City Overlap ---- when and why?

[blitzkrieg1980]

Okay, I'm a low-monarch level player and I've been on the forums nearly 3 years. I have never been able to get a grasp on the idea of city overlap in Civ4. Civ3 overlap made sense to me because maintenance costs were based on buildings not distance or # of cities and distance from capital determined how much tile yield was "lost to corruption".

However, in Civ4, I could never get down why overlap was good or when and where to do it? What are the ideal conditions for overlap? Do you overlap food tiles or cottage tiles for continuous growth during whip cycles? Do you found cities with overlap for this reason only sometimes? How does it benefit different styles of economic structure?

Any high level players that wish to contribute to this would be greatly appreciated. Believe it or not, I think this is what is holding me back from doing really well on some games where (as of now) I do mediocre or lose.

 

[Kadazzle]

I over lap when I have multiple tiles that I need to work (examples would be high commerce tiles like floodplain cottages, gems, gold and such) but not enough happiness to support all of them in one city. This means that I can continue to grow my cottages, and it helps a lot in the early game, but later in the game you have to choose between which city you want to be better.

Another case for city over lap would be to share food tiles. I do this when I have a lot of food high tiles in one city, while not a lot of food high tiles in another city. This usually happens between a commerce / GPF city and my production city, as I'd use the commerce city's food in the production city so that the prod city can grow into its mines and other low food tiles quicker. More or less it's to reach the happy cap quicker, while still being able to work most of the tiles you need/want.

I hope this makes sense.. I had a late night last night.

 

[Gooblah]

Well, overlap lets your cities alternate working cottages so that a secondary city can work a cottage, make it mature, then give it back to the capitol which is running Bureaucracy or something.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Is there anyone who might have some screenies of cities overlapping (beneficially)?

I guess I have trouble deciding when overlap is a good idea and if it is, what tiles to overlap. Often I find myself making sure that each city is able to work its entire fat cross. Often, I'll find that the map suits this a lot of the time. However, I know that being able to use overlap properly will help my game a lot.

 

[Lansky]

Early game after blocking in land I will often make my 4th or so city one that is right next to my capital, sometimes one such city on another side as well. The idea is that early game I normally use my capital to pump workers/settlers/units/library/etc since it is the most productive. This also means that working a cottage would slow things down most of the time. The overlap cities are there solely to work the cottages so that when I get Civil Service instead of working hamlets I can swap over to a few villages or towns as well.

Other than that there are certain tiles you will always want to work as Kadazzle mentioned. If you have 3 gold mines but the best city spot can only work 2 of them reasonably until biology another city could very well be in order. A worthless city working a few farms/cottages and a gold mine still will pay for itself and later on can give any good tiles to the nearby powerful city. The little worthless city can then work several biology farms and just be used to whip/draft an army or with the proper multipliers/civics a size 8 city working several workshops can still be quite productive.

Edit - Could worldbuilder such cases later, sadly I am at work now.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Awesome stuff. Thanks a lot. I think I'm starting to get the gist. So you guys will settle cities specifically to grow cottages while the bigger/powerhouse cities do other more productive (at the moment) things. This is really good.

 

[Badtz Maru]

I used to be really anal about not having my cities overlap at all, it felt like I was wasting potential. I realized later, though, that many of my cities will never get big enough to work all the tiles and I was often giving up really good city positions just because they were too close to another city.

Of course, I'm just a Noble/Prince player.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Badtz Maru good job on learning city overlap at those levels! Your transition to Monarch+ will be easier.

 

[Silu]

My advice about city overlapping: don't worry about it. Even serious overlap can be a non-issue in many games, as for it to have any effect whatsoever requires you to have several 15+ size cities close to each other. Usually the game has been decided far before this happens.

My (on-the-spot draft) city placing priority rules of thumb:
1. Possible blocking of AIs with Culture
2. Optimal city place (i.e. has food, is coastal vs 1tile inland etc.)
3. Distance from capital (esp. in early game)
4. Avoiding overlap

About intentional overlap for sharing tiles I have no comment, since I hardly ever use it, except in the most blatant cases.

 

[Dirk1302]

I often overlap cities especially if there isn't too much food. Let 2 cities share one fish. Settle city 1, grow to max with fish fast. Once it works all the useful tiles stagnate, give the fish to city 2,this one grows to max fast too. Now you have developed 2 cities with only one food resource. Both cities can be whipped too occasionally since they can grow back on the fish in a decent rate. Compare with settling city2 without any overlap and so without any food resource, it'll grow to max very slowly and you can't whip it profitably.

