Building cities on resources - when you get a bonus.

[Gufnork]

It's generally a bad idea to found cities directly on a resource, since you will lose the benefits you get from building the improvement on it. But sometimes you have to do it to gain a resource elsewhere and I believe that it's sometimes preferrable. This guide will show when you get a bonus from the resource in the square you found the city. I will only use the resources you see from the start, since those are the relevant ones.

Food resources (Wheat, Rice, Corn, Cow, Pig, Sugar, Banana, Deer, Sheep) gives a bonus when located on flat grasslands (forests are irrelevant since they're removed upon the founding of the city).
Production resources (Stone, Marble, Ivory) gives a bonus when located on a plains and/or hill. Yes, this means a city on a plains hill with a production resource gets 3 hammers in it's city square.
Commerce resources (Gems, Fur, Dyes, Gold, Incense, Wine, Silk, Silver, Spice) gets a bonus when located next to a river.

So when is it worth founding a city on a resource? Well, what you lose is the bonus you get from the improvement, so lets list them here:

Pigs +3F
Banana +2F
Corn +2F (+3F if irrigated)
Deer +2F (+1H if in forest, since camps don't remove forest while cities do)
Wheat +2F (+3F if irrigated)
Rice +1F (+2F if irrigated)
Cow +1F +2H
Sheep +2F +1C
Spices +1F +2C
Sugar +1F +1C
Wine +1F +2C

Now, since food is very hard to come by it's generally a bad idea to build cities on square which will produce extra food. All of these are superior to farms.

Ivory +1H +1C
Marble +1H +2C
Silver +1H +4C
Gems +1H +5C
Gold +1H +6C
Stone +2H
Horse +2H +1C
Copper +3H
Iron +3H

Production is the second hardest commodity to come by. One must compare with mines which produce +2H or cottages that gives +1H+7C at best. Now things are getting interesting. A stone square does not give anything more than a mine, so you might as well build your city on it if you have enough hills. The others all gives less than a Town under Universal Suffrage and Free Speech. Now you have to consider the time it takes for cottages to reach Town status and if you will be using Universal Suffrage at all, but in many cases it might be worth placing a city on it. Iron, Copper and Horses should be left alone, however.

Incence +5C
Dyes +4C
Fur +3C
Silk +3C

Commerce is very easy to come by. A cottage gives 1-7C and an additional hammer under Universal Suffrage. This means that a square with one of these resources is actually a waste, assuming you want to be able to use the resource. Planting a city on it is about as good as planting on tundra or desert. If you're lucky you can plant a city on tundra or desert with one of these (yes, you sometimes find desert next to river that isn't flood plains). Sure, you get the extra commerce instantaneous which can be a huge boost early, but since three of the four needs Calendar that point is fairly moot.

Conclusion:
The general consesus to never found a city on a resource that appears to be true in these forums has serious flaws. While food resources are valuable, hammer and most of all commerce resources are not. Quite the opposite, they're in the way. Finding a nice Silk square next to a river should be something to aim for, to get that extra boost early. Or why not a juicy Sugar square? You lose a commerce, but you wouldn't be able to get it before Calendar anyway and an extra food early on is a huge deal. Plus you get the extra benefit of an unpillagable resource.

 

[Zombie69]

You failed to take into consideration the type of tile it is, and the features. A city founded on plains gets the same bonuses as one on grass (or anywhere for that matter, except plains/hills). However, it's usually agreed that grass tiles are better than plains tiles in your city radius. Therefore, if the ressource is on plains, it's more tempting to found your city on it to get rid of it.

An even better example is if the bonus is on tundra or desert. By founding your city there, you may actually ged better FPC than by improving it.

Also, you say that horses, copper and iron should never be settled on. Why not? If iron gives you +3, wouldn't you get the same bonus in these two cases? (1) Settle on a grass hill next to the iron, for a +3 with iron. (2) Settle on the iron (giving you +1) next to the hill, and mine the hill, for a total of +3. Though it's true that you'd get more food by going with version 1.

 

[BruceLeeee]

Doesn't a +7C town include financial trait? In that case, a gold mine is just as good as a town with universal suffrage.

 

[Requies]

Also, you say that horses, copper and iron should never be settled on. Why not? If iron gives you +3, wouldn't you get the same bonus in these two cases? (1) Settle on a grass hill next to the iron, for a +3 with iron. (2) Settle on the iron (giving you +1) next to the hill, and mine the hill, for a total of +3. Though it's true that you'd get more food by going with version 1.

Actually, it wouldn't. You get a bonus for just the iron being there. So, instead of +4 from the square with the iron, you would only get +1. While instead of +3 on the hill, you would get +1.

Req

 

[Requies]

Doesn't a +7C town include financial trait? In that case, a gold mine is just as good as a town with universal suffrage.

