prefer distance between cities?

Just wondering what is the prefer distance when placing cities?

It's dependent on your terrain, but for most cities you want 4 tiles between each city. That allows each one to grow to max size while minimizing travel time and wasted space. In some cases it's just not possible because of room and you have to overlap, and in others there are reasons to leave dead space between them. You need to select every cities possition based on the merits of the locations, including resources. I don't care to spread them out because it becomes too time consuming to move units between them at need.

4 spaces UNLESS

- closer spacing would allow use of strong tiles that would otherwise be lost (the 'corner' tiles in the 5x5 city square)
- you plan to use the second city to prework cottages in the first city, which is usually a capital w/ Bureaucracy
- one or the other city will never get the chance to grow to size 20 (e.g. lots of tundra tiles, city settled just to grab resources like silver/incense/furs)

Whereever the resources are, particularly food. Sometimes the cities have several layers of overlap, sometimes they are several tiles apart. Just depends on the land, on an individual city-by-city basis.

I usually start the game by scouting out my position round the capital, and before I build my first settler I know where I want to have my cities. I tend to build into rivals first, as those spaces will be taken if you don't grab them early. The first two or three cities will be planted in such a way as to maximize the food and resources, the rest has more focus on production.

Overlap of a few tiles is acceptable if you need resources or to block off an opponent.

Welcome to the Forums Xellos-_^.

Supr49er said:

Overlap of a few tiles is acceptable if you need resources or to block off an opponent.

Welcome to the Forums Xellos-_^.

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I find these tips of every one very useful and accurate.

I would like to add however that being an organised civ sometimes makes me reduce the distance as well, because I will not care as much about the upkeep required to keep my extra cities running. This way you can sometimes sneak in an extra city or two, which can be very worthwhile.

The fact that your cities cannot grow to full size this way is a weak one IMO. You will typically only care about that late in the game. By then, the game should be won - or you should be well on your way of winning anyway.

An extra comment is that you should always look at the tiles you will gain by overlapping. You will want to work class tiles. What you do not want to do is settling cities for the heck of it. You always MUST take food into consideration. Your cities must be able to grow. Grabbing recources that cannot be worked is a nono in my book.

Xellos-_^ said:

Just wondering what is the prefer distance when placing cities?

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4 spaces is perfect, BUT as above it is ok to have more or less.

1: Maximise your workability of resources. If you have a tundra city with good resources but will NEVER work your "outter cross" tiles, its ok to build another city for that purpose.

2: Maximise your geographical advantages. On a "Tectonics" or "Hemispheres" map, you may notice MANY beautiful choke-points. use them.

3: Sometimes, if there is a resource clutter and its kinda far away (like 8 spaces), you MIGHT feel forced to build a useless "waypoint" city to connect it.


In general, you want to have the option to work EVERY usable tile. so if you see your cities will boom large, place 4 tiles apart. if your forced to admit you will have smaller size cities, it may be best to place a city 3 spots away.

The real challenge is not how far apart - but "When" to put how far apart.

I used to be a fanatic (heh!) about avoiding overlap. However as of late I've determined this really hinders my game. Points:

• Many cities will never grow to 20 pop to use all the tiles in their fat cross
• 20 pop cities are difficult to achieve before Medicine and Hospitals
• Small cities with unused terrain are wasting space
• Two small cities sharing a lot of tiles are easier to manage from a health and happiness perspective, particularly in the early game

So I've started overlapping all over the place. I do still place with an eye for which tiles are "primary" and "secondary" for any given city, but I have become more productive and am making better use of my terrain. It's also faster to reinforce with the shorter distances.

Just my two gold!

This I think is a pretty good example. note that Cuzco is the capital and Tiwanaku is the 2nd city. Which is 4 places away. but placed in that location because there's stone, a river, and it's on a hill for defense. If I'd gone one place further north, it would have left better room for the city to the south of it, but it would have been a less ideal possition for that city. City 3 is Mancha Picchu, and I don't love it's place, but putting it there early prevented Rome from taking a spot, which it would have because the site has several seafood. Hemming them in and making them expand in other directions was worth the less than optimal spacing for me. Likewise the 4th city (I forget what order I planted all of these) is Ollantzytambo and was placed there because it's a choke point and a hill. Where if I'd gone a bit west with the city I would have gotten the wine into it's fat cross, but by placing it there it had the hill defense and by building a fort next to it I had a canal across the isthmus. Huamanga is not a great location in and of itself, but again it's placed to hem in Rome, and is on a hill for defense (Augustus attacked that city with 9 cats and about 20 other units and was destroyed). And Vilcalamba was place on a hill near Russia for the same reason. Corcagfodsrjsewaeupsedrjwe (however the hell you spell it) was placed for the food resources, and if Rome hadn't been so close is where I would have planted city 3 instead of later when I did. And Vilcas fills in middle.

