Okay, I've been struggling with this for a while. I have a hard time 'reading' the terrain for city placement. In general, what should I be looking at? Food? Hammers? Coins? A combination? Or Resources above all?

Here's an example from my most recent game. Settled in place with my American Settler (was this correct? seemed like a pretty good start as far as resources and defense [Hill/Forest 75%]). Now I've popped a settler from a goody hut as well as Animal Husbandry, which revealed a Horse resource to the south.

However, the horse resource seems like a not-so-great position for a city.. Tundra tiles and very little food.

Here's some looks at my current position:

Full overview

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/5351/civ4screenshot00688lh.jpg


Close up of south area with Horse resource

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/8664/civ4screenshot00698jf.jpg

Close up of northerly area with (better?) more food/hammers

http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/61/civ4screenshot00702la.jpg

Sooo the question, besides the general questions I asked above, what's the best place to settle city #2 in this particular game?

Thanks in advance! :D

Oh, here's my save file if someone wants to take a closer look than my screenshots showed. :blush:

I like the hill 4 north, 2 west of your capital as a #2 city, and in the south, two east of the mountain (currently a dark square) looks like a good #3 spot... bronze working and further discovery on the map may provide a better alternative, though. It looks like you have some time to do more exploring before you are forced to make the decision.

I like the hill 4 north, 2 west of your capital as a #2 city, and in the south, two east of the mountain (currently a dark square) looks like a good #3 spot... bronze working and further discovery on the map may provide a better alternative, though. It looks like you have some time to do more exploring before you are forced to make the decision.

Thanks for the input! I didn't even see that. Some overlap on the fat cross with my capitol though isn't there? How do you judge a spot you like? Do you look at food overall? Tile defense?

Of course, I didn't plan on settling wherever someone said instantly. I'm more interested in seeing the thought process of some veteran players on how they judge terrain and future early city sites...

At the moment, I look for resources first, followed distantly by the terrain, and I know this isn't a very good practice on higher difficulties where terrain and city specialization can make or break a game later on.

Okay, I've been struggling with this for a while. I have a hard time 'reading' the terrain for city placement. In general, what should I be looking at? Food? Hammers? Coins? A combination? Or Resources above all?


In general: Food first. Improvable terrain second. Resources as needed.

Slavery is your most effective means of production, so securing sites that can recover their population quickly is a big win. You also want to have enough food to work all of your good tiles.

For most of your cities, commerce is more important than production. So after food, you are looking at grassland, plains, and grassland hills to get cottages running.

Good tiles that can't be improved are a mixed blessing - I usually try to avoid them, but they may make for useful cities in the early going.



Here's an example from my most recent game. Settled in place with my American Settler (was this correct? seemed like a pretty good start as far as resources and defense [Hill/Forest 75%]).

Looks reasonable to me. Note that the forrest goes away when you drop a city on it (as do floodplains). I'd be looking at the plains hill on the river bend for my second city, unless a reasonable spot appeared with copper, gold, or some other critical goodie.

Small tip: the resource arrows point toward the equator. Tropical and equitorial terrain tends to be more useful than tundra. Consider that when choosing directions for scouting.

grabing resources is imperative, so i agree with post # 3, looks like good spot. But bronze can change all that.

Food is the most important. I made a dumb decision in a game I'm playing currently, and now I'm stuck paying 8 gold in maintenance to keep a useless city. I should have razed it, but I kept it, and it only has the ability to generate 4 food, meaning the city is stagnant at size two. I can't get it to grow any bigger until I get biology and can build farms without a source of fresh water, and even then, it won't be able to get very big. Waste of a city? I do think so.

Resources are nice to have in your fat cross, because you can improve the tiles, giving you some nice bonuses when you work the tile, in addition to the resource.

I like the hill 4 north, 2 west of your capital as a #2 city, and in the south, two east of the mountain (currently a dark square) looks like a good #3 spot... bronze working and further discovery on the map may provide a better alternative, though. It looks like you have some time to do more exploring before you are forced to make the decision.
I second this. Those appear to be the best two spots for settling.

