build my initial cities 6 or 7 tiles apart if there is a really tempting site somewhere with a few good tiles. If you only get to work 10 tiles early on in the game, you want to work the 10 best that you can (unless they're far enough away that corruption is really an issue). Sometimes that will mean packing the cities in, if (as in the German mini-tourney game) the amount of useful land is seriously limited.

When your expansion runs up against other civs (or the coastline), then is the time that you gain from building close together. Simply because you can't go around building cities wherever you want to without causing wars, so you have to pack cities together. The issue here is no longer 'I have 5 cities and am working 15 tiles', but 'my empire has 300 tiles, and I want to work as many of them as I can'. This is obviously done by packing your cities in so that as many useful squares as possible are being used.

The last stage is after you've conquered enough territory (and built your FP) such that new cities you build/conquer on the periphery are massively corrupt. Now you want to try and minimise the corruption on as many worked tiles as possible. The optimal solution is to have your city spacing such that your core cities are all size 20 and have no overlap (you can in principle use 21 out of every 23 tiles if you do this (or size 18 cities using every tile with 2 overlap is also possible on theory)). Consider a tile a certain distance away from your capital or FP. If you use a more dense than optimal build of cities, that tile is worked by a city with the same (more or less) distance corruption but worse no. of cities corruption so it has more corruption than the optimal layout. More widely spaced cities give you tiles worked with the same no. of cities corruption but worse distance corruption (and wasted space in your empire).

Rearranging the positions of all your cities is obviously not practical. The best solution as it appears to me is to try and build cities at close to the purist approach in the early game, going for good production tiles. When you can't expand freely any more, put down small cities through your core to make optimal use of the tiles their. And when you get past 1.5x the optimal number of cities (or 3x with a well placed FP) and can build hospitals then start disbanding the small cities to try and work more tiles with lower corruption.

Plans may change subject to game conditions...

[Arrian]

I'm trying. Really trying. But I always end up looking at the map and seeing 3-4 tiles (mostly 4) between my cities (as in 1-2 tiles overlap maximum). I'll have to force Aeson's concept of "temp" cities on myself. That's a good compromise, as you can later remove them.

On the other hand, I just about never raze enemy cities, and the AI is no purist. Therefore, my second core area (forbidden) is built with overlap. So I guess that pushes me a little bit toward the "borg" style.

I also tend to be less picky about city spacing when I'm building highly corrupt cities far away from my palace or fp. These cities may well become productive once I switch goverments, buy courthouses, and get WLTKD going, but for a good long while they just sit producing 1 shield/turn.

I suspect that I've been getting away with a non-efficient strategy because I've been playing on Monarch. I think Emperor is going to necessitate a more calculated look at things.

-Arrian the purist holdout.

[King of Rasslin]

Some AIs are more purist than others. I have noticed that the Babylonians have plenty of space between their cities and the Zulu have their cities packed very close to each other.

[King of Rasslin]

Respectful bump for this excellent thread.

[Cort Haus]

Nice bump, KoR - I missed this one before.

My two-shields-worth :

I tend to find that river & resource-access (if available) strongly influences my choice of city placement. Apply industrial worker-power to cities on rivers, and the gold & science quickly come pouring in. I've just researched my way to a end-of ancient era tech lead with 1000G in the kitty (monarch) with this as priority, whilst fighting a long-term defensive (at first) then offensive campaign.

For a builder play-style (< emp) there are two benefits to wide-spacing with culture to secure territory. The first is the long-term resource access (gotta get some desert/tundra/jungle) and the second is ROP's. Peaceful terrain leaders can scoop maybe 20-40G from each Civ every 20 turns whilst maintaining good relations.