city placement template

[panzooka]

plan to maximise number of cities u can place on your land, while not overlaping workable tiles. i've come up with these.

feel free to add your design

1. nice easy square


2. only 3 tiles in center

beware if friendly AI send settler to the center

3. tilted square

beware if friendly AI send settler to the center

4. hybrid



it doesnt matter how big your culture border is, the only workable tiles are the 20 tiles around your cities, but, u can still get bonus from resources (healthiness, happiness only) inside your culture border but not within working range of your cities. so its best to place cities that it can have many
resources(any kind) in these 18 tiles, because resources have the biggest yields when improoved.

and have less unworkable tiles, namely desert, peaks, ice, thundra, in these 20 tiles

and less unhealtiness tiles, flood plain, jungles are ok, because u can chop it down with iron work.


knowing which tiles are unworked is important, so u dont have to improove the tile with your worker, and feel free to cut down forests on unworked tile

build cities according to your situation, u can have 1 or 2 tiles overlaping, it doesnt hurt that bad.

[Philips beard]

Nice!

But one thing about CIV4 compared to CIV3, is that cities by water has increased importance, so sometimes I feel I have to place my cities in a less perfect system, regarding to overlapping/unworkable tiles.....

[panzooka]

yes indeed, i always trying to place city with fresh water, best if its even coastal

[André Alfenaar]

You don't need to work every available tile. In fact you shouldn't. Only build cities on important locations and let culture do the rest.

[Philips beard]

Of course you don't have to, but I hate to waste land, and then reduce the possible amount of cities, without overlapping, on the map... I always play crowded maps to, and that makes this even more important, I think....

[panzooka]

if u have overlaping tiles, it means your cities have less potential.
if u left lands unworked, it means u have wasted some space, which result in cities placed more farther apart, cost more money, and takes longer for your troops to arrive.

culture doesnt mean your cities can work more tiles, the maximum number of workable tile is 20.

[rainmaker]

So far I have been concentrating on placing my cities on order to include the maximum amount of resources. To get a fish or horse resource I will give up several non resource tiles.

Don't forget in civ 4 you no longer can work all tiles. So if you include mountain or desert tiles they are useless producers.

[Philips beard]

Yep, that's true, but remember that desert tiles suddenly becomes attractive if oil pops up......

[Vaiks]

I agree with Philips. I dont pay too much attention to the "optimal grid" since resources are not evenly placed and the proximity of sea or lake/river should bear importance where to place the city.

[Bakaroyna]

Originally Posted by panzooka

if u have overlaping tiles, it means your cities have less potential.
if u left lands unworked, it means u have wasted some space, which result in cities placed more farther apart, cost more money, and takes longer for your troops to arrive.

culture doesnt mean your cities can work more tiles, the maximum number of workable tile is 18.

Call me crazy,but aren't there 20 workable tiles surrounding a city?

[panzooka]

ah, sorry lol, stupid my head must have fell off or something, i go fix the figure now

[rainmaker]

Originally Posted by Philips beard

Yep, that's true, but remember that desert tiles suddenly becomes attractive if oil pops up......

But oil doesn't need to be in your city tiles. As long as it's in your culture boarders your're ok.

[Bakaroyna]

Originally Posted by rainmaker

But oil doesn't need to be in your city tiles. As long as it's in your culture boarders your're ok.

Yeah, but if you're working an oil square (with the oil drills), you get a nice production and economic bonus

[eg577]

I don't mean to sound critical, but I think I became a better civer when I stopped drawing pictures like these and caring about overlap. Overlap doesn't matter since you never need every tile. By the time cities grow that big the game is already decided.

Good tiles aren't evenly spread throughout the landscape; they tend to come in clumps. If you spread out like this then you will end up with cities who have more good tiles than they will ever need.

[SygmaZero]

I've never run into the problem of "having too many good tiles" in any given city. Especially with the focus on less cities overall but more specialized. The more special resources a city has the more dominant and critical it will be in winning the game... I don't understand how it could ever be a bad thing.

[Nilrim]

One thing to be careful of with lakes is you can't get Light House so no way of upping the output. I try to avoid locations with more then a couple of lake tiles inside the sweet 20.

[Steelsmith]

This is the pattern I always used to shoot for in Civ III. This covers every square, with minimum (but some) overlap. This pattern allows 20 squares to be worked per city, including the city tile, and ensures every square is workable.



As has been remarked, getting an exact build pattern isn't really the most important consideration, especially in Civ4, since it's no longer the case that more cities is always better. But for some reason it just irks me to have good tiles that aren't worked by any city, so this is still what I shoot for in general.

[KevinTMC]

Interesting discussion. Myself, I shoot for something like the pattern immediately above...but that is just the starting point. In Civ IV especially, I am likely to place cities a tile or two away from the "ideal" grid position if it helps me reach more resources sooner, deny strategic spots better, avoid more desert/ice tiles, et cetera.

Now if we could just get that option back (wasn't it in one of the Civ II patches?) where we could toggle the drawing of the workable-tile radius on the grid in the game itself. That was such a lifesaver...why they ever let the feature disappear?

-- Kevin

[claxer]

is there any way to highlight workable tiles around existing cities? i always find it a chore double checking that a new city isnt going to eat into my other cities tile space because you have to memorise where the existing cities worked tiles are then imagine the tiles which your new city would take up. I usually find that I am quite often trying to pack cities in close together to minimise waste of good tiles (eg. around river areas), being able to see these borders would be very helpful.

[Nilrim]

Originally Posted by KevinTMC

Now if we could just get that option back (wasn't it in one of the Civ II patches?) where we could toggle the drawing of the workable-tile radius on the grid in the game itself. That was such a lifesaver...why they ever let the feature disappear?

-- Kevin

Oh yea I would love that feature, the turn grid on is ok but would prefer turn city grid on.