The two sites mentioned are great city sites you have nearby. Copper placement would dictate for me whether those would be sites I grab before or after Copper City. If one of them happens to be the Copper City, even better. I also tend to settle first toward the opponents I find to deny them spots close to my capital.

Good advice overall, I'll disagree on searching mainly at the equator for resources. The problem with that is those resources are often surrounded by a mess of jungle and so make for bad cities until ironworking + time, plus you need calendar to harvest most of them. The northern parts of the map may be sparse, but it's also the only place that has early-to-harvest furs and silver. It depends on how well set up you are overall, but I'll often choose to settle to snag some fur or silver for the early happiness, then use axes or swords to take the warmer site.

Some good questions to ask yourself before founding a city are:

"How many useless tiles are there?" - Generally mountains, deserts, ice and overlap. While you can live with 5-8 such early game, it cripples your cities lategame.

"How many weak tiles are there?" - Grasslands and plains, hilled or not are all good tiles. Tundra, Ocean, Coast and lake tiles without ocean acces (no lighthouse) all detract from a city's productivity. Note that deer on tundra is just a decent tile, while incense in desert isn't worth working.

"What will the city work before border expansion, and how will it get its expansion?" This is most important in the first non-capitol cities, but always worth consideration. Note in particular the importance of bronze/horse/iron in first ring.

"What are my misc modifiers?" - Rivers, fresh water, ocean acess, resources, forests and jungle. This stuff doesn't matter much in a late game, developed city, but should at least affect the order in which you found your cities. That city in the middle of the jungle with two bananas, spice and dye makes a great lategame city, but unless you need to rush it before the AI, wait for workers and iron.

"How does the city fit in with my future cities?" - Sometimes, founding a single city with two wheat, a pig and a cow is great. Sometimes, it is better to move that city a bit to the west, so that you can make use of the eastern grasslands without getting overlap galore.

"What about AI expansion?" - The AI loves founding cities. Make sure he does not found them where you want cities - particularly since they are usually founded in razeworthy locations, like one NE of your spot.

Great advice everyone! Thank you!

Unreason - You mentioned how to tell if you're below/above the equator and the benefit of scouting towards the equator... In this particular case, much of the area south was revealed through a map from a goody hut. In fact that's what revealed the horse resource for me. Which brings up another question...

When scouting, generally it's a good idea to scout towards the equator first? However, if a key resource such as horse/copper/iron is revealed towards the pole, is it not better to scout the terrain around the resource first? Or is it safe to just assume that the further from the equator you go, the worse the terrain will be on standard, 'real world' type maps?


At any rate, what I'd like to go ahead and do now is play a little further and found a few cities. I scouted a bit more on this map and ended up with 3(!) settlers popped from goody huts. So I have a really excellent start in this game and a great opportunity to make some early terrain decisions and get some more feedback. :D

I'll keep posting progress here.

Ok, after about 30 more turns I now have Bronze Working, 3 settlers as I mentioned in my previous post, contact with 3 Civs and I'm setting up for CS slingshot.

I made some dotmaps with some future possible city locations.

North of capital:

http://img488.imageshack.us/img488/7663/dotmapnorth5zl.jpg

South of capital:

http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/7531/dotmapsouth1xl.jpg

First city site looks like red dot, as was suggested I believe. Two Ivory, Pig and plenty of food from floodplains...

For the second site, I'm leaning towards green dot, for the quick access to Copper and a several tundra hills, as well as a Corn resource.

Third is a bit more difficult for me.

On one hand, blue dot has Stone resource, and about 5 flood plains, but on the downside some useless desert.

There's also pink dot, which looks like a decent coastal site, plus would give me access to Marble and Horse.

Another possibility would be yellow dot, which would make a great military/production base (I think) with about 6 or 7 hill tiles and some more floodplains to keep up growth.

Finally, white and grey dots could make good future sites for cutting off the Civs to the north (likely Asoka and Freddy) at the chokepoint on the continent.

Again, I can settle 3 cities pretty much right away.

As a sidenote, this is a Large continents map at Epic speed on Warlord difficulty (want to work out the kinks in my early game before moving up to the higher difficulties again). I want to go for domination win on this map with Washington's Americans being ideally suited to this, I believe.

