Exactly what do you look for in a spot to put down a city? In civ3 it seemed rather easy to me to see the good spots, but in civ4 it seems much more difficult.

I know the basics, like rivers help defense and you would like to have some forests for chop-effect, resources are good, etc. but I find myself running into a problem when I expand. I know that when the Settler is active it shows the food, etc. output of the squares...but it is almost like I'm overloaded with too much trying to figure out exactly where to put it down. I started civ4 with the attempt at trying to get my fat-Xs to perfectly match up so that every spot can be used without overlap. But so many times halfway through my game I look at a city and think "if it just would have been one spot over..."

Any tips or help? Perhaps this is a dumb question.

CH

Perhaps this is a dumb question.

If it is a dumb question then I'm just as dumb. :eek:

Edit: Hehehehe

I would like to add to that question...

I have read frequently in posts here that the AI often chooses its city locations poorly. Does this translate to not always trusting the 'blue circle' when settling a city? I am new to the game and usually build in the 'blue circle' every time.

Exactly what do you look for in a spot to put down a city?

Food. Will I have enough surplus food on hand to work all the useful tiles? You can do it by counting food, but I usually take a shortcut and think about which food surpluses will work which tiles ("2 food from the city lets me work the mine on that plains hill, four surplus food from the pigs on the grassland lets me work those grassland hills..."). Any tiles that can't be fed will need to be made food neutral (farming plains, windmilling grassland hills, watermills in some circumstances), or will require some other potentially useful tile to be converted to a farm.

Next comes specialization. I prefer to have cities that are production centers, or cities that are commerce centers, rather than cities that are a little of each. So, if by moving a couple tiles over I get a more concentrated city, I'm likely to do that.

Fit (the whole dotmapping thing, if you've seen those exercises).

I tend not to worry at all about transient things (do I have enough health to deal with the floodplains, are there enough forrests to chop), because long term, they just don't matter, and my games aren't usually over in a hurry.

Tactical considerations occassionally come into play (if I settle on that hill I get more production, if I'm on the coast I can build a harbor, or a lighthouse which will give me bonus food in the nearby lake, building a city on a resource makes the resource easier to defend), and occassionally strategic ones (if I put the city there, it will block the choke).

Blue Circles: Building on the blue circle is a totally reasonable thing to do as a new player - it'll usually be a good choice, though not always best, and this sort of optimization is not an immediate priority (better, in my opinion, to play a bunch of games to get a handle on the bigger strategic ideas). I leave the circles turned on when I play, so that I can see what the algorithm recommends - but it is making local decisions, not global ones. You will abandon the practice eventually - the sand is faster than you, but it isn't smarter.

A typical mistake by the AI, for example, is to build cities one tile away from a nearby coastline, which means (a) you can't build a lighthouse, so any water tiles provide less food, and effectively become "junk" tiles (b) you can't build a harbor, which gives your city a commerce boost and health bonuses.

It's important to choose the right locations for your first few cities, because settling recklessly everywhere causes the city maintenance to rise too quickly. You don't have to make the placement pretty and try to use every tile, rather you should go for quality over quantity. What I look for...

1. Resources (copper, cattle, sugar etc.)
This is the first thing I look for. If there's no bonus resource, I'm probably not looking to place a city there. Copper and Iron are critical for military units, so they're a high priority.

The type of resource may dictate if I'll try to make it a commerce or production city (see below). If it's copper and there are other hills, I'm going to shoot for high-production. If it's dye or other commerce bonus, then I'll try to place the city in a way that I'll be able to support several cottages. Basically, if at all possible, I'm going to try and exploit the bonus by specializing the city in the same direction. It's not always practical and I may wind up with a production-focused city with "wasted" dye, but it is something I always consider.

2. High Commerce locations
Rivers are great, as are coastal cities and grasslands. Anywhere that you'll have enough food to work a lot a cottages, without needing farms. Riverside tiles get +1 commerce, so they're superb locations for cottages. If a river has only plains (1 food tiles without a farm) and you can place a city there within reach of a food bonus, then I'll do that so I can have enough food to work cottages on the river-plains tiles.

