The Quaint Old Village Approach

[Barchan]

I was thinking about this a bit, but since my vision hasn't really recovered yet after lasik surgery, I haven't had a chance to try it. But perhaps those of you who are sighted can give it a go....

Anyway, as a matter of personal taste, I tend to prefer larger mega-cities that can work every available tile in the fat X over a cluster of smaller 8-13 pop cities that run out of places to support more people. Of course, building your initial cities with such extravagant size in mind is not necessarily the most efficient way to expand, since it’ll be millennia (literally!) before you’ll be able to grow your cities so large. Therefore, packing in cities closer than the 3-square-perfect-X-mesh pattern seems to be a crucial element of successful early growth and domination.

Before 1.29f, you were pretty much stuck with whatever cities you owned unless you starved them down or razed them. Although it’s now easier to simply abandon them, doing so will cause you to lose the resident population and, more importantly, any ancient culture “cash cows” you’ve built in them. After all, the temple you built in 3700BC generates a boatload more culture *each turn* than does the new-fangled one you’ve built in your replacement mega-city site across the river. Even for those who dismiss culture with a haughty snort, you've got to have a lot of culture to defend against potential flips and keep your borders growing. The older a lost culture-generator is, the greater the impact on your overall culture production.

So that’s the problem, as I see it. You can build your cities optimally for the early game (i.e., with 6-8 squares of prime real estate) or the late game (minimal overlap), but not both (well, you can sort of mix and match, but that’s not really optimal for anything). If you build for the early game, you can remove and rebuild later, but you’ll be destroying critical culture generators in the process. Also, for the sentimental builders, it just might be too painful to abandon your ancient palace and move into some gaudy new mansion in Capital City.

I thought about the real world for a little bit (gasp!), and found that not all of the big metropolises in the world grew from ancient cities, and not all the ancient cities were paved over to make way for the new ones. I thought of the “Quaint Old Village” that almost every country seems to have, something tucked away on the outskirts of a sprawling megalopolis that serves as a reminder of days gone by. You know, the little town of 1,000 people with a 500-year old church or the crumbling remains of an ancient coliseum.

So then I thought that perhaps this approach would work well in CivIII. Build your initial cities packed in tight to maximize the use of prime tiles and allow for greater initial expansion (as well laying foundations for ancient culture-producing structures). As time goes by and your empire grows larger, you can begin “migrating” workers and settlers away from some of the smaller “ancient” cities to the bright lights and busy streets of newer metropolises. Once you get the city down to 1 or 2 pop points, stabilize its growth (which could easily be done with one or two of the least productive tiles available), set it to produce wealth (or some other non-critical, long-term project) and let it serve as source of national identity and pride (as well as a nice tourist attraction). The surrounding metropolises will be able to work all the other good tiles and become production and resource powerhouses, while the Quaint Old Villages are still cranking out the culture.

Anyway, that’s my $.02 on the matter. I can’t wait to be able to see again so I can try it out, but if anyone else gets a chance to (or has used this strategy before), feedback’s appreciated.

[jabberwockysr]

I personally tend to keep my larger number of medium cities for the culture, but I can see how that would be the best way to keep pollution down while keeping the culture... gonna have to try it this weekend.

I'd thought that lasik was supposed to have a very short recovery period.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by jabberwockysr
I'd thought that lasik was supposed to have a very short recovery period.

Supposed to, yes.

[jshelr]

You are quite right that a preference for large cities in the middle and later portions of the game should not govern how you build them at the start. I think you should completely focus on what's best for the early period at the start. What's best early are cities close together. You are not stuck with these villages forever. Not only can you disband unneeded cities to create room for large city growth later on, but the workers you produce in the process come in very handy heading toward RR. Meantime, the AI is building "optimally" spaced cities. Go and borrow a few. Jump your palace to the middle of a nice AI city array as your FP gets finished in the old core. At this point, you will be a large civ made up of large cities. Enjoy.

By the way, you should plan from the start not to do culture builds in citites you are going to abandon. For me, that includes the capital, since the CivIII gods conspire against me ever getting a leader to build the FP and I have to keep the palace jump available as a precaution. I don't have much trouble with early flips as the compact city build keeps your towns close to the capital and the neighbor towns are usually outliers far from their capital and not full of culture.

