Settling?

I'm not really a newbie just a lurker. I have PTW and I play on regerent level.

But my question is do most of you here settle close and then move away from your capital or settle away to block the enemy and then settle towards the capital?

I am waiting on replies to try a new stragtegy in my next game. I want to try and settle away but want to see other views as I haven't tried this before I am looking to move up to Monarchy after this game.

Thanks in advance.

I try to settle close to my capital so that my settlers don't spend too many turns travelling... Although it is a good idea to move the extra distance to get a really good spot.

Here how it works for me. It pretty much depends on situation and level.
On regent and below, yes you can settle far form capital and later fil gaps.
That is because AIs are not so aggressive and they do not expand fast.

If you play harder levels you reall want to build as many cities as you can in short period of time. (with maximum production level and minimal corruption) The only way to do it is building close to capital. as it was mentioned above you don't want your settlers to lose turns on unnesesary travel.
I do have few exceptions of this rule though.
1. Choke points on the map. You really want to place city ASAP there to prevent AI from expanding.
2. Resources and luxuries.... if you see iron far away from you but very close to AI do everything to grab it. Put a city and build a temple and/or library to prevent flipping. AI with no iron is a dead AI :devil2:. So in my games i always try to get control of resources and iron is the most important one in AA.

Again the beauty of Civ in it's flexibility and you dont have a single recipe for each situation, each game each map is unique.... There are some general recommendations but player has to make unique desicions each time he/she plays a new game. i love it.

I always build them close to my capital, and expand outwards.

While using cities to cut off enemy expansion can be a good thing, it also has its downsides, such as:
- Settlers will use many unnecessary turns to travel to their destination.
- Placing cities far away from your capital increases their corruption & waste rate - which is already horrendous in the early game (because of the Despotism government).

I'd rather concentrate on conquering your neighbours cities with military instead of trying to cut him off by founding cities close to him.

Berrern said:

I always build them close to my capital, and expand outwards.

While using cities to cut off enemy expansion can be a good thing, it also has its downsides, such as:
- Settlers will use many unnecessary turns to travel to their destination.
- Placing cities far away from your capital increases their corruption & waste rate - which is already horrendous in the early game (because of the Despotism government).

I'd rather concentrate on conquering your neighbours cities with military instead of trying to cut him off by founding cities close to him.

Click to expand...

Yes, but can you imagine how much easier it will be for your military to conquer your neigbour if you placed that pity and totally corrupted town of yours far away but on top of an iron mine? Now you won't face his swordsmen, pikemen, knights and have an easy walk with half of resources for the war needed otherwise. (read my spoiler on COTM1 for details in few days)

My goal is always to build my commerce as rapidly as possible. The best commercial cities are going to be the ones closest to my first city, so I build close. With my strong economy, I can always capture the resources and territory farther from the center of my empire by force, at the appropriate time.

Another question, is it better to move a space to go coastal access and get off a hill or should I have stayed on the hill and lost the access. There was a source of wheat on flood plains? (two food plus the wheat) which stayed in the city limit even when I moved. I'll attach a picture tonight but I did move to the coast and set up a 4 turn settler city.

What are your opions on not settling the first turn.

If I can block the enemy but am not too far away, then I do settle a bit further away and build cities between. Furthermore, I try to plan for them to be as productive as possible, with as few tiles as possible going unused. I'm a bit of a settlement planning freak if I have the time for it. Or, what I'll do is settle the coastal areas (should I happen to be on my own island or have eleminated the opposition) and then settle the interior. It really all depends upon your situation. As for Potatoe's post about the coast vs. the hill, I say settle the coast as you have sea access, still have flood plains for food, and will be able to use hill for good shield production in the future.

I've got a related question...

I just started a new epic game: Russia / Large map / Continents / Monarch. I got a couple of free Settlers from goody huts. Do you try to bring them back to your other cities when they are far away? You would get better defense and lower corruption in close, but you risk losing them to Barbs and you waste turns if you move them.

What should I have done with those Settlers? I ended up pretty much just building where I found them. One was about 20 tiles away from Moscow and the other was about 10 tiles further past that. I'm churning out the Settlers right now and it looks like I might eventually be able to join them up, but it will be a while.

If I think I can join the cities up then I will probably build it where it is especially if I think barbs have started to appear and could easily intercept the settler and I'll build a city if I can't get it back through AI territory. However I would try and bring the settler back if I could get an escort to it and it was too far away.

So I moved my guy off the hill and set up a settler factory. Here is my orginal location, I moved just off the hill but still next to the river.


Here is a settler factory I was able to set up after moving.