You get +1 for knowing Printing Press and +2 for knowing Universal Suffrage with the base +4 for a town making +7C...

Req

 

[Smirk]

Future benefits aside there are some things I will settle on without a second thought given correct conditions.
Some spaces *may* be improved higher but if there are 3-4 other good resources then the least of those might not get worked for hundreds of turns, while the center space is always worked. Plain hills are one of my favorites as they get the +1P, plains hills with stone is my all time favorite as they get +2P (ie center space is 2f3p).

Copper and iron I don't really like to settle on as the bonus once mined is big enough to warrant a citizen, but gold, silver and the others I have settled on. Gold is especially nice if for some reason you want to get a lot of early tech, like to gain a religion monopoly.

Note, I'm mainly talking about the capital, rarely do I do this (other than plain hills) with other cities as I have more information available and can place much better, but I think the benefit from this early bonus to the center square can make for a nice boost in your game.


This logic doesn't apply to food resources since those are exactly what you are most likely to have your citizens working both early and the entirety of your game.

That is, even without calendar you still want to farm those resources and have a citzen working them. At least I do.

(Also BTW every desert space touching a river is going to be a floodplain, thats just how it works. Even those corners where you can't place a watermill will still be floodplain.)

 

[DeltaV]

Gold mines produce +1H and +6C...in addition to the 1F2H or 2F1H for the hill. And they do it immediately, instead of waiting for a town and Printing Press and Universal Sufferage. Gems, and Incense are almost as good. They're also easier to replace if pillaged than a town.

There are 5 resources who's improvement only adds +2: Bananas (+2F), Deer (+2F), Ivory(+1H +1C), Stone (+2H), and Sugar (+1F +1C). These are probably worth just putting the town on, particularly Stone and Ivory, which will boost initial production, and Sugar, who's output with a plantation isn't any better than a city's (4F1C) vs (3F1H1C). Dropping a city on a Tundra square with Deer will actually improve its output over a deer camp (but might leave you with one other mostly worthless Tundra square instead).

Note that a farm on a banana square will eventually produce +3F (with Biology) instead of +2F with a plantation! Same problem with Sugar.

 

[Gufnork]

+2 food is a lot different from +1H +1C. Farms only produce +1F, +2 after Biology which comes very late. That makes it a lot more valuable. A city with Deer on Tundra does not get the +1F, so it's better to place it on another Tundra square. Furs next to a river on the other hand is a whole other matter. And a farm produce +2F after Biology, same as a Banana plantation.

I don't know why, but occasionally I've seen Desert squares next to a river. It may be a bug in the mapscript or whatever, it is rare but it happens.

I wouldn't advise to settle a city on Gold. That commerce bonus is huge early in the game. I recently played a game where I had three gold resources on plains hills and plenty of food, which made me storm ahead of the AI in the tech race on Emperor difficulty. Marble, Ivory and Stone is worth settling on, so is Silver (atleast since it only appears on Tundra or Snow). I don't think Gems or Gold are, however.

Incense can only be found in Desert, so while it does save a Desert square from being completly useless, it's rarely worth working. Settling on it doesn't help much either, since unless you get the freaky thing with a Desert next to a river you won't gain anything from it.

 

[walkerjks]

I wouldn't advise to settle a city on Gold. That commerce bonus is huge early in the game.

I only partially agree with you here. Gold is often found on desert hills and often in clusters. Silver is found on tundra hills, and again often in clusters. While I completely agree that the commerce boost from either of these (or gems) is huge in the early game (I love seeing gold, silver, or gems in the fat cross of my first city), it can be very difficult to work multiple gold or multiple silver from the same city due to lack of food. So I have no problem settling right on top of gold (or silver) when those resources come in pairs or threes.

 

[InFlux5]

I thought I read that settling on desert or tundra makes that city build structures slower. For this reason I've been avoiding building on them. Did they change this, or did I mis-read something?

EDIT: Ok, where I saw it was in the Civilopedia. It says "Improvements take 25% longer to build." I now realize this means worker improvements, not improvements to cities built on those tiles. I don't know why I thought that's what it meant!

 

[Sostoro]

But you don't get the benefit of the resource if you don't improve the tile do you? It seems some tiles like stone and marble would be too valuable to build on, esp. early.

 

[DaveMcW]

Spices +1F +2C
Wine +1F +2C

If these resources are on plains, you get +1F for building a city on top of them. So this is another example of only losing a couple commerce.

 

[Xerol]

But you don't get the benefit of the resource if you don't improve the tile do you? It seems some tiles like stone and marble would be too valuable to build on, esp. early.

As long as you have the technology required to hook it up (mining for Iron/Copper/Gems/etc., Calendar for plantation resources, etc.) settling the city on it automatically hooks it up.

 

[Caradoc]

This would seem to make Stone a good choice for the first city. You do not lose much, and you gain the benefit of accelerated production of some ancient wonders.