Choosing city locations

[Areva]

I'm a beginner playing on Noble (I've gotten through warlord a few times). The thing is, I have no idea how to select a city location.

Here's what I understand so far:

1) Choose city locations based on specialization. Food for Cottages/Specialists, Hills and hammers for production (and food, of course).

2) Resources. Get resources that give you corresponding bonuses to your specialty city. Make sure you put them in your fat cross!

Alright, here are my questions:

1) If you're trying to find a GP farm, you want a few tiles with huge food bonuses (read: food resources), so you can sink the rest into specialists.

If you're trying to find a cottage farm, you want LOTS OF FOOD. It doesn't matter how much is on each square, as long as there's alot, since you're going to be assigning workers to those squares anyways.

Is this correct?

2) I can find really good city locations (e.g., crapload of grasslands + some flood plains for cottages).

What do I do when there's just random terrain everywhere? Like, 2 hills, 1 flood plain, a little desert, some plains. How do I specialize those cities?

3) Is it better to search for really good locations, or grab land like crazy?

 

[Damoklesz]

1)
A cottage city doesn't NEED lots of food. Sure, it needs to be able to work most of it's tiles eventually, so it will need enough food to do that, preferably without any farms. But any food beyond that is only contributing to the growth speed, so it's somewhat less important.

For a GP farm, you don't need to have the food bonus on a few tiles. I mean, having like 5 floodplains and one food resource on top of that, makes a nice GP farm.

2)
If you can't specialize, you don't. Hybrid cities do work, even if they are not that optimal. By hybrid I mean mines on all the hills, part of the grasslands are farms, if you need them to work the mines, and the rest are cottages. If you built any farms, you ignore the plains, if you didn't, and still have extra food after working the mines, you cottage some of the plains and ignore the rest. In most cases these cities don't have much food, so specialists are out of the question most of the time. You only want to focus on getting as much production as possible, and some commerce as an extra. If everything around you is like that, then you either had a bad start, or you're playing on the more extreme maps.

3)
Never grab land like crazy. On the other hand, expanding fast is a very good idea. If by "searching" you mean scouting, than that's something you should do before your first settler is out. You never want to settle the first city very far (unless you know what you're doing), and you want to expand towards one of you opponents. The best tactics, to end up with enough land, is to try to close down part of the map from your opponents, with your cultural border. If you can close a lot of great land by settling 1-2 cities on less impressive sites, that that's probably what you should do first. If you can't, then get the best places first, and fill in with the worse cities as long as there is still land worth filling.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm a beginner playing on Noble (I've gotten through warlord a few times). The thing is, I have no idea how to select a city location.

Note: if you are struggling at Noble, you don't need to be concentrating on city specialization yet. There are higher leverage concepts to learn first (expansion, war, etc).

But, that's not what you asked....

1) If you're trying to find a GP farm, you want a few tiles with huge food bonuses (read: food resources), so you can sink the rest into specialists.

If you're trying to find a cottage farm, you want LOTS OF FOOD. It doesn't matter how much is on each square, as long as there's alot, since you're going to be assigning workers to those squares anyways.

Is this correct?

You always want food. Food is life.

The point is rather this: how many pop do you have left over after you work all the food? If you have spiky food (irrigated corn, pigs), then you have lots of pop left over, and you can hire specialists. If you have smeared food (flood plains, sugar), then you're going to be working lots of tiles, and you might as well cottage them.

2) I can find really good city locations (e.g., crapload of grasslands + some flood plains for cottages).

What do I do when there's just random terrain everywhere? Like, 2 hills, 1 flood plain, a little desert, some plains. How do I specialize those cities?

Literally, just do it anyway. If you've got two cities that could either be cottages or production, just flip a coin to choose which is which. Having perfect tiles is gravy, the point is to reduce your infrastructure costs to make it easier to win the game.

3) Is it better to search for really good locations, or grab land like crazy?

Every food special you can reach should be worked by at least one city.

 

[Dracaena]

Being a beginner, I wouldn't worry too much about planning city specialization in advance. As you play and complete more and more games, you will start to get a feel for what is possible with a given piece of land.
Not every city needs to be highly specialized, the main reason for specializing is to get the maximum benefit from wonders. As you play more games you will probably automatically start to specialize cities as the game progresses without even thinking about it. The further up the tech tree you go the more flexible the land becomes.
Your thought might go something like this:
"This city has a lot of hammer output, I will put Ironworks here"
followed by
"Hmm I put ironworks here, I'm going to change those cottages to farms & workshops"
etc.

