In Civ4, cities are placed with the maximum 20 tiles not interfering with another city's fat cross of 20 tiles, as much as possible. With the exception of the capital city and creative leaders, the initial city tiles are 8 tiles around the city tile before any culture is put into the city. I am very used to this concept, so much so that I am trying to do the same thing in CivRev.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case in CivRev. Even though the courthouse building is supposed to work like the culture giving city border pops in Civ4, I am beginning to see a lot of cases where cities are placed with no regards to concerns regarding BFCs overlapping. Many times, people are just placing cities so close to each other, in the pure interest of having as many cities as possible.

And that doesn't seem to be a bad strategy. Even in the example of Mega City gameplay videos submitted by KAZUY4, that particular mega city without a border pop to enable maximum 20 working city tiles, the high population count of 31 automatically made it a powerful enough city with only 8 working city tiles. Is this how CivRev's city placement strategy works?

Even in other forums, I see people claiming to have 15-20 cities under their name. If these players had approached the city placement like it is done in Civ4, there is no way they could have self built that number of cities in the much smaller map size given in CivRev. And these claims are stating that they actually BUILT these cities themselves, and they are not the conquered cities of rivals. Even in the YouTube videos, when I look and see how they placed their cities, it seems obvious that people are just plopping cities so tightly bunched up together with no regards to the Civ4 concept of avoiding overlapping.

How useful is the courthouse in its ability to expand the city's workable tiles from 8 to 20?

Say this one mega city has a population of 31 with no courthouse. That means maximum of 9 citizens are working the actual tiles, including the very tile of the city itself. If I am not mistaken, the game doesn't seem to have this concept of showing the other 22 citizens as some sort of specialists like entertainers, scientist, taxmen, or etc. So how are these 22 citizens not working any tiles contributing to the gold, science, and production?

I think a lot of the successes in the Civ games had to do with the city placement, and since it seems to be working in a completely different manner in CivRev, I thought I will throw these questions out to anyone who has played extensively to explain these to me.

Since there is no unhappiness, pollution or starvation, a city can only decrease in population when you build settlers there. If you go to a city, choose custom workers, you can leave regions unworked. That citizen is represented by a black flag on the city itself. I believe that every citizen adds 1 science and 1 production, but I could be mistaken.

The only reason you would spread cities like in Civ4 is to make good use of bonusses. You'd want to settle somewhere between mountains and hills for a production focussed city and feed that settlers from a food/gold based city (since you can buy settlers every 2/3 turns to settle in your production city). You don't want other cities to take these bonusses, but it's not a big deal if it does happen. You could always unwork the region and assign it to the specialized city.

A city doesn't need 2x population food each turn, just 1 food is enough to grow (albeit very slowly). So in the end, you'll end up with a 10-15 pop city in even the most barren areas.

Honestly bro people that place over 10 cities in their given spawn area is really pointless at least until you get further in the game. If your running a feeding strat you want to get your feeders out asap to your MC's. This of course is the whole point of running a feeding strat. Yes it does produce 1 hammer+1 science/gold(dpends on what you want your city to produce). You honestly should not go for the 1 food production squares when placing your city's. You always want to try and have 2H & 2F, the reason being is because later in the game when you have a 3 pop eventually, you'll be able to rush settlers from those cities, hence acquiring a settler unit from that city one turn and then another next. So you should only ever go for cities with 1F when you either really need it, or you can just afford to risk it.

sometimes especially early on in games it can be good to have a city outside of the ideal parametres to act as a fort or with little food and plenty of production to fire out a few military units in order to help an assault/defence on a nearby city.

i have used this strat ceveral times now to great success

Having a production city is great for being able to focus on your science and gold, while protecting them by pumping out units 24/7.

Sure. Those strategies are very sound. I am sure good players like you guys implement this on a case-by-case basis. My question mainly has to do with the effectiveness of city border pop upon building courthouse and whether or not there is a consequence or two of placing cities so close together.

