City placement redux (for the third time)

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Theseus
I just tried it (admittedly very partially) in my first effort at AU 204.

I got America...

You got the secret civ! Woo-hoo!


Dominae

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dominae
And Tanks in 2 turns is nice, but a necessity?

/Valley Girl voice on

Uh.. yeaah!

/Valley Girl voice off

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Theseus
/Valley Girl voice on

Uh.. yeaah!

/Valley Girl voice off

/Homer Simpson on

Whatever, Theseus!

/Homer Simpson off

[Theseus]

America, solely because of Ind, is just fine for me with this one (but yeah, thanks a lot buddy!).

I've also been quickly joining workers to the 'keeper' cities once I get rid of a camp, cause I've gotten so much work done so fast... a nice subtlety to the new approach.

DeepO is absolutely right about terrain. Not just good stuff, but bad as well. He's only sorta right about managing these smaller, tighter towns... the downside is that when they start getting close to their max size pre-camp-abandonment, they need very close monitoring in terms of which town / city uses which tiles. Sort of a pain in the b-tt.

But man... the power of early ICS, abandonment of camps, and pumping up your keepers with workers and even settlers...

I knew it, first in a hunch, then in SR's theory, and now in a first application. It'll only get better as more people try it and polish it.

Where's Aeson, damnit?!

[badams52]

This is getting interesting. Though I may fall more on the side of Dominae on the pruduction of tanks issue, just as a style of play.

But I have some questions on these camp cities. How large do you let them get and how do you go about disbanding them? Starvation? Rushing workers/settlers? Building settlers without growth? From my experience, waiting to disband cities isn't a quick process, so how long will it take?

My biggest fear would probably be worrying about grabbing enough land as Sir Ralph eluded to. I can see you making one maybe 2 rings if you're lucky before running into other civs, at least in most of the games that I play.

Actually, wouldn't the size of the map matter to the "best" city placement? If I was on a tiny map, I don't know if such a plan, good as it may seem, would be as useful as the 3-tile or 4-tile spacing. And it's useless when I play one of my favorites: 16 civs on a tiny map where you're the king if you get 3 cities.

[DeepO]

Theseus, you're right about smaller cities requiring more MM to get them perfect, but that's not really an argument. Most of the times you could also not micromanage, and let the governor pick tiles, it will certainly not be optimal, but comparable with 19 or 21-tile cities. So, all the MM you put in gives more efficiency... and if your not still churning out settlers and workers in all cities at the same time, you only need to set it once, and not look back unless you notice an obvious problem. If there is just one tile to pick, that tile gest picked... after building a worker, a city will grow back into it's original tile-pattern if there is no pressure from other cities to take the tile.

Even with MM, it seems to be worth it to use this more flexible pattern, even if it requires a bit more work. Again, it's a matter of pace of the game, in a PBEM, you will have plenty of time to set all workers optimally, while in huge SP games with 200 cities, nobody can be bothered with keeping all of them in perfect shape.

DeepO

[theNiceOne]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
A playable 3-tile pattern with exactly 12 tiles per city is this:

. . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . x . . .
. . x . . o . . . . .
. . . . o o o . . . x
. . . o o O o o . . .
x . . . o o o . . . .
. . . . . o . . x . .
. . . x . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . x . . . .

The x'es and the big O are cities, the small o's are the tiles dedicated to the big O city (as example).

This is exactly the pattern I've been defending and converting players to at CFC. It's interesting to see the difference in focus in this thread and city spacing threads at CFC, where most of the players seems to be using the OCS scheme.

My favourite is the above layout, as it lets all cities grow to size 12 and still has the benefit of only 2 tiles between each city for a one-turn move of defenders in case of emergency.

BTW Catt, I think its time to rename OCS from Optimal City Spacing to Open City Spacing as "optimal" is misleading in all but aestethic sense.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by badams52
But I have some questions on these camp cities. How large do you let them get and how do you go about disbanding them? Starvation? Rushing workers/settlers? Building settlers without growth? From my experience, waiting to disband cities isn't a quick process, so how long will it take?

Camps are maximum size 6 cities and get a barracks and maybe a temple as only improvements. They get the "crappier" terrain, compared with the cities, and need no food surplus after reaching size 6. In the ancient age they build spearmen, swordsmen and horsemen, in the medieval age cheaper units up to musketmen. A size 6 city with 8 production (should be not hard to achieve) can make a standard musketman in 8 turns, or a pikeman in 4.

Each permanent city gets 2 such camps not farther than 2 tiles away. After construction, the first camp gets disbanded, on the verge of the industrial age the second. They get disbanded by producing workers. Especially with the 2nd camp this should go fairly quick, since the terrain is already improved.

The first chunk of workers improves the terrain and then gets added to "their" city, to grow it quickly up to size 12. The second chunk builds railroads, a part stays and deals with pollution (along with the slaves), the other also gets added to "their" metropolis. The fact, that due to the workers the cities don't need a granary to grow quickly.

[Jawa Jocky]

I smell another AU course coming.