Your decisions will also be influenced by your overall strategy and civics, and the unique situations that every game presents.
Eventually you'll be able to plan in advance which cities will be best suited for different purposes.

 

[Areva]

Awesome, I just pounded a game at Prince level.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Yxklyx]

Food Resources - perhaps Floodlands (and Lakes near sea for 3 food to a much lesser extent) are the key. You need those otherwise the city won't do much - so taking all the Food Resources should be your primary factor in deciding where to settle.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Not every city needs to be highly specialized, the main reason for specializing is to get the maximum benefit from wonders.

While I agree with most of that post this part isn't correct IMO. Specialization is all about efficiency, making the most out of the hammers, flasks, and food. Applying the multipliers in a way that that multiplies their usefulness. A science city that is producing flasks from specialists and buildings and wonders will get the most out of limited resources. A military production city that is producing units quickly and with many promotions is better than many cities slowly producing lowly promoted units.

Food Resources - perhaps Floodlands (and Lakes near sea for 3 food to a much lesser extent) are the key. You need those otherwise the city won't do much - so taking all the Food Resources should be your primary factor in deciding where to settle.

In addition to obtaining strategic resources and locking up some land and . . .
But yes, food makes growth and that makes things worthwhile.

 

[aggri1]

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I would like to ask something about city placement also.

My question relates to balancing long-term city potential with short-term resource requirements.

Near the start of a game, I found some copper and some rocks on two hills in a desert. Between the nice hills and the straight river is one line of desert squares and then the floodplain squares along the river. I decided to settle on the floodplain, to be next to fresh water. However, this meant that I didn't have access to the copper or stone for a long time, until I'd built a monument and waited for the culture to grow to expand the border.

During the time I was waiting to get access to the copper, I was being attacked by axemen (and other) barbarians. I was defending with weaker units, and losing many as a result.

My question (for people who know how to play Civ IV ) is: does one usually need to give up settling in positions which would be optimal in the long-term in order to satisfy short-term needs? Is this common?

I always think long-term with Civ games, which can be a problem for my citizens as the barbarians slaughter them while they're busy laying the groundwork for their hundredth-generation descendents. Hmmm...

Cheers, A.

 

[Benginal]

You've just asked a super hard question. Some rather discombobulated comments as follows.

• I prefer to settle for long term sites, but if you have no other resources you need the copper.
• I'm not sure what level you're playing at, but copper is important.
• You can make do with archers, in which case copper becomes less important.
• Stone (I think that's what you mean by "rocks") are cool for wonder building.

In general, there is no rule. You have to evaluate things like:

• Are there other city sites that will be more helpful?
• Is there a lot of room for Barbs to spawn meaning you'll be facing them longer?
• Is there another source of copper or horses that might be farther away but at a better city site?
• Do you have a good commerce tile (like gems or gold) that could get you to IW quicker?

So yeah. How about the next time you have this problem, you take some screenshots and ask us. I personally would find it a lot easier to say something useful if I had a specific map to look at.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Very good thoughts, Benginal. Choosing between a site that's good now and one that will be good later involves a lot of considerations. What are your tech priorities? Do you have time for an Archery diversion? Can you wait safely until Iron Working? If you are looking to found a religion or build a wonder you may not have time to research those things justifying a short-term site for the copper city. This ties into Benginal's point about research speed as well.

To answer the question about whether it's common to settle for immediate benefit and thus forsaking later perfection, yes it is. It can be more important to protect yourself or have an offensive force ready early than to have "perfect" (impossible to define anyway) city placement in the modern era.

Screenshots would indeed be very helpful.

 

[Perfection]

Forsaking perfection is a bad strategy.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

It invites giant death robots?

 

[aggri1]

OK, thanks folks.

I'm playing on a low difficulty (can't remember which, but I get +2 health per city for difficulty and other civs don't have archery to start), and on a huge map; I guess there's lots of room for barbarians. I've improved my fog-busting technique as a result.

I got wiped out a few times by neighbouring civs, but I've saved the initial t=0 game, and have tried a few different strategies. I know that's 'cheating' since I know now where the resources are, but at least this way I can see what works and what doesn't on an otherwise identical map.

Next time I have a specific question I'll post a screen shot.

Thanks,
A.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Don't worry about "cheating" in this way. It is just studying and learning anyway, that's a great way to improve your game. There are so many "what if's" in the game it is good to test some of them out.