How far apart should cities be spaced in civ 1 for maximum city count
If you give 'em all a 4-square distance, there is no way to fit 128 cities onto a Civ1 map.
Here are screenshots of a couple 128-city games. Unfortunately, posting an image here makes it go through some filter which blurs the details, but you should be able to get a feel for how the cities are sited. I always play yellow, so the larger squares are the cities, the smaller squares are just units. Both of these were customized at the beginning for Large landmass, Warm and Wet. The first game is a 4 billion y.o. planet (LWWN).
A Normal aged planet set to Large land, Wet skies and Warm temps (LWWN) makes a very similar type of planet every time. In this game, the map is very typical of the species, and look, full utilization of the land means that cities have to be much closer to each other in places. In rich areas, they are often 1 square away from their neighbors, but the global norm is about 2 squares distance. But... i found a way around that crowding.
The next is a 3 billion y.o. planet (LWWY). Check the city spacing here:
See the difference in citysite diffusion? It's because this is a 3 billion year old planet.
The difference is luck, a younger planet will give you larger swaths of similar landscape, but what if that landscape is soft chewy grasslands? Then you're off to the races. But you have to cycle through a few LWWY scenarios to find one where the "large swaths" are not deserts or mountains. Take a couple hours and explore one, sometimes it's a dud, but once in a while it's a gem of a world.
If you play on the Earth map, there is more dry land, but more non-edible squares. In fact, here's a passage from the gamelog of the second image above:
"Something had been nagging at me, in the back of my mind, that i saw someone say the Earth map is larger than the customized but randomly drawn map. Am i chasing a good game on an inferior map? Finally looked into it. All maps are 80 x 50 squares, including the Poles. That's 4,000 squares total. The difference with the Earth map is that it's more full of land: 1510 squares. Choosing Small-Normal-Large when customizing a random planet just sets minimum values for the number of land squares: 640-960-1280.
So the Earth map has 230 more squares of land, or possibly a little less, than a customized Large Land map. But here's the key info: Earth has a bunch of useless squares that my LWWY map doesn't.
Earth, by my quick count on a small compressed image of the Earth map, has 176 deserts, 32 mountains, and 95 snowy squares.
My Large-Warm-Wet-Young map has 10 deserts, 42 mountains, and only 18 arctic squares (no tundra).
So i have 10 more mountains, 22 fewer hills, a whopping 77 fewer snowy squares, and a stunning 166 fewer deserts!
Earth has 1510 squares, but 303 no-wheat squares (not counting seals, caribou, or oases). My map might have 230 fewer land squares, but only 69 useless ones.
1510 - 303 = 1207.
1280 - 69 = 1211.
So that puts my nagging worry to rest. I have a more fruitful planet than the Earth map. Even at the bare minimum of 1280 land squares, i've got more good squares. Armed with this good news, i'm motivated to count my land squares...
3 tiny islands: 20
SW islands: 64
NW islands: 24 + 57
The North: 113 + 86
Near East: 132
Far East: 126
Homeland: 214
Near West: 119
Far West: 108 = 1,063
Only 1063? Did i count right? Yes, now i counted 3 times: 1063, 1062, 1063.
Maybe the Earth map's 1,510 includes the poles?
My North Pole: 80 + 18
My South Pole: 80 + 19
= 197
1063 + 197 = 1260.
Humph! Seems like i should have 20 more squares of land.
Still, not worried, i have 22 less hills, 166 less desert and 77 less snow. If Earth's total of 1510 counts the poles, then that's about 1315 on non-Pole lands, about 250 more than my planet. If i've got 243 fewer snow/sand squares and if half of my 22 fewer hills are grasslands, then i'm at least on a par with the Earth map, as far as potential wheatstalks."
So, Sir OsoSober, what this all means is that the amount of dry land is not as important as the
kind of land you have. Ran plenty of tests on this, and discovered that the Large-Wet-Warm-Young customization scenario offers the best potential for a landscape where you can not only fit 128 cities, but 128
productive cities. But it takes a couple hours to fully investigate a LWWY planet because you always know that somewhere, there is a big swath of shield-rivers, and you could do quite well moving your civ there.
How close you site your cities depends on what the landscape offers you, but it's on the order of 2 squares distance with the Large landmass customization, if you want to get up to 128.