Opinions? :D

Save attached for anyone who wants a closer look.

You're wasting too many good tiles by trying to avoid overlap. I'd much rather build a city with 2 tiles overlapping my capital's fat cross, then build one in a place that will leave 2 grassland tiles unworkable for the rest of the game.

You're wasting too many good tiles by trying to avoid overlap. I'd much rather build a city with 2 tiles overlapping my capital's fat cross, then build one in a place that will leave 2 grassland tiles unworkable for the rest of the game.
That's an excellent point. You generally won't get near full pop until the end game, if ever, especially if you use the whip, which Zombie would be first to say you really should. So don't worry too much about overlap.

In fact, there are several benefits to overlap, especially in the early game. Remember that vulnerable units like Workers and Settlers are safe from barb animals within your borders, and even from the first few barb units. By being very careful about Open Borders, your cities can lock off territory from rivals faster.

Sometimes I find it helpful to have different cities swapping use of a key tile. For example, one can work a low-production cottage tile, ensuring it keeps earning turns towards a town, while its neighbour works high-production tiles for an expensive build like a wonder.

You're wasting too many good tiles by trying to avoid overlap. I'd much rather build a city with 2 tiles overlapping my capital's fat cross, then build one in a place that will leave 2 grassland tiles unworkable for the rest of the game.
Strangely, I wasn't really trying to avoid overlap. Though it did turn out that way on the dotmap. That said, I see your point.

With regards to the dotmap above, would perhaps moving the red dot city center two tiles south be a better option? Therefore closing the gap and picking up the Corn resource?

The other dots would be a bit trickier though wouldn't they? In this scenario, I'd want to pick up the Copper resource quickly, as well as the Marble or Stone, no? By building on those two dots I'd have quite a gap initially between my capital and the new cities. Would it be better to ignore getting close to the resources to simply not waste any good workable tiles early on?

Just curious, what climate is that? o.O I never get that many floodplains in my games lol

Just curious, what climate is that? o.O I never get that many floodplains in my games lol

Temperate, medium sea level. Standard settings as far as I know. :D

it's quite good on the dotmap, but it could feel bad in the end : so much food ressources not workable!

if you go for red first, my guess is to go one tile SE (fresh water+corn, losing the pig). You get a (hybrid) commerce city with all those floodplains, but you can welcome elephants = strategic ressource + happiness ressources. If it's going to be your first city you want it to :
- grow fast (food! healthiness!)
- give you good ressources (health, happiness, strategic)
Since you already have pigs in your capital, corn is better.
It's obviously not a great production city, but with all those forests around, you can build enough ;)

Yellow city is a good production site, can be better early if you move one tile SE (corn), but in the long run you lose hills, and make it a hybrid city.
So if you want a production city, leave it there.

Dark gray (horse/gem/clam) is good, but requires border expansion to get the horses. I would (don't shout, i know there is a loss) settle on the horses :
- immediate access to the ressource,
- still coastal
- you gain the pigs (and lose the clam)
- more hills / less ocean.
A better production city if you keep the forests, hybrid if you chop (all the grassland around is calling for commerce) .

I won't go further but you understood i favour some overlapping against losing good tiles.

One more thing : your southern (i think) copper/silvercity is pretty good, but i would make it 2 cities, in order to use the sheep:
one coastal for the copper (NE of the copper)
another for the silver + second sheep

One more more thing:
i would settle on the marble instead of building the low food pink city = you work the same ressources, but gain a food "rich" grassland.

You're wasting too many good tiles by trying to avoid overlap. I'd much rather build a city with 2 tiles overlapping my capital's fat cross, then build one in a place that will leave 2 grassland tiles unworkable for the rest of the game.

In my opinion, this is a question which deserves a lot more consideration. Amassing cities and slaving like mad, stacking multiple overlap is very strong for the early game and gets the most out of your available tiles, but in the late game (which Zombie apparently avoids, prefering early conquest), having fewer powerhouse cities which can milk those National Wonders to their utmost potential is usually better. In my opinion, you gain research and lose production by spreading cities, but you will have to hoard happiness.

