City placement discussion

[BrutalGodProjek]

I want to discuss the methods you all use to place your cities. I feel my biggest weakness in Civ is my city placement. I always build my cities keeping in mind the 21 tile after expansion boom. I never overlap unless forced to by limited space, caused mostly by rival civs crowding. I notice a lot of people put there cities really close together, for example like CxxC and so forth. Is it bad to never overlap unless forced too? I always try to keep a neat grid thing to make sure all my cities will get to use all their 21 tile right.

 

[klopolov]

If you give your cities all 21 tiles, they will not use a lot of them before the hospitals, thus taking a lot of usefull and possibly productive land away for the most part of the game. For a lot of people the game is over before the modern age and what use would the wasted land be then? I build my cities 2 tiles apart from each other. This enables me to build more cities on the land that I have. More cities means more gold, unit support, units, science... Try it out and see for yourself, it will keep your cities small in the last stages of the game, but for the most part of it it will give you significant benefits over the wide spread city building pattern.

 

[Hyronymus]

I was a 21-tile hardliner too once but I sound discovered the AI filled in the void I created by going for the full 21 tiles each time. I also missed out on direct connections to resources many a time. That's why I allow myself to build cities that share tilesnow. It gives me a dense network of cities where even the AI can't find a suitable place to squeesh in a city.

 

[BrutalGodProjek]

I was a 21-tile hardliner too once but I sound discovered the AI filled in the void I created by going for the full 21 tiles each time.

Yeah, that happens to me too....A LOT!!! The A.I always find the small space gap you leave behind when you go for the full 21 tiles.

 

[Scuffer]

You could always stick an obsolete unit in the gaps to keep out settlers, or rush a library.
I used to give my cities tonnes of room, but by the time you have railroaded a few irrigations, they can support a good size population once you have hospitals anyway.

 

[Zakharov]

I find the best way to place cities is to give them 12 tiles each. This gives four major advantages:

1) All of your tiles are worked quicker, as you just need to grow to size 12 asap to achieve your civ's growth potential. If you leave 21 tiles of room per city you are wasting 8 out of 21 tiles, or 38% of your territory, during the all important early game.

2) By building cities in a CxxC or CxxxC pattern you can expand your borders without having to construct culture buildings.

3) By never growing cities above size 12 you will suffer no pollution due to population, only from shield production. This makes the later turns much less frustrating as there is less whack-a-mole to be done by your workers.

4) A tighter build pattern allows you to build more cities in the same area, which allows you to support more free units.

There are other reasons but I can't think of them all now.

 

[Brain]

One thing nobody has mentioned yet is corruption. Corruption is a big problem when your empire gets bigger and cities are placed far from the capital. Making a tighter grid allows more cities to be close to the capital, thus more cities with less corruption. Also, there's a specific pattern that is often used in vanilla/PTW called Ring City Placement (RCP). Read about it here.

 

[The Fjonis]

The best option then seems to be a quite tight fit (12 tiles each) in RCP style. Has anyone got a nice scheme / map / general plan for such city builing?

 

[Hyronymus]

If you want an optimal city placement you need to be lucky with the terrain too. You can start a game with your mind preset on RCP-ing but if the terrain (or AI!) doesn't cooperate you're already starting 'weaker'. If you want to keep corruption low you need (the luck) to have luxuries in abundance.

 

[bonscott]

My first priority is to secure lux and resources as well as stratigic spots like choke points or to cut off the AI. I don't worry too much about overlap but I do typically try to allow more then 12 tiles per city.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

I try not to make city squares overlap, it is economically sound in the long run.

 

[budweiser]

A lot can depend on the map and the reletive distances between civs and the phase of the game inwhich the city gets founded.

I play C3C. My initial core is almost always CxxC. Some times an odd city or two may be placed at CxxxC. After that, if/when I expand and build a second 'core' they are usually CxxxC with an odd city or two placed at CxxxxC. Beyond that, I usually capture enemy cities and they are placed at CxxxxC by default by the AI. If I end up razing instead of capturing, then I will just place cities down so that the most land gets claimed when culture expands since they wont be that productive anyway.

 

[Renata]

10-15 land tiles per city is about average for me. There are always a few mountain or desert tiles that won't be used until very late, but in general I want my towns to be able to grow to size 12 without very many good tiles going to waste.

Farther apart is too inefficient. Closer is powerful very early in the game but gets frustrating if you're trying to build libraries and marketplaces and middle ages military and even your best uncorrupted towns are only making 7 or 8 shields per turn. Still, it's good tactics for a game that'll end early enough that you don't need much infrastructure.

