So how (far apart) do you place your cities?

W

Wuddel

Warlord
Joined
Sep 7, 2010
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Location
Zürich, Switzerland
So I so far placed them pretty far apart so that the "big rings" would not overlap. Is this stupid maybe? Since otherwise you could cram 2 cities into a small island.

Also the map always seems very crowded with civs and city states already, which makes it hard to find good, big patches of unclaimed land.
 
Wuddel said:
Also the map always seems very crowded with civs and city states already, which makes it hard to find good, big patches of unclaimed land.
Click to expand...

And so war was born for the riches of good land!

I generally place my cities so there will be a few spaces gap between the borders (Got to remember you dont get 80 billion tiles each time a city expands anymore) but also make sure its in a strategic location near a river or surrounded in hills/mountains. Generally Ive found the best place for setting up a city for defense (especially with 1upt) is where there is only a small area to actually get units towards the city, not only does it make it easier to defend by taking on enemy 1 or 2 units at a time but they cant bring their full force of an army to attack the city at once.
 
It's the age-old question of overlap, made more interesting by the fact that culture doesn't expand in concentric rings anymore, and that there's 60% more max. workable tiles per city.

I think it's actually difficult to give a specific answer, because there are so many variables. Putting a city three squares away from another (so their initial rings touch) is quite possibly fine if both have decent land to expand to away from each other. It would get cramped if/when both cities got big, but if it helps in the short-term it's almost certainly worth a sub-optimal long-term outcome, when those two individual cities will be relatively less important.

In general, four hexes apart feels like a good compromise between too close and too far. But again, it depends on any strategic importance of that city, what the quality of the terrain is like in other nearby locations, how quickly you expect the cities to grow, etc.
 
Is it just me or isn't it better to rush a capital city or a city state to get a very good place with plenty ressources instead of building settlers?
I mean you don't have the maintenance drawback as in earlier civ versions. The only big drawback is the happiness malus, but I can deal with that, if I get a great place with many ressources & a great general (because of war).
 
I think getting all of your cities to be properly spaced for the max 36 tile usage will be a bit hard to manage.

So far from early game plan (very limited) your culture doesn't expand quickly and your cities are going to have lots of gaps between them. I feel that this can be exploited by enemy forces quite well.

I wouldn't bunch them up real close, but I think the 36 tiles makes overlapping less painful compared to the traditional fat cross.
 
It seems the AI likes them 3 hexes apart. So far I've seen England, France, Japan, Aztec and Greece all spam small cities like that everywhere, regardless of terrain or resources. One continent had a huge desert right in the middle, probably 8-9 hexes wide and 12-15 hexes tall and France put 3 cities in there.
 
3-4 seems like the good response from my limited experience so far. While having 6 between the cities seem like the ideal thing to avoid overlap like in previous versions, how often do you think you will work 36 tiles? Along with culture expansion being slower, the happiness control has me thinking we will not see many cities in the 20pop range let alone 30 pop.
 
mcmpan said:
Is it just me or isn't it better to rush a capital city or a city state to get a very good place with plenty ressources instead of building settlers?
I mean you don't have the maintenance drawback as in earlier civ versions. The only big drawback is the happiness malus, but I can deal with that, if I get a great place with many ressources & a great general (because of war).
Click to expand...

I've only played on lower levels, and this seems like a good way to expand early. My guess is that it won't be easy to rush at higher levels, though.
 
In my first game, I built my second city many, many tiles away from my capital in order to take advantage of a natural wonder and some extraordinary resources. It developed into a great city. Other then taking a long time to connect by road, there were no noticeable disadvantages. It is not like in Civ IV, where there are huge penalties for widespread cities.

Although in my second game, I'm building cities much closer.
 
Remember, though, that there isn't a cost to having your cities far apart at the beginning! (apart from road maintenance - but that just means you can delay building a road until your cities grow and the trade route will override that). It can be worthwhile to build your second city 5-6 hexes away if it is very good land and has the resources you need. Backfilling later is not a problem.
 
Dizzy75 said:
I've only played on lower levels, and this seems like a good way to expand early. My guess is that it won't be easy to rush at higher levels, though.
Click to expand...

This strategy worked on king. I managed to conquer two capital cities early on with egypt. I will try this also on higher difficult levels.
 
Do you have to expand/buy tiles in a circle around your city or can you expand to lets say the west only, so all your tiles are on one side of your city.
 
mcmpan said:
This strategy worked on king. I managed to conquer two capital cities early on with egypt. I will try this also on higher difficult levels.
Click to expand...

Ok, just tried this strategy on deity. I played deity for the first time.
Had 4 War Chariots, 2 Warrior, 1 Archer in front of Athens border by 2500 BC, but could not manage it. He had already a big army with even 2 Companion Cavalry.
Either I need to rush even earlier on deity or I must replace the warrior with spearmen to make this work.

But playing on deity was a great experience :goodjob:

I'm looking forward to hearing what the first reliable strategies will be on deity.
 
mcmpan said:
Ok, just tried this strategy on deity. I played deity for the first time.
Had 4 War Chariots, 2 Warrior, 1 Archer in front of Athens border by 2500 BC, but could not manage it. He had already a big army with even 2 Companion Cavalry.
Either I need to rush even earlier on deity or I must replace the warrior with spearmen to make this work.

But playing on deity was a great experience :goodjob:

I'm looking forward to hearing what the first reliable strategies will be on deity.
Click to expand...

This is a relief. I've been steamrolling on Prince against Civ's who just refuse to build units. I'll have to ramp up the difficulty for the next playthrough.
 
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