Edit: However, you are spreading cities a bit too much, in my opinion. Leaving a irrigatable corn unworkable? Heresy, I say!

Edit: However, you are spreading cities a bit too much, in my opinion. Leaving a irrigatable corn unworkable? Heresy, I say!

Corn is pretty huge.

You are doing, I think, a pretty good job of finding good city sites. But I don't think you ended up with a good dotmap - those cities are pretty sparse.

A useful drill might be to take that north snapshop, and mark all the good locations on it first, then from there try to find a combination of sites that fit well together, provide the commerce/production/resources you need in a timely fashion, etc. There can be more than one right answer, depending on the kind of game you want to play.

Case in point. Your Yellow Dot site rocks as a production center. When State Property kicks in, you are looking at 68 hammers per turn, before multipliers, even though you lose some production because of the desert hills.
You could work all the hills and crank out hammers the old fashioned way, or you could drop the Globe Theater/Heroic Epic combination in there and use the whip to crank out insane numbers of units during the middle ages.

But it does leave a lot of tiles loose, especially along the north.

I'd be considering moving Yellow Dot two tiles NW (immediately south of the pigs), a site which seriously rocks as a seaport (ocean access, but not many ocean tiles, plenty of food to work all the hills, enough surplus food that you could probably run the Heroic Epic/Globe Theater gambit there too). This placement leaves a reasonable collection of tiles to work the gems and pigs over there, and gives you some more flexibility for where to place the city to pick up the eastern corn and floodplains over there (looks like a kicking GP farm in the making). Maybe red dot slides down a slot now, picking up that loose corn [turning into a pretty good GP farm, I think].

Corn is pretty huge.

You are doing, I think, a pretty good job of finding good city sites. But I don't think you ended up with a good dotmap - those cities are pretty sparse.

A useful drill might be to take that north snapshop, and mark all the good locations on it first, then from there try to find a combination of sites that fit well together, provide the commerce/production/resources you need in a timely fashion, etc. There can be more than one right answer, depending on the kind of game you want to play.

Case in point. Your Yellow Dot site rocks as a production center. When State Property kicks in, you are looking at 68 hammers per turn, before multipliers, even though you lose some production because of the desert hills.
You could work all the hills and crank out hammers the old fashioned way, or you could drop the Globe Theater/Heroic Epic combination in there and use the whip to crank out insane numbers of units during the middle ages.

But it does leave a lot of tiles loose, especially along the north.

I'd be considering moving Yellow Dot two tiles NW (immediately south of the pigs), a site which seriously rocks as a seaport (ocean access, but not many ocean tiles, plenty of food to work all the hills, enough surplus food that you could probably run the Heroic Epic/Globe Theater gambit there too). This placement leaves a reasonable collection of tiles to work the gems and pigs over there, and gives you some more flexibility for where to place the city to pick up the eastern corn and floodplains over there (looks like a kicking GP farm in the making). Maybe red dot slides down a slot now, picking up that loose corn [turning into a pretty good GP farm, I think].
Ok, taking into account the great advice here and above (thanks again everyone!), I've made an adjusted dotmap of some overlapping cities. As many as I can see, anyway.

http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2428/dotmapnorthadjust14bp.jpg

Here I have red dot moved to the SE picking up the Corn. Yellow moves two to the NW as suggested by Unreason. This opened up another city site, in my opinion, indicated by the orange dot. It overlaps the other two cities a bit, but I figure the Yellow and Red can give up those few tiles to what would be a great production city.

Moving what was originally the Grey dot (changed to Purple for better viewing) to center on the Horse as Cabert suggested, another great coastal site opened up as indicated by the Blue dot, picking up 2 Gems and the Clam.

Finally, the White dot is moved one east and loses the peak tiles and still picks up the horse without any significant overlap.

I see a possibility of yet another future site in the empty space between Yellow and Purple (possibly centering on the Pig?). This city would have quite a bit of overlap though, so my questions now are...

- How much is too much overlap when considering a map such as this?

