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**vmxa1** · February 26, 2003, 19:10

I agree with your hypothesis on city placement.
You are correct about the extra runs in baseball, but the thing that needs to be added is that you will get one extra at bat for your 1-3 hitters in many games. This should payoff. I always batted clean up until I realized that I was not getting enough at bats. I toyed with movng to lead off, but I would not get enough RBI opportunities, so I settled on 3rd. Optimal AB and RBI, this is what you want for you top hitter, if they are a power hitter. Clean is reserved for those that can only swing for the fence and not be relied upon to get a high average. This maximizes their chance to payoff, as they willl have the most chance to come to the plate with runners in scoring position.
BTW, I no longer follow baseball since the strike about two strikes ago.

**Catt** · February 26, 2003, 19:46

Re: City Placement, meaningless?

Originally posted by badams52
Taking this idea to civ, it seems to me, and I could be wrong, but given a set amount of land area, the exact placement of your cities, including # of cities, does little to determine your overall power and production, as long as you are working all the tiles within the given area.

If my theory is correct, then city placement, though very fun to argue and analyze, has little to no effect on winning or losing a game of civ.

I think your hypothesis might hold up in a scenario with a pre-made empire. But in a game that progresses from a start of only 1 settler and 1 worker (maybe a scout too), early city placement decisions seem to me to be very important. A snapshot comparison in 1500 AD does not convey the relative power, over time, of the development choices made previously.

Imagine a hypothetical empire that contains 7 cities. The capitol is on "decent" terrain. The three western cities are on fabulous terrain -- lots of rivers, cows, etc. The three eastern cities are on terrible terrain - lots of desert. The growth of the empire as a whole is radically different if the three western cities are settled before or after the three eastern cities. Even if the end result empire is an identical 7 cities, at any given point in the game one would assume that the empire which settled westerly first would be stronger and more advanced than the city that settled easterly first (cities -- i.e. production centers -- come online faster if better terrain is settled before weaker terrain).

If the above makes sense, extrapolate that to a city placing scheme that (1) ignores the fact that workable tiles will expand only with the investment of shields in cultural buildings, (2) settling on a river gives a free 100-shield growth facilitator (aqueduct), and (3) settling according to a grid, but ignoring specific terrain factors, means that some tiles may not be worked, even though an empire with the same outside boundaries but different city placement will be able to utilize the same tiles (best example that comes to mind is settling near mountain ranges -- how to make sure that the mountains get worked in the long run).

It seems to me that you're setting up a pretty tough hypothesis -- for me, taking it to its extreme, your hypothesis rests on the mistaken view that a shield of production power (or one gold piece) in 1500 AD is of equal value to a shield of productive power (or one gold) in 1500 BC. It's hard to say how much more valuable the early resource is to the later, but I think it's tough to make the case that there isn't a difference in value, biased towards early resources.

Catt

**nbarclay** · February 26, 2003, 19:47

Re: City Placement, meaningless?

Originally posted by badams52
as long as you are working all the tiles within the given area.

That's the key, but if cities are spaced too loosely, you don't get to work all the tiles in the area until Sanitation. Similarly, if you don't take maximum advantage of coast, the area you work is smaller (at least in terms of ability to generate commerce). I follow no particular geometric pattern in placing my cities, but I like making sure few tiles (especially land tiles) are wasted in my original lands when my cities reach size 12.

In MP, geometry can potentially be a little more important so cities can support each other militarily. But making maximum use of the land (including being able to use the best tiles early) is still king.

**Master Zen** · February 27, 2003, 01:52

ln Emperor/Deity, city placement is VERY important in the early rexing phase. A poor city placement will leave you at a very large disadvantage to hopefull beat the AI after it expands.

Try some games using popular placement styles like 3-tile or Ralphing and you'll see that it is much more successful than using no placement style whatsoever.

**Artifex** · February 27, 2003, 03:46

I got a question what do you do on Emperor level when you capture an empire like the Russians that have good cities but they are all placed loose with 4 tiles between each city. Just keep them or place cities in between them? Or can you just keep them as is?

