City Spacing

[JAWiseman]

I am curious about how people space their early cities. Do you give the maximum room around your capital and each of your first cities (21 tiles), or do you group your cities closer together?

If you group cities closer together, do you notice a beneficial effect on corruption and waste due to more cities being closer to the capital?

In the later game, is this answer different? Since most of the far outlying cities will be 1 shield cities, does it really matter how far apart they are with regards to production?

 

[planetfall]

JAWiseman,

Check out the FAQs and look for the concepts of OCP and ICS. Briefly most players start with spacing of between 2 and 4 tiles separating cities. The actual game spacing will vary according to the difficulty level and starting position.

Another resource is to look at the GOTM forum and then review the results. There are about 50 minimaps there of the different players and you can see the wide variance in city spacing.

== PF

 

[Henry_X]

Some guys play it this way. I on the other hand try to forward build, find my neighbours and try to build cities near their Iron. If I succesfully get prevent them from making swordsmen, then my units move in to weaken them and making demands for peace after I think they had enough. I also try to get chokepoints or a well defendable mountainrange.

Later in the game , when I 'm happy with my territory I don't often build more cities. But sometimes it's the only way of , again, prevent an enemy to get some strategic resource or te obtain a luxury resource that I don't have.

 

[JAWiseman]

Thanks for the information! That is really helpful to think about with regrds to what I normally do.

 

[china444]

I usuallly will build in circles or lines around my capital. 2,3,4,5,or 6 tiles away.(except if I need a vital resource far away).
Whenever I build a city as close as it can be, my friend and I call it 'clutter' or 'bunch'

 

[Knowze Gungk]

I have a habit of building my cities so none of them share tiles & it seems to work for me. What advantages does OCP have over this?

 

[Henry_X]

What advantages does OCP have over this?

Every tile of your territory is used and all tiles in the city radius are used. Since you build closer together, you also reduce corruption to a minimum.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Knowze Gungk
I have a habit of building my cities so none of them share tiles & it seems to work for me. What advantages does OCP have over this?

Well, OCP is what you do, build so that all cities get 21 tiles. But with this build pattern, half of your tiles aren't used at all until the middle of the industrial age.
If you instead build your cities so close that each city have about 13 tiles, then you get to take advantage of all your tiles as soon as the cities reach size 12.

 

[BillChin]

For competitive games (multiplayer, or higher solo levels) it is an excellent idea to have most early cities one turn apart, meaning three tiles with roads. The advantages include:
1) much faster early growth because cities can use each other's improved tiles (a really huge bonus), and settlers do not move so far before becoming productive.
2) much tighter defense against early rushers (multiplayer) or barb threats (high level solo play). With one turn between cities, units can swarm to meet any threat.
3) much easier to connect with roads to share luxuries, again a huge bonus on Emperor or Diety.

Disadvantages of a dense build include:
1) It is not as pretty (this is one that bugs most people).
2) It is not the way to maximize score for "milking" the game.
3) Territory claimed is smaller (but this is made up by faster building of settlers and units with a tighter build).

Spacing cities so each has 20-21 tiles per city is excellent for people into role-playing, and want a nice pretty lay out for the empire. However, OCP is not a good way to go in a competitive game, because a dense early build will crush an OCP build, if the players are about of the same ability.
+ Bill

 

[Moulton]

Optimum is more than just a pattern. I have placed two cities back to back, on adjacent squares -- in order to provide a "canal" across an isthmus.
Since my games usually run well into modern times, I like to leave them room to grow. Against an invasive competitor, sometimes that means marking out a line of border cities, and filling in later.
If I have to colonize desert or tundra, I put the cities closer together, since I don't expect to be allowed the time to fully develop that area.
I did make myself an overlay so I can fit cities together with least lost land, and sometimes use it, sometimes not. Optimum is the best placement considering all factors, not just space.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Moulton
Optimum is more than just a pattern. I have placed two cities back to back, on adjacent squares -- in order to provide a "canal" across an isthmus.

Can you show us a screen shot of that? Otherwise I have to think you are mistaken, since placing cities next to each other is not possible under normal rules.

 

[Moulton]

I might still have on. It was a year ago, unmodded. I will look tonight. It is not normally a good design, but there are times when it becomes optimal.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by BillChin
For competitive games (multiplayer, or higher solo levels) it is an excellent idea to have most early cities one turn apart, meaning three tiles with roads. The advantages include:

IMO, you forgot the biggest advantage: You don't leave 45% of your land's tiles unused until the middle of the industrial age.

Disadvantages of a dense build include:
1) It is not as pretty (this is one that bugs most people).
2) It is not the way to maximize score for "milking" the game.
3) Territory claimed is smaller (but this is made up by faster building of settlers and units with a tighter build).