I agree with the need for standardized terms, and I apologize for being the person using them incorrectly so often. However I think ICS/OCS is a good name despite being technically wrong. Imagine that……Jawa prefers the acronym. Maybe the newly crowned King of the Acronym can realize his gift and come up with a better name.

Other name ideas

LCS – lost city spacing, or losing cities spacing
UCS – unbalanced city sizing
GTS – ghost town spacing

[Jawa Jocky]

FPCS – flexible population city spacing
DCS – drop city spacing
DDGCS – duck duck goose city spacing (hey I had to add dumb ones to make the others look better)

[alexman]

Let me just point out that these elaborate patterns look great when there is no terrain attached to them, but in practice, the coastline and other terrain features always force you to do something different. This is actually a good thing. It makes you think about your choices, instead of building cities like a robot.

Having said that, I like Sir Ralph's proposed scheme. Early-game expansion power combined with late-game efficiency: every builder's dream!

I have only one concern: Building improvements in just the first ring of those permenant cities will be painfully slow because of corruption. For example, the 'o' city five tiles away from the capital will have about 56% corruption before a courthouse (46% with a commercial civ ). For a permenant city that is supposed to build almost all improvements, that will be very slow progress, and keep in mind that this is just in the first ring of permenant cities around the capital!

My favored approach is to build my core with a tight spacing, and not to worry about what happens after the ancient age. The ideal scanario is that by the middle ages I get a leader and move my palace to an AI core that has loose spacing, which is more suitable for building expensive improvements and units.

[Catt]

Originally posted by alexman
Let me just point out that these elaborate patterns look great when there is no terrain attached to them, but in practice, the coastline and other terrain features always force you to do something different. This is actually a good thing. It makes you think about your choices, instead of building cities like a robot.

Totally agree.

(And most of what I find fun about Civ is dealing with unique circumstances. The other big part that I find fun is deatiled discussions on "breaking the game" by deciphering the most brutally efficient gameplay methods (such as this thread offers), even if I don't subsequently use them ).

My favored approach is to build my core with a tight spacing, and not to worry about what happens after the ancient age. The ideal scanario is that by the middle ages I get a leader and move my palace to an AI core that has loose spacing, which is more suitable for building expensive improvements and units.

That's how I tend to play my SP games as well -- 3-tile spacing (with the occasional 4-tile where called for and the very rare 2-tile) for the native core, and take the AI's city placement largely as found, which is quite loose and tends towards OCP or even greater. Though I plan on exploring DDGCS.

Originally posted by theNiceOne
BTW Catt, I think its time to rename OCS from Optimal City Spacing to Open City Spacing as "optimal" is misleading in all but aestethic sense.

I agree in principle, although I fear there is far too much baggage associated with OCP as "optimal" to do more than create mild confusion.

Catt

[Arrian]

Catt, Dominae, others...

I think 'tis I who used different spacing terminology and gave rise to Catt's post. I tend to count the tiles between cities, but not the city tiles.

Having said that, everyone else does it the other way, and so I will use that method.

Hence, I'm an incorrigible 4 to 5 tile spacer. Can't help it. Occasionally, in special circumstances due to terrain, I will drop to 3 tile spacing. I vaguely remember building a city with only 1 tile between it and another ONCE, to steal a luxury.

That said, I agree that calling my method "Optimal" is misleading. My city spacing is the one part of my gameplay that I know of that is clearly sub-optimal, and I accept that.

Why aim for Metros? Why use wider spacing? So that when you have 1/2 the world under your control, you have an efficient, aesthetically pleasing empire. I cannot provide a better reason.

-Arrian, perfectionist warmonger

[Catt]

Originally posted by Arrian
I think 'tis I who used different spacing terminology and gave rise to Catt's post. I tend to count the tiles between cities, but not the city tiles.

I had no one in mind at all (not you or JJ) -- I just remember instances of confusion in past threads over "dense" versus "loose" and what exactly "3-tile spacing" means.

My city spacing is the one part of my gameplay that I know of that is clearly sub-optimal, and I accept that.

Nothing wrong with that, IMHO. I suspect we're in the minority though (but not a huge minority ) in playing in a manner we know to be sub-optimal bercause we have more fun that way. At least a minority on the Strat Forum.

I am intrigued by this thread though -- I only occasionally build "camps" that I know I will disband later. I suspect the PBEM'ers here will be using variants of SR's build plan to crush each other under foot (if they're not doing so already, that is )

Catt

[BRC]

Fellas, this thread is fabolous.

Why aim for Metros? Why use wider spacing? So that when you have 1/2 the world under your control, you have an efficient, aesthetically pleasing empire. I cannot provide a better reason.

This is my basic feeling too. After I have reached parity and feel that I am no longer in danger, it seems that my tendencies shift me to build a better civilization, instead of just trying to end the game. A bunch of cities become a pain to keep track of. It is also disappointing to have cities producing 1 shield a turn, no matter what you do, because you have too many cities. The key is to not have tiles that will be unused.

You guys have made this game a lot more interesting for me. I was getting upset with having to deal with so many cities, half of which were useless. I was thinking about this ICS to OCP transition, but I didn't really know how to make it efficient.

Good Work!!