I understand that every game is unique. I understand that resources and defensive considerations

But in the early game, when founding your first new cities ... when you usually have lots of land to choose from ... how much FOOD are you looking to see at a minimum to get the city rolling?

I saw Kazuy4 in the Greek Deity game found his second city with one Grassland in the initial 8 spaces. So he had 2 food to start with. That would scare me, but what do I know? I have yet to win on Deity, but I'm working on it.

At a minimum, 2 food, but the more the merrier. 2 food is enough to at least keep the city growing though, and I often am content with only 2 food in a city's immediate access.

2 food is good enough, but 0 is fine. Just set up a settler pump with lots of food to merge settlers into new cities.

It depends on how much you want the city to grow. As a general rule of thumb, a city will grow with 1 food per population. This is the minimum. A 1:1 ratio for growth.

I take into consideration very few things when building a city in Civ Rev mainly because you don't need to take much into consideration in this game. It is very easy to min/max a city.

#1. How much pop will this city support without the need of buildings or other settlers?

#2. What is the main objective of this city and will it be realized with the available food?

#3. How does this effect my road system?

#4. Can I easily get troops to it/from it?

#1 and #2 are the main questions. #2 is usually answered when I see a potentially good location. Production? Forests for early production, hills for mid production, and mountains for late productions. #1 is usually answered after I have already figured out what kind of city I'm looking for.

Unless you're building a city in the late game, how fast a city grows isn't very important. Some people will argue that it is, however, the main focus of the majority of new cities will be building units to protect it.

Of course, I'm spoiled by Japans coastal bonuses and The Mongols huge number of cities in the early game so this could all change depending on the civ.

1 food source plus coastal access is ok.

1 plains is rough until you build a granary but then its sufficient

when you can build harbors it mitigates a lot of the food issues.

I find the debate to be more about production. settling next to 1 forest is NOT enough production. you had better atleast have a hill and plan on rush buying a workshop

NaZ

I think I'm learning something here....

I have been obsessed with findings areas to settle where I have at least a Grassland and a Plains, hopefully more. In other words, I think I have been too focused on food.

Then I found the city, and notice that I have 2Production per turn, and no quick way to get it increased.

Less food ... more hammers .... good thought.

you can always augment their size when you hit navigation with harbors.

one grassland and a plains in the fat cross not the short square is enough usually

NaZ

The purpose of growth to get more workers to increase trade and production. If you're working on food tiles, you're taking away from trade and production, which defeats the purpose of having more population. So 1 or 2 food tiles to begin with is just fine. In fact, I don't want more than 5 food tiles in the entire fat cross. However, generally there are more flatland than forests or hills, so the locations for extremely high production cities are hard to find. Later on harbor can generate a lot of food, so once again flatland becomes less useful.

I generally try to find spots with atleast a couple good food squares. Plains are awesome, especially near rivers + a granary. Plains with marble helps the production side of things as well.

Although, production isn't everything. I've built cities in locations with no forests, hills, or mountains. I just specialize these cities to gold/science and watch them grow. To build units/buildings you just have to buy them, which isn't that bad really, especially if the city itself is raking in tons of money.

I've also had cities that were the complete opposite, with only one food tile, but loads of production. Also had a couple cities as the Mongols that, because of the barbarian villages I took, had no food at all. Atleast until they built harbors.

Depends on what the purpose of the city will be, and what land is available. Most times I'll try for atleast 2-3 food tiles, but am perfectly fine with just 1 or 2. Having no food tiles really hurts, unless you can rush a harbor fast, or unless you just like doing the Mega City strategy, which I have never done.

The purpose of growth to get more workers to increase trade and production. If you're working on food tiles, you're taking away from trade and production, which defeats the purpose of having more population.

You are missing one very important point. The purpose of a large city with a lot of growth is NOT to get trade or production it is to get tons of culture. If culture is not your purpose with a city of great growth then you have done something very wrong. If the purpose is to grow a culture booster then food is what it is all about.

You are missing one very important point. The purpose of a large city with a lot of growth is NOT to get trade or production it is to get tons of culture. If culture is not your purpose with a city of great growth then you have done something very wrong. If the purpose is to grow a culture booster then food is what it is all about.

But population does not equal culture, right? You first have to build the buildings or generate the GP that start to ramp up culture. And that takes production.

But population does not equal culture, right? You first have to build the buildings or generate the GP that start to ramp up culture. And that takes production.

Charlie you are right to a certain extent. You need temples, cathedrals, GPs, and Wonders to generate CPs (Culture Points). The point is that the temples create one CP for each population, i.e. food creates culture in an indirect way. Should you have zero production (possible but not something I propose) you just have to rush temples and cathedrals.

But population does not equal culture, right? You first have to build the buildings or generate the GP that start to ramp up culture. And that takes production.

Another important thing to remember is that even if there are no forests, hills or mountains near a city, that city can still have production. Each worker assigned to work in the city generates one trade and one hammer. So if you don't want to spend a lot of gold, all you have to do in your mega culture city is pull a few workers in from the fields to build things.

Each worker assigned to work in the city generates one trade and one hammer.

Yes, very good point.

Yep, I love building cities where most other players neglect because it doesn't have production. Coastal cities without hammers can be fairly strong, especially if used properly.

Yes, I just won an economic victory with Japan with two cities without production. One for science and one for gold. They both were very strong cities in the end. I rushed all building more or less.

for growing culture, a 9 tile area that has plains and maybe a couple of hills is perfect. save up the gold to rush buy a workshop, then use that to build a granary. procede to go wonder building ;)

last game I had a setup like that with silk in the 9 tile square, so extra culture from that. with 3 hills and oak I was generating 15 hammers per turn. I build shakespear, hanging gardens, and a few other wonders there.

at one point the AI turned on me because of the cultural pressure. gave me a good fight but ultimately they lost

NaZ

actually workers in a city generate

1 hammer if the pop is small 1-6
but they get more and more trade as well as the population goes up

so
Any city with a lot of food around will be good for Anything Later in the game. (Culture, Production, Science, Gold)... best for science/gold/culture

Overall food v. anything else is a Later v. Now situation

[production is the thing a super city will be the most dependent on its terrain for]

One thing many of you seem to be forgetting about large cities is that expanding your borders only gets you so much. If you are going for a cultural victory, hammers are your best bet in large cities. High hammers=fast wonders=fast cultural victories.

Which is the point, right?

The thing about this debate that intrigues me is that nobody brings up the fact that larger cities don't need food to grow. You can have cities expand without the use of food tiles. While it was nerfed in the patch, it's still incredibly useful up to about 20.

make sure you have food. I played a senglish and had a city with no food. needless to say, it only kept working a gem resource and thats all.

Yep, I love building cities where most other players neglect because it doesn't have production. Coastal cities without hammers can be fairly strong, especially if used properly.

If you can get their science up and research engineering and railroad first, you get +1 from engineering and +2 production in each city from railroad. You have fair production while you can still assign all your workers to tiles.