City Overlap ---- when and why?

[lilnev]

In evaluating a city site, ask yourself three questions:

1) How quickly will it become a net contributor? This could mean it's producing more commerce than it consumes in maintenance, or it's contributing hammers to building units. Or it could mean claiming an important resource, or blocking off land. Usually this depends on the best 2 or 3 tiles. Whether it needs a border pop and how that's to be achieved, and distance costs from the capital, factor in here as well. (The lowest distance maintenance is for cities within 4 tiles, couting diagonals as 1.5 and rounding down -- equivalent to the 60% culture shape. For early non-blocking cities especially, 1 or 2 gold per turn can be a significant factor in favor of tighter packing).

2) What will it look like at size 6/8/10? Generally this is the best N tiles unless that city is running specialists. Use the lower range for early cities, the higher range for later cities.

3) What is its late-game potential? Many people focus way too much on this third question, when it's arguably the least important. It's mainly worth considering for your National Wonder cities. You do want a few really good production cities for the HE and Ironworks, a super cottage city for Oxford, etc. And cities that overlap with one of these uber-cities will have to relinquish some tiles in the late game, and that should be accounted for. But it's only part of one of the three questions.

These three questions leave a lot of room for overlap. Borrowing a food resource greatly helps (1), and can even help (2) if your size 6/8/10 cities are whipping or drafting and need to balance regrowth rates. Overlap of "generic tiles" e.g. grass cottages generally allows you to have more good cities at stage (2), even if they won't all grow into stage (3) monsters.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

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

Put up or shut up - overlap has almost no negative consequences until you reach a size where there is contention for the resource.

Purely hypothetical exercise: consider a football field (green, flat), with pigs in the middle. Your two cities have 39 cottages to work - how many turns are you going to have to work that 39th cottages to make up for the time you lost growing to the 38 cottages I'm working sooner because I overlapped the pigs?

Until the point that the second city reaches size 20, the overlapped cities dominate the distinct layout - I always have the option of playing the pigs in the primary city, and reaping the same benefits. But any time that play is sub optimal, where you are stuck I can swap and score a small profit that you aren't going to make any progress against until the endgame.

 

[DaveMcW]

I will have 10 more cottages, because I stole some grassland from your empire while you overlapped the pigs.

 

[brianb1974]

I think I agree with almost all of the posters on here. Yes, overlap isn't good per se. But yes, it isn't a huge (or often even a big) problem, and may well be the optimal solution to a given map.

Lilnev summed up the general principles well. I would add to his points that sometimes strategic blocking and/or getting your hands on a resource and/or working a great tile immediately (even before a border pop gets you your BFC) will lead you to put cities in places that are suboptimal from a long-term point of view. This can mean immediate overlap issues right away or possibly necessitate filler cities later with significant overlap.

This has probably reached the limit of its usefulness as a general discussion. I think to really gain any more insight, we'd need to look at some actual maps and make some dot-maps that would allow us something more concrete over which to argue.

 

[VoirDire]

IMHO, it's not so much that overlap is benificial - it's that you want to utilize all avaliable (non crappy) tiles within your border for maximum efficiency.

Depending on what difficulty you play, most cities will only be able to work 8-12 titles for most part of the game.

I usually build my power cities first and let them grow as much as they can, then place filler cities with farms/cottages so that I work every tile. Even ocean tiles. With some decent traceroutes they pay for themselves almost instantly.

BTW, those small filler cities are excellent for mass-drafting.

 

[Calouste]

What VoirDire said.

In the beginning it is more important not to let good tiles (resources/hills/riverside) within your empire lay fallow than worry about overlapping. After you have settled you first four or five cities you usually don't have any choice but to overlap anyway. Towards the end game you can decide which of the cities will become power cities (which might be different then the initial idea because a religion might be founded somewhere and where resources and random events pop up) and which become filler cities and assign the full BFC to the power cities. Filler cities pay for themselves anyway by that time, and if you have corporations, the more cities, the better.

 

[Iranon]

I like extensive overlap. Change food resources so you can whip efficiently, without letting a good food source go to waste. Overlap can eliminate the need for early culture, getting the cities off the ground a little more quickly.
Favouring horizontal over vertical expansion means your cities can build useful things instead of cap raisers. You also need less workers per city.