 

[michmbk]

Is there anyone who might have some screenies of cities overlapping (beneficially)?

I guess I have trouble deciding when overlap is a good idea and if it is, what tiles to overlap. Often I find myself making sure that each city is able to work its entire fat cross. Often, I'll find that the map suits this a lot of the time. However, I know that being able to use overlap properly will help my game a lot.

I think my sentiments are the same as others - I typically will overlap high food sites and cottaged flood plains. One gets to the happy cap, the other can keep working. The current nobles club Charlemagne game had some good overlap opportunity around the capital, with a number of flood plains. Cottage the flood plains, the capital can work some early on, and switch those to a newly settled city as it grows so it has good initial commerce. I did that in my shadow of that game.

i remember having this discussion in a thread a long time ago, and really tested out mass overlapping to see the benefits in a Monty game shortly thereafter - link is below. Monty is a good leader for overlap, because as long as you can get cities up to size 6 or so, they can be constant whipping machines with sacrificial altars in place. Not sure if it has great screen shots or not, but I was really settling cities 3-4 tiles apart throughout the island, and ended up with like 35 cities or so on our island, which were great whipping machines.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=307817

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I generally try to get the very best sites for my first 4 or so cities - if they overlap a little, that's ok, and if they have gaps, that's ok, too. I'll fill in the gap with filler cities later - those often turn into decent secondary commerce cities with windmills/watermills.

Best sites are heavily dependent on good/commerce/hammer bonus sites, with fresh water and/or coastal.

 

[peppe1]

I am a city spammer/overlap. I learned it running specialist economies as far fewer tiles are worked directly leaving a lot of of room for city overlap. Trying my hand at cottages, and have a similar city spam, but a little looser when i identify good locations that allow for a couple large commerce cities to form.

I might drop 3-4 cities in a grassland area with room for 2 BFCs. The extra cities help work the cottages while the main city or two get infrastructure/grow. Once the hand off occurs the helper cities get non commerce resource tiles and hills to work and usually work out as a decent unit pump, or at least a draftable city.

Unless the capital is clearly a Great Person farm (4+ food start) and for a peaceful opening with an average capital i will settle a 1-2 cities right next to the capital and start the helper cities working cottages in the capital's BFC early on. Usually hand them off as towns or very close to towns at bureaucracy. Blocking off land takes priority though, so these 1-2 cities may get delayed in favor of blocking off more land.

Overlap is natural to me. I will often be able to share a string of hills between 2+ cities. It requires some micro to go swap which city owns it, but can speed up infrastructure builds, while not reducing tiles worked. I generally don't mind whipping citizens off cottages as another nearby city can take over tiles to work.

I like the 'land is power' line often seen here, but how you use it is also important. I like to shoot for high % of tiles worked... hopefully extracting more power out of my land.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Awesome post peppe1. Thank you very much. I will be employing these tips tonight as I start a new game. Hopefully, I'll get some dang rivers this time around (last 3 games have been almost void of them). Micromanagement is fun to me. I enjoy adjusting specialists/tiles to maximize city output. Overlap will aid me in doing so more rapidly.

 

[Fluxx]

Lately I tend to overlap often.

When I begin a map, and have scouted I always build a dotmap, or got an imaginary map inside my head.

Question 1 always is what is the ideal placing for this city.
Question 2 then is, does it overlap with other cities, how much, and how disadvantageous is it.

Most of my games lately my cities got an average of 10-15 tiles to work on, rest is shared.

 

[shyuhe]

I tend to have overlap for all but one or two cities. As Dirk mentioned, sharing high yield food tiles is a good idea. And in the end game, I will normally shuffle the tiles so that I'll have one really big city surrounded by a few filler cities working 10-15 tiles. The fillers can still help with small things (like making airplanes and guided missiles).

 

[DaveMcW]

Overlap is bad.

But don't focus on overlap, focus on resources and good tiles.

Cities should have 10 good tiles of their own to work. If you see a spot with 10 good tiles and some overlap, go ahead and build on it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

A good rule. But overlap apparently helps by allowing economy/cottage cities to whip infrastructure/multipliers while overlapping cities continue to work the cottages allowing them to continuously grow. I would think you would like that kind of thing DaveMcW!

 

[DaveMcW]

Those are tricks that help reduce the pain of overlap, but overlap is still bad.

 

[6K Man]

I try not to overlap. But by the same token, I hate leaving resources unworked. So I often end up with some filler cities with a little overlap.