**nbarclay** · February 27, 2003, 04:26

The closer you get to Sanitation, the less sense it makes to add cities unless they take advantage of tiles the conquered AI wasted. When REXing or conquering territory early in the ancient era, a relatively tight spacing can make a lot of sense because you have a long time to take advantage of the tight spacing before hospitals shift the advantage to looser spacings. But as the game progresses, you have less and less time to take advantage of tighter spacing before hospitals shift the advantage in favor of a looser spacing.

Personally, I rarely build additional cities in a conquered area unless I'm trying to take advantage of tiles the previous owner wasted. You can build more than that if you want to, but you certainly shouldn't feel like you have to.

Nathan

**cumi** · February 27, 2003, 04:42

Re: City Placement, meaningless?

Originally posted by badams52
If my theory is correct, then city placement, though very fun to argue and analyze, has little to no effect on winning or losing a game of civ.

Maybe if there's enough interest, someone could test this theory...

I think every single turn has an effect on winning or loosing the game. If there is a formula or a "perfect strategy" the game would not be interesting.

I was playing Warcraft II before a 4-5 years and there was a perfect or optimal strategy for the beginning of the game (I think, for the first 10 steps or so), like:

1.) Build a peasant, send him to mine a gold.
2.) again.
3.) with the third start to build a farm
4.) send the fourth to harvest trees
5.) start building a barrack with the 2 peasant e.t.c

If someone did not played like these steps describe, were weaker after the same number of steps.

For Civ3 I still didn't found anything like this. And I was searching a lot! Now I am beginning to think, that there is no optimal strategy on the beginning...(like warior, warior, settler, wonder building order in your first city.

The reason, why I think the beginning of the game is very important factor for winning is, that I think this game has a kind of "exponensial" game curve. So if you have a weaker start, later you will be much more weaker then others, unless some miracle happens.

So I think a city placement is one of the effects, that decides the beginning of the game. And the beginning of the game decides, what will happen later.

Let's take a look at the city placement again:

if between your cities are 5 tiles (insted of for example 3), we can easily calculate how much more turns your wrokers need to connect two cities. If you continue like this, you will have to build additional workers. If so, you will be able to start building a wonder a few turns later, in the city, that has a 1 pop smaller size. You have to wait with building a settler also couple of turns. Later, your wonder is a few turns late comparing to your opponents. You have to forget more and more wonders. The avalanche is started and you feel you are loosing a game....

This was a very simple (stupid) example, how you can loose a game because of city placement. I think the CP is not soooo important, but stil can have an effect on your game...

Have a nice day,

cheers

cumi

**vmxa1** · February 27, 2003, 14:06

Working over here boss.
Da Boo

**badams52** · February 27, 2003, 14:34

Originally posted by Master Zen

ln Emperor/Deity, city placement is VERY important in the early rexing phase. A poor city placement will leave you at a very large disadvantage to hopefull beat the AI after it expands.

Try some games using popular placement styles like 3-tile or Ralphing and you'll see that it is much more successful than using no placement style whatsoever.

Hmmm, I was thinking between different styles, such as OCP, 3-Tile, 4-tile, but now that you mention it, as long as all tiles within the borders are worked I could make a very asymetric or unaesthetic style of city placement and have similar production values as well.

Originally posted by Catt

Imagine a hypothetical empire that contains 7 cities. The capitol is on "decent" terrain. The three western cities are on fabulous terrain -- lots of rivers, cows, etc. The three eastern cities are on terrible terrain - lots of desert. The growth of the empire as a whole is radically different if the three western cities are settled before or after the three eastern cities. Even if the end result empire is an identical 7 cities, at any given point in the game one would assume that the empire which settled westerly first would be stronger and more advanced than the city that settled easterly first (cities -- i.e. production centers -- come online faster if better terrain is settled before weaker terrain).

Actually, when I thought up the theory, I wasn't thinking in terms of proper vs. improper REXing. I think that if you REX correctly and choose the best city places for 3-tile or OCP, then your net result after hospitals will be similar.

I emphasize after hospitals cause in OCP, you won't be working as much land at 3-tile till you reach hospitals.

