I am very anal about city placement. I ALWAYS place my cities with the endgame in mind, no matter what Sisiutil or Obsolete says. Ever since I played Civ2 way back in 199x, I have always avoided overlap of cities. I would get all into a tizzy whenever I saw the AI do it, and I never did it. Better to let 10 grassland shield tiles go free, than let one desert tile overlap was my way of thinking. But I was only like 8 years old then. I accept now that not all cities can work all 20 tiles, but a part of me is screaming every time I'm forced to overlap. What do you fellow fanatics think of overlap?

Desert, mountains, and overlap are all the same thing.

Good luck trying to avoid any desert or mountains!

Overlap doesn't bother me at all. I don't even consider the endgame often - looking for a short term advantage IE placing the city "optimized" for gaining an advantage of some kind ASAP. My logic is that many cities don't even have the potential to work 20 tiles until very, very late. If it can do something useful now, in particular more useful than alternatives in the short term, I will place it regardless of overlap.

That's just my tendency, although I'll point out that players significantly better than myself (I'm talking immortal + players) have placed cities that work cottages or "excess" food tiles from the capitol's BFC - as part of an axe rush for example.

Ultimately you have to place cities so that they meet your goals, whatever that entails. I find my struggles in this game are almost always rooted in the early game, so anything I can do to provide an advantage then seems worthwhile to me.

Of these options, ICS is the closest to my style of play.

Early on, overlap is great for so many reasons - maximum use of resources, fewer worker turns needed, reduced maintenance costs, easier defence, less need for monuments (I despise them!).

The only time it's not worth it, imo, is when you've got lots of quality land that needs claiming.

Even then, as the game goes on it's better to fill the gaps. Unless I'm pursuing a quick military victory, in which case I''ll want to use the minimum # of cites necessary to claim the land, I'll eventually settle any space that has a couple of vaguely useful tiles to play with. With the help of a decent corporation, these cities can be surprisingly powerful.

If we could start with 20 citizens/city, overlap would be a major problem.... as we don't, overlap sometimes is advisable, like for maturing cottages for the nearby planned Wall street city builds the necessary infra working mines.

First of all, overlap doesn't prevent you from preferring one city over another. So, for instance, if your capital city had 3 overlapping tiles with a neighboring city, you always have the option of assigning all of those 3 tiles to your capital instead of the other city.

Second of all, it will usually take a very long time before overlap becomes a problem. By the time it becomes a problem, hopefully you'll have Biology by that time to prevent your population from starving. You can then convert the extra citizens to specialists in the city with the tile shortage.

I try to place my cities 3-4 spaces (not 4-5 as suggested by the built-in strategy guide) from each other when settling, even if one of those cities is my capital. Using lots of specialists in your capital helps counter the problems of overlap.

I have two playstyles that seem to be contridictory:
- a bloody warmonger
- believes in quality over quantity when it comes to cities.

I fight for land, and I'll need a lot of it in order to fit more quality cities in. I'll end up razing lots of cities, clearing lots of ground, rebuilding cities, and then end up having unworked tiles. Only time when I can accept a lot of overlapping is if I find myself on a rampage against defenseless civs, or in watery maps.

Arti, I don't think that's his problem. If he's anything like me, he simply despises an incomplete BFC. I have learned, though, that sometimes it's just necessary to do it for strategic reasons, like grabbing otherwise unreachable fisheries, or cutting continents so my fleets can sail through a lot quicker - a fast navy is a good power-multiplier.

Thanks to the article on cramming cities together (Sisiutil's?) I have learned that cramming isn't such a bad thing, but in the last several games, cramming simply hasn't been a good option. My eye looks for locations that gather 2-4 resources at once, and I can't NOT settle such a spot if the opportunity presents itself. Heck, I haven't taken a city by culture in a long time, and haven't by AP ever! I used to take 2-3 cities by culture per game in Civ3, but for whatever reason, I haven't been so offensive in my city placement in Civ4; I think it has to do with resource placement more than anything else.

