Feel Good Distance between Cities

historix69

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After maybe a year of not playing Civ5 I recently started a new game of Civ5BNW on the giant world map (marathon) with lots of free space to settle in africa ... and I noticed once again that from the look and feel of the map I would naturally place cities at a small distance of maybe 4 tiles : city - 3 tiles empty - city - 3 tiles empty - city
For small cities below size 10 in ancient and classic era, this would look realistic and fine, would give fast access to all resource tiles and would effectively block AI from settling inside your claim. However cities placed so close have a huge overlap of about 50% territory, have all the penaltes, double upkeep, low pop, etc. and therefore in the end are less profitable. So I went with the wider spacing with 5-7 free tiles inbetween depending on geography and resources. Since small cities in Civ5BNW usually have small culture production compared to the capital with palace, wonders, etc. it takes forever for the cities to claim their 36 tiles (especially on marathon) ... in classic era the map looks like an archipelago, most tiles between cities are not claimed. It looks unnatural. (For example in the game the cities without overlap at the north african coast are Tunis (Karthago) - Tripolis - Bengasi - Port Said (Suez-canal))

The 4-tiles-spacing would be ok if there would be no penalties (science, culture, happiness) for the additional cities. In the beginning they would claim and work the land quickly. Later when cities grow and buildings become more expensive, only every second city would continue to grow to a metropolis using all 36 tiles while the other cities would stay small with basic buildings, representing more a village or provincal town (or fortress town guarding the border). When necessary, tiles would be swapped from the small towns to the metropolis. (Kind of urbanization process.)
I would really appreciate it when Civ5 would remove the penalties for small cities.

Civ3 and Civ4 allowed spacing in 4-5 tiles distance without overlap. In Civ5 you need 7 tiles distance to avoid overlap.
Civ3 and Civ4 used a culture range around the city, so (if I remember correctly) usually already after around 10 turns(?) of culture production, a city had control of the 2nd ring / the full fat cross. In Civ5 a city starts with one ring (6 tiles of 36 tiles) and the other 30 tiles have to be acquired one-by-one with increasing costs (culture/cash) which may take a lot of time for non-capital cities.

What is your "Feel Good Distance between Cities" if there were no penalties?
 
I generally space cities 6 tiles apart when I am playing with lots of room, otherwise I just try and block the AI and space them 4-5 if I am using it just for resources.
 
I'd say 5-6 for me, I actually like a bit of overlap. It's nice when your newly founded cities can start working tiles that have already been improved right away. Overlap allows for some additional micromanaging later too, e.g. have a city that's 2 turns from growing work another city's riverside wheat to grow in 1 etc.
 
In Civ5 you need 7 tiles distance to avoid overlap.
In the rest of your post, you write about tiles between cities, but here I can only assume you shift to title counting from city-to-city. Is that correct? In any case, six tiles between cities means zero overlap.

Five tiles between cities in a straight line is exactly one shared tile, so no big deal at all.

Four tiles between cities in a straight line is only four tiles of overlap, so still not bad. Especially if those overlapped tiles can be plains or desert or mountains or water (or even tundra and snow, but that is much less common). The problem is doing that three or four times and then an AI settles equally close to you!

The other thing to keep in mind is religious pressure. Between any three cities, it is strong if the tile count between any two at the greatest distance is ten or less. If you have three cities all in a straight line, and five tiles between each, that is a count of eleven tiles from first to third city. Three cities in a straight line with four tiles between each has 50% more internal religious pressure than three cities in a straight line with five tiles between each!

It depends how fertile my land is. When my land is very good, I always put five tiles between cities, but aim for six. If the land is below average, then four is fine.

What is your "Feel Good Distance between Cities" if there were no penalties?
I do not understand this question. What penalties are you referring to?
 
I suspect he is referring to city-settlement "penalties" (e.g., culture cost of policies, tech costs, and maybe city-settlement unhappiness as well), and asking, if those penalties didn't exist, how tightly (or loosely) would you space your cities?
 
I do not understand this question. What penalties are you referring to?

Penalties are global unhappiness, science and culture penalty per city. If you place your cities closer to each other with overlap, you need more cities to cover a certain area (e.g. continent) and so have more penalties in comparison to a strategy where you completely cover the area without overlap.

However my question was not about strategy but about the city distance feeling natural. I remember from Civ5 vanilla that the advisor usually suggested to place a new city in 4 tiles distance and that is also the distance I would instinctively choose before considering strategy and penalties. This might be caused by Civ1-4 having smaller distance between cities and also by the scale of the graphic representation of cities and landscape ... with 6 empty tiles between cities the map looks very "empty" to me ...
 
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