In Civ4, there were exceptions on a case-by-case scenarios where you put cities on a strategic locations even if the overlap was great. But it didn't happen that often. However, in CivRev, it seems like virtually every cities are being placed with no regards to concerns with overlapping whatsoever.

In regards to 1F tiles, if those tiles are plains squares, I believe that granaries will bump them to 3F tiles, effectively making them very profitable in growing population even faster. I don't know if grasslands stay at 2F forever, but at least with the plains tiles, I know that 1F will go to 3F with granaries, and that looks to be a plus to me. If playing as Egyptians, the desert squares don't hurt either.

A few things:


The tile the you build the city on doesn't get work in CivRev, unlike in previous Civ games. For this reason, you should not build city on resources.
Citizens that don't work tiles generate different # of output depending on the size of the city:

Laborers (Pop 1-6): +1 hammer
Vendors (Pop 7-12): +1 hammer, +1 trade
Traders (Pop 13-18): +1 hammer, +2 trade
Merchants (Pop 19-24): +1 hammer, +3 trade
Importers (Pop 25-30): +1 hammer, +4 trade
Exporters (Pop 31): +1 hammer, +5 trade
(On PS3, on the city screen you can press L2 to see the type of citizens you have, including great people settled in the city.)

So yes, a large city early in the game is indeed powerful, especially when the city has buildings like market, bank, However, in my games I found building the courthouse always help the large city significantly, by giving access to more tiles.
The most negative thing about having too many cities close to each other is probably the travel cost. As you know, in CivRev, roads don't consume movement point, but entering a city does.
The most positive thing about having many cities is probably those extra bonus that affect all cities when you are the first to discover certain techs or when you use certain great people. For example, Industrialization gives +5/gold per city if you discover it first.
The Civilopedia's game concept section actually has some pretty good info. You may want to check it out. :)

Actually, you can have workers working in the city tile itself and they can contribute quite well. Say you have a pop of 10, but only 8 workable tiles, you can set the spare 2 to work in the city. What they do depends on the situation, but 2 nights ago, they were working in the city and each one was producing 4 gold + 1 hammer for me, which was pretty damn good so I left them there. It shows you at the bottom left of the screen what they will produce if you put them there. Check that and see.

A few things:


The tile the you build the city on doesn't get work in CivRev, unlike in previous Civ games. For this reason, you should not build city on resources.
Citizens that don't work tiles generate different # of output depending on the size of the city:

Laborers (Pop 1-6): +1 hammer
Vendors(Pop 7-12): +1 hammer, +1 trade
Traders(Pop 13-18): +1 hammer, +2 trade
Traders(Pop 19-24): +1 hammer, +3 trade
Traders(Pop 25-30): +1 hammer, +4 trade
Traders(Pop 31): +1 hammer, +5 trade
(On PS3, on the city screen you can press L2 to see the type of citizens you have, including great people settled in the city.)

So yes, a large city early in the game is indeed powerful, especially when the city has buildings like market, bank, However, in my games I found building the courthouse always help the large city significantly, by giving access to more tiles.
The most negative thing about having too many cities close to each other is probably the travel cost. As you know, in CivRev, roads don't consume movement point, but entering a city does.
The most positive thing about having many cities is probably those extra bonus that affect all cities when you are the first to discover certain techs or when you use certain great people. For example, Industrialization gives +5/gold per city if you discover it first.
The Civilopedia's game concept section actually has some pretty good info. You may want to check it out. :)


So, with population 31 city, the citizens not working any tiles produce +5 trade? For a trade-oriented city, that seems like a better alternative than having more tiles to work with. If I am only focusing on trade, having 23 extra citizens working to produce 5 trade each will result in +115 base trade. I don't think there are any combination of buildings/tiles/resources/techs that will top this in any given situation. Of course, I am only going by the information provided since I don't have the full version of the game. If I am wrong, please correct me.