Nevertheless, an early city should have at least one decent resource or attractive trade routes; without either it is often better to leave the spot blank to backfill later.

Later in the game, per-city-bonuses like religion, religious wonders, espionage buildings, corporations and free specialists can rival or overtake yields from tiles. If you want to rushbuy continuously, you want additional shipping addresses to avoid paying a markup. If you want to draft continuously, you can make good use of 20 cities in high digit numbers even if you have an optimised GT drafting city.
Small filler cities with corporation food can whip extremely well.

 

[Artichoker]

One more strong supporter of overlap!


There is not a clear-cut rule to follow in deciding when to overlap. The more land you have available to settle, the greater the chances are that you can settle without overlapping. Overlap-free cities allow you to cover more land with fewer cities, thus reducing maintenance. However, at some point down the road the missed productivity of avoiding overlap will eventually outweigh the savings of settling fewer cities.

As a rule of thumb, the lower the total food, the more attractive overlap becomes. This is because lower food means slower growth, and lower population. Lower population means more free tiles available for overlapping cities. This is especially true for plains-rich areas of land.

It is quite possible to have very productive cities even with just plains. Plains powered by rivers make way for high-commerce cities that are productive early, despite having poor growth potential. Having more cities working those plains allows the land to be covered more quickly than without overlap.

 

[tibbles]

To toss in my monarch 2cents.

I think the biggest consideration is, what do you intend to use that city for. If it were for pure long term cottage spam, I can see overlap as being undesirable. Your maximum number of cottages is reduced overlapping, so IF you can grow fast enough to use them all, it is a net loss commerce. But even in the junglebelt it's hard to find a pure football field, theres going to be noncottaged food and hills mixed in. What I do like overlapping in cottage spam cities is those food resources or hill mines pre windmills. You lose fewer cottage tiles and it helps get them up faster.

But for most of my early cities, I go with lilnev's point 2 and assume during the most important period of the game the cities will be size 10 tops. If some overlap gets me more good tiles early at the cost of late game having to run a specialist or short 1 pop in 1 of the 2 cities, I'll probably take it.

 

[Virtual Alex]

I came from ICS (Infinite city spam) style CivII and CivIII play so my opinions on overlap were quite different than they are now. But I don't really care about letting my cities reach maximum potential. How many cities do you really get to size 21? Maybe 20% of your cities?

if you are doing a specialist economy than overlap is pretty much a none-issue. the only thing you need to think about is how many +food squares you can manage out of the land.

Another bonus to overlapping is it makes your cities much closer together. It's much easier to move your army around to defend your empire. In my CivII and CivIII days I would often spam cities 2 plots apart like this: CxxCxxCxxC. If I had a grid of cities this close together and I had 1 defender in each city (which often wasn't needed at all) I could move 4-5 defenders from nearby cities into an endangered city in one turn. Obviously that isn't possible in this game, but a smaller empire is easier to defend.

It's also a good idea to backfill your civ with squished little cities just because you end up working more total land faster, and growing faster. Since the late game in Civ4 (this is my opinions I am no expert) is much less important than the early mid game, I say maximizing worked tiles and growth is more important than having 21+ god cities later.

 

[mi6agent]

Early game after blocking in land I will often make my 4th or so city one that is right next to my capital

I use the 3rd city, 4th is impossible because your capital culture will pop the 2nd time thus your city can only share very few titles because its so far away.

 

[Lansky]

I use the 3rd city, 4th is impossible because your capital culture will pop the 2nd time thus your city can only share very few titles because its so far away.

Huh?

You can settle a city anywhere as long as it is 2 tiles away from all other cities. Your own cultural borders do not matter. Or is there another point I am overlooking?

 

[fed1943]

I avoid overlapping and only do it if I cannot do otherwise.
To compare overlapped cities with 1 city is deceiving; you must compare
2 overlapped with 2 non-overlapped.

