Civ Illustrated #2: Case studies - city placement

Excellent guide, Seraiel!

This guide is an amazing source! The fact that it talks through an entire game with examples is really grand.

Can I request that the topic of isolated starts and quick cottages is also covered (e.g. civs that can go pottery instantly)? In most of these games in your posts the first cities are for the purpose of blocking and only overlap a little. I personally find that sometimes a very strongly overlapping city (perhaps sharing a food source with the capital) is more beneficial on lower difficulties or when isolated because you can share the working of the cottages more easily and quickly upgrade the cottages.
... or is that tactic of mine rubbish? :\ If its not then its possibly worth a mention?

Using overlap for the first city, especially if it has a river connection is good play. With rising difficulty however it becomes more and more important to block land, because Elepult is the only safe option for early war, and if not having Ivory but also in several other cases, Cuirrassiers or even Rifles are best choice (doesn't apply for Marathon, on Marathon, everything's different because units are 33% cheaper and it's even possible to conquer whole maps with Immortals or Horse Archers because they need so long to obsolete) . Grabbing 6-7 cities on a Standard sized map is not easy on Deity, I'd think it'd be impossible without using aggressive blocker tactics, except the map gave onesself unusually much land, have that case in my current game, it's 1st time for at least a year though. So your guessing is right, on lower difficulty, other rules apply towards settling, because the AI just cannot have 3 cities while the player is still at 1.

Regarding isolated starts or quick Cottages: There'd need to be a GOTM that has an isolated start, then I could write a post about it. It'd make no sense to play an isolated start when playing for the HoF, I'm sure you'll find several games in S&T if you search for it though. Basically, isolated it just a completely unique case, settling islands i. e. becomes a lot more important to have 2 TRs and one can settle the land in order of quality and doesn't need to pay attention towards other rules, like i. e. not founding Jungle-cities, border pressure or settling on resources.
Going instantly for Pottery imo. is very adviseable, if there's no other chance of . It's not really a topic for a city placement guide, because one wouldn't place cities differently only because they could work a shared Cottage for the first 50T, also AH is much more preferable, as it may mean that one may skip on Bronze Working and directly beeline Alpha via Writing. If Pottery is only one tech though so if a civ starts with Agri and TW (i. e. Egypt) , then it's hard to imagine researching Pottery would not pay back until Alpha, even with beelining it after AH or BW (or nothing of both if playing without barbs) .

Helper cities I btw. covered already, they're good if they're not too crippled or if playing games where cities only need very few tiles (Dom- / Conquest) .

Hth and thx for the compliments Quibblesome & STW .

There used to be the Lonely Hearts Club, a series of isolated starts that were played like the Nobles club. You could have a look here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6148900

They're all pretty old though, so some of the screenshots are no longer working. The consensus on some issues of strategy has also shifted over the years.

Seraiel said:

Spoiler :

That city could hire 24 Specialists if the empire were currently running Caste O_o .

Seraiel

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Hi Seraiel, looking at this screenshot it makes me realize there's something I don't understand about hiring specialists. In that case the city size is 14 but it can hire 16 specialists while working 12 tiles, how does it all add up? I thought each hired specialist means sacrificing a workable tile?

It's got the National Park - 1 free specialist for every Forest Preserve.

mdesy said:

Hi Seraiel, looking at this screenshot it makes me realize there's something I don't understand about hiring specialists. In that case the city size is 14 but it can hire 16 specialists while working 12 tiles, how does it all add up? I thought each hired specialist means sacrificing a workable tile?

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That looks suspiciously like a picture from one of my games

Like NobleZarkon wrote, the city has the National Park. That means it gets one free specialist for each Forest Preserve in the city's BFC. It can be worth it to save many forests or jungles to get a really good great people farm in the later stages of the game. If you're going to space and the National Park city has many forests, you can then chop them down at the end to quickly finish a space part.

