Civ Illustrated #2: Case studies - city placement

Just noticed, that I didn't answer this post yet:

drizzt.titan said:

First of all I am going to pretend my inquiry inspired you to write this article even if that is not true.

Secondly, tyvm

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You're welcome, and what I wrote was true. I had thought about writing some strategy-guides earlier, but then thought the interest wouldn't be great enough. It really was your post in the HoF-forum, that gave me the “push“ to simply write and test in reality if there are enough people interested. I must say, that I'm very pleased with the feeback 'til now, and enough users also rated this thread, for which I'm thankful. Ofc., the last doesn't mean, that you should not vote, if you haven't yet .

But third I am in the middle of a tough work schedule which has caused me to put civ on hold for a couple weeks and only logged into civ fanatics to pass some time before bed; your article caused me to miss my bedtime and so I will blame you when I am very tired at work tomorrow; unfortunately I do not have time for comments / questions right now but I will get back to this when work eases up.

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Thx for that compliment (you missing your bed-time because you found the guide interesting) . I also had to cut down my CIV gaming because my studies began again. I hope I still will find the time to compete in the upcoming major Deity Gauntlet. Having written this guide will probably help me too.

Cya!

Amazing work, thank you!

Eagle777 said:

Amazing work, thank you!

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Thx too mate .

Woah, did not realize that there is a #2 for this series. Good job, I enjoyed reading it. Keep it coming!

#9 is eye opening for me. I always feel the urge to settle beside a coastal tile so as not to "waste" them.

Can you add supplementary topics about city placements on "trap cities" for espionage and "dummy gift cities"?

Very comprehensive guide Seraiel. Thanks for all the tips and getting Wastin Time to help out.

Thx you two .

Glad that the article helped you, or gave you ideas.

City gifting imho deserves its own special topic, as it's far from trivial. Even in the current SGOTM, some teams couldn't gift certain cities to the AI, but often had to get them down to 3 cities or less, to make the gift possible. Afaik, the rules to gifting cities are not known 'til this moment, could be something for issue 4.

Why #4? Because #3 is almost completely readily stored on my hard drive and only waits for me to finally get my PC back to make the last corrections and to add the last missing content (i. e. many screenshots which I have on my hard drive) .

And pandamancer, do you really think that the placement of trap or dummy cities really needs an explanation? Ofc., as bad and as close to one's own capital as possible .

^ Yes, as stupid as it sounds. Gifting cities with no resources and poor tiles is a given. But I see seasoned players give free cities to the AI only to be razed by barbs next turn... or gifting cities that encourage rival AIs to DoW each other... or EE cities for cultural victory. The point is maybe there are some unorthodox ways to settle them?

No, they're all logical. One gift's cities that one would lose on the next turn, to at least get a little bit for them. Gifting cities that steal a lot of tiles to raise the chance of AIs DoWing each other also have no secret. Espionage-cities are best if they're only 3 tiles from the capital, because Spies can reach them im 1T then, after they got teleported to the capital after a successful espionage attack.

Those are good ideas, and I would invite you to the CIV Illustrated project if you are interested, they don't fit in this guide though. The first two I never used in over 50 games because 1. Cities are very expensive and AIs can be controlled by other means, 2. I usually don't lose any cities and 3. is something for an espionage guide or a guide to espionage assisted cultural victory.

This guide is for how to found cities for oneself, and I fear that featuring those three examples would either not belong to the topic or even confuse the readers of this guide. At last, gifting away cities is a very special topic that deserves its own guide and gifting away cities at all is already very special on Deity, because it's so expensive, and one wants ones own resources to benefit oneself.
There is even a 4th example, where one gifts a city on one end of an empire to an AI who sits on the opposite end, to weaken it by maintenance-mechanics and to force AI to build roads through one's empire, but that again is mostly a tactical measure and also mostly for slower gamespeeds and games, where one already is in a dominant position.

Sera

erikthecelt said:

Very comprehensive guide Seraiel. Thanks for all the tips and getting Wastin Time to help out.

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Yep! I make these words my own !

Thanks Seraiel for another Guide. There are several tips that I have to adjust in my games, especially about economy (it's always a problem...). I'll try to pay more attention in rivers for trade routes and how cities can pay for themselves with it (trade routes). Also about Sailing (I never thought it was important for land maps ).

Other tips to follow:
- food in the 1st ring (for non CRE or SPI);
- more overlap tiles;
- avoid border-pressure and jungles;
- Worker-pump / Warrior Farm;
- cities with lots of forests.

And by another reading: the idea of keeping small cities (to Domi or Conquest) surprised me (particularly to avoid war). Now I have new concepts for a complete change in my way of playing !

Excellent work !!!

Thx for that post Falabello .

Always happy to help, and even nicer, when getting good feedback .

Reading that keeping cities small in Dom / Conquest games is something new, is already the 2nd time I read this today, which surprises me. From my knowledge, there is nothing stronger than the whip, so all I care for is to not whip away the food out of my cities. Growing cities may get stronger at some point, but at that point, one could already have x additional cities in which one again can whip.

