City Placement Scenario

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Dominae
On Master Zen's map, I would put #10 as #2. With a start like that, a Granary is a must, which means the Wheat tile will go to waste every three turns (4+4+4=12, but only 10 Food required to grow with a Granary). That extra Food is really useful in early growth. Food should always be prioritized early on, regardless of whether pure REX is the goal. Bonus Grasslands are fine tiles but not as good as bonus Food.

Edit: I'm wondering why Master Zen prioritized site 2 at all. It's not River-adjacent, does not have access to a bonus Food tile, and competes with the capital for Bonus Grassland tiles. It would probably be the last of the cities I build in that "ring" at ~equal distance around the capital.


Dominae

The reason I prioritized #2 was becuase of the forest and the bonus grasses. My 2nd city usually doubles a a military camp/granary site. First as military, I like to rush a barracks for a few quick units if possible for a ultra-ultra-early archer rush along with city 3. So, capital becomes settler pump, City 2 becomes military city until city 3 is up and running, then switches to settler pumping with a granary (if possible helped by a forest chop). If an early war takes a bit too long then perhaps I'd wait for a better city spot or switch once 2 camps are in place.

Mind you if I knew I was safe at the start I'd go with the 2 quick granaries and would have instead built the #2 city at #8 instead. But you should know this is a GoW Dtrategy thread where we're all paranoid mother****ers...

The placement I outlined would be in the event of a "normal paranoia" mode. In a "heavy paranoia" mode (say 2 close neighbors) I'd build the 2 camps first and have 3 camps very quickly for a massive archer rush. (good lord, I'm sounding like Tom Ridge here...)

[cumi]

My approach

Hi,

here is, how would I place my cities (most probably).

The white boxies are the core, productive cities, that would be responsible for building military, wonders etc.

The gray cities will be my second core cities with high corruption, responsible for building workers (in the beginning at least).

Usually, I build one of the second core cities earlier, than the first cities are all founded, because of the workers...

BTW, I used the numbers totally randomly...

[cumi]

...cities 2,4,6 and 9 are on river. That's nice, they will not need aqeducts.

Are there any suggestions, how could be "possible" to found more cities on rivers? Would it be worth?

City 9 is a kind of "watchtower" on the north-east. Most probably I would continue after city 11 and 12 the building of north-west watchtowers.... but of course everything depends on how the enemy expands....

[Master Zen]

cumi, have you ever tried fitting in some military camp cities? with your 4-tile pattern you can fit 2 inside your inner ring. That would help you with some early wars.

(we GoWers are big on camps )

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by alexman
Just FYI, the newest discovery in city placement is called RCP, and it's described in a strategy article over at CFC.

Just make sure all your fancy plans place as many cities as possible at equal distances from your capital (or FP).

Just read the whole article, it's very interesting

I think it is not at all incompatible with some of the camp placement styles which were mentioned in the other thread (Camp Placement). I'm going to try and tweak my generic "Zenning" plan to accomodate some RCPing.

I still think it is important though to make camp cities especially when you know you'll be doing some archer rushing. In that case, I would rather sacrifice corruption for a strong military start. However, I'm sure that knowing the concepts of how corruption works and RCP you can make a city placement to take advantage of both world. I'll try and re-work my placement with some RCPing tomorrow...

[cumi]

Originally posted by Master Zen
cumi, have you ever tried fitting in some military camp cities? with your 4-tile pattern you can fit 2 inside your inner ring. That would help you with some early wars.

(we GoWers are big on camps )

Sound good, but I never tried it. (I feel like I am quite a fantasyless) Any example?

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by cumi


Sound good, but I never tried it. (I feel like I am quite a fantasyless) Any example?

Bascially a military camp is a city which only gets a barracks built and after that just produces an endless stream of military units and workers in case you need to bring the size down. These cities usually are about pop. 6 maxium and once you reach Sanitation you disband them as the other "big" or "core" cities will use up the tiles that the military camp is using.

The camp is usefull because it frees your other cities from producing military units so they can be used for other things like wonder pre-builds, improvements or settler/worker pumps. In the early game, camps are very useful to set up archer rushes, or to hoard warriors for a swordsman upgrade for example.

Some camp strategies by GhengisFarb and myself are found in the Camp Placement thread here, there's also another very good placement scheme called Ralphing... it was explained in a thread a few months ago, I'll try and find the link later on.

[cumi]

MasterZen, I will try this, sounds good.

I've never disbanded a city yet. Normally some of my core cities have the role of "camps". Hmmmm.... Actually, in early phase the camps need about 3-4 tiles....

[Panzer32]

Nice

Thanks for the RCP link! I had sort of been considering something like that just informally, and have yet to test it, but now I'll see if I can fit it in to my strategy.