So as a whole I have little overlap and little dead tiles, but it wasn't possible or practical to the situation to have no dead space.

I go out of my way to create maximum overlap.

In the initial expansion I'll often leave spots in the middle to be settled later (claiming contested land is a higher priority, especially if I don't want to fight anyone) but I will attempt the closest thing to an infinite city spraw possible in Civ4.
If I manage to snag the Great Lighthouse, I will found a city every 3 tiles of coastline unless that leaves ressources unworkable and adjust inland cities accordingly.

Once I've grown into my natural borders, I usually continue cranking out settlers until I can't settle any more spots.

I think it's important when you decide whether you want to allow overlap depends on whether the city is a primary or secondary city. Primary cities are your big guns, the ones that you think you can grow to a full 20+ population and which will be specialized. These will be your wonder / great people / military / commerce / research producers.

For other secondary cities that won't be as heavily specialized, go ahead and feel free to overlap as other posts have said above.

Formica said:

I used to be a fanatic (heh!) about avoiding overlap. However as of late I've determined this really hinders my game. Points:

• Many cities will never grow to 20 pop to use all the tiles in their fat cross
• 20 pop cities are difficult to achieve before Medicine and Hospitals
• Small cities with unused terrain are wasting space
• Two small cities sharing a lot of tiles are easier to manage from a health and happiness perspective, particularly in the early game

So I've started overlapping all over the place. I do still place with an eye for which tiles are "primary" and "secondary" for any given city, but I have become more productive and am making better use of my terrain. It's also faster to reinforce with the shorter distances.

Just my two gold!

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Getting 20+ pop cities is facilitated more by biology than medicine. And supermarkets are better than hospitals since they're cheaper and usually give you +1 and +4, instead of just +3 assuming you have cow,pig,deer,sheep (I usually have all).

Another thing I'd add is that commerce or GP cities should be built with less or no overlap, and it matters less for production cities. Why? Because the production cities are going to build factories, coal plants, and industrial parks that will limit growth anyway.

In the early game, placing a city that will give you access to what I call complimentary resources is more important. For example, pairing a gold resource with pig, corn, or fish is ideal because you can get huge yields without working a lot of tiles, and you can still work the gold comfortably at 2 pop without halting early growth. If you have to build a city 6 tiles or 3 tiles away in order to achieve this, then do it.

When establishing a city that will overlap with another, I consider the overlapping tiles desert tiles for the purpose of judging the quality of the new city's location.

Also, if you have very limited expansion space for some amount of time. It might make more sense to overlap so that you can utilize every tile you can.

Tephros said:

When establishing a city that will overlap with another, I consider the overlapping tiles desert tiles for the purpose of judging the quality of the new city's location.

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This sounds inherently bad. Simply because the tiles aren't deserts, you can't treat them as such. Consider the first city, is it going to use those tiles? Does it need those tiles? I always check what that city is going to do, then what I want from the new city, then if that could get along and then position it accordingly. Overlap is ok, instead of that 5th grassland the first city could use the extra scientist. The grassland can then be used by the new city.

PureE said:

This sounds inherently bad. Simply because the tiles aren't deserts, you can't treat them as such. Consider the first city, is it going to use those tiles? Does it need those tiles? I always check what that city is going to do, then what I want from the new city, then if that could get along and then position it accordingly. Overlap is ok, instead of that 5th grassland the first city could use the extra scientist. The grassland can then be used by the new city.

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Bad? No. Simplistic model with the late game in mind? Maybe. Two cities cannot work the same tile, so for the second city it effectively does not exist, or it is taken away from the first city. But you could call it an oversimplification because of how you can pre-work cottages for another city, or the fact that you won't use all tiles in a city until the late mid-game. So it depends on the tile. If your first city needs a corn resource to work gold and still grow, and the 2nd city overlaps with the corn resource, the tile with the corn resource effectively is a non-tile for the purpose of the placement of the second city. So I guess a better statement would be to consider it desert for the purpose of the 2nd city if the first city needs to be working it.

1. Follow the food.
2. Follow the food.
3. Follow the food.

Skallagrimson said:

1. Follow the food.
2. Follow the food.
3. Follow the food.

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Pretty much this. You can make an argument for any city 3-5 tiles from the next so long as there's food by it.

As a general rule, I try to limit my main cities to no more than 3-4 useable (ie not mountain or desert) squares overlapping with each other. Minor, "filling in" cities I'll put wherever they can get 6-7+ useable tiles to themselves.

I don't stick religiously to this rule, sometimes more overlap is benficial, but I find it serves me well as a guide.