This part was taken from your Replay #9 (page 3 - postcount ¨#60).

I think I'm committing a great mistake in my games . I always search for Currency to recover the economy (always a problem ), keeping some cities in Wealthy. For this I try to grow all the cities to maximize production, converting in . So, I avoid whip.

After reading all these tips (and joining all of them), I'll change, surely, my way of playing. And this will be a new motivation to play (my games are stagnant).

Another thing: I'll have to find some time to read all the others #Replays (I read only #9, watching the 3 videos from it) . Also I'm studying your Diplomatic Deity video for Game 8 - current Challenge. It's a lot of information ...

@ Falabello: I'm already working on a guide about hybrid economy, so CIV Illustrated #4. Difficult topic, as building a good economy takes a lot of knowledge, and the topic itself is very large already.

Replay 8 + 9 are the best for learning btw..

Seraiel said:

@ Falabello: I'm already working on a guide about hybrid economy, so CIV Illustrated #4.

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Wow, very cool! I'll read it, surely.

BTW, is there a CIV Illustrated #3? Tell me where is it, please ?

Falabello said:

Wow, very cool! I'll read it, surely.

BTW, is there a CIV Illustrated #3? Tell me where is it, please ?

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CIV Illustrated #3 is mostly finished but I have it on Handy. I must transfer the data and I still need to work-in the screenshots.

I'm guessing CI3 will come in a maximum of 1 week from now.

If @Seriael (or anyone) can help me with this situation:

- Ghandi of India
- Pangea
- Normal speed
- Emperor


Additional screenshots / info:


- Where would you settle my 2nd city (if we take into consideration all what is written in the Seriael's guide on the 1st page of the thread)?

I settled Delhi immediately because it's on a great location, isn't it? City center on a riverside plains hill (for health bonus and +1); several floodplains and riverside grasslands for bureau capital; corn; 1 more riverside plains hill for a mine; plenty of forests and stone & marble for some wonders!

Bad things: Stone and marble aren't riverside (no extra commerce); corn not irrigated.

What was my plan; what was I doing for the first several turns? It's not important for my opening question, but I was probably doing some not so clever things. First Agri for corn, then Masonry from Mysticism (not just for Oracle), Marble quarry, Mine on the plains hill, road for marble and then I've headed to Priesthood and Oracle (not GW or SH). For early philosophical and Representation (Pyramids) specialists... maybe cultural game, because I never did it before.

After all that, I've started to look for the 2nd city location, but after a lot of thinking I haven't been satisfied with any location. For me, the best would be near the wheat because I have Agri and would like to skip AH for a while (you probably ask am I really not afraid of barbs?) . The problem is settling 1 tile from the river; and what would I do with 2nd floodplains city while probably destroying a location for a city which would include the gold...?. Btw, the 1st gold doesn't have near food, except cows. ...And if I want the spices and the wheat (in the first ring) then I would be 1 tile from the river again or if I take plains I would waste a floodplain tile. Zara is in that direction, but for now there's nothing valuable there. Other solutions are either far or they need fishing... HA... hunting... If we go back to my first idea, I can settle a floodplain to the right and take wheat slightly later? Flood plains as a temporary food source = a bad idea? And how to get the 1st gold efficiently? Scout more? Wait capital's borders (Oracle) to expand and get plains cows ?

I'm really not sure. What would you do in my place? How many mistakes you think I committed until turn #32? BW or HA and go to war to get something better?

Normally, this is the wrong forum and thread, because you would have wanted to ask in the S&T forum for advice.

As this thread is about city-settling in general though, I'll say where I had founded the cities, and that would be 1N on the Plains Hill for #1. #2 could be founded 2N1E of Cows to get the Gold, at least that city got quite a lot FPs too, so can work the Gold without problems with i. e. a Farm.

All your other questions don't concern the topic of this thread, so I'd advise you to ask them again in S&T.

Great work, now we want wars illustrated including all tricks (effective stack splitting, estimating stack size, health bar tricks, how much chop, double whips cats->axe to have 2 units ready in 2 turns, keeping units prebuilt and so on and so on...)

enKage said:

Great work, now we want wars illustrated including all tricks (effective stack splitting, estimating stack size, health bar tricks, how much chop, double whips cats->axe to have 2 units ready in 2 turns, keeping units prebuilt and so on and so on...)

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That's not something for me, but I already have some users in mind, who could write this, so I'll leave a notice for the other members of CIV Illustrated. Thx for the idea .

For fast conquest, settle toward your first target.

LowtherCastle said:

For fast conquest, settle toward your first target.

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For which difficulty are you talking, Lowther? You mean move your first Settler and settle directly beside an opponent, right? That maybe works 'til Emperor or even Immortal, but not for Deity.

If you mean move towards your target with your 2nd city I agree, 2nd and 3rd city should always block as much land as possible, and all neighbours are targets.