Obviously there are a huge amount of great sites on this map, but I would imagine you'd eventually have cities sharing too many tiles and would have to give up some workable tiles in exchange for avoiding the early maintainence costs of having 10+ cities? This leads to another question:

- How many cities are too many to have in the early game?

On one hand, I know this would probably depend on the land area you have available, which is quite a bit on a large map, and in this particular game, I have 3 settlers which will no doubt allow me to expand onto practically all the dot mapped sites before I even have the slingshot completed.

Now, when I expand early game in any game I play, I try to keep the amount of cities low (4-5 max), making the most of what cities I do settle. Later when I have knights, I'll have a second expansion which picks up any sites I may have passed over early or another Civ's cities if I feel I'm in a good military position. Should I be expanding more in the early game?

That's all my questions for now. I'll see if there's anything further that could be improved before I go ahead and play some more turns on this game. Thanks again everyone for the great advice! :D

you don't settle on food ressources! (horses are not food)
that would be a big loss!

I see you listened to all advice, but it doesn't fit too well : orange is worth much here, my initial advice was intended for leaving the ex yellow where it was.
The 3 overlapping squares between red and orange are puzzling me = you have tighter cities, but still leave a pig unworkable! arggg!
Orange doesn't even have a bonus! (still good city, with all those floodplains)
Yellow (one tile from coastal = :nono:) and orange aren't optimal for this.

About questions :
There is no overlapping max (other than necessary distance between cities).
But you need to keep a low number of cities to begin with.
My usual way of thinking is "what will this city bring me?"
answers are :
- big commerce
- ressources i don't have yet
- big production
- land grab

land grab is only low on my list. For tiles i don't necessarily want to work (plains without bonus, tundra, desert, pikes, snow) culture will give me land grab early enough.

For the first few cities, i usually go for
- copper
- horses
- iron
- ivory
- gold
- gems
- silver
- stone
- marble
And I try to get those with as much good food bonus as possible.

I won't build an early city for corn.
But i will build the crappy copper city, if there is no other copper around.

That's 9 good reasons to build a city ;)

If i need too i'll build those 9 cities+capital = 10.
But usually, i don't have so much bonus (it's a crazy map!) and i am "lucky" (or late ;) ) when i have 4 cities before needing to conquer some others.

Yellow moves two to the NW as suggested by Unreason.

Ick ick ick ick! North West, not North East. Therefore four tiles west of it's most recent position, so that it is immediately south of (under) the pigs.

Placing a city one tile off the coast is often a bad call (you can't build a harbor, so you lose extra trade income and a bunch of health, you can't build a lighthouse so the coastal tiles die, you can't build ships....)

you don't settle on food ressources! (horses are not food)
that would be a big loss!

I see you listened to all advice, but it doesn't fit too well : orange is worth much here, my initial advice was intended for leaving the ex yellow where it was.
The 3 overlapping squares between red and orange are puzzling me = you have tighter cities, but still leave a pig unworkable! arggg!
Orange doesn't even have a bonus! (still good city, with all those floodplains)
Yellow (one tile from coastal = :nono:) and orange aren't optimal for this.

Yellow does seem like it'd be better if I moved it one tile north, thus making it a coastal city. I was following Unreason's advice on moving that particular city, but perhaps I misinterpreted the move.

Orange I wanted in there because I really think it'd be a great early production center. You have a bunch of floodplains and a ton of hills to mine. Personally, I'd be willing to give up a single pig resource in exchange for a good production center early on. Is this not a good strategy? :confused:

Ick ick ick ick! North West, not North East. Therefore four tiles west of it's most recent position, so that it is immediately south of (under) the pigs.

Placing a city one tile off the coast is often a bad call (you can't build a harbor, so you lose extra trade income and a bunch of health, you can't build a lighthouse so the coastal tiles die, you can't build ships....)
Ahh.. I need to learn my cardinal directions lol. :blush:

Fixed:

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/1583/dotmapnorthadjust28qt.jpg

Moved the orange dot in response, using that to pick up the Corn and Pig to the east. Better?

How much is too much overlap when considering a map such as this?

