Would you have started this second city differently?

I've been winning on emperor pretty consistently now, so I'm thinking it's time to move up. But with that said, I still suck at picking the best city locations. This is especially true when trying to settle in or around desert. I've usually shied away from it out of fear of not getting Petra.

I ended up winning this game easily thru science even though I started out with domination in mind. I am still second guessing this starting location. I started it thinking I wasn't going to get Petra. So I wanted the salt to the north, sheep to the west and the oasis tile for food just in case. That meant no river or mountain. I think I started this city around turn 40 or so, and since this is emperor, should I have assumed I would have gotten Petra, thus starting the city next to the mountain. This would have gotten me the observatory and grand mesa, but no salt and sheep. I had Earth Mother as my pantheon as I had three copper in my capital.

Anyhow, it ended up being a nice city anyway. How would you have placed it?

Here is the fourth city I started. Also in desert. I think I picked this one correctly on the hill with three oasis and wheat tiles in range. Could have used two Petra wonders

This game was just crazy and everything went right. I had allied every maritime and mercantile city state early so my cities pop snowballed out of control. I just kept it going to see how big the cities could get. I could have won sooner if I had been working specialist slots instead. I was trying to get each city to pop 30. Didn't quite make it.

Also, this is the first time I controlled all of one resource (copper) and had sold/traded to every AI in the game. Crazy game....

McBean said:

How would you have placed it?

Click to expand...

I would have placed that city next to the mountain anyway. I would have put a 5th city east of Saltzburg(maybe no Salzburg when you decide to put a city there who knows?) next to another mountain to work Salt.

It's emperor so i guess that it is possible before it's too late.

Yeah, it's less important that your capital gets all of those resources if you plan a second city over there...I know it's tempting though as you want the extra growth/production for the capital and especially in desert. I sometimes struggle with the same question. However, that close to a single mountain and flood plains/copper already? You probably should've taken it as any mountain capital is an insane difference in science later. Also, I can't tell if you made it on the river or not...I'm assuming with that much riverfront a hydro plant would've been epic.

Looks like you won easily anyway though.

you really should have turned off some of info, no idea hwo you people play with all that crap on your screen.

For the 1st screenshot, I would've place the city on the hill river tile that is north to city's main tile. If you would've done this, your city could have an extra hammer earlier and access to the water mill which adds +2 food and +1 hammer. The city is ok atm.

The game has far too many variables to say what was right to do or not based solely on a screenshot (an end-game screenshot, no less). However, in general it would be extremely ill advised picking a spot with no river access and no mountain when one could have moved one tile apart and placed the city where it would have gotten access to both.