Part of the reason I think of it this way is that (as Aeson proved) games are winable even with absolutely lousy starting locations. What makes this so is the AIs inability to defend it's territory well, and going to war, though more difficult with OCP, will in most cases net you with more land.

Actually that's a big assumption of my theory that I failed to mention, that defeciencies in land and city placement are easily rectified by building armies and taking cities from your hapless victims. I call it the great equalizer: war.

I've had starting places much worse than the AI, and even though the AI had more and better cities, I still conquered his empire. If the AI knew how to attack better, how to build a better army, or If I was playing a human, then I should have had no chance, but as it happened, he was dead from the beginning, even after he absorbed the closest empire to himself.

**badams52** · February 27, 2003, 14:45

Re: Re: City Placement, meaningless?

Originally posted by nbarclay

That's the key, but if cities are spaced too loosely, you don't get to work all the tiles in the area until Sanitation. Similarly, if you don't take maximum advantage of coast, the area you work is smaller (at least in terms of ability to generate commerce). I follow no particular geometric pattern in placing my cities, but I like making sure few tiles (especially land tiles) are wasted in my original lands when my cities reach size 12.

Hmm this is certainly true. If you had the same land, but not the same workable tiles, then the productions wouldn't be similar given the one with more workable land (more cities) would our produce the other. I first was thinking of this since I noticed that when I had similar land when I tested Ralphing v. 3-Tile (which both work all available land before hospitals) that the total shield and gold production from both empires was almost identical.

In MP, geometry can potentially be a little more important so cities can support each other militarily. But making maximum use of the land (including being able to use the best tiles early) is still king.

Actaully, I purposefully mentioned this for SP only since for many people employing the strats found here, winning an SP game is almost a foregone conclusion because of easy to win wars, tech whoring, pre-buiding wonders, and all the advantages the player has over the AI.

But in MP, I think REXing and city placement will really make a large difference in the outcome of the game cause your advantages over the AI are gone.

**badams52** · February 27, 2003, 14:52

Originally posted by vmxa1
I agree with your hypothesis on city placement.
You are correct about the extra runs in baseball, but the thing that needs to be added is that you will get one extra at bat for your 1-3 hitters in many games. This should payoff. I always batted clean up until I realized that I was not getting enough at bats. I toyed with movng to lead off, but I would not get enough RBI opportunities, so I settled on 3rd. Optimal AB and RBI, this is what you want for you top hitter, if they are a power hitter. Clean is reserved for those that can only swing for the fence and not be relied upon to get a high average. This maximizes their chance to payoff, as they willl have the most chance to come to the plate with runners in scoring position.
BTW, I no longer follow baseball since the strike about two strikes ago.

There's also the theory that the optimal baseball order is to order your batters starting with the highest OBP+SLG (I forgot what it's called for the moment) and go down from there because that will get your best hitters up the most number of times during the course of a season. That being said, I still stand by my other comment that the "optimal" baseball lineup will net you 5-10 runs more a season (162 games) which is not as much of a factor as who you put in the lineup.

**Mountain Sage** · February 28, 2003, 11:15

Badams52,

Sorry, I don't play Baseball, just CivIII

I think that city placement is extremely important at the very beginning of the game. Take the extreme case: your Capitol is build on a floodplain. How many more Settlers, Workers and Warriors could you crank out in, let's say, 100 turns that if it was build on a desert tile?

In fact, the city placement of the first 6-8 cities will affect the future of your game tremendously. Faster REX, more military units, improvements build more quickly etc.

Aftrerwards, you can make more 'mistakes', or let's say you can be more 'picky'. For instance, how many times did you build a city on a (almost) useless spot (like a plains tile sourronded only by mountains), just to prevent another Civ to build there, instead of on a juicy spot on a river? That city will be useless for a long time.

The size of the map is also important: on a Tiny map each city, and therefore each city placement, is a question of life and death (or so I have been yold). On a Huge map, you can 'waste' a couple of turn going for the 'best' spot.

The size of your empire is also important. On a Huge map, you'll have easily 30+ cities. Again, a 'perfect' city placement for the core cities is essential, but for the 31st?

