City Placement!?!?!?!??!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????????!?!?!?

[Torakami_Bltzen]

Ok i'm so confused about city placement that i always get frusterated (i've been playing nearly every waking moment and i havn't got out of ancient EVER because i get frustrated and want to start over), so pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese tell me.. how many tiles should i put between cities normally, i know there are special circumstances (such as the culture rush in war academy) where i would put them real close, but i need a general value, how many tiles between cities. I read 3-4, but the city outline the setteler creates sometimes puts the outline maybe one tile from another one of my cities even though i am 3-4 squares away! please help i want to be able to make a darn dude with a gun for once instead of a bunch of guys beating eachother with sticks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Troyens]

I put them five tiles away. That gives each town two tiles in the direction of the other town, and that's enough room for a long time. Any closer and they will choke each other eventually; any more and some annoying idiot civ will drop a settler in between. This assumes the towns are built earlier in the game and in good terrain. If built later in the game, and in poor terrain, I'd have them a little closer.

 

[CivAl]

Keeping in mind that all squares will eventually be worth something, the most important thing is to make sure you utilise EVERY SINGLE possible square. A good way to do this, is once you're about to get your first settler, take a snapshot ("Print Screen" button on your keyboard) and upload the image into a Paint file. Then fiddle around and try and place those fat X city borders so you can use as many squares as possible. You can paste in these X's and reearrange them etc. The X is shaped like a square which extends two spaces from the city in all directions, except for the 4 corner squares.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, 5 tiles away is what works best for me (I've only played Chieftain, huge maps so far). This works great on the lower levels and larger maps. I suppose on the smaller maps you wouldn't have very many cities or room so you might want them a little closer. With 4 tiles between each city your city has the maximum potential for growth. Although before you have hospitals your city is limited to 12, so you only really see the impact after that. Yes, there will be a two square gap, but I always build a temple first. A temple supplies 2 culture points per turn, a library 3. So after 5 turns (4 for a library), the border expands, and when both towns have expanded, there is no gap. Don't worry about what the your other cities cultural border is, it's only the two squares around it that it actually uses. I keep expanding until I start getting near my neighbors, or my border cities are getting too corrupt, then I focus on building improvements and my military.

 

[BillChin]

I suggest building the first two cities one square from the capital on a diagonal square that the capital can not access. Build the first two settlers before building a temple or granary. This nucleus of three cities provides tremendous early leverage in units, tech, gold, culture. Other benefits are easy defense and easy to connect with roads to share luxuries. Negatives are the need to trim some cities after the first age so others can expand, and some micromanagement of overlapping tiles.

After building two cities very close to the capital and sending out some warriors to scout I decide where to place the next cities. Often times I claim resources. If there are hostile enemies nearby I may continue to build cities very close together. If there is a lot of open land, I may space the next batch of cities out to claim more land.

I use this method on Emperor difficulty, standard size map, random civ, 8 players. A lot of tips for this game depend on what difficulty level you play on, and what size map. However, this start is good for just about all occasions and I find it to be the best way to survive poor starting positions in difficulty terrain.

If you read some of my other posts, I go into detail about what to do after the build out phase. Basic outline is to build 8 to 15 cities, research the wheel, claim a horse icon, build 20+ horsemen, pick an enemy, bribe the other neighbors, attack in force, crush the enemy. Works like a charm on Emperor difficulty, no matter how poor the starting position. The only hitch may be horses, but it is rare that I can not get any.