On this map, where you have so many good plots, I'd avoid overlap as much as feasable. But it's not a high priority, so long as the various sites can pay for themselves.

The population is going to be limited by health and happiness, so it could easily be the case that three overlapping cities pay off more quickly than two that don't overlap, simply because you are working 50% more plots in the first case.

Do pay attention to which tiles overlap, though - there are ways of gaining some advantage to compensate for the extra costs; an overlapped forrest gives a health bonus to both cities, so hold off on chopping it if you can. Similarly, when you have overlapping commerce cities, the "big" city (with the bigger bonuses) works its own plots, and the small city works the overlap - maturing the cottages before handing off control to the large city. Food tiles can be flip flopped back and forth, depending on which city needs to grow.

(NB: make sure you understand how to transfer control of the overlapped plot from one city to another [if a plot is dark in the city screen, that indicates it is not controlled by this city. Click on the plot, observe that it lights up, and it can now be worked here])

How many cities are too many to have in the early game?

More than you can afford and defend.

Moved the orange dot in response, using that to pick up the Corn and Pig to the east. Better?

Getting there. Lots of good tiles by the gems in the north east. The pigs would probably be a good fit with those tiles. So I'm thinking another coastal city (the same one you were thinking of earlier). After that, see if you can better position the orange dot. (if it is not going to use the pigs, it doesn't need all those pointless dessert tiles either - see if you can improve it.

Orange I wanted in there because I really think it'd be a great early production center. You have a bunch of floodplains and a ton of hills to mine. Personally, I'd be willing to give up a single pig resource in exchange for a good production center early on. Is this not a good strategy?

A single pig resource is a good production center early on. :whipped:

Early production comes from two sources - food with lots of mines (work the mines constantly), or food with lots of food (whip the population and regrow).

But it is a good idea, as you are laying out maps, to think about what the various sites are for. Most of them, remember, should be for commerce. But you've got some special cities to consider (the GP farm, for instance); you may need to sacrifice some other city's potential to maximize your overall position.

Example: if Red Dot has the most potential for your GP Farm, then you'll probably need to move it one plot west to pick up the pigs, which will weaken Purple considerably (long term), but open up another space to the immediate NE of Washington. On the other hand, if relocated Orange Dot would be the GP farm, then the pigs aren't as important at Red Dot.

Random other tips.

Alt-F (toggle Satellite camera) may make your dotmapping easier.
Ctrl-I (toggle interface) may give you more room to work.

Yellow is still badly placed. Move it one tile east and you gain coast-grassland-plains-grassland, while only losing a river plains and a coast. Plus you gain +2 health from fresh water. A no-brainer.

Then you can place another city in the north eastern corner, to work the gems.

I would then move orange down one tile, because everything it's working in the north is used by someone else except for one grassland. Actually, i'd move it down two tiles and make it my GPF, with lots and lots of flood plains. That or make it my best science city with Oxford.

And there's a huge gap between red and orange with lots of unworked grassland. Pluck down a city in there somehow.

Finally, i might move blue one tile west, depending on what lies in the northwest.

Getting there. Lots of good tiles by the gems in the north east. The pigs would probably be a good fit with those tiles. So I'm thinking another coastal city (the same one you were thinking of earlier). After that, see if you can better position the orange dot. (if it is not going to use the pigs, it doesn't need all those pointless dessert tiles either - see if you can improve it.

Knew I kept Photoshop open for a reason. Makes moving the dots around quick! :p

Ok.. here's what I'm thinking now:

http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/2363/dotmapnorthadjust33up.jpg



A single pig resource is a good production center early on. :whipped:

Early production comes from two sources - food with lots of mines (work the mines constantly), or food with lots of food (whip the population and regrow).

I've never used the whip effectively in any of my games. Possibly because of my city site choices. My cities never grew fast enough for whipping to be useful very often. Hopefully this discussion and the concentration more on food/resources will help remedy that in future games.


But it is a good idea, as you are laying out maps, to think about what the various sites are for. Most of them, remember, should be for commerce. But you've got some special cities to consider (the GP farm, for instance); you may need to sacrifice some other city's potential to maximize your overall position.