In won't dispute 1). 3) can be helped by first settling the border cities and the fill up the ciites inbetween.
2) Is a point I want to discuss thoug, as I've seen this claimed before, but I believe it's flat out wrong - if you want to milk the score, then a denser build is better:

Assume you have a land of 273 squares and can choose between 13 cities with 21 tiles each (open build) or 21 cities with 13 tiles each (dense). Since I'm assuming the same amount of land, what differs is the number of happy citizens (count 2 for score) and content/specialist citizens (count 1 for score).

The open build will give you a few more citizens overall. When all squares are worked and there are no specialists, the open build will give a total of 13*20 = 260 citizens, while the dense build will give 21*12 = 252 citizens. But the open build will have lost out score-wise in the early game (before hospitals) where it had only 13*12 = 156 citizens. Also, with 20 citizens, there is probably a few unhappy/content, while 12 citizens can be kept all happy - giving a better score to the dense build solution.

 

[Moulton]

But if you go to war in later stages ( assumming that you live that long ) The super cities have high productivity. You have to be able to keep your citizens happy, yes, but I find pop 16 - 20 can be kept happy, and productive. I have 8 cities that can produce a tank or MI in one turn, battleship in two. I have 90 tanks, now, and don't need more, so they are building manufacturing plants... and if I dont meed more then, they will produce wealth. Alteratively, they will produce transports every turn, to send to the Australia or South America to scrap for shields..
It is harder to survive early wars and invasions with wide spacing... but if you do, and last into the modern age, you have super cities. If you have market place and 8 lux, they you have 20 happiness generators, plus any other generators, like Cure for Cancer. To achieve this, it is essential to build cathedrals and have the the Sistine to double the cathedrals effect.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne


2) Is a point I want to discuss thoug, as I've seen this claimed before, but I believe it's flat out wrong - if you want to milk the score, then a denser build is better:

Assume you have a land of 273 squares and can choose between 13 cities with 21 tiles each (open build) or 21 cities with 13 tiles each (dense). Since I'm assuming the same amount of land, what differs is the number of happy citizens (count 2 for score) and content/specialist citizens (count 1 for score).

TNO,

Your points are right on the mark. Another thing to add to your argument is that twice as many cities allows you to produce new citizens at a rate of up to 4 times as fast as smaller number of large cities. [Towns produce a new citizen with only half as much food as a city]. Since the score is averaged over the entire game getting a leg up in score early can have a huge effect on the end score that the large cities can never overcome.

On a huge map during expansion, I like to hace cities placed with 2 tiles between cities in one direction and 3 tiles between cites in the other direction. later, once your on the brink of domination, fill cites back in where you left three spaces to really thicken it all up.

 

[Moulton]

I have always played -- from CivI - for optimum placement. However, I am listening to arguments... I will try close spacing when I start the next game.

 

[heikeott]

Has anyone tried building the cities close together in the early game, and then abandoning some of them after Sanitation to let the others grow bigger? Isn't there some advantage to having a few "super cities" that produce 100+ shields per turn?

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by heikeott
Has anyone tried building the cities close together in the early game, and then abandoning some of them after Sanitation to let the others grow bigger? Isn't there some advantage to having a few "super cities" that produce 100+ shields per turn?

Yes, abandoning cities later can have it's place, especially in regards to enhancing city placements.

Of course, 100+ shield cities have some obvious advantages but late in the game you should have things under control and you don't score points for shields, armies and nukes.

 

[JAWiseman]

TNO-
Thanks for your input. I really enjoy reading your posts, they are always very helpful and informative.

I have always gone with OCP in Civ II and Civ III for (until now) no real concrete reasons. I think, now that I am reflecting on it, is because it was "prettier", and had just not given it much thought.

My next game will be much dnser build, aiming for 13 tiles per city. I agree that is much more optimal placement for all the reasons you mention.

Does anyone have a graph or picture of this build?

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Moulton
But if you go to war in later stages ( assumming that you live that long ) The super cities have high productivity. You have to be able to keep your citizens happy, yes, but I find pop 16 - 20 can be kept happy, and productive. I have 8 cities that can produce a tank or MI in one turn, battleship in two.

Happiness aside, with fewer, better cities, those cities will turn out military units every turn. But it is just as good to have twice the number of cities that build military units every second turn. You get the same amount of military units finished in the same time span.
And if you factor in the happiness, things starts to favour the smaller cities, since a size 12 city can easily be kept in constant WLTKD and thus get less corruption.

The only benefit of power-cities is that they're better for building wonders - and that it looks better.