Civ Illustrated #2: Case studies - city placement

7. Jungle cities
You can have one jungle city (for National Park)
If you have to settle a jungle city early, you can just improve a couple food tiles and whip the city. It should be a useful city without ever having to improve 80% of the jungle tiles.
I wrote about the NP specifically in one of the later paragraphs [emoji6] .
 
Interesting thread. :)

It seems I tend to favor more tile sharing and founding cities close, preferable insta-connected via river. In the first example (Cathy) I'd have settled 3N of St.Pete. It would have connection via river, preimprovable food so could have started with already improved corn and nice floodplains + tile sharing. Also shorter distance for workers.

One reason against it would have been strategic resources, but there already was copper inside culture.
 
9. plains-hill
There are of course many more good things to settle on. Maybe a complete list would be good to add to #9. For example, a lot of things give +1 commerce besides wine.
And then there's the PH-marble and stone for 3 hammers
 
Case study #1 (creative civ) is a great addition to this guide. I really helps you realize how wonderful a creative civ is to play in the early game. There are so many city placement sacrifices you have to make without that trait.

As far as where I'd settle: definitely the Pig/gold/gold. Vicky can have the sugar and I'll conquer her later. But if you're determined to play peacefully, then yes, you had to go for the land grab city.
 
Case study #2
I would have put a city at Wheat-East (green dot). I'm looking at the screen in the sun, so I might be wrong, but I think you get +5 forests (not 4) since you don't settle on one.
Since you're not creative, and you want to rush. You want the forests in the first ring.

Note I said I'd put "a city" there. Not my first city. My first one would go West of the capital and share the corn/gold. I like shared gold because in a game like this one, it will be a while before your capital is bureaucratic or has a library. So there's no advantage to work the gold in the capital yet. It frees up the capital to grow and whip more.
 
Another thing you could add to the guide is the value of an island city or two if available. Especially in a game where your trade routes are often internal.
 
Interesting thread. :)

It seems I tend to favor more tile sharing and founding cities close, preferable insta-connected via river. In the first example (Cathy) I'd have settled 3N of St.Pete. It would have connection via river, preimprovable food so could have started with already improved corn and nice floodplains + tile sharing. Also shorter distance for workers.

One reason against it would have been strategic resources, but there already was copper inside culture.
3N of the capital would have been a good pick from a pure commercial point of view. Anyhow, the Horses are at least as good as the FP and rushing via Horses is stronger than rushing with axes. If not rushing, one should found Blocker-cities before Filler-cities like 3N though.
9. plains-hill
There are of course many more good things to settle on. Maybe a complete list would be good to add to #9. For example, a lot of things give +1 commerce besides wine.
And then there's the PH-marble and stone for 3 hammers
I'll compile a list, once my PC is back from SNASA. I thought with the explanation of the rule, three examples would be enough.
yep, I was just going to edit my post. I see that now. Might be better to combine those two, or at least not separate them so much in the list.
Good idea, thx :) .
Case study #1 (creative civ) is a great addition to this guide. I really helps you realize how wonderful a creative civ is to play in the early game. There are so many city placement sacrifices you have to make without that trait.

As far as where I'd settle: definitely the Pig/gold/gold. Vicky can have the sugar and I'll conquer her later. But if you're determined to play peacefully, then yes, you had to go for the land grab city.
Maybe I should give more examples, on how I would have settled if not being CRE.

Did you btw. read, that the Pigs were in the Jungle? Would you still have settled there, with no immediate food available?
 
Case study #2
I would have put a city at Wheat-East (green dot). I'm looking at the screen in the sun, so I might be wrong, but I think you get +5 forests (not 4) since you don't settle on one.
Since you're not creative, and you want to rush. You want the forests in the first ring.

Note I said I'd put "a city" there. Not my first city. My first one would go West of the capital and share the corn/gold. I like shared gold because in a game like this one, it will be a while before your capital is bureaucratic or has a library. So there's no advantage to work the gold in the capital yet. It frees up the capital to grow and whip more.
Green is a good spot, but did you see the Tundra-deers? Capturing another source of Food is better in the long run, would the earlier advantage (Forests) really outweigh the extra resource?

Also: I fully understand your reasoning for a city in the west, but that city would have had no food on its own. I don't like stealing food from my capital, so therefore would have prefered the Cows + Marble. Probably again the weaker choice super-early, but definately good from Aesthetics onwards.
Another thing you could add to the guide is the value of an island city or two if available. Especially in a game where your trade routes are often internal.
I thought about it, but dismissed the thought because I mainly play large / huge maps, and on those, there are always enough foreign TRs. As you mention smaller maps though I agree that island cities should have been mentioned. I'll add a part on that in about a week too.

Thx for your critique :) .
 
Updated with the promised changes and additions your critique made me aware of. Man, will I be glad once I get my PC back, editing threads like this from a handy is ololol :D .
 
Heya all, nice writeup!

