Second City Placement

[Kloreep]

We should hammer out the placement before we hammer out the settler. We still have at least 20 or so turns to go (assuming completion of the spear build and then an axe) so we should have plenty of time to discuss, but it never hurts to start early.

Here's a pic I took in CIV of the area around Alpha Base.

[Kloreep]

Here's the original .bmp zipped if, like me, you don't have much besides paint to use for editing.

[Kloreep]

Cptn Fancypant's proposal from the Turn 25 thread:

Originally posted by Cptn Fancypants
I have earlier advocated settling to the SE. My preferred spot as of now is 3-3-3-3-3-6 from Alpha Base (that's 2-3 from the east-coast pigs). The city would be on a plains hill. The site has enough food (pigs first, then fish) to quickly start working the other hills in the city radius. It would be a very good place to build a barracks and start our serious military production. It also projects our empire roughly in the direction of known opponents --- er, potential clients. We still don't know what's 2 from this site, though.

The spot:

[polarnomad]

I would suggest the following as a location for city 2:



While it does not provide a port for city 2, it allows the city access to stone and wheat in addition to pigs and fish. The fish can be accessed by building a work boat in alpha base and sending it around the peninsula.

Alpha base is close enough to act as a port for units leaving city 2 if needed.

EDIT: This would obviously make city 2 a center for the production of land based units. Another location would be needed for naval units.

[Kloreep]

I actually don't think the stone & wheat are that important for city #2... we're not yet reaching the sizes where health becomes critical, and the stone won't be needed until we have an actual wonder to produce. With Alpha Base primarily producing food and us needing military units from somewhere, I do think city #2 should be a shield producer, but its shields will need to go towards military units first, with a wonder farther into the future.

Here's a layout I've made for cities around Alpha Base. My argument for the layout as a whole is that I think we need semi-overlapping cities, as we won't be able to take advantage of all 20 tiles till much later in the game. This is my stab at some semi-overlapping cities (but not too close if I can help it, which I couldn't with Green which is really filler for the middle and also there to grab the stone).

While I placed a city at the spot Cptn Fancypants proposed, I don't think it's where we should put City #2. I think City #2 should be at red or blue in the picture below. These cities have some decent food & hammer resources that, with worker improvement, will see City #2 off to a good start. Red is by far the better city of the two, encompassing many resources after border expansion (which comes quickly to us Creative folks) - it has the same copper tile as blue, plus a gold hill, plus two food resources (both of which are on land and merely require Agriculture to improve, as opposed to Blue's which is split between Agriculture and Fishing). Red also has more forests in its radius for chopping, and we should have consistent line of sight between it and Alpha Base after red's cultural expansion, leaving it not totally unconnected. That said, Blue is closer, allowing more mutual reinforcement between the two cities, and I also don't know how the distance maintenance costs would stack up between the two.

[rush]

Blue site has both fish and wheat in it's starting 9 tiles. It's also near Alpha, easier to defend. However, we have to research Agriculture & Fishing to work the wheat and the shield output is not that strong. I saw only a hill there.

Red site will take many turns to get there and more difficuilt to defend. It has gold & wheat in it's 9 tiles. This will be a great commerce city.

Captain's white site is good. But it's starting 9 tiles sucks. Can we move it one tile North so that we can work the pig from the start ? We can also mine the hills to produce military units quickly.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I actually like your green site next, Kloreep. It removes the most fog, we could virtually eliminate barbs in our core with 1-2 sentries, and focus on expansion and defending from 1 front. It also places us in the strogest position to deter anyone from settling on our little penninsula.

I would say green, red, and maybe even push further for city 4 or to the east of red to close off the area, saving the blue city and others for backfill later.

[polarnomad]

@Kloreep:

I don't quite understand the logic behind semi-overlapping cities. I mean eventually we will be able to take advantage of all tiles. What then? Of course, overlapping isn't bad in itself, but here it seems you're making it a goal.

Also, having that many cities in such a small area seems like it will be a drag on the economy.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I happen to agree with overlapping cities. In fact, I think Kloreep is being rather optimistic and not overlapping enough.

Basically we need to plan on having a limited space due to our no-attacking philosophy. And we need to take the most possible advantage of that space. Some overlap is going to be needed, and we should plan for it now. I do think we need to reach as far as we dare as soon as possible, but leave the idea that when we backfill, we may need to overlap more than we are all accustomed to as even with the CivIV changes, some overlap and more cities is still better than fewer cities and no overlap.

[polarnomad]

Oh, so the intention is not to overlap immediately, but rather when we backfill, later. Now I understand better.

I do think we need to spread out as much as possible in the early stages.

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by rush
Blue site has both fish and wheat in it's starting 9 tiles. It's also near Alpha, easier to defend. However, we have to research Agriculture & Fishing to work the wheat and the shield output is not that strong. I saw only a hill there.

Don't forget the plains copper. With a mine it'll produce 5 hammers a turn, just like the one Alpha is working now. That would definitely be its first hammer tile (and either first or second citizen depending on how we prioritize food there).

Originally posted by rush
Captain's white site is good. But it's starting 9 tiles sucks. Can we move it one tile North so that we can work the pig from the start ? We can also mine the hills to produce military units quickly.

