Adviser City Recommendations

PatrickSWarner

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 15, 2015
Messages
24
New to the game but played previous ones up to Civ4.

When playing on beginner modes with adviser, should I pay much attention to the adviser city recommendations where the put icons on recommended squares to site a city? Looking at a couple of guides on the web, it doesn't look like the recommendations from the adviser are that good, and sometimes other nearby sites that they don't recommend could be better?
 
My sense of them has always been that they aren't necessarily optimal, but they're a safe choice or a good starting point if you just don't know what to do.

I don't think I've ever seen the advisor recommend settling away from any source of water, but if it somehow does, then definitely ignore that. You basically always want to be on a lake, coast, or river (unless you're Maya--then you don't necessarily care as much).
 
One thing I noticed is that I read that you should put your city on "Plains (Hills)" but the advisor doesn't put the icon there even if there is a such a tile right next to where the icon is.
 
In both Civ4 and Civ6, the advisor can give you help about where to place cities. In both games, experienced players here have developed additional recommendations; with Civ6, one can also watch YouTube videos for recommendations.

IIRC, the Civ4 recommended practice was to spread cities out a bit, to make sure that each city had a food resource in the first ring. That would speed growth, since cities needed to grow a bit to stop being a net drain on your empire economy. One would add cities as your economy overall grew.

In Civ6, settling on a plains hill or with water in the first ring is recommended. One can settle expansion cities a bit closer together, since districts can get adjacency bonuses -- not only from being next to the city center, but for being next to districts from another city. Getting more cities is better, and having your cities closer together helps with loyalty (assuming that you have the Gathering Storm expansion).
 
Settling on a plains hill gives you one extra hammer from the start, so handy for speeding up your first builds. If you don't have many hills close to you or at least some flat stone to quarry, then maybe keep that hill for mining.
 
The advice is ok if you're new or not that good, but if you play on a higher level you need to start doing your own judgement to further maximize short and long term gains.
 
I find they recommend cities too close together for my liking. But that's my preference since I like cities really big. But as mentioned above, closer cities do have the advantage of being able put districts closer together and you can develop some strong adjacency bonuses. Especially useful as Japan, but also Germany and Mali.

Settling on a luxury in the early game may not be half bad either. I don't recall if the AI recommends that. And yes plains hills do give 1 extra hammer in the city center. Useful for getting an early scout or builder out quickly. But is mostly useful in the early game. If you don't have a lot of hills, you may prefer to settle on flat land and put a mine on that plains hill.
 
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