A few notes:

Food
Floodplains should be counted as a source of food when looking for city spots. Sure, it's not a grassland pig or irrigated corn, but its not worse than non-irrigated rice or even sugar with plantation. And it's available at Agriculture.

Tile sharing
Tile sharing depends on so many factors it almost mandates its own writeup. It greatly depends on game difficulty, map, and overall strategy of the specific game. But generally, tight spacing makes less sense as the game progresses. Once you whip in all the important % modifiers, it pays to work as many tiles that utilise those modifiers.

Jungle cities
I don't see that avoiding settling in jungle is a good general suggestion. If you're on a conquering spree, resources might not be a problem, but if you're going for a long, defensive game, jungle full of resources is a good settling point after you get iron working. Sure, you need an extra worker. But so what? Jungles contain high-yield luxuries, oil, uranium, and, once cleared, are ideal for cottaging.

As for the national park, I don't think jungles make particularly good spots. Not because they wouldn't be - if kept intact - but for the fact that they are hard to cut off from the AI, for the simple reason they are in the middle of the map. From my experience, tundra forest cities are much more common, if not better, candidates for the national park. If you spawn near the poles, you're almost guaranteed that you'll cut off a chunk of tundra/ice from the AI. The only way I can see a jungle National Park if you have a jungle patch right in the middle of your island.
 
Thx for your post Bibor :) .

Regarding Floodplains: I never wrote, that they shouldn't be regarded as food. Personally, I count FPs as 0.5 food that doesn't give a resource.

To the Jungle-cities: If you think “one more Worker, so what“ you're either underestimating the cost of Workers, or you are not aware of the opportunity cost. A Jungle city needs 1 Settler + 2 Workers, that's 220 :hammers: ! Opportunity cost could i. e. be 4 Horse Archers or 4 Granaries!
On Deity, AIs settle and improve the land extremely fast, there often is no more land available at 1000 BC. What I propose is to let the AI found and develop that city and take it over, once it at least got improved food and is something like size 4. Then one often can even steal one or two Workers on top, and one often gets a nicely large city that already has a Granary (66% chance) . Therfore, conquering the city has an even better opportunity cost than 4 HAs or 4 Granaries.
Ofc., peaceful games are a slightly different, but peaceful games are not optimal play, because CIV favours war. Also: If you count Uranium or Oil as resources, you're winning your games too late. At the time when those come into play, I got at least 40% of the map or the game has already been decided and I'm short before winning it.

Your argument for the Jungle or Tundra city I don't understand unfortunately. Many human starts are in the middle of a map, and there even are mapscripts like Rainforrest, where the complete map is all Jungle. If you find, that Jungle-cities are not suited for National Park city, please take a look at this screen:

Spoiler :


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

And I commented already at tile-sharing with making the readers aware of, that cities grow larger in certain games than i. e. in Domination or Conquest games. Well played Domination games usually end with Cavalries and Rifles, or, if the speed i. e. is quick, then they end with Nukes. In both cases, the whip remains to be extremely efficient, Biology-fueled Farms + Kremlin whips have an efficiency that only drafts can beat, so in those games, doing with less tiles / city is no problem. Growing cities large to work the maximum tiles is only important in the very end or when a game drags out because an opponent cannot be conquered without Nukes, so it shouldn't influence the early game choice of where to found the cities. Having 8 good tiles is really enough.

Seraiel
 
I like that National Park city! :D

Not sure why you say workers are so expensive though. For me the early workers aren't about costs in terms of production or potential maintenance, but about priorities.
 
I like that National Park city! :D

Not sure why you say workers are so expensive though. For me the early workers aren't about costs in terms of production or potential maintenance, but about priorities.
;)

You'll start to recognize how expensive Workers are and how much building them slows down your empire, once you start stealing them. You've read Replay #9 (signature) : In that round I only stole 1 Worker, still, it helped me so much, that I was able to keep up with Deity AIs when comparing the number of cities! When one steals 2 or 3 Workers very early, one can even out-expand Deity AIs!
 
Green is a good spot, but did you see the Tundra-deers? Capturing another source of Food is better in the long run, would the earlier advantage (Forests) really outweigh the extra resource?

depends. I was thinking along the lines of early rush for quick conquest, but maybe if you're rushing to eventually do a space race that'd be different. It could be 1000 years before you pop borders and get that deer tho.
 
depends. I was thinking along the lines of early rush for quick conquest, but maybe if you're rushing to eventually do a space race that'd be different. It could be 1000 years before you pop borders and get that deer tho.
It's amazing how many errors one can make with city placement. I was so sure, that the deer spot would be better, but you're right, 1 or 2 more Immortals early outweigh the 1 :food: advantage when playing for Domiation or Conquest.

I'm gonna change that in the guide. Thx :) .
 
Updated the 2nd case study to reflect the recent discussion and also corrected some minor mistakes in the explanatory part in the beginning.

Thx everybody for your feedback :) .
 
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