City locations

[hiya1]

Hello ive been playing civ 3 for awhile now and I was wondering how everyone else lays out their cities what I mean is do you do you place your cities side by side ,3 squares over what? I always seem to clump my cities together just out of habit and now I need to know a good way to spread them out cause it got me in trouble more then ounce heeh and it really slows me down trying to figure out the best place for a new city .




Thanks for your time and help!!!

 

[TheNiceOne]

I like to go for a 3+2 spacing. That is 3 squares horizontal and 2 squares vertical or vice versa. This has several advantages compared to the "ideal" 4+3 spacing.

A settler need only use 3 moves to get to the new city cite, for fast expansion.

With roads, a unit may move to neighbour cities in one turn. Great for defense.

You get more cities closer to the capital, which means less distance corruption.

You get more cities in the same area. Great when land space is limited (it usually is).

A 3+2 spacing means 13 squares to each city, which is exactly the number of squares that can be worked on by a size 12 city.

You don't really need to build hospitals, because you have already used your land effectively. This also means less of a happiness problem than in size 20+ cities.

Granted, you don't get any single power cities than can produce 100+ shields, but istead of 10 tanks every turn you get 25 tanks every second turn.

 

[Globetrotter]

Just for hints:

You can go to Craker's site here

or just go the War Academy where you'll see a couple of threads related to starting locations.

Pretty helpful i might say!

 

[pompeynunn]

My first few cities I normally build closer together (and my first two I normally have 3 squares away from each other - I find it helps to improve squares they can both use, because when you are churning out settlers in the early game, you rarely have a situation where you need lots of improved squares).

However, after 3-4 cities, I start to place my cities further apart (maybe 5-7 squares) trying to predict where the cultural boundaries will be after expanding twice (100 culture points). As the game goes on, I then think about placing cities even further apart, to try to get around the optimum number of cities and corruption problem. Sometimes that means gaps in my territory, but I find that the AI isn't so aggressive in going for those gaps as it used to be.

 

[Ribannah]

I leave room for my capital, SSC and FP cities to eventually expand to size 20.

Most of the other cities have room to grow to size 12. Initially, they work the inner tiles of my realm (the excess tiles of the capital). Later in the game, after they have built most improvements and the capital has a hospital, they work the outer tiles (up to coastal and sea).
Where there isn't enough food to grow to size 12 (large patches of tundra and/or hills), I build more densely (size 6).

 

[ProPain]

Depends on game goal, terrain, distance to capital and available pace for me

Game Goal
When I plan on early conquest/domination (small maps, lower difficulty) I space cities so they don't overlap on their 3/3 starting grid only. You won't reach sanitation, so cities won't grow beyond 12 pop. This means you won't be working (much) more than 9 squares a city anyway. Waste of tiles to space em out more.
When you plan on a longer game, you might wanna space em out more so you can grow till all 21 tiles are used.

Terrain
When building on terrain with lots of food I space out more than on terrain with little food. Tundra cities for example won't grow beyond 2 anyway so spacing them out a lot means you're not supporting all the pop you can. If you build them 1 space apart they'll still be able to grow to 2 pop

Distance to capital
When cities are so far from my capital that they only produce one shield anyway I don't look at the terrain that much anymore. I just place them so I can take up the territory or defend easily or maybe steal a resource from an AI by expanding my borders. Only exception: I place them next to a river when possible. Saves me the process of building/buying an aquaduct

When you want to take territory, keep in mind that when you leave only 1 row of free tiles between your old border and the 9 tile city radius the empty tiles will be added to your territory at once. When you leave 2 rows of unclaimed tiles you'll have to expand first to connect borders.

Available space
When I'm cramped between other players, or on a small island I build cities very close together. That way I'll be making all available tiles productive as quickly as possible. This enables you to build an army quickly (to conquer your neighbour) or research as fast as possible (to get map making and leave your island).

Hope this helps!

 

[Chieftess]

This is better asked in the Strategy & Tips forum. I'll move it there.