Edit: With RCP placement, I like a first ring at RCP 3 or 4, whichever yields more good city sites. RCP-3 can get a little squished around the capital, but it's still doable with a second ring at RCP-6 if the first-ring towns work mostly outside tiles.

Renata

 

[The Fjonis]

In the game I'm playing now I use RCP radius 4,5 and 7,5. Seems to be working quite nicely. Previously I've mostly used radius 5 and 10 - gives lots of tiles for each town, though some overlap.

 

[garyg]

I start with 21 tile placement in the beginning around my capital.
This makes for a faster expansion and leaves me able to have large core cities later in the game.
Then the farther from my capital the closer I place my cities.
I'd rather have alot of small corrupt cities than a few big ones.

 

[777]

I'm old school player so I usually take advantage of all tiles. But problem is, like mentioned, corruption (God damn bribe taking polices ) and it's real problem even with Demo. I've tried to change my style to new game and try to put towns closer each other.

Do you know if there's mod making Civ3 to Civ2

 

[Bucephalus]

Like yourself, I too have a weakness for 21 tile cities as it suits my gameplay style to have massive production in the industrial era. By coincidence, in my current game I was forced to place my cities cxxc, due to being spawned on a small island. To be honest I usually restart such games - especially as I had no resources - but I was only one coastal tile away from a continent, so I stuck with it. In a nutshell, I found it was pretty much like previous replies suggested it would be, ie. the extra gold kept me up with the tech race in the early-to-mid game, and the extra unit support allowed a very successful invasion of the nearby continent. The downside is that now I'm in the modern era the lack of productive cities is cramping my style. I'm about to try a drastic tactic of starving-down a few cities to allow others to use the overlapping tiles exclusively - I'll let you know what transpires.

 

[Roxlimn]

I find that city placement has equally as much to do with other city placements as terrain considerations, both present and future. Top factors to consider in placing cities:

1) Other city placement. Of course. I tend to build cities in 15-18 tile considerations, but I've placed cities in CxxC formations depending on need and other factors. If you need the unit support, you can build added cities just anywhere you have the space for and abandon them afterwards.

2) Resources. Of course. Luxuries and Strategic Resources will entice me to build cities so far out, they're over 100% corruption.

3) Fresh water. River and lakes allow your cities to grow to size 12 without needing to build an aqueduct. Moreover, outside of Depotism, the Grasslands and Floodplains you will usually find around fresh water allows you to reach that size crazy-fast. Not needing to build the Aqueduct is the least of the benefits, growing to size 12 instead of making 2 size 6 cities diminishes maintainance, lessens needed production of buildings and concentrates production power.

4) Power tiles. Yup. Power tiles are a 4th consideration, not first. Getting fresh water is probably more important than getting a power tile, because a size 12 city is still more powerful than a size 6 city with a single extra power tile (and especially if that power tile is food-related).

5) Work consideration and flexibility. I'll likely place cities farther apart in terrain that requires more work to make profitable, such as areas of Hills and Forests. Of course, you work the easier to work tiles first to derive maximum power curve benefit and then work the harder tiles. Taking that into consideration, a city placed with a considerable amount of Hills into it probably won't tolerate another city sharing its key food-producing squares, though it can probably share the Hills, no problem. Also, placing a variety of tiles into a city can allow it to shift from more production to more food or more commerce as the need arises.

 

[The Fjonis]

Roxlimn - sound advice there. The challenge then will be to incorporate that with RCP for minimum corruption and waste. For that reason, I guess it would be a good idea to use quite large radii in general, as there are more possible city placements in large radii so you can select those which also offer some of the advantages you listed. For example in radius 10 there are lots and lots of possibilities, whereas in radius 6 there are fewer. Then add that 12 tiles pr city is optimal [generally], and that you shouldn't leave too much room between the cities - and voilà, you have a quite complicated picture with lots of factors to be taken into consideration.

A side note question - how does the effect of Palace and Forbidden Palace change with map size? Does their effective radii increase correspondingly?

 

[Roxlimn]

Thanks, The Fjonis. Last I heard, RCP doesn't work in C3C anymore, so I don't pay attention to it. I've likewise downladed several games in RCP mode city placement and because of other factors, I strongly believe that a significant departure could have benefitted their power curves.

I generally "plan" for 12 tile placement + 2 tiles for function switching/worker turn buffer and anarchy buffer + about 1-4 tiles that are hard to work or profit from, like Mountains or Deserts. This usually leaves me with a 15-18 city tile placement with as much as a full 21 tile placement on coastal towns with bad terrain (which don't benefit as much from the Shore tiles). On particularly rich terrain, however, I place as close as CxxC depending on power curve needs and/or fresh water availability, power tile placement, and the availability of Aqueducts. It's a very involved question and I can only really get into specifics regarding a particular piece of terrain.