3. High Production locations
What I'll look for is a place with at least one food bonus, like pigs or wheat, with a few nearby hills. This city will probably just have farms and mines/workshops, and produce military most of the time. A couple of grasslands next to a fresh water lake can substitute for a food bonus resource. For example, Iron is a priority resource...but I want to take it in a way that also makes the city useful, if at all possible, so I look for some way to get extra food to that city as well.

What you don't want in the beginning is to place a city on any area that has no food bonus resource, no grasslands and isn't near fresh water (can't build farms). If there are no 2+ food tiles, then it wont grow to support cottages. and it wont pay for itself through commerce. Also, without food bonuses or fresh water to build farms, you can't get a high production city either. In short, it's just going to be a burden on your economy.

Placing a city along a river gives it a health bonus and allows automatic trade routes to any other city hooked up to the river, so do that if possible. I don't value this over grabbing an extra resource, but you should definitely factor it into your decision.

Coastal cities are better than cities one tile away from the coast. You don't want your city to have several ocean coast tiles, without the ability to build a lighthouse.

Good stuff guys, I appreciate the suggestions. I need to buckle down and study the terrain more, and this will help immensely.

Hokie13

Before I plant any city, I turn on the grid and zoom out and sit and figure out the next 3-4 cities. Takes 5 or even 10 minutes sometimes, but it's worth it.

Wodan

I do the same thing. I also use the "Draw" function to draw a fat cross around my capital, and also where I want my next 2-3 cities. I even use a sign with numbers for the order I want to settle them. :crazyeye:

Yeah same here. I don't know where i'd be without the draw function to mark out three to four fat crosses.

I'm with Voice on this and I'd add one point: when city placement allows me to cut off a sizeable chunk of land from other civs I'll gladly settle for one or two horrible spots first.
Early game this can make a tremendous difference; being able to settle several good cities in peace afterwards (though not too much so; settler transports will appear quicker than you may think) and esp. quietly chopping for those improvements/units you need most for your current strategy is well worth it IMO.

But otherwise food is definitely number one: the blue circles often indicate spots with great resource access but no ability to grow to reasonable sizes without biology. Unless those resources are top notch (e.g. the only iron/copper within reach) or the city is worthwhile for strategic reasons I'd most certainly reconsider settling there.

A good think to help you w/city placement: zoom out to the lowest level of the globe view, w/the grid one and 'show resources', and take a screenshot. Open up your MS Paint on your desktop and you can paint in dots for each city you want to build in the future, along with the fat crosses. NO real difference from the in-game draw, but it's still pretty useful. Dotmapsare great fun!

*mental note* Try the draw function tonight.

I think I've been playing civ for so long that I see fat crosses while driving down highways or looking at satellite maps of the US. Usually I just want to move my capital 1 or 2 squares around 1AD to make everything else fit perfectly.

I didn't even realize there WAS a draw function. I knew I had to be missing something---that will definitely help in planning. I can visualize the fat-X pretty well but it makes it tough when planning a few cities away.

Thanks all!

Hokie13

draw function?
ha ha, that's were those neat screenies are coming from !

Something new to learn every day ;)
heeerrrr, mind to explain where it is and how you use this?

draw function?
ha ha, that's were those neat screenies are coming from !

heeerrrr, mind to explain where it is and how you use this?

No, most of the neat (tidy) screenies come from mspaint.

If you zoom up far enough, the controls on the lower right change....
http://www.whiterose.org/~danil/civ4/posts/strategylayer.jpg

You click on the left most button to get the strategy layer, click New Line on the menu that appears, and you can freehand draw things on the map.

No, most of the neat (tidy) screenies come from mspaint.

If you zoom up far enough, the controls on the lower right change....


You click on the left most button to get the strategy layer, click New Line on the menu that appears, and you can freehand draw things on the map.

thanks a lot, i'll try this :)

wow. didnt know that existed. how cool!

also, if you find a bottleneck early enough on like I did with a tiny pangea map because I was looking with worldbuilder and saw a nice bottleneck, so I plopped a city there as soon as I could and denied any open borders and was free to take over that section of the continent as the AI doesn't use boats to move settlers around until later.

Thank you for explaining the option on drawing.

Personally i am using the new sign function to indicate future city sites and this is saving me using graph paper and counting squares which is what i have previously been doing.

Now theres a great huge blue marker with "here" plastered on it for my future sites.

It is making life very much easier