how to go "tall" without conquest?

darkace77450

Emperor
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Mar 8, 2015
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I almost always play tall, and I always play on small maps. I aim to get four cities going early, but I also aim to space them six tiles apart unless a luxury good, great cluster of high-yield tiles, or a natural wonder dictates I not. The problem with spacing my cities this far out that I'm running into over and over again is a lack of space for the fourth city. If I'm quick enough, I usually wind up with three cities built in some pretty choice spots. But there's never enough room for that fourth city.

So that leaves me with the choice of making room for the fourth city by force, even if I'm aiming for a peaceful approach, or waiting to colonize after I research Navigation. I'm loathe to start an early war of conquest when I intentionally set out on a peaceful approach to my empire-building, but waiting so long to get a fourth city up and running really puts me behind in Research, money-generation, etc.

So what's a guy to do when going tall? Do I take a "peace be damned" approach? Or do I compromise on my six-tile separation and start settling with five or even four tiles between cities that are eventually going to be rather populated? How do you guys do it? Any feedback would be appreciated.
 
5 tiles is the maximum potential without wasting any efficiency in usage. If you space cities 6 tiles away, you will have a wasted triangle of tiles in the center of a perfect triangle of cities, which is completely inefficient. Max efficiency can only be achieved, theoretically, with spacing of 5, and then only if you grow your cities to the max usage of tiles.
 
5 tiles is the maximum potential without wasting any efficiency in usage. If you space cities 6 tiles away, you will have a wasted triangle of tiles in the center of a perfect triangle of cities, which is completely inefficient. Max efficiency can only be achieved, theoretically, with spacing of 5, and then only if you grow your cities to the max usage of tiles.


But efficiency of what, though?
 
Ah. That I can kinda get, but in the end, how often is the waste of several times per four cities gonna actually make it so you have room to found one less city?

Also, the general consensus here seems to be that tall is better than wide, so perhaps four great cities sharing few or no tiles is better than five cities sharing several tiles?
 
Ah. That I can kinda get, but in the end, how often is the waste of several times per four cities gonna actually make it so you have room to found one less city?

Also, the general consensus here seems to be that tall is better than wide, so perhaps four great cities sharing few or no tiles is better than five cities sharing several tiles?

No, becausethe four great city sharing few or no tiles was a stunt that was a lot easier to pull off than a wide liberty particularly with tradition. Tradition was very OP in tall even with the recent patch. Tradition used to be more OP without the recent patch.
 
That'd be a serious blow to it. I'd start by making Engineering necessary to get them if you wanted to nerf Trad.

thats a good idea, maybe those should be not aqueducts specifically but a "growth building" so you'd get medical labs if took the finisher in the later era. (dont know if it has any sense though)
 
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