ahman
Warlord
You can only build at least 2 tiles away from a city (leaving 1 tile in between). I would recommend building between 3-5 tiles away from each city depending upon the situation, just make sure the borders join up. Also it may be good to have a set sequence you do when developing a 2nd city and onwards.
I've always built the second town and third etc within road walking distance, 3 tiles, to be able to protect all towns from a sudden attack and finetune martial art by moving around military units. But this only saves a few gpt, and to risk losing one town in the expansion phase is probably not a big deal, if someone declare war on you early you'll get serious growth problems anyway. Is it better to steal as much land as possible by building as far as possible from the capital without leaving a gap, and moving all military units to the outer perimiters? You don't need any ML if you connect one luxury and build a settler or worker as soon as you reach population 3. After 100 turns the capital expands one more step, so you could even leave a 1 tile gap, maybe even 2 tiles without the AI trying to build there, you could boot him if he enters your territory.
Gotta try this in my next demigod game, maybe I won't get boxed in so badly, I like 80% water maps because you get more interesting choke points