nested cities

I was playing an immortal game where I was employing specialist spam in at least one of my core cities, fueled by cargo ships to feed all the specialists.

I started to notice that less and less of the tiles where being worked, until I finally reached the point that the only tiles being worked were a couple GP tile improvements.

At that point, I started to realize that I could have begun growing a second city "under" the first, i.e. 4 tiles away to work all the improved land tiles that were no longer being worked by the original city. The second city could have sent another cargo ship to the first city. Ultimately I think there was enough land available elsewhere and/or I did not want the additional city, but still, I thought the concept was interesting.

Has anyone employed "nested" cities in BNW by means of internal trade routes?

I myself like a clear 6 hexes between cities. How big did this core city grow, this sounds like a good plan for GP producer.

Is it really worth it though? I suppose if space is limited, but consider you're only getting about a third of that prime capital placement territory with your new city, and no new luxuries. Plus if you're pushing that hard for great people you're probably tall, which makes the building of new sub-optimal cities counter productive.

I suppose it would really depend on having good resources just outside of the nested city's range for these new cities to exploit, which is pretty rare in my maps it seems. Neat concept though I'll have to look out for opportunities to try and make it work

Hmm, if you devote a bit of time in growing that city as big as you can, as soon as you can, I can see this being pretty effective. No time needed to get them up and running because their tiles have already been improved, maybe send them some apples from other cities if you can...just as long as you make science buildings a priority in the new city and don't get too unhappy, I honestly see no downsides to this. I might try playing say, Freedom India with this in mind, it can only serve to make your empire stronger.

Edit: ooh, or Siam, if you Target maritime city states with Arsenal of Democracy you could grow those cities AND your capital pretty quick, freeing up those cargo ships.

Depends a lot on terrain tbh, if you assume even late game your cities wont reach much bigger than 30, with say 10 specialists, they only need 20 tiles to actually work. And only at that at the very end of the game, so if you want/can put up even 1/6th additional cities it is well worth it.

There is also the option of 'sharing' tiles between cities, so you want to grow a new city fast, let it work the already improved banana tile (or other food tile), a rather great option.

This is because you built all the guilds in one city.

The artist/writer/musician guilds should be in different cities ideally.

sonicandfffan said:

This is because you built all the guilds in one city.

The artist/writer/musician guilds should be in different cities ideally.

Click to expand...

What's the reason for this? I've heard it a lot, but I don't really understand why. If you've got the population to support them, why not concentrate them?

That Other Guy said:

What's the reason for this? I've heard it a lot, but I don't really understand why. If you've got the population to support them, why not concentrate them?

Click to expand...

That condition is practically impossible meet. I usually strive to get Temple of Artemis hanging gardens, fertility rites and a caravan giving food to my capital. And yet at best I build only two guilds on my capital.

You are going to kill that city development if you use too many specialists, and in your capital you'd want to get a few for great scientists, engineers and great merchants depending on your aims.

Spreading the guilds just lessens the burden, there's hardly a reason not to do so if you can (sorry Venice).

The point of building all the guilds in one city is so that you can put a garden and National Epic for +50% great person generation. If you spread the guilds to different cities, you can only choose one to get the bonus from National Epic. Probably a good idea to at least put the Artist Guild in the city with National Epic, or Music Guild if going for a CV.

Putting the guilds in one city may be more efficient but putting them in different cities allows you to generate great writers/artists/musicians constantly throughout the game without too much determent to growth/production, freeing up tour caravans/cargo ships for actual trading. Also the culture boost guilds give to a city allows for faster border growth in those cities.