Settling cities closer than 4 tiles.

OR: A Tale Of Two Cities

I think it's rather artificially restrictive that you not only cannot settle within 3 tiles of your own cities, but city-state cities and rival cities as well. Of course, I understand that the problem has to do with cities potentially working other cities, as well as tiles located beyond other cities. That's why I've come up with this handy little mechanic to make closer settlements less game-breaking.

The green star is the city currently selected in the city screen.
The red star is another city located within the green city's borders, and can only be worked by the red city.
Blank tiles can only be worked by the green city.
Tiles with yellow dots can be worked by either city.
Tiles with red dots can only be worked by the red city.

3 tiles away by a straight line:

The two cities have a considerable amount of overlap, and the green city is denied one workable tile. As an added disincentive, 0.5 unhappiness is generated by the red and green cities.

3 tiles away by a zigzagged line:

A tad more problematic. Four tiles, including the red city, are rendered unworkable by the green city. Again, 0.5 unhappiness is generated by both cities.

2 tiles away by a straight line:

Only slightly more troublesome than the previous example regarding workable tiles, but now both cities will generate 1 extra unhappiness.

2 tiles away by a zigzagged line:

Here's where settling close really starts to become an issue. A quarter of the green city's tiles are now eclipsed by the red city's presence, and both cities will still generate 1 extra unhappiness.

Neighboring tile:

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Over a third of the tiles are now unworkable by the green city, and both cities generate 2 extra unhappiness.

What this system does is allow extra flexibility in settling cities. Obviously, poor planning will result in a penalty to your empire's happiness, but it allows for a little more wiggle room. It also lets you get just that little bit closer to your rival's borders, if you're willing to give up some unhappiness for a military advantage.

You can do this by altering GlobalDefines.xml.

3335d said:

You can do this by altering GlobalDefines.xml.

Click to expand...

Yes, it's possible to change the minimum distance through there, but without a way to restrict a city's access to tiles located beyond another city, that would just break the game entirely.

The problem is not the workable tiles for each city. This occurs already with the current 4-tile-limit and is solved nicely, as you can switch tiles between cities by simply clicking on them in the city screen.

When CiV was came out, the minimum city space was 3 tiles! (You might be too new to the game to know about this, regarding your Join Date.)
The problem was, that with this low distance limit, infinite city spam (ICS) was an usefull and all to dominant (if not overpowered) tactic. Firaxis fixed this (exploit, as some said), by raising the minimum distance to 4 tiles.

I think, this fix proved as a good change in the meantime and shouldn't be reverted.

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Your proposed unhappiness mechanism might work as a "soft limit" and allow some interesting trade-offs, just as you mentioned. I see your point and as (in general) I like trade-offs, I think it might work as intended.
But I think, it is not very intuitive for the player and quite hard to pre-calculate. (The need of so many necessary case studies might already indicate this.) This is possibly not the most desirable effect in a game lik CiV, which follows the philosopy of easy-to-understand rules.

So what you're saying is that the unhappiness penalty would suffice as a trade-off to settling cities too close together?

"Cities generate 1, 2, or 3 unhappiness for each city 3, 2, or 1 tiles away from it, respectively."

That would be a simple and intuitive rule to remember.

I like the idea, but I think there needs to be more of a penalty than happiness. The AI gets so much happiness on higher difficulties anyway that it wouldn't be too bad for them to abuse. Maybe a culture decrease, since the two cities culture are being shared? -10% per city closer than 4 tiles away.