Need help selecting spots for towns

Downloaded this mod, started playing and I'm at the point I just cranked out my 1st tribe. I have a large swath of land with multiple resources discovered, however I have a hard time choosing a location.

Need some advice please, regarding what resources should I prioritize and how far apart cities should be.

Zamolxes77 said:

Downloaded this mod, started playing and I'm at the point I just cranked out my 1st tribe. I have a large swath of land with multiple resources discovered, however I have a hard time choosing a location.

Need some advice please, regarding what resources should I prioritize and how far apart cities should be.

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I think it's fair to say there's little or no advantage to cities sharing tiles in C2C. That said, I personally like to work all my tiles, so I don't hesitate to place cities with only 2 tiles between them. In Renaissance depending on options you will be able to work a third ring, but I don't believe it's worth spreading your cities more for that reason.

If you anticipate an easy game like most people, you don't have to consider defence when placing cities. However if you've chosen any challenging options eg. Deity, Ruthless AI, Raging Barbs, Nightmare mode etc etc., your cities will need to huddle together even more than usual. Even without any such options, be aware than spawnbusting for barbs doesn't seem to work here, ie. barbs can spawn adjacent to your borders, so every city needs a strong or specialist defender (preferably two or three) asap.

I'm sure you know that Horses is the priority resource. Also Elephants are pretty obvious, but one you might not know is Obsidian, because obsidian weapons give some fairly advanced units in prehistoric/before metal. Apart from that it's the ones you have the tech for so mainly hunting. You will get Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (as well as Mining iirc) fairly soon (???), although of course it will be much longer than in vanilla or BtS.

It's been ages since I was in prehistoric and you haven't said your gamespeed etc., so this is just a few thoughts off the top of my head... (Apart from military units, I've forgotten what you can use resources for in PH)

Well I'm in prehistory, circa 26,000 BCE, I play on eons speed, I think is the second to last slowest speed.

Atm I'm drowning in animals lol, I trained 3 trackers, in capital with hunt master, so they have hunting 3 by now and I have like 20 different animals, getting more every single turn. I end up butchering most of them, I already got all the myths, built deer camps and somesuch, I'm trying to get rid of them to go back into positive gold gain, I'm on -3 atm.

So obsidian is important, good, I'm playing as aztecs and just seen the jaguar warriors on research, they seem to need obsidian, so my 3rd city will be in the mountains.

I saved couple of animals, eagle can build feather worker, a snake can build a snake charmer, ibex and bison can build camps, saved those for 3rd town.

Atm I'm using the spacing I used in vanilla civ 4.

Being next to a river (particularly a long one) is very important through the mid game. There are a lot of buildings you won't be able to build if you aren't on a river. Trade is also improved along rivers. Costal cities (particularly at river mouths) can generate lots of once you get into ancient and classical eras with additional trade and port/harbor buildings.

Standard Civ4 city placement still applies, for example: Avoid useless terrain; Maximize new resources whenever possible, a new food type or luxury or so is more important than doubling up on ones that you already have; etc...

Note that, unlike vanilla Civ4, there are special bonus buildings only available if you have particular combinations of resources in your fat cross. The majority aren't critical just nice to have. However, this is one possible way to get easier access to poison than the more typical method of capturing tons of venomous snakes and waiting for the right techs.

Personally I like to maximize the number of resources available to new cities while minimizing tile overlap (I'll do 3 overlap if I have to but prefer to avoid it), even if it means having some gaps of tiles that'll never be worked. In the mid game extra specialists are nearly just as good as working the extra tiles (and some people think they're better). I also like to ensure that at least 1 (and preferably 2) food resource(s) is/are available to the new city. This is important for early growth to get that city to cross important pop boundaries (6 & 13 in particular) required to build critical buildings.

It actually is a lot easier to decide in C2C than in the normal game. It really is more about distance from other cities than the resources you are close to. Almost every tile will have some resources anyway. That being said, I like to place at least far enough apart for every city to have a fat cross. An extra space or two between isn't a bad idea either since you will still pick up those spots when you get your metropolis. Also whenever possible make sure to be on a coast. use Alt X and ctrl X to paint out the fat crosses for new cities to help work it out. Being on a river is still good, but not nearly as important as in the normal game since you can get fresh water from wells and stuff.

It's not so much the fresh water, as it is the extra/early trade and then river port and such buildings. They help with the early gold/expansion problems. Later when gold is less an issue those same buildings/boosted trade help with increase commerce/science.

Oh snap, so I should go for coastal towns? Damn, made 2 of them already, both landlocked. I saw Jaguars in the research tree and I went straight for them, strength 7 unit, so I needed some obsidian.

I finally got it only to realize I need a crap load of other stuff beside the obsidian, like team sports? Lol, why do they put a flashy unit on research tree but you can't get it when research is done?

Stone is a priority for me early on

Zamolxes77 said:

I finally got it only to realize I need a crap load of other stuff beside the obsidian, like team sports? Lol, why do they put a flashy unit on research tree but you can't get it when research is done?

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It depends on the order you define the requirements for the unit, in part. Some need multiple techs and people put the earliest tech in the list first rather than the latest one so the unit (or building) shows up on the early tech since the pedia and tech tree assume the first tech is the important one.

We have had this discussion a lot and earliest tech as the first tech has always one out. I would prefer it the other way round, I.E. furthest right tech you need to research is the first in the definition, but I loose out.