Good point. I would say the tiles gained aren't as good as the tiles lost by the move, but overall either site will have good tiles in its radius, and that would save us 5 turns of piglessness.

If we do go for Captain's site immediately as City #2 I think we should definitely make this move.

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
I actually like your green site next, Kloreep. It removes the most fog, we could virtually eliminate barbs in our core with 1-2 sentries, and focus on expansion and defending from 1 front. It also places us in the strogest position to deter anyone from settling on our little penninsula.

Green would actually not be too bad compared to Blue. Green's wheat is just as good as the corn, perhaps better, as I can't recall if an Oasis spreads fresh water to surrounding tiles. If we research Masonry in time we can build a quarry on the plains stone tile and get it to 4 hammers, only 1 less than the copper tile would provide. However, we would be sacrificing that one hammer and forcing research on Masonry sooner rather than later in order to get more central placement... I figure we don't have to worry about competition for that area, so I think we should base our city #2 choice on productivity and defense, not territorial claims.

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
I would say green, red, and maybe even push further for city 4 or to the east of red to close off the area, saving the blue city and others for backfill later.

Red would definitely be good for City #3, especially if we don't get the other copper tile in the radius of City #2.

After City #2 we may indeed want to pursue a backfill strategy, especially with those mountains helping out; Captain's/White city + a city southeast of red would be effective at blocking easterners, while another city somewhere west of red would make a complete barrier around our northern area. (Of course, by that point we'd likely only have blue/green and purple left to backfill with my layout.)

Originally posted by polarnomad
@Kloreep:

I don't quite understand the logic behind semi-overlapping cities. I mean eventually we will be able to take advantage of all tiles. What then? Of course, overlapping isn't bad in itself, but here it seems you're making it a goal.

Also, having that many cities in such a small area seems like it will be a drag on the economy.

Eventually we can get cities to size 20 and guarantee all tiles are worked, but at what tech and more importantly what turn? Health and happiness are going to limit our city sizes for some time. It is a bit more complex than Civ3 with its two impenetrable caps on city size. The aqueduct was clearly early enough that it was worth it to reach sizes 7-12, especially once Conquests came along and made full Cities invaluable to Republics.

While Civ4 does help fight the ICS that was good in Civ3, and has softer population caps that can also be raised in more ways, I think there is still a certain point where a tile is not worth saving for a city and should be picked up by overlapping. Referring to a tile by the citizen # that will work it, Tile 1 is obviously worked right away, tiles 2-5 can be added fairly quickly if the city has enough surplus food, tiles 6-9 or so can hopefully be accessed by hooking up health & happiness resources and growing some more... but soon enough tiles 10+ will make you build improvements to get to, taking up hammers. The first points from the earliest and cheapest improvements may not be too difficult to reach, so in an optimum scenario we may even get to low teens in our cities without too much trouble. But what about those last 7 or 8 tiles? Those require improvements to be built which require techs to research, and not only do we have to make those investments, it'll take some turns to do so, leaving tiles vacant over those turns. By the time one conducts the research and builds the improvements necessary, the potential production lost while the tiles lay fallow may not be worth lowered maintenance costs of fewer cities. There are still only so many turns in the game, so while Civ4 does do a better job of encouraging large cities, I think the size increases that come with later techs sholud stilll be treated with some skepticism.

(And one last point: Saying that all tiles will be worked eventually without overlap at size 20 assumes no cities use specialists, which we certainly will want to use in some cities. This leaves even more slack in worked tiles that could be picked up earlier with overlapping cities than with increased city sizes.)

Edit: more posts while I was replying. I assumed you were questioning overlap in general polarnomad. I agree we may want to pursue a backfill strategy, I just think that when all the cities are down and we're done building settlers, we should end up with a layout that overlaps tiles.

[polarnomad]

Kloreep: You make some good points about the usage of tiles in city radii in regards to overlapping. Thx for the explanation. Sorry, I wasn't clearer in my initial post questioning the strategy.

I am seeing that my suggestion for city 2 is not quite as good an idea as I had thought.

Otherwise, I don't believe that oases provide fresh water for irrigation.

[Cptn Fancypants]

The position 6-6 from Blue could be nice. It has the same amount of overlap with Alpha Base as does Blue. It has stone and copper. It has wheat and corn. It abuts the city radius of White. Green could be eliminated. Red could move 3 and still maintain its count of river tiles, work corn and gold, and gain two hills.

A city 1-1-2 from Alpha Base could maintain a nice food surplus by working the fish and thereby provide a coastal commerce boost as a minor city.

While this would work all the specials (currently known) S and SE of Alpha Base, it is a low-overlap plan and suffers the drawbacks of all such plans. Low-overlap plans that work lots of specials aren't too bad, though. This one would give us one or two strong production cities and one good science city.

I suggest Purple 4 and adding a minor city another 3-3-2 from current Purple. That would allow us to make some use of the coast due east of Alpha Base.

What additional resources will we be able to see by the time our first settler is available?

[rush]

Horse.

[polarnomad]

*crosses fingers and toes

Actually the area around purple seems suspiciously devoid of resources... Could there be a horse in hiding?