[jabberwockysr]

Originally posted by jshelr
By the way, you should plan from the start not to do culture builds in citites you are going to abandon.

The point of Barchan's strategy is that you have the huge, ongoing culture production from the old cities that you're making into small towns, and if you farm out enough workers (and set the last citizen to scientist or taxman), it won't be taking much at all from your new cities. The negative impact is from the fact that the city still counts towards corruption due to number of cities, so it's mainly a question of whether you value the huge culture you get from old cities that have only one specialist citizen, or the slightly lower corruption from having fewer cities.

If you're going for a cultural win, I'd say it's almost never worthwhile to abandon any of the old cities, but if you need that little bit of production boost for a war...

[jshelr]

I think his idea is innovative and thoughtful. For sure, it makes lots of sense to carefully consider the tradeoff of culture for space that this thread highlights before abandoning cities. The tradeoff is that close packed cities really need the squares liberated by abandoning some cities completely to grow large. I fully agree that once you've built ancient culture buildings, you should hang on to them for dear life.

Trouble is, even the quaint old village will often take up too much needed space, IMO.

That's why I think that, if you are going to build culture early, it seems best to build it in a town you want to grow, and these buildings also are good at keeping the pop in large cities happy, a feature we don't want to give up either.

[SanPellegrino]

The old problem: space or time. I never found a satisfying solution for this, because I hate to abandon cities, so I will give it a try...

b.t.w.: English is not my native language, so what is lasik?

[Konquest02]

Originally posted by SanPellegrino

b.t.w.: English is not my native language, so what is lasik?

It's an eye laser surgery to correct myopia

--Kon--

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by jshelr
Trouble is, even the quaint old village will often take up too much needed space, IMO.

If you change all the citizens to specialists, the village will take up exactly one tile. Is that really so bad?

If you take it to that extreme, the village will produce exactly 2 food, the amount always produced by the city square itself. That's enough to support exactly 1 specialist citizen. (For this reason, a city can never be starved out of existence.) If you have more than that, they'll starve, so you should probably build workers and/or settlers before you do this.

And that's the most extreme case. How often are all of the tiles in the quaint old village's radius even available to other cities? Even if they are, the surrounding cities may not have the population to work them all, or even require those tiles for optimal production. Let the QOV's inhabitants work the land "not good enough" for the big cities; you can move them off of it later, if needed.

You may want to sell off some of the buildings in the QOV that are no longer paying for themselves. Granaries definitely, harbors possibly (if other cities have access to all the available water tiles), factories almost certainly, barracks maybe, etc. But the loss of one tile shouldn't be a big deal for any of the surrounging cities. Well, OK, one of them might be surrounded by hills and mountains and need arable (did I spell that right?) land in order to grow. But this is the exception and not the rule.

The major considerations are the village's impact on corruption and whether the upkeep of those old buildings is worth the culture they produce.

[SanPellegrino]

thx Kon, but what is myopia?

JohnM brought up a very good point, the impact of too many cities on corruption, didn't thought about that. So I think such villages can only be used sparely.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by SanPellegrino
thx Kon, but what is myopia?

Near-sightedness. If you can't see things at a distance without glasses, you're myopic.

My vision is slowly improving, BTW, and so I'm able to test this strategy a bit this weekend.

Originally posted by SanPellegrino
JohnM brought up a very good point, the impact of too many cities on corruption, didn't thought about that. So I think such villages can only be used sparely.

I hadn't thought too much about corruption, mostly due to the fact that by the time this strategy really would kick into place (think post-industrial, post-sanitation), your empire will already be large enough that you're past the optimal number of cities anyway. Plus, you’ve got a lot of improvements and governments at your disposal to compensate for the increased corruption, so it may be possible to efficiently trade off some corruption for culture. I guess my current game won't be a really good test of this, though, since as the Indians I have a commercial bonus.

As far as the upkeep cost being worth the culture production of an ancient temple, I'd have to say it would be entirely worth it for two reasons. One is that the points produced are actually cheaper, point for point, than those churned out by newer temples, and the other is that the points produced cannot be replaced, again point for point, without building newer temples at a greater than 1:1 ratio.

