City Placement: Always place cities on Gold Resources when found?

[Artifex]

whats best?

A. Place city on gold resource at 5 squares away of nearest city thus wasting 3-4 patches of useful grassland.

B. Place city on gold resource at 5 squares away and place another city between the 5 squares to utilize the grassland squares and create a suburb. Making cities in area very tightly packed.

C. Don't place city on the gold hill resource and place within your normal 3-4 square distance and just use gold in your city radius.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Sounds kinda specific - do you have a screenshot? I'd say C in most cases, unless the world is small and you won't reach the optimal number of cities. In that case, plop down two cities.

[Nakar Gabab]

I wouldn't build on the gold hill. Just road it and drop a mine. You'll get more shields AND lots of gold.

[Solver]

BTW, IIRC, Vel suggests that you found cities on gold whenever possible.

[Slax]

Don't forget your capitol city square gets a minimum of 4 commerce no matter where it is placed.

[DrFell]

Yes, never found your capital on a gold square.

[Velociryx]

If it was me, I'd go with the tight city spacing, 'burb approach, but personally, I like the benefits of placing cities right on top of gold mines, for a couple of reasons:

* Gold mines are often found in hills....that gives your city a defensive bonus.

* Placing the city ON the goldmine gives you the commerce boost, while enabling your worker to work a juicy field tile for quicker growth. Doing it the other way (mining the hill containing the gold, sure, you could eventually get the benefit from the mine, but you'd have to wait till your city grew, and if we're talking about the early game, then mostly you'll want your workers focusing on mined shielded grassland, not mines in hills, gold or no.

-=Vel=-

[Nakar Gabab]

Well, one must concede that, Vel. I was thinking of defensive bonuses and the like, but I didn't consider that as important as giving up workable grassland tiles. In that circumstance, I guess you have to prioritize.

If you really need cash, build it on the hill. It'll be a safer town with more money to burn. If you want a fast-growing city and don't need the gold IMMEDIATELY, I would probably tweak it over to incorporate the fertile tiles and just road/mine the hill later in the game.

But it depends. Are you giving up grassland for plains? That's no big deal. But if you're giving up grassland for desert or mountains... that's something to think over.

[Solver]

While I agree with Nakar that this tends to be different, I've seen that taking cities in Hills is tough. Like, if you only got Archers, you can't kill Spearmen at a nice ratio. And if there's a Greek placing cities in hills, you just can't eliminate him.

[Nakar Gabab]

Well again, that's situational. If you have cavalry and riflemen and/or infantry aren't around, the hill isn't gonna help much. If you have spearmen/pikemen or hoplites against horsemen and knights, it's a wise idea. Depends on when in the game you're working with.

It also depends on the terrain around the hill. If the city is going to be nestled in mountains, it might not be a good idea to build there - you get a defensive bonus, but so does the attacking force that marches across the mountains. Counter-attacking suddenly becomes a pain.

On the other hand, an isolated hilly patch with a gold resource (or three) is definitely tempting for ancient-era commerce and defense, but not all that special later in the game when a city can be hooked up and prepped to go rather quickly. 3-4 pre-worked grassland tiles can spring a city up to speed VERY quickly, and in a democracy, that might outstrip the gold resource.

Use your best judgment I guess, and when in doubt, go for it.

[Arrian]

I consider building on a gold mine a bit of a waste except for certain situations.

If the gold mine happens to be the square upon which I wanted to build my city to space it properly, then I probably will build on it. Building one of my first few cities on a gold mine is also nice, as it conveys a relatively big commerce boost early on, while allowing the city to grow normally.

In general, however, I think it's a waste. I want the bonus shields from a mine later on. With regard to not mining hills in the early game (as Vel mentioned), this is usually true, but particularly if you're playing an Industrious civ it's not a very big deal to mine one hill.

-Arrian