How close to build the cities?

[wheathin]

How close do you generally put your cities at the start? Do you try to ensure that they wont overlap even when they reach size 40, or do you leave them closer for faster early growth and defense?

[Alpha Wolf]

being that the number of cities that can be governed, I overlap as little as possible. however, I will occasioanlly created production cities whose sole goal is to pump out units. This would be like a city deep in the woods or mountains. It wont grow much so limits the overlapping penalty.

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History is written by the victor.

[wheathin]

I found what I think is the most efficient spacing.

1,2,3,4,5 = city radii
9 = other cities
x = wasted land
W = overlap
o = City itself

9x11111x3333o3333
91111111333333333
11111111W33333333
11111111133333339
1111o1111x33333x9
111111111x44444x9
W1111111144444449
9111111144444444W
9x11111x444444444
9x22222x4444o4444
92222222444444444
22222222W44444444
22222222244444449
2222o2222x44444x9
222222222x55555x9
W2222222255555559
9222222255555555W
9x22222x555555555

Each city overlaps twice, and thus loses at most one square. For each city, there are also only 4 'lost' squares that remain undeveloped - perfect for watchtowers, forts, or radar, etc...

[Alpha Wolf]

that assumes all land. i play alot of large islands and geography determines city placement as much as any thing. Remember that the city tile gets its full production value while the rest of the tiles are percentaged. Personally I like to build on forests and mountains that are surrounded by grasslands or plains. This gives me alot of prod up front to build granaries and units. if you overlap on the farthest out tiles, remember how large a city must be to get to those tiles. Some cities because of terrain will never grow to their max. If you need to fill in border gaps, you can always build forts.

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History is written by the victor.

[wheathin]

Good points AW. Actually, it only assumes that there is land at the city site. Beaches are the best terrain in the game, and water is generally no worse than land.

Good ideas about the building on forests and mountains. Given the inability to quickly focus on production with a mine or two (because the effect of any single TI is so diluted ina small city), building on a production-heavy tile is the only real way to ensure an early production boom.

[Cyrius]

I try to give 4 spaces between cities. I don't think overlap will kill extra large cities that bad; remember in CTP1 and CIV2 when a city got too large to work its on land? You just turned everyone extra into specialists. It actually became a bonus to have more people than land that could be worked. The only problem was you couldn't make food specialists so there was a danger of starvation (or a halt in growth at least). Well, now we don't have to worry about that problem anymore. Specialize away everyone!