Pangaea said:

Like NobleZarkon wrote, the city has the National Park. That means it gets one free specialist for each Forest Preserve in the city's BFC. It can be worth it to save many forests or jungles to get a really good great people farm in the later stages of the game. If you're going to space and the National Park city has many forests, you can then chop them down at the end to quickly finish a space part.

Click to expand...

If you're playing a Time game the National Epic and National Park in the middle of the jungle with food provided by Sushi and Hammers by Mining Inc can be awesome

The photos don't load anymore. The original article is a couple years old now and the forum has been updated, so I imagine that's why. Is there an adjustment that I can make to my account/forum settings to make them show?

MeowZeDung said:

Is there an adjustment that I can make to my account/forum settings to make them show?

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I've asked the Admins to look into this.

NobleZarkon said:

I've asked the Admins to look into this.

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Unfortunately I suspect @Seraiel has simply deleted his account with all the pictures Came across some other posts of his here and there, which contained pictures, and they're all dead. Tried to look up his photobucket, and it comes back with an error message: http://photobucket.com/user/Seraiel/

Perhaps something can be done with the waybackmachine? It's usually excellent for stuff like this.

Pangaea said:

Unfortunately I suspect @Seraiel has simply deleted his account with all the pictures Came across some other posts of his here and there, which contained pictures, and they're all dead. Tried to look up his photobucket, and it comes back with an error message: http://photobucket.com/user/Seraiel/

Perhaps something can be done with the waybackmachine? It's usually excellent for stuff like this.

Click to expand...

I noticed the same is happening for the Kossin daily round posts, which I use to reference often a few years back. I will check the wayback machine, didn't even think of that.

Edit: It worked Edit again: Ok, only sort of. I can get some of the photos from Civ Illustrated #3 to load, but not #2 or DR Kossin

I have a question for founding one's capital. Is a coastal capital good? If one's capital then they can take advantage of more land resources and does not have to defend the capital quite so much, but if the capital is coastal one can take better advantage of coastal resources and could even build Moai Statues and run bureaucracy and use it as a very strong naval production city which has strong commerce as well, also a strong navy means one doesn't have to worry too much about surprise amphibious attacks.

First of all, I must say this is a fantastic post/series.

My Civ games, typically follow a similar path. Strong military effort gives me an advantage, followed by weak - or at least sub-optimal - economy play costs me dearly.

Applying your insights to my games, I think I am spacing my cities out too much. I rarely have any overlap and notice my cities regularly waste - by not-working - valuable tiles.

For example, I often play Egypt on Earth-18 civs and my typical city placement would be:



..and fighting the Persians / Arabs for the Babylon area:



It's cheap, and simple but I notice that for most of the game many of these tiles are not being worked whilst the cities grow.

Having read this, I think this is hugely wasteful and could have more than twice as many cities in this area:



..maybe more of a long-shot with this number of cities, but the Babylon area:



My typical strategy is:

• Warrior Rush phase, primarily to grow cities and steal workers.
• Tech:
  -> Animal Husbandry for Horse Archers / Chariots
  -> Bronze Working for
  -> Writing for Libraries (my early economy is almost always specialist)
• Trade the rest, after Alphabet.
• Currency & Code of Laws.

My observations:

Benefits:

• Settling cities off floodplains maintains their higher value and adds 2 1 1 to otherwise junk tiles.
• Most cities are settled on rivers or oasis for 2.
• Cities could work an average of 3 floodplain tiles which - health and happiness permitting - could support a size 7 city with 4 specialists.
  -> Could be huge with a Philosophical leader.
• Capital has 9 tiles which could later be Cottaged.

Disadvantages

• Production cost of 9 settlers, vs 2 settlers.
  
• Maintenance cost of 10 cities, vs 3 cities - is there an easy way to calculate this difference?
• Early war with Arabs / Persia lasts longer as settling the area takes longer.
• Capital has 9 floodplains which means 3 so slow early growth.

