This is how I envision Team TNT's Realm in 30 turns, around 2500 BC.
All three cities will be connected to the Elephant and to each other, and we will have three effective settler factories to driver the economy.

I decided on the southern river on floodplains to drive expansion southeast along Dyno River, and on that southern hill for added protection, share capital wheat resource and to drive the expansion southwest towards Nitro River. The goal is that all our cities should have easy access to road connection and luxury resource for added happiness and growth. Additionally, we can assure full patrol security with reshuffling two warriors on three cities. Two warriors and an elephant is the optimal use for three expanding cities in that cluster.

Legend

Violet crosses are chopped forests
Light blue squares are irrigation
Brown square is mined
red lines are roads
dark blue circles are new cities

I think we should explore the dyno river and than make a vision around turn 15-16.

A bit more exploring would be prudent, but overall it seems good for now.

Gentlemen

You ignore the fact we got only two workers to produce the infrastructure for a full three cities and connect these three with roads within only 30 turns. There is no need to sprawl the cities too far, and it is much wiser to keep them as presented in order to actually link the elephant to these cities, and roadlink all cities together, so we can use the same military police units all over the place and save costs.

The presented solution does not harm productivity, closer location means we can use some of the same tiles, roads will not be a problem, and it will take very long before we run out of tiles with this setup, if we ever do. Also, that hill is close to lotsa forest for lumberrushes, and will serve jointly as settler and military city, which we need badly. The Dyno River city is well placed, and very likely, there are no better position.

Citys closer together are easier to defend, which is essential when you see a SoD at your front door.

Vbraun, thank you, exactly my point. Most Intersite Demogame Teams oof some calibre have a semi thight build, and in particular for a "slow" unit like the 1 move immortal, that is essential We are not playing a dumb AI, and the only thing that wil save us, is a smart and efficient road structure, and properly placed cities.

That hill alone will give us a 50 % defense bonus on all sides, giving spearman a base defense of 3. Also, with this setup, we stretch our workers to a maximum, and we will still produce what we need in time.

In fact, we are building roads leading up to new city sites, so we do not waste time for sending settlers through wilderness. This is our only competitive advantage when they only produce settlers in other teams.

So please support the plan as stated, and forget to sprawl the cities on both riverbeds with no luxes and no shared military police units to assure safe growth.

Finally, do not forget that this setup gives new cities a pre-improved infrastructure with higher returns from the lands, than a marginal good river bed position would do.

Looks good to me.

That makes alot of sense Provolution. I usually space my cities out more, but I'm not really that great at regular civ.

This is how I envision Team TNT's Realm in 30 turns, around 2500 BC.
All three cities will be connected to the Elephant and to each other, and we will have three effective settler factories to driver the economy.

I decided on the southern river on floodplains to drive expansion southeast along Dyno River, and on that southern hill for added protection, share capital wheat resource...

What do you mean by *share capital wheat resource*? Your new cities are too far from the wheat to use it, aren't they?

Well, my vision included an Imperial Army and several tribute nations, but I guess this will have to do for the time-being.

With share, I mean to transplant workers for population transfers.

You are right, the cities marked cannot use the same tile. Yet, I was contemplating placing that riverine city one tile NW, what do you think of that ? For sharing the wheat between two cities.

OK, I understand now what you meant by sharing. That's good.

As for moving the city one tile NW to be able to actually share the wheat tile, I'm not sure. That move would also make the riverine city and the capital city one turn apart via our projected roads. I don't usually use tight builds so I'm not sure. I'll have to hear what others have to say about this.