Example: if Red Dot has the most potential for your GP Farm, then you'll probably need to move it one plot west to pick up the pigs, which will weaken Purple considerably (long term), but open up another space to the immediate NE of Washington. On the other hand, if relocated Orange Dot would be the GP farm, then the pigs aren't as important at Red Dot.

See above. I think the relocated Orange dot would make a good GP farm. I considered having Orange one tile west, but figured if I was going to have a GP farm I may as well sacrifice some possible commerce tiles for the corn resource.




Random other tips.


Alt-F (toggle Satellite camera) may make your dotmapping easier.
Ctrl-I (toggle interface) may give you more room to work.
I was looking for the interface toggle earlier actually, but didn't feel like dragging out my game box/manual. So thanks for that!

Yellow is still badly placed. Move it one tile east and you gain coast-grassland-plains-grassland, while only losing a river plains and a coast. Plus you gain +2 health from fresh water. A no-brainer.

+2(!) health from fresh water? :eek: I wasn't aware of that. Is that only when the city is settled on fresh water or can it just be within the fat cross?

Either way, moving the yellow and new cyan city one east works for me.



I would then move orange down one tile, because everything it's working in the north is used by someone else except for one grassland. Actually, i'd move it down two tiles and make it my GPF, with lots and lots of flood plains. That or make it my best science city with Oxford.

See newer dotmap. I believe that would make a good position... but as has been pointed out to me already, I tend to leave unworked tiles looking for the 'best' position. So I'm still a bit unsure.


And there's a huge gap between red and orange with lots of unworked grassland. Pluck down a city in there somehow.

Finally, i might move blue one tile west, depending on what lies in the northwest.
Well, current position on the orango, I don't see any useful way to jam another city in there early on anyway.

Barring a resource in the fog, wouldn't moving blue NW add another unworkable peak to that city? And lose a grassland? Although from the jungle up there I'm guessing it's more of the same in the fog.

Yellow is still badly placed. Move it one tile east and you gain coast-grassland-plains-grassland, while only losing a river plains and a coast. Plus you gain +2 health from fresh water. A no-brainer.

I don't agree that it's a no brainer. Late game, the river position will have a higher yield (+1 food = +1 hammer). Very early (up to size 5, I think), they are effectively equal. Between those periods, I think the current position, with the extra hill, is stronger. The difference between the two could easily be compensated by the improved commerce city to the east.

Judging from the shape of the river, I'd probably move orange dot SE, then shift red dot east or south east to fill the gap, then move white dot eastward as well.

i agree with zombie on yellow. +2 health is very big and your not exp.

Try orange 1 more east, cyan 2 more east, and orange 1 more south east like i said, you'll see how much better it is.

I don't agree that it's a no brainer. Late game, the river position will have a higher yield (+1 food = +1 hammer).

It's a lot more than 1 more food. It's coast-grassland-plains-grassland versus only a river plains and a coast. This means two extra grassland tiles to use, while only losing a river on the plains. Plus the health benefit of fresh water.

Between those periods, I think the current position, with the extra hill, is stronger.

Who needs hills when you can whip instead? I almost never work hills tiles in my games, whipping everything i need instead, which is more efficient.

Try to keep your cities close to reduce maintenance cost and also make them easier to defend. I typically settle about three spaces apart, unless I need to grab some special resources.

+2(!) health from fresh water? :eek: I wasn't aware of that. Is that only when the city is settled on fresh water or can it just be within the fat cross?


the city must be touching a fresh water source = river, oasis, lake
river in the fat cross isn't enough.
For a good production city, health is important : you'll have a forge with +1 unhealthiness, a factory, possibly iron works, and coal plant, and you don't want to work farms, you want to work hammer tiles (even though zombie is right about the poprushing thing, a good production city with Heroic Epic is important early on)

For the rest, i think you're getting the idea. still some things to learn (like the fresh water thing), but you'll be alright, now.
Suboptimal placing isn't going to kill you on average levels.
Go for a last dotmap, play the game and feel the difference. You'll understand the effects very early if you don't automate workers.:goodjob: