Bibor
Doomsday Machine
Define "close". A city without food within reasonable borders is going to stagnate for a long time. The bombard damage is a pretty high price to pay for 3
gained.
City Spacing
- Thread starter johncross21
- Start date
Define "close". A city without food within reasonable borders is going to stagnate for a long time. The bombard damage is a pretty high price to pay for 3
gained.
AL_DA_GREAT
amour absinthe révolution
Never less than 5 tiles inbetween 8-9 tiles is best. Go for land expansion upgrades such as angor wat and the policy. Within not to long the cities will grow together. This will mean that you can cover a huge area, giving you geopolitical and resources advantages.
The best distance is still absolute minimum. There are simply more benefits of 2 small cities than one big city. The only occasion where tight packed small cities is not best is culture victories. This is not to say this is the only strategy, but at present, no other method has produced faster victories or better scores. If you are a player that does not micromanage or doesn't like min max gaming, larger spacing would probably suit you better. Otherwise ics is still the best from settler to deity.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
So what, a city every 3 hexes? That's +2
, and half production per city. And the benefit? Bombard damage and an extra 5-yield base tile.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
How do you get more scientists exactly? By running 1 in each university that takes 25 turns to build?
Treso
Warlord
At least is not only with me that stuff take too long to build.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
Buildings take too long to build only if you don't manage your cities well. I've ran into "nothing to build in city except units, barracks and garden" around turns 200-250 on several occasions (and not with Rome) on both King and Emperor.
So what, a city every 3 hexes? That's +2
A city every 3 hexes is the core of the ICS setup, which is one of the stronger strategies in the game right now.
I don't really understand the assertion of more Great Scientists, though. Great Person production suffers fairly heavily without access to a lot of the specialist buildings you need to produce them - and that's to say nothing of the lack of other buildings to help that production, such as the Garden or the National Epic.
swordspider
Dread Multiplayer
This is a rhetorical question because the way you are going to play the game, size, etc all comes into play.
Here's a good rule of thumb:
If you are in Multiplayer, you should only leave 2-3 tiles between your cities EXCEPT when you are jumping clear across the map to block an opponent or steal a resource... aka anything goes.
If you want a long, drawn-out single player game, then 4-5 tiles is a good distance between so your cities so they can get in the 20's and 30's for population.
If you are playing a shorter game or a military victory game, your cities are not going to get over the 20's and thus you are clear with 3-4 tiles.
Airey
Prince
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2008
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- 509
ya...in MP, u simply won't have time to turtle.
against AI....grabbing multi lux cities first, then back fill to 2 tiles ICSing works pretty well.
not faster scientists, but defn the raw pop growth from 1 to 4 is enough to power through tech.
against AI....grabbing multi lux cities first, then back fill to 2 tiles ICSing works pretty well.
not faster scientists, but defn the raw pop growth from 1 to 4 is enough to power through tech.
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
Oh yeah, these 5-10 beakers will save my tech race. I'll rather trade away my non-surplus happiness luxury for an extra RA.
The power in ICS isn't having 2-3 extra cities, it's having 10-12, and bringing them to maturity in relatively short order. So you're not talking about 5-10 extra beakers, you're talking about 50-60 - before the Libraries, Universities, and Public Schools are considered.
Yes, they'll probably take 20-30 turns to build, but with so many cities, having 3-4 of them offline put up buildings isn't that big of a deal.
And you can still sell all those luxuries, because the gold input from short trade routes will give you more than enough extra to blow on Coliseums and Theaters.
FidelZandro
Optimistic turtle
I would say 4 tiles.
It will take forever for a city to grow to a size that it has all specialist slots filled and all land worked.
If ever . .
So with 4 tiles it can grow substantially while supplying happiness and dealing with maintenance.
Only very late game growth could be limited because of city spacing.
Besides, your first and best cities will be placed near resources, so it only counts for filler cities anyway
It will take forever for a city to grow to a size that it has all specialist slots filled and all land worked.
If ever . .
So with 4 tiles it can grow substantially while supplying happiness and dealing with maintenance.
Only very late game growth could be limited because of city spacing.
Besides, your first and best cities will be placed near resources, so it only counts for filler cities anyway
Bibor
Doomsday Machine
10-12 extra cities, that's like extra 20-24 unhappiness just from # of cities, not counting population. At pop 6 they will be, what 7 gold per city in trade routes? that's 70-84 GPT. A colliseum takes 680 gold to build, so that's 8 turns for a single colliseum, 80-96 turns to build them all. That's not counting the # of turns you have to spend building settlers at 12-16 turns per. We're already around turn 150.
In comparison, 20-30 GPT gives you a new tech every 10 turns (3 RAs every 30 turns), so basically doubling or tripling your research speed. 30 GPT is exactly upkeep cost for 10 colosseums.
But nice theory.
builer680
eats too much Taco Bell
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2010
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- 525
The only way to settle this would be to have Bibor play Sneaks 1v1 in a best of 7 series (to mitigate the effects of random terrain for both players). My money is on Sneaks, because I know from experience that he's right. Even though I hate ICS, it is the fastest, easiest, and most lucrative way to leverage tiles in the majority of cases on typical maps. Especially if you begin to factor in Policies that increase the base City tile. Not to mention the defense it provides.
You can argue that this a problem in the way the game is balanced (which I frequently do and have), but you cannot correctly argue that he is wrong.
Barring a head to head matchup to circumvent the simultaneous turns of MP and advantages one player may gain over another because of it (due to connection, reaction speed, what have you), simply put up 7 new saves on any level. I'd go with Emperor, but any would technically work except Deity, as I don't know that anyone can beat Deity every single game. See who can claim outright Victory the fastest on each of the 7 maps.
You can argue that this a problem in the way the game is balanced (which I frequently do and have), but you cannot correctly argue that he is wrong.
Barring a head to head matchup to circumvent the simultaneous turns of MP and advantages one player may gain over another because of it (due to connection, reaction speed, what have you), simply put up 7 new saves on any level. I'd go with Emperor, but any would technically work except Deity, as I don't know that anyone can beat Deity every single game. See who can claim outright Victory the fastest on each of the 7 maps.
Airey
Prince
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2008
- Messages
- 509
true true...(been playing multiplayer recently forgot about RA)
What setting is that? On Deity settling peacefully to 10~12 cities on normal speed/normal map?
I always get DOWed when I try to do that...wouldn't it? Or u rush raze and resettle?
I'll bet on Bibor....he knows what he's talking about, I know where he's coming from...I think it's just the timing of expanding. Not like he's only settling on the initial lux cities and not grow horizontally for the rest of the game.
But in MP, u take out RA, which is where most of the research coming from...so it's kind of unfair. Just 2 styles.
builer680
eats too much Taco Bell
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2010
- Messages
- 525
You can still get RA's in ICS. And more Science to boot. The Happiness isn't a big deal because you'll typically cap around 4 and build a Colloseum, and maybe grow your Cities a bit more once have a lot of money coming in. The maintenance for this is more than paid for by Trade Posts + Improvements.
Hey, I know where you're coming from philosophically. I hate ICS and would like to see it utterly destroyed as a viable strategy, in favor of more emphasis on excellent City site selection. I feel there is more depth gained from this approach, at the expense of the "depth" provided by having the option to ICS.
