City Overlap or Efficient Resource Collection

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I often come in conflict when deciding my order of settling cities. Infact, my major problem in the game is my OCD towards it. I hate having overlap, I like my cities to maximized all available land. I'm trying to break myself of this OCD as it causes me to not stick with a game long.

My question is, what is the priority? Is the collection of more resources more important than city overlap or do we avoid overlap as much as possible? How do you usually branch out your cities from your main capital?

DaimyoDan said:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I often come in conflict when deciding my order of settling cities. Infact, my major problem in the game is my OCD towards it. I hate having overlap, I like my cities to maximized all available land. I'm trying to break myself of this OCD as it causes me to not stick with a game long.

My question is, what is the priority? Is the collection of more resources more important than city overlap or do we avoid overlap as much as possible? How do you usually branch out your cities from your main capital?

Click to expand...

How long do your cities spend with less than 20 population?
How many good tiles go unused for thousands of years?
How much does avoiding overlap cost you in the long run.

A good example is the city where you plan to place Oxford University. If you overlap that on all sides with helper cities that can develop cottages in tandem with the main city, then Oxford will be working villages and towns every time the pop increases instead of starting a whole new cottage all over.


Once you have super-powered 20 pop cities, you can just whip the helper cities back down to 2-3 pop and get some more troops.

Paeanblack said:

How long do your cities spend with less than 20 population?
How many good tiles go unused for thousands of years?
How much does avoiding overlap cost you in the long run.

A good example is the city where you plan to place Oxford University. If you overlap that on all sides with helper cities that can develop cottages in tandem with the main city, then Oxford will be working villages and towns every time the pop increases instead of starting a whole new cottage all over.


Once you have super-powered 20 pop cities, you can just whip the helper cities back down to 2-3 pop and get some more troops.

Click to expand...

yes, I use heavy overlap on my capital. less so elsewhere because I'm expanding and am loathe to pay for a lot in maintenance for a new city. but my capital can be overlapped by 1-3 other cities, and sometimes a really good "second capital" location I will build a city to overlap w/ it.

Paeanblack said:

A good example is the city where you plan to place Oxford University. If you overlap that on all sides with helper cities that can develop cottages in tandem with the main city, then Oxford will be working villages and towns every time the pop increases instead of starting a whole new cottage all over.

Click to expand...

I think I might be a little lost on that explanation... so if the city with Oxford is surrounded by helper cities (That are working tiles with cottages) this can contribute to the main city, how is this done I am lost... I thought overlapped cities lose squares and which city gets the square is randomly decided... two cities can't work one tile can they? I believe I'm lost...

Basically, the helper cities work the cottages that the main city can't to build them up, then you can shift all your production to these fully advanced towns and reap the rewards in a high-tech city to maximize trade production.

Dan - you can control which tiles (of those within the city's fat cross) are being worked by the citizens. Tiles being worked are marked by a white circle in the city screen: click on one of these and the citizen becomes a citizen-specialist who can then be transformed into a more powerful specialist (assuming the city buildings allow this). So during the build-up you get the citizens of the helper cities to work cottaged tiles which form part of the overlap, then later shift them off those tiles and put citizens of the main city to work on them. Obviously this means keeping a careful eye on the main city and its helpers, switching the use of tiles from one to the other as required, and not letting the program put new citizens wherever it fancies - you will have to turn off citizen automation.

It's much more important to have cities working each "good" square, ie: specials and flood plains, than to worry about overlap. Plan your cities to make sure each good square is worked. You will benefit from faster growth, and by the time the overlap starts to actually limit the size of your city, the game has already been won or lost anyway.

Thanks everyone, I recently had a game going like that and saw slight improvements... I stopped playing it though as Kublah Khan has it in the bag with Domination... I'm not really a big fan of Capulation and Vassal states anymore...

Unlike the older civ games, the game seems decide for you which city gets to use which tiles.

I've had tiles in one city (that I wanted to use there) greyed out, even when they weren't being worked in another city. Tres annoying.

@HectorSpector

You've probably discovered that clicking on those greyed tiles while in the city screen will 'select' the tile for use in that city over the other. I've also heard that you can use this to select which city will get the chop benefit of a forested tile that is workable by more than one city (though outside of the BFX, it's decided by distance from city center, then maybe by cultural superiority if distance is tied).

I also apply overlap very, very frequently, usually about two tiles, sometimes more (depending on landscape and resource placing). Sometimes a good food resource is used too, and I usually will if I can. For instance, as the biggest city is nearing its hapiness limit anyways, it can switch to work another tile, while the "younger" and smaller one uses the developped food resource for rapid growth. Saves you a lot. Idem with the cottages->towns: the town is always worked by one of the overlapping cities. In short, I find overlap very good. And as Paeanblack rightly asked: How long do your cities spend with less than 20 population? How many good tiles go unused for thousands of years? How much does avoiding overlap cost you in the long run...!

Jaca

Interesting.

I've always avoided overlap, but will definitely reconsider after reading this.

How many good tiles go unused for thousands of years?

Click to expand...

This is an excellent point.

Bushface said:

... - you will have to turn off citizen automation.

Click to expand...

How do you do this??