Clearly, maximum culture production is key for a cultural victory, but I’d posit it’s a critical component of any victory, including (and perhaps especially) conquest. Many have frequently bemoaned the dreaded “culture flip” and the fact that the AI treats players with utter contempt in international relations. Maintaining a culture edge will help to minimize both of these problems, and unless you are successful in razing the other guy’s ancient temples at the same time you’re abandoning yours, the AI will begin to gain ground culturally. This can lead to shifting borders, decreased international standing and, of course, losing cities to culture flips. So all I’m saying is that keeping an eye on culture production is essential to a sound victory strategy, and being able to keep older cities with serious culture-generating buildings in them will help avoid the possibility of a “culture gap”.

But I would have to acknowledge that keeping the quaint little villages (QLVs) in your empire’s core is going to hamper the development of newer towns on the fringe if you’re over the optimum number of cities. Given that, the question would have to be what do you expect to get from those distant cities and is it worth trying to build anything there in the first place? Keep in mind that the only reason these interior cities are being made QLVs is to make room for a larger, more productive mega-city, so is it more worthwhile to have the interior mega-city or the fringe colony?

[bbaws]

Sort of a variation on the theme here. The early land grab works best for me if I concentrate on coherent borders. Frequently this is at the expense of a lot of squares that end up in my cultural borders but can't be worked by any city. that's when I start building QOV's backfilling the gaps. This is way before sanitation so I end up with a lot of size 12 cities and few unworked squares. Once hospitals get built, generally in the first wave cities as I go for the prime real estate first, the QOVs churn out settlers and workers as quick as the metropolii need the space.
Leaving cracks in the heartland then backfilling generally leaves me with about a fifth of my cities that have very low constant production and a steady pop with 2-3 specialists which is great in the modern age as I usually task them to CM production interspersed with workers and settlers. With the numbers of squares unworked by the population pre-hospital it doesn't matter much that a lot of squares can't be worked at all for a period up till the land grab is over. It quickly turns round to being able to work all the tiles. I always try to stick to the golden rule of not actually building another city in a city's workable radius.

[bbaws]

Just noticed on my current game that a QOV with all improvements up to the research lab which has outlived its usefulness can be transformed into a tactical nuke in one turn. NICE. Saves a lot of money on upkeep too.

[DaveMcW]

If you plan ahead you can have closely packed cities in the early game AND full-radius cities in the late game.

To get the full radius you need to build cities 5 tiles apart, where C=city and x=empty space:
CxxxxCxxxxC

In the ancient era, build cities 2 or 3 tiles apart so half of them fit into your modern era plan:
CxCxxCxxCxC

When you get hospitals you can abandon the cities you don't need. Don't bother to build improvements in them, just add a barracks and make them into unit factories. If your unit factories have a lot of bonus food nearby you can add a granary and pop rush units, then abandon them when you get out of despotism.

[ducki]

The thing about
CxxxxCxxxxC
placement is, looking at it this way, it's one dimensional, and only half the story.

You need to look at
CxxxxXxxxxC
XxxxxXxxxxX
XxuuxXxuuxX
XxxxxXxxxxX
CxxxxCxxxxC


If I remember correctly (which I might not) there are 4 squares there that will never be workable - denoted by the "u" pairs.

What's wrong with having a 1-2 pop city there doing nothing but maintaining a 1000-2000 year old temple and a 1000 year old cathedral or library?

Yes, corruption might come into play, but it might not. In my most recent game, I've only just gotten to Knights and already had 3 cities from one civ flip to me, 1 from another, and 2 from another. My culture's insane and it's a lot easier for me to let the AI build cities while I build Archers-Swordsmen-Knights or Wonders and let them flip to me.

Anyway, the point is, in the
CxxxxCxxxxC
template, you're only looking at a straight line, which does no good if you don't look at the whole block.
CxxxxXxxxxC
XxxxxXxxxxX
XxuuxXxuuxX
XxxxxXxxxxX
CxxxxCxxxxC

(I hope the formatting is at least mostly understandable - if not, I'll try to knock something out in a paint program.)