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I usually find that the game situation constrains build patterns far more than any attempt to get a particular grid pattern organized. Perhaps this is a function of map type, since I've never played on a Pangaea map, which might be expected to give you the largest area uninterrupted by coastline to lay out the city plans.
In general, my first few cities are almost entirely dictated by local geography. I'll stick my first cities wherever there are useful bonus tiles to be used. If I'm only going to be using one or two tiles per city for the early parts of the game, I want to stick to using the best tiles possible. Given that there are a number of tiles you can found a city on to take advantage of a given bonus resource, you can mold this to suit your planned spacing, and mark it mentally as a temporary or permanent city (not that there is any difference in terms of what you build in the early game). Detours from this will be made to grab luxuries, strategic resources, or choke-points (or other strategic locations).
Actually, one problem I have is probably in not planning for the future enough. I usually find that having grabbed the good city spots with the first few settlers, camped out on a choke-point and a luxury or two, and my city spacing is pretty much fixed by that, and I just have to fill in the obvious gaps left when I reached for important locations to beat the AI there. I usually end up with pretty random spacing, generally in the 3-4 tile range, rather than the 'optimal 5' (probably should be called the 'aesthetic 5'). I've never really looked into whether I could plan more efficiently - look at the map, decide on a good city arrangement, and see to what extent it is possible to shift placing on the early cities to fit in with this global constraint, rather than picking the best position for the local geography. Is it better to found a city on a 'grid' spot where it only gets one bonus grassland, or to move one more (or less) space onto a hill for the defensive bonus and immediate access to two bonus grassland?
Okay, so my early cities come in three types: production cities (founded for good bonus resources), strategic cities (founded on choke-points, luxuries or strategic resources) and filler cities (to use up the rest of the land in the area I've earmarked as my empire). And, as I've said, due to geography, rivers, coastline, resources, etc. the first two classes tend to have their positions dictated by factors beyond my control, and then the filler cities have their positions determine by the locations of the gaps between the first two city types, so the option for me to plan out a regular city grid seems rather remote. But I wonder to what extent this is a function of map settings? Does a younger planer with more rapidly varying terrain force this on you where an older one with large plains allows more leeway in city spacing? Islands and narrow continents certainly constrict you, but do they do so more than a Pangaea map would? The amount of space you have before you run into neighbouring civs is also something of a factor.
I think I've said the next bit elsewhere, but at the start of the game the serious limitation on your empire is the number of population points you have. When you only have 5 pop points in your empire, you want to be working the 5 best tiles (definition of 'best' is another issue entirely). Once the REX phase comes to an end, each civ typically has its native territory marked out, and the issue is then one of maximizing the use of this territory, which means packing cities in so that as many tiles are worked as is humanly possible. This is where I like the 2/3/5 strategy. If you can put your early production and strategic cities in appropriate places (5 spaced) then you can go back and stick in filler cities with barracks only in the intervening gaps, to produce veteran units (and since everyone here seems to be a vicious warmonger, you can notice that the AI city spacing is quite convenient for this, so your conquered territories can be padded out with productive unit-factories too).
Eventually you reach the point where the new cities that you build or capture on the edge of your expanding empire are hopelessly corrupt. This is the final stage, where corruption is the limit to your empire. This is where the 5-spacing becomes truly optimal. Imagine making a map of the production from each tile of your empire, where the shields and gold generated from each tile are multiplied by the corruption percentage (well, the 'amount received percentage') of the city that works that tile. Since the OCN corruption (corruption due to number of cities, for those not up to date on acronyms
) is the dominant source of corruption, it quickly becomes apparent that you want each tile to be worked by a city as close to the palace (in terms of number of cities, more than distance) as possible. Which means having large cities, each working 21 tiles (although that isn't possible in practice). You maximize the production of your whole empire by getting rid of the small unit-factories, and having size 20-ish cities with the minimum of overlap (2 tiles). People who stick to close spacing late in the game are throwing away quite a lot of productivity, simply because each tile is being worked by a city with higher corruption than it need have. A wider spacing gives you lower corruption for any given tile, not to mention fewer cities needing factories, universities etc. to get the most use out of those tiles. The downside is the greater pollution though (although all those workers you got from disbanding your production cities can be useful here - assuming you disband by building workers and settlers).
If you never get to the point where high corruption cripples you outer cities, then the amount of saving you can make from disbanding smaller core cities is quite small though.
So, has anyone had much luck with trying to achieve the 2/3/5 spacing that allows the best in all phases. My point with all the above is that there are three different phases to the city building game - the population limited time where you plant cities in good sites, the land area limited time where you want to work all tiles available to you, and the corruption limited time, when you want mega-cities with 5 spacing. The problem I have is that almost always, my city building for the first phase precludes optimizing things for the later phases - but I'm willing to live with that since efficiency in the ancient era is much more important than late game efficiency, when often the game is just going through the motions to get the win chalked up.