 

[tibbles]

You cant compare 2 overlapped vs 2 nonoverlapped without specific time/tile limits, the non will always win long term. It'd more be comparing...I dunno, say an empire of 5 nonoverlapped vs 8 overlapped.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I've never considered overlap to be beneficial in the sense that the cities can share tiles between them as might be needed; when there's overlap I like to simplify things by just assigning tiles to one city or the other and forgetting about swapping specific tiles between the cities. I'm not dead-set about that, but it's a rule of thumb I use to keep things simple.

If the amount of good land to expand into is limited, I'll gladly tolerate some city overlap (or a lot, 4-tile overlaps are common in my games, 6-tile overlaps happen sometimes also) if it will give me another decent city site in the short run. If I have lots of good land to expand into, I try to limit overlap if only because I'd rather spend city maintenance and settlers expanding into that good land than trying to cram in as many cities as I can in my little corner of the earth.

Ultimately, though, overlap doesn't really matter a whole lot. The only thing that matters is if the settled city is going to help you out; there's no sense obsessing with overlap if it keeps you from founding a productive city. Tiles that can't be worked due to overlap aren't any worse than mountains or deserts, or ocean tiles for that matter. And unproductive tiles are only going to matter when your population is high; it's better to look at productive tiles than to obsess about unproductive ones that aren't going to matter until the game's practically over.

 

[cabert]

overlapping is a non issue in most situations, it's beneficial in some situations though :
- going for culture. you want all your cottages to mature. I do intentionally overlap alùost all tiles in my wanabee legendary cities.
- with a really low happy cap, you still want to use all the high food tiles all the time. So slavery + overlapping can be good. Better go for monarchy though.
- you need one (or 2) more libraries/stables/whatever and the available land is scarce.
- a really cramped island is all you get until astronomy

 

[Gorey]

Like most new players... i originally avoided overlap like it was the plague. I felt as if i was gimping a city when i did that.

Now that im at about emprorer level, overlap doeesn't phase me one bit.

Just lay out your cities to make use of all the resources availble.. and dont worry about some overlap.

If a certain city is to be one of your major 4 cities... let it hoarde all it's tiles and dont share em with the surrounding cities. Or let the surrounding cities work the cottages in those squares until the major city can grow onto them.

Or maybe share a 2nd food resource between two cities. One can use it to speed up its growth, then hand it off to other city so it can grow quicker as well.

One city might not have enough food for that plains tile.. but the other city does. Or maybe one city might be lacking production, so you can share the hill between them.

The uses are limitless. But by no means does a city have to reach full size for it to be useful. Just lay out your cities to a) block your opponents and b) make use of all resources.

 

[Bleys]

Here is my perspective.

Early in the game, when you are struggling the most to get that edge, to turn that corner, you cannot work all the tiles in a citys BFC. Period. So share some, especially good ones like riverside cottages, FPs, etc.

Later in the game, sure, you will have a city that can only use 17 tiles. Boo Hoo. How horrible is that, really, when its surrounded by a bunch of other cities, all using lots of tiles too. Those 4 tiles are not significant, and in fact, ARE still being used in your empire.

Thats the key now, not cities, like the old Civs, but tiles. As long as the strongest tiles are used, an extra city here and there is easy to benefit from early, and doesnt REALLY hurt you later. In fact, I often put more cities in just to work strong tiles, with full knowledge they will never grow that huge.

Its more an anal-retentive thing, I swear it is, people dont LIKE that overlap, its not perfect, its not OCD perfect, heh.

Trust me, I am back playing OGame, I know this OCD thing we all have.

 

[Kietharr]

Generally, you never care about overlap if
1. the space that you're overlapping is useless (tundra, desert, ocean, ect)
2. The only thing you lose out on by not overlapping is useless land (see above)


Overlap can be advantageous if you have a food poor or high development required site (such as a coastal city with seafood but no other sources and no other coastal cities) and you need to borrow from a richer city to whip infrastructure.

I also often overlap if I have a decent strip of land with a few resources right outside another city or two's cross, and I just let the old cities hold on to all of their tiles and have the new city work the non overlap tiles. The overlap city won't hinder any of the other cities and will produce enough to pay for itself usually.

Overlap is really no big deal either, even if you're overlapping a few productive tiles for a more optimal city site. In the short run you won't have the population to work every tile anyways and in the long run it won't matter if you're suboptimally using 3 tiles when you have an empire spanning several hundred tiles.