City Placement -- Where Would You Place It?

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I noticed somebody mentioned a site two tiles east of 1B...that gives pretty uncomfortable overlap with my capital. I tend to overlap 1-3 tiles, but never that many (6, I think, if you place it there). Is that a strategy I should be looking into changing?

No. It's a good general guideline that you should challenge from time to time.

In this case, I would be looking at the new city as a military pump. Pigs, copper, and the four available hills will free up the capital to concentrate on commerce and infrastructure.

How important is the overlap? In the short term, the capital gets to work all the tiles it was working anyway (except the one grassland hill you have mined) and the military pump works none of those shared forests - leaving the tiles available for the capital. Until the happy in the capital reaches at least 14 you don't have a conflict, and even then you may be running specialists to take advantage of your beaker modifiers.

In the intermediate term, you may actually see some gains, as Coppertown can run help mature cottages on the shared tiles, then hands them off fully developed to the capital.

Long term, Coppertown will have three hills and four plains tiles of its own, which is as much as the pigs can support (with a little help). So Coppertown figures to be a very important city in the early game, and dwindling in importance later on.


Compare the cities in the intermediate term. Coppertown will run the pigs, the copper, 5 grassland mines, and of course the city center itself, with 1F/turn left over: 20/turn. 1B has the pigs, the copper, three grassland mines, and presumably an engineer, leaving 1F remaining: 16 /turn.
Not a tremendous difference, but for the fact that 1B needs a lot more infrastructure to realize its coastal potential, where Coppertown has a very simple mission.


To me, it feels like a leverage decision (is coppertown now worth more than 1B later), which depends on many many things. For example, you have copper and Metal Casting, so you are planning to build the Colossus, right? Are you going to build it in Cuzco? or at 1B? because you cannot build it at Coppertown. Etc.

BTW: have you considered putting City 2 between the silver and the sheep?

 

[iamnleth]

Perhaps you could grab pigs/copper with the first city, and sheep/silver with the second?

EDIT: Damn, VoiceOfUnreason beat me to it...

 

[Antilogic]

First, on my other cities:

My capital is not using all the seafood tiles because I need production for units, and I have enough food right now. My cities' have a happiness cap of 7 at the moment, so I'm not growing them past that point (because the citizens would be angry and just useless). As soon as I have a higher happiness cap (or I switch to a massive whipping campaign), I will be using all those clams.

I plan on invading Cyrus and his little horse city up there, so I'm not going to cram my city right up against his to try and steal it culturally when I plan to take them by force.

Now, on the sites:

The second city site is to "fill in" the continent. I may try to use the forest preserve to spread some woods around and convert it to a National Park city, but I haven't planned that far out yet. My first priority is to secure the metals on the continent (of which there is only copper, apparently). The southeast isn't much better--a lot of desert tiles. The way I see it, the tundra can at least grow trees and become useful later on. Also, I picked its location so that it would not overlap too much with the 1A site (my preferred "gut instinct" location for building the city, if you haven't read the OP). However, if the 1A site isn't going to be settled, then I am more open to moving around site 2. As a matter of fact, site 2 is a detail to me at the moment--there is room up there for a city, but I'm more concerned with grabbing the west coast resources (especially whales, simply because I don't get whales that often in my games and I like a change of pace).

I am playing this game with the intent of winning a Culture victory, largely because I haven't won that type of victory yet on BtS. Therefore, I will build the Colossus...eventually. Right now, my capital is producing defenders and settlers to claim more territory from Cyrus. Then, my core cities will be producing wonders while these new cities are going to be my defense and commerce cities, for conquering territory and boosting my economy along with the wonder cities (at least one of which will be a great person factory, preferring artists). That is, at least, the grand strategy I came up with early on. We'll see how it ends up. I should mention that I typically ignore wonders in favor of troops, so I have prioritized different techs than a builder typically would (that's why I'm still researching Math). I'm doing a trial and error here...it's not perfect.

@Wimsey: I was considering an island city, but I considered the cost of such to not be worth it in the long run. Unless, of course, I tack the Moai Statues on an island city like that. It's another idea to throw into the pot. However, I was considering putting the Moai Statues to the southwest, where there are some slightly larger islands (hopefully with resources, land or seafood).

 

[Electryon]

What about settling on the hill 1E of A? You would have the silver, copper, and pigs as workable tiles. You wolud lose the whales for production but you could get them as a lux resource when culture expands. Plus archers on the would be a strong defense.

 

[Antilogic]

What about settling on the hill 1E of A? You would have the silver, copper, and pigs as workable tiles. You wolud lose the whales for production but you could get them as a lux resource when culture expands. Plus archers on the would be a strong defense.

One thing I absolutely hate to do, and have a very hard time doing, is building one tile in from the coast. It usually means that those coast tiles cannot feed themselves because you don't have the advantage of the lighthouse to boost food. Even if the tiles I would then use would be more valuable, it still doesn't set well with me.