But anyway, having shadows in my BFC just screams at me WRONG!!!!!! so it's hard to intentionally put cities too close together, and in the late game when I CAN work most of those tiles, it's even harder to tolerate them, because I want ALL my cities to be productive powerhouses. I am slowly trying to break that habit, though.

Desert, mountains, and overlap are all the same thing.

Actually overlap is better, because it allows cities to share resources. I often find myself wanting to place a city to nab some resources but no food, but if I can share a food resource with a neighbor for a while then it adds some flexibility to how I grow my cities. Also, you can have your neighbor work cottages to grow them when they're small, so they have pre-worked cottages to use once they get bigger. With a desert or mountain, you just get nothing, so I try to overlap rather then settle a mountain or desert.

Preferring one city over another is exactly what I do.

Shared Forest Preserves give health and happiness for both cities = good.

What you have to remember is that your score/power etc increase exponentially with time as the game progresses. Just look at the graphs to demonstrate this. Therefore overlap is absolutely fine by me in the early game as my cities are not going to be anywhere near working all 20 tiles any time soon.

I do try to avoid overlap between my major specialist cities (capital/oxford/national epic/heroic epic) when these become available and will pre-plan for this.

Also as many of the other contributors have stated overlap can actually help when you take city specialisation into account. A major city can have its cottages matured by adjacent minor cities or can lend out spare tiles & resources to them when reassigning population. Reducing worker time and effort and the number of tiles to defend which matter early on.

I find overlap amongst AI cities very helpful when you are absorbing a mature AI empire. A newly captured city can normally only work 9 tiles at most and if the AI has a lot of residual culture this could be less, worst case just 1. In this case it is very hard to avoid starvation. But if the city overlaps the cultural radius of your previously captured city (or one of your own) you can use those shared tiles to avoid starvation (laying down farms or windmills if you need to).

The sequence works something like this i) capture 1st city ii) when revolt is over, rush culture in 1st city (eg theatre + 2 artists) iii) capture 2nd city iv) pillage any overlap tiles you are going improve v) 1st city culture pops, assign worker gang - if required vi) when 1 turn of revolt is left, assign overlap tiles to 2nd city vii) rinse and repeat.

This can really help and can easily save 2-4 pop on each captured city. Like most overlap ploys it requires a lot of MicroManagement.

Some overlap is fine. There's really no reason to try and place a city so that it will benefit you in the endgame if it could mean all the difference in the early game.

I'm pretty anal about overlap although i try not to be.
Maybe a handful of cities with wonders whose benefits you want to maximise its actually worth being obsessive about overlap.

Overlap is great, even in your capital. It's important to work your cottage tiles every turn, so overlap allows you to continue working your cottage tiles in your capital's BFC even if you need to work mines to churn out a wonder or something of the sort.

Also, food tiles are also well worth sharing.

Cheers,

Dai

If the terrain is such that I'll benefit from 2 cities sharing tiles than being completely seperate, I'll overlap. BUt I prefer keeping my cities spread out.

It really depends. I think that close spacing works for me if I'm going to conquer the world. My only serious Domination attempt was on Prince with Khmer. The thing that really helped was a tight spacing of cities - I had three core cities spaced three-four tiles of each other. It really helped in pumping units (Carthage disappeared like a *puff*).

Well, although I try to avoid overlap between major cities, I really can't stand unused good tiles for a long time.. So while I often start OCP-empires, it will get increasingly cramped over time (especially after State Property, my favorite civic) - settling sites with just 6 tiles that are not taken by other cities is not uncommon :mischief:

Concerning that - don't you find it annoying that new cities usually steal tiles from neighbouring cities that often already work these very tiles? That really pisses me off if I found a filler city between 3-4 major cities, which afterwards would starve.

Concerning that - don't you find it annoying that new cities usually steal tiles from neighbouring cities that often already work these very tiles? That really pisses me off if I found a filler city between 3-4 major cities, which afterwards would starve.
You know you can reassign those tiles back to the original cities, right?

I used to be staunchly anti-overlap until it dawned on me how much of the game is spent with single-digit population cities...

