Build a city two tiles from another civs city?

[mpescatori]

Alright... anybody from Minneapolis-St.Paul ?

Or from Niagara Falls... which one, New York State or Canada ?

The world is FULL of examples of cities built so cose to each other that the bigger one eventually engulfs the smaller one...

So... ships right off your coast? Keep subs at hand, or build the Guns of Navarone!
(credits to my bro for thinking up this one)

Or, do as I did, build sea mines and minefields to keep "strangers" from penetrating "your homeland"

It's a matter of ...imagination...

 

[Anithraldur]

In theory, yes, but, in reality, the AI does not seem to do that. I do not ever remember an AI building a city in one of my city radius'. The AI favorite trick seems to be to wander into my territory and build a city on a vacant square that is in a gap between some of my cities.

Au contraire, I swear that the AI loves doing this. I've noticed a tendency that, late in the game, if they get an engineer/settler in your territory they'll try and plop it down anywhere with enough room to have some growth.

This exact thing happened to me the first time I used accelerated beginning too. Never checked that option again. o_o

 

[JAC1]

I often use this tactic. On my own land I build cities with as little overlap and wasted space as possible, but on opponents' land I colonise their city radii as aggressively as possible. If you have two established AI cities, say size 20 each, and you build 4 of your own on their farmland, your ZOCs completely overlap and you can then place units all around their cities. Not only does this make for a peace time seige (and more efficient than using freights to block squares) but when you leave a unit on their production land the square is taken out of production for them next turn and you can use it for your cannibalistic city. Rarely do the AI use the same technique to take squares back. Soon, you'll have 4 size 15 cities and the original AI cities have been devastated by hunger, sinking to maybe size 4 or 5. Their reduced production will force them to disband units, and they are left with a small city with 0 production and 0 food surplus, as well as an unsuitable number of improvements for a small city, a drain on their treasury. Plus having 'fort' cities next to opponents' (I tend to call the cannibal of Paris Fort Paris and so on,) gives you poterntial for a huge garrison deep in enemy territory. Finally, late in the game when land is scarce you can use spies to further reduce the host cities' populations and reap the vast majority of the benefits of all their engineers' hard work for yourself.

 

[mpescatori]

I invented an air unit "Hot Air balloon", like one would have in the Civil War.
It has two squares visibility amd is created with Physics;
I then made Settlers and Engineers "airdroppable".
(But not any military unit which is not a Paratrooper)
This allows to carry Settlers and Engineers (one unit per balloon)
to far away lands for colonization.
I have, however, an issue with "range", the balloon runs out of ... "fuel".
I pretend it's running out of food for the aircrew or something.
Still, that, along with the new air and sea units created with Explosives
(Land Mines and Sea Mines) make for very interesting options to wage war...

 

[mpescatori]

Why is is bad? Doesn't it go along with the idea of securing your borders and all that jazz? It sure is helpful to be able to do it to the AI, so they should be able to do it to us as well. Only fair, right?

I have my own strategy for securing my borders.

I build my cities right ON the "rich" tiles, i.e. buffalo, wheat sheaf, gold etc.; this has the multiple benefit of ensuring a decent produciton of shields/food/trade at every turn, PLUS it means i will build cities more or less every three tiles.

What does this mean?
1) With roads, cities will be able to aid each other by sharing defensive units amongst themselves (i.e. I can have two Phalanx per city, and share cavalry); futhrermore, as my civilization grows, "inner" cities become safer and cavalry will be moved further towards the border;
2) With roads, it means that when I build caravans to help build my Wonders, these caravans will hop from one city to the next until they build, so they're safe from enemy or Barbarians;
3) When cities grow beyond size 7 or 8, they will eventually grow automatic entertainers because they run out of farmland; these entertainers I can then convert to scientists or taxmen at no expense;
4) When I build triremes, they will be able to ship goods directly from one city to the next, or use those ports as safehavens in case of enemy navy.

When planning to build a city next to an enemy city, I plan ahead:
1) I place one or two caravans so that my chosen spot is left vacant, and enemy units of any kind cannot move into it;
2) I place two or three engineers in the area, building a road from my ZOC to the chosen spot;
3) I keep two or three cavalry units in a waiting zone, ready to zip into the newly built city the moment it's created, so that by the time it's the enemy's turn he has MY city in HIS territory, with military units AND innocent helpless little caravans preventing him to take any action... snicker snicker snicker... it worls best after you've built the Great Wall, so you have instant city walls AND he must accept a peace settlement anyway... snicker snicker snicker... build infantry units and catapult asap and move those cavalry units backstage...