I play on Noble.

Am I going in the right direction? Any insights are much appreciated.

Ah, in my post above I'd overlooked my Capital losing the +2 from fresh water meaning we have -3 from so start stagnant which - I think - is just too much of a disadvantage, so I need to look at it again.

guys I tried to make a copy of a text from mobile phone, guess it doesn't do so, interesting guide, I played civ 4 on multiplayer my login was LivingJurka, its interesting statement about floodplains, having much of floodplains really can make your city to work not on a full scale, so less units will be build

CivilizedBerserker said:

First of all, I must say this is a fantastic post/series.

My Civ games, typically follow a similar path. Strong military effort gives me an advantage, followed by weak - or at least sub-optimal - economy play costs me dearly.

Applying your insights to my games, I think I am spacing my cities out too much. I rarely have any overlap and notice my cities regularly waste - by not-working - valuable tiles.

For example, I often play Egypt on Earth-18 civs and my typical city placement would be:



..and fighting the Persians / Arabs for the Babylon area:



It's cheap, and simple but I notice that for most of the game many of these tiles are not being worked whilst the cities grow.

Having read this, I think this is hugely wasteful and could have more than twice as many cities in this area:



..maybe more of a long-shot with this number of cities, but the Babylon area:



My typical strategy is:

• Warrior Rush phase, primarily to grow cities and steal workers.
• Tech:
  -> Animal Husbandry for Horse Archers / Chariots
  -> Bronze Working for
  -> Writing for Libraries (my early economy is almost always specialist)
• Trade the rest, after Alphabet.
• Currency & Code of Laws.

My observations:

Benefits:

• Settling cities off floodplains maintains their higher value and adds 2 1 1 to otherwise junk tiles.
• Most cities are settled on rivers or oasis for 2.
• Cities could work an average of 3 floodplain tiles which - health and happiness permitting - could support a size 7 city with 4 specialists.
  -> Could be huge with a Philosophical leader.
• Capital has 9 tiles which could later be Cottaged.

Disadvantages

• Production cost of 9 settlers, vs 2 settlers.
  
• Maintenance cost of 10 cities, vs 3 cities - is there an easy way to calculate this difference?
• Early war with Arabs / Persia lasts longer as settling the area takes longer.
• Capital has 9 floodplains which means 3 so slow early growth.

I play on Noble.

Am I going in the right direction? Any insights are much appreciated.

Click to expand...

If anyone's interested, this city placement - give or take - was the backbone of my first ever Diplomatic victory and highest ever score in my (probably crap) HOF. Thank you for the advice, I am delighted.

Couple of factors certainly got lucky, i.e huts and Persia never grew particularly strong, but I'll take it!

High-level overview:

• Initial Warrior rush on Arabs and Persia, killing settlers and stealing workers.
• Got Bronze Working and Masonry early.
• Whipping out settlers at every possible opportunity whilst constructing the Pyramids.
• Farmed all the Flood Plains around the nile, and middle east area.
• Whipped libraries and running 2 scientists in lots of cities started a steady flow of Great Scientists.
• CoL, Partheon and Philosophy then to really up the volume.
• Took Southern Europe - Greece, Rome and Spain and settled in the Carthage area.
• Bulbed all scientists - following a guide on here carefully to get max beakers - and Liberalism, so very efficient teching and trade possibilities.
• Intended to go for the Space Race victory but realised I could do the UN much earlier.
• Combination of my large population, vassals and good relations due to trade meant I won the Diplomatic victory on the first vote.

Really enjoyed that game. I'd like to have a go on higher difficulties now.

This is really an excellent guide, but it really hurts that the images are gone. It's the same with issue 3#. Is there any way to recover them. Maybe somebody stored them or anything? Unfortunatly waybackmachine didn't spit out anything useful.

This is gold. Tnx.

Very good guide! Really missing the pictures for the examples!