This is definitely something that I need to think about. Since I am thinking about assigning at least 2 cities each dedicated to gold and science, it is important for me to see how fast I can get these specialization city set up and running without sacrificing my economy and military.

There has to be a reasonable balance to be found somewhere when it comes to city placement and the number of cities. The road movement restriction passing through cities and the technological implication of having more cities all make this very interesting to analyze.

Thanks for the thoughtful input.

Actually, you can have workers working in the city tile itself and they can contribute quite well. Say you have a pop of 10, but only 8 workable tiles, you can set the spare 2 to work in the city. What they do depends on the situation, but 2 nights ago, they were working in the city and each one was producing 4 gold + 1 hammer for me, which was pretty damn good so I left them there. It shows you at the bottom left of the screen what they will produce if you put them there. Check that and see.

Once I get home, I will check with the demo since I live in the US and it is still a week away from official release.

So, with population 31 city, the citizens not working any tiles produce +5 trade? For a trade-oriented city, that seems like a better alternative than having more tiles to work with. If I am only focusing on trade, having 23 extra citizens working to produce 5 trade each will result in +115 base trade. I don't think there are any combination of buildings/tiles/resources/techs that will top this in any given situation. Of course, I am only going by the information provided since I don't have the full version of the game. If I am wrong, please correct me.



I think for a size 31 city, the first 5 people you have working "in the city" will be +5 trade +1 prod, then the next 5 would be +4 trade +1 prod, etc.

It still makes large cities ridiculously good at trade/gold though :D

I think for a size 31 city, the first 5 people you have working "in the city" will be +5 trade +1 prod, then the next 5 would be +4 trade +1 prod, etc.

It still makes large cities ridiculously good at trade/gold though :D

That makes sense. Even then, this strategy is grossly unbalanced and needs to be changed in my opinion. I consider this an exploit that was never intended by Firaxis team. This very concept is made possible because there is no need to feed your citizens as in Civ4 where 2 food is required per citizen to maintain a city.

There should be a limit on the city size that is possible to be fed by settlers. Something like Cities size 10 or larger cannot be fed by settlers. The very concept of the Republic government's bonus was probably intended for easier expansion of new cities, NOT feeding a selected city into a super-sized city.

I am not going to play my games this way either.

Actually for a pop 31

1st-> 1 resource 5 trade
2nd through 8th-> 1 resource 4 trade

And I am certain that republic WAS designed to fuel a mega city... however, it Is definitely too powerful (buildings only necessary in one city, wonder bonuses applying to that city, etc.)

It is that way because of the increase in population cost (growing from 1->2 costs 10 food, 10->11 costs 100 food) which means Republic is the Only way to get that mega city in a reasonable rate.

So either
1. render the Mega city more achievable without Settler pumping (allow faster Growth at high populations)
2. render is less achievable with Settler pumping (cap the settler adding limit... say 20, or increase the production cost of Settlers under Republic say to 30 or 40 production.)

In any case Republic only Sets up the Settler cities, it doesn't get the best use out of them.. that is Democracy (given the bonus to science it gets)

In any case Republic only Sets up the Settler cities, it doesn't get the best use out of them..

Actually if you properly know how to use a feeding strat then it does get the best use out of them. In democracy you might have the early rush out in techs. But Feeding is designed for long term game.

The point is once you Have the Mega City, then it makes sense to go Democracy/Communist to get the best use out of it.

The point is once you Have the Mega City, then it makes sense to go Democracy/Communist to get the best use out of it.

Well it's really up to you at this point. Because all though this may be a good alternative, you could just also make another Science city or have on already underway at this points where you can be producing more science than your already producing from having two science cities compared to one. But this is only if you want to keep the Feeding up. Switching to either Democ or Comm would make it easier so you wouldn't have to micro as much, but you would have to play more of a defensive role due to, that your Democ gov wouldn't allow you to attack so you could take the opprotunity to build up and then switch govs when you want to attack of course. I've easily been able to produce over 4k science from one city using a combonation of sorts.