I am assuming that MZ's post is an example of 'zenning' , but I haven't seen any other true strategy... I still don't know exactly what Ralphing is still!

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Master Zen
The reason I prioritized #2 was becuase of the forest and the bonus grasses.

Your site #3 looks better for this purpose (access to Bonus Grasslands, Silk Forest to chop, low Corruption). Even if it's to be a temporary city, there's no real harm in building a Barracks there, since it will be "temporary" for a long time (i.e. long enough for the Barracks to pay off).

My 2nd city usually doubles a a military camp/granary site. First as military, I like to rush a barracks for a few quick units if possible for a ultra-ultra-early archer rush along with city 3. So, capital becomes settler pump, City 2 becomes military city until city 3 is up and running, then switches to settler pumping with a granary (if possible helped by a forest chop). If an early war takes a bit too long then perhaps I'd wait for a better city spot or switch once 2 camps are in place.

I guess it all depends on your level of paranoia. If you're reasonably confident that your neighbor will attack you with 2-3 Warriors and maybe an Archer, perhaps it's better to build a military camp right away. In other circumstances (and against the AI), prioritizing the Food (at all sites) is best, I think.

Another thing: good Food production has a place even in the most militaristic of starts. Even if you're only producing 1 Shield per turn by working that bonus Wheat, the growth to size 2 in 5 turns more than offsets the "loss" of production. IMO, the same applies across the board for any Food bonus, however small. The only situation in which there is too much Food is those "Flood Plains only" starts, but there you've not much a choice anyway.

How would you place your cities if this were a SP game?


Dominae

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by alexman
Just FYI, the newest discovery in city placement is called RCP, and it's described in a strategy article over at CFC.

Just make sure all your fancy plans place as many cities as possible at equal distances from your capital (or FP).

Its a good thread discussion but it is far from a new idea. The concept has been around since players first starting disecting the elements for corruption generation and has been an element of several city placement strategies and methods for quite awhile.

Here's my city placement for this scenario, I had to move city A over 1 square as it wouldn't fit into the Camp System floating in the water:

[Dominae]

GhengisFarb, with that setup I see no reason to ever disband the camps. Why restrict yourself to such a layout instead of just placing cities closer together at good city-states to begin with?

In this map, it turns out that your initial four camps around the capital are very well-placed with respect to good tiles (especially bonus Food). But in other maps (like your example in the other thread), this will not be the case.

Note that if ever you disband the camps, the tiles immediately underneath them will never be accessible by any city.


Dominae

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Dominae
GhengisFarb, with that setup I see no reason to ever disband the camps. Why restrict yourself to such a layout instead of just placing cities closer together at good city-states to begin with?

In this map, it turns out that your initial four camps around the capital are very well-placed with respect to good tiles (especially bonus Food). But in other maps (like your example in the other thread), this will not be the case.

Note that if ever you disband the camps, the tiles immediately underneath them will never be accessible by any city.


Dominae

The primary difference in our strategies from what I have observed is that your placement is based on short term or immediate use, while my placement is based on long term or the tile usage of the citysites later in the game.

I prefer to place my cites where they will minimize corruption and maximize tile usage later down the road when they are size 7-12 cities than to sacrifice that effectiveness to gain a Wheat resource immediately rather than to simply have access to it in another 10-18 turns.

While I lose out on those 10-18 turns of bonus production (+1-2 food under Despotism) I gain far more (1-2 shields and 1-2 commerce under Despotism or an even greater benefit assuming I decide not to play under Despotism for the entire game) once the city's radius expands.

[Dominae]

I'm not sure why your size 7-12 cities are better under your system. Is it because of the lowered Corruption of having your camps each at distance 2 from the capital? But then that's not really a long-term benefit, as you plan to disband your camps at some point.

You've still not addressed the fact that you're not utilizing many tiles around your core once you disband your camps. That's not really good long-term usage, either.

If you place your 4 camp cities before outer ring, and assuming that the map is such that your 4 camps do not have access to a bonus Food but your outer ring does, then you're losing out on much much more than 10-18 turns of bonus Food production.

Accessing the bonus Food tiles early is not "short-term gain", but rather the best kind of investment you can make early on to support your choices in the long run.

It would be interesting but boringly complicated to run tests to determine if the benefits of prioritizing Food tiles is better or worse than minimizing Corruption by using the pattern you're proposing. I could very well be wrong, but my gut instinct tells me that extra Food will almost always prevail (barring any Flood Plain silliness). This is especially true if you're playing an Industrious civ, in which case: extra Food = extra Industrious Workers = more tile improvements = laugh in the face of Corruption.


Dominae

[DaveMcW]

I agree, I always make sure bonus food is in my 9-tile radius. And sites with bonus food are settled first.