I can deal with some overlap. If the difference between gaining that resource I need and not gaining it is a few tiles from another city, I'll overlap over missing the resource.

Because of Trade Routes, once my empire can support it, I have no problem settling citys that gain only a handfull of extra tiles, especially along the coast(s).

Windmills also help my 'last round' of citys grow.

But early on, unless there is a food source (or strategic reason) for the marginal city, I would be more likely to pass over the marginal site for a good 2-4 res monster site, mainly due to the fact the city needs to pay for itself (and I dont attack early often)

My strategy: cover as much ground with as little cities as possible. Overlap is unheard of in my games

The way i see it, there are 2 kinds of empires: "pretty" ones with a couple big citys that are nicley spaced, and "eye-sore" empires that clutter the map with lots of smaller cities that overlap eachother.

Both types of empires definatly have their advantages; a "pretty" empire will most likley preform better in the end game when cities can, and need to be larger to produce units and buildings that require more hammers. "Ugly" empiers generaly preform better early on in the game because the cities dont need to be as large to produce units/buildings at a decent pace. In some cases a single iron resourse nearby will be enough for a city in the early game to produce units in a couple of turns.

Anyway that is what I think.

You know you can reassign those tiles back to the original cities, right?

Yes, but i still annoys me having to check every neighbouring city and remedying this nonsense.

@lordmacroer: and what about the beautiful ordered grid of ICS-style empires? They are pretty neat also ;)

The way i see it, there are 2 kinds of empires: "pretty" ones with a couple big citys that are nicley spaced, and "eye-sore" empires that clutter the map with lots of smaller cities that overlap eachother.

Both types of empires definatly have their advantages; a "pretty" empire will most likley preform better in the end game when cities can, and need to be larger to produce units and buildings that require more hammers. "Ugly" empiers generaly preform better early on in the game because the cities dont need to be as large to produce units/buildings at a decent pace. In some cases a single iron resourse nearby will be enough for a city in the early game to produce units in a couple of turns.

Anyway that is what I think.

Later in the game your ugly empires can just resassign titles to get some really big cities and some smaller cities which is still way better than the pretty empires... Especially with sushi this can get quite alot better than just having big cities...

Later in the game your ugly empires can just resassign titles to get some really big cities and some smaller cities which is still way better than the pretty empires... Especially with sushi this can get quite alot better than just having big cities...

Those smaller cities are great whip/draft candidates as time goes on...

I used to plonk down cities any-old-where but now have got used to dotmapping and planning so I can now find a good site. I tend towards no overlap but if I must, I must. Most of my games tend to end before the modern era - I'm a fan of Domination victories by 1700 or so - so I'm not always trying to fill production quotas. When I went for a space-race victory as the Dutch I was settling extra space along the French border and small islands, and I managed to use as much space as possible in order to get the benefits from science production to get me to the required technologies faster, but I won the game by Domination as a result after building a few SS components, so it depends on who I'm playing and what era the game is in. I tend to like spreading myself over enough little islands to get Domination, though, so overlap doesn't often tend to be an issue.

@lordmacroer: and what about the beautiful ordered grid of ICS-style empires? They are pretty neat also ;)

I dunno why they call the styles ugly and pretty, they are just terms I read about in some book. Personaly I find that an empire with lots of closely spaced cities looks much cooler than an empire with only a couple boring cities scattered here and there. Expecialy so if the cities are in an exact ICS grid like Chieron said, that can be a real nice sight.

Work the best tiles ASAP and go down from there, with the exception of blocking the AI so you can get more good tiles. I don't see how overlap is even worthy of consideration in this equation!

With the ability to specialize cities overlap isn't a big deal at all, and for most of the game both cities will be able to work as many tiles as they have citizens for regardless, and that's assuming you'd even want to do that...!

In CIV 3 I tried putting all my cities in a grid that left no tiles out but had only two squares of overlap so each city should have been able to work 19 tiles. Of course you could never build all the cities like that even then because of the coastline and neighbors. Unworkable mountains and deserts in CIV 4 make it even harder and more counterproductive but I try to use as many tiles with as little overlap as possible.