In general, my first few cities are almost entirely dictated by local geography. I'll stick my first cities wherever there are useful bonus tiles to be used. If I'm only going to be using one or two tiles per city for the early parts of the game, I want to stick to using the best tiles possible. Given that there are a number of tiles you can found a city on to take advantage of a given bonus resource, you can mold this to suit your planned spacing, and mark it mentally as a temporary or permanent city (not that there is any difference in terms of what you build in the early game). Detours from this will be made to grab luxuries, strategic resources, or choke-points (or other strategic locations).
Actually, one problem I have is probably in not planning for the future enough. I usually find that having grabbed the good city spots with the first few settlers, camped out on a choke-point and a luxury or two, and my city spacing is pretty much fixed by that, and I just have to fill in the obvious gaps left when I reached for important locations to beat the AI there. I usually end up with pretty random spacing, generally in the 3-4 tile range, rather than the 'optimal 5' (probably should be called the 'aesthetic 5'). I've never really looked into whether I could plan more efficiently - look at the map, decide on a good city arrangement, and see to what extent it is possible to shift placing on the early cities to fit in with this global constraint, rather than picking the best position for the local geography. Is it better to found a city on a 'grid' spot where it only gets one bonus grassland, or to move one more (or less) space onto a hill for the defensive bonus and immediate access to two bonus grassland?
Okay, so my early cities come in three types: production cities (founded for good bonus resources), strategic cities (founded on choke-points, luxuries or strategic resources) and filler cities (to use up the rest of the land in the area I've earmarked as my empire). And, as I've said, due to geography, rivers, coastline, resources, etc. the first two classes tend to have their positions dictated by factors beyond my control, and then the filler cities have their positions determine by the locations of the gaps between the first two city types, so the option for me to plan out a regular city grid seems rather remote. But I wonder to what extent this is a function of map settings? Does a younger planer with more rapidly varying terrain force this on you where an older one with large plains allows more leeway in city spacing? Islands and narrow continents certainly constrict you, but do they do so more than a Pangaea map would? The amount of space you have before you run into neighbouring civs is also something of a factor.
I think I've said the next bit elsewhere, but at the start of the game the serious limitation on your empire is the number of population points you have. When you only have 5 pop points in your empire, you want to be working the 5 best tiles (definition of 'best' is another issue entirely). Once the REX phase comes to an end, each civ typically has its native territory marked out, and the issue is then one of maximizing the use of this territory, which means packing cities in so that as many tiles are worked as is humanly possible. This is where I like the 2/3/5 strategy. If you can put your early production and strategic cities in appropriate places (5 spaced) then you can go back and stick in filler cities with barracks only in the intervening gaps, to produce veteran units (and since everyone here seems to be a vicious warmonger, you can notice that the AI city spacing is quite convenient for this, so your conquered territories can be padded out with productive unit-factories too).
Eventually you reach the point where the new cities that you build or capture on the edge of your expanding empire are hopelessly corrupt. This is the final stage, where corruption is the limit to your empire. This is where the 5-spacing becomes truly optimal. Imagine making a map of the production from each tile of your empire, where the shields and gold generated from each tile are multiplied by the corruption percentage (well, the 'amount received percentage') of the city that works that tile. Since the OCN corruption (corruption due to number of cities, for those not up to date on acronyms
) is the dominant source of corruption, it quickly becomes apparent that you want each tile to be worked by a city as close to the palace (in terms of number of cities, more than distance) as possible. Which means having large cities, each working 21 tiles (although that isn't possible in practice). You maximize the production of your whole empire by getting rid of the small unit-factories, and having size 20-ish cities with the minimum of overlap (2 tiles). People who stick to close spacing late in the game are throwing away quite a lot of productivity, simply because each tile is being worked by a city with higher corruption than it need have. A wider spacing gives you lower corruption for any given tile, not to mention fewer cities needing factories, universities etc. to get the most use out of those tiles. The downside is the greater pollution though (although all those workers you got from disbanding your production cities can be useful here - assuming you disband by building workers and settlers).If you never get to the point where high corruption cripples you outer cities, then the amount of saving you can make from disbanding smaller core cities is quite small though.
So, has anyone had much luck with trying to achieve the 2/3/5 spacing that allows the best in all phases. My point with all the above is that there are three different phases to the city building game - the population limited time where you plant cities in good sites, the land area limited time where you want to work all tiles available to you, and the corruption limited time, when you want mega-cities with 5 spacing. The problem I have is that almost always, my city building for the first phase precludes optimizing things for the later phases - but I'm willing to live with that since efficiency in the ancient era is much more important than late game efficiency, when often the game is just going through the motions to get the win chalked up.
I'd say that's pretty insightful and very-well articulated.
It isn't worth disbanding and rebuilding (usually. If I capture the Pyramids, I might just rush workers and settlers out of some of the AI towns and replace them as I prefer).
Did someone say corruption? 
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