City Spacing Mod?

[Cruor]

First, sorry if the mod exists, but if it does I have not found it. I think it would be a good addition to the next RoM version, or for A New Dawn.

Is it possible to mod increasing the min space between cities? My biggest pet peeve in this game is how the AI founds cities. Say City A is founded so that it will have a cow in its fat cross. The AI will often found City B 2 squares away to "share" the cow, even if it could gain other resources by spreading out more, and be better in the long run. The 2nd stupidity is founding 1 square from the coast or a river when (especially with Irrigation Canals) You want to be on that river, or the coast for lighthouse/port etc. Hills are overvalued as well for founding spots I think. A hill is great if its on the boarder but They shouldn't found on a hill if it means missing out on a key resource or not being on a river, which is a defender bonus (If your behind it) as well as a food/production bonus.

Is there some way to mod in a min distance between cities of 3 or 4 squares, at least for the vertical and horizontal? Maybe even 5 V/H 3 Diagonal for large/huge maps, makes it feel a little more real, would especially help on the huge Europe maps we have. Also raising the value for the AI of founding on rivers.

 

[Stormwind]

RoM already has a 3 tile spacing between cities, A New Dawn currently too, but Afforess will change it back to 2 tiles with his next patch. And you can simply change it yourself in the GlobalDefines.xml. Search for Max_City_Spacing or something like that.

 

[gramcrkr103]

Often I will be irritated by a civ putting their cities in stupid spots (especially if I want it to be mine soon) so recently I have been going into the WB and "fixing" it.
It is a tedious task and I dont recommend it though lol

 

[zappara]

RoM already has a 3 tile spacing between cities, A New Dawn currently too, but Afforess will change it back to 2 tiles with his next patch. And you can simply change it yourself in the GlobalDefines.xml. Search for Max_City_Spacing or something like that.

Actually it's 2 tiles in RoM 2.9. It was 3 in RoM 2.9beta but I changed it back to 2 after seeing some screenshots of ackward situations when trying to place cities on some islands.

 

[Cruor]

I was going to say, yeah there def is not a 3 space min in 2.9 which I currently play (great work btw)

haha, I also constantly use the world builder to fix the mess the AI makes, I actually have to "cheat" to help them not be ********, I have a rule that anytime I move one of their cities I have to add a pop point or add a building so I'm actually "cheating" in their favor.. it makes games last at least 2X longer from the time taken to help them however.

I have also painstakenly tried to make maps with specifically placed resources just to stop them from founding correctly, it helps, but they always find some way to be ********. Best strategy I have found is to create a map, make a lot of grassland and river, or plains/desert with flood plains and few resources, less resources, less reason for them to bunch cites up.

On the Europe map I have tried to simulate Russia having huge territory but with just a few large cities spaced out, like they actually have. Placing down marsh/peat bogs away from fresh water then making "islands" of grassland with bonus in them works pretty well, the fact that they are penalized by having a spread out empire is balanced by having several "super cities" and they usually do quite well in games.

As for editing myself, I found the file, I am able to open the xml with wordpad/notepad but once I make the changes I wont let me save it, or save it elsewhere then drag it into the folder, how do you do this?