Then, at last, the level you are playing becomes important, you can make more mistakes at Chieftain than at Deity, or Overgod.

In the long run, after 4'000 years, a 1 shield miss from your Capitol is not so important (it will still produce 60 or 70 anyway by now), specially in respect of your 50+ empire, but remember that you carried this miss for 200 turns, therefore you lost half a Wonder (more or less).

Finally, I totally agree that NOT placing the right terrain improvements AND not working them is the final sin which will make your empire go under sooner than later.

Well, have a nice week-en all of you and happy Civving

**pedrojedi** · February 28, 2003, 15:03

Cumi's statement is very good. Actually, I think it is, at least for me, the chief argument for OCP. Timing in early game is very important.

if between your cities are 5 tiles (insted of for example 3), we can easily calculate how much more turns your wrokers need to connect two cities. If you continue like this, you will have to build additional workers. If so, you will be able to start building a wonder a few turns later, in the city, that has a 1 pop smaller size. You have to wait with building a settler also couple of turns. Later, your wonder is a few turns late comparing to your opponents. You have to forget more and more wonders. The avalanche is started and you feel you are loosing a game....

I usually do not follow many guiding for building cities and use every tile possible. I like to build cities on good spots with plenty of shields and lots of food, specially if there's a river about. This works for me in the first 7-8 cities. After that, the next cities will almost always be on less desirable space, because I'm not building them to necessarily be good cities, but because I want to secure a bottleneck, a good space to start a campaign against another civ or just to be a beach head. Even though I end up developing these cities, I recognize that some of them should have only the necessary improvements to survive and be protected (temple, barracks, walls, and a marketplace - people like buying and give money to me!

)

I know distance is all at early game, but I just like to have all tiles for all cities later on, that's why I use 4-tile distance between cities. That's just a bad habit, hehehe.

Sometimes I don't respect these distances - a good example are tundra and desert cities, which do not have a great advantage in being with lots of space, hence the practical 3-tile distance. They are for practical means just Myciv huts.

**badams52** · March 1, 2003, 14:20

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
Badams52,

I think that city placement is extremely important at the very beginning of the game. Take the extreme case: your Capitol is build on a floodplain. How many more Settlers, Workers and Warriors could you crank out in, let's say, 100 turns that if it was build on a desert tile?

I certainly agree with you that city placement in the early going is very important, just whether you use a 3-tile or OCP style is less important to winning than how much land you get, which is more of a product of wars and cultural boundaries.

The size of your empire is also important. On a Huge map, you'll have easily 30+ cities. Again, a 'perfect' city placement for the core cities is essential, but for the 31st?

This I would disagree with. 'Perfect' city placement is not important as long as you are working all your territory. The size of your core depends upon distance and amount of cities. Alexman who's studied corruption would be the best to tell us whether a 3-tile pattern near your capital outproduces an OCP pattern, but I suggest that the net result for your empire in terms of production and gold are the same regardless.

In the long run, after 4'000 years, a 1 shield miss from your Capitol is not so important (it will still produce 60 or 70 anyway by now), specially in respect of your 50+ empire, but remember that you carried this miss for 200 turns, therefore you lost half a Wonder (more or less).

Though a 1 shield miss might be important, it isn't as important as the amount of shields you lose when a improvement or unit is made.

Take building a swordsman which costs 30 production point. A city with 8 production build in 4 turns with 2 wasted shields (unless you micromanage tremendously)....here's a chart:

Code:

[FONT=courier new]  Production   Turns to build Wasted Shields
 ------------ ---------------- -------------
    15                2               0
    14                3              12
    13                3               9
    12                3               6
    11                3               3
    10                3               0
     9                4               6
     8                4               2
     7                5               5
     6                5               0
     5                6               0
     4                7               2
     3               10               0
     2               15               0
     1               30               0[/font]

So the difference in the lower production cities is more obvious, but move up from 6 to 7 and you end up with the same time but wasting 5 sheilds. And if I inclued 10-14, all those would have the same turns (3) while each progressively wastes more shields.

I think the wasted shields you get from a city is more due to the remainder of the cost divided by the production than the lack of having a few shilds missing.

Edit: formatting

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