Discussion: How tightly do you settle? Why?

[PurpleMentat]

I have it in my head that cities are rare, valuable, and I should endeavor to get the maximum from every single city. This generally means 5 or 6 tiles between cities, more if it gets me better terrain. Recently, I've been considering that this thinking might be very outdated in CBP, and was wondering what the rest of you folks do.

 

[Funak]

I have it in my head that cities are rare, valuable, and I should endeavor to get the maximum from every single city. This generally means 5 or 6 tiles between cities, more if it gets me better terrain. Recently, I've been considering that this thinking might be very outdated in CBP, and was wondering what the rest of you folks do.

I do this some times as well, but as far as I can gather more cities are pretty much always better, so packing them tightly together is probably the way to go.
Then again I'm a sucker for impressive capitals so I suck at packing cities together.

 

[Gidoza]

I'm more of an opportunistic colonist. I like it when every city is a potential capital. I think though that this is really because I played enough times with huge Civs and got tired of controlling so many cities. Playing my turn shouldn't be such a burden.

Anyways, these days in translation that means it could be 4 tiles, or 6, or 8 - it depends where all the special resources are located.

 

[Surfal]

I'm ruled by my OCD.
From your first (and after that, any current) city, head out four hexes, turn either right or left and go 3 more. Maintain the handedness throughout the individual game. Each city then has an exact 3 hex radius to grow.

If you want 4 hexes, go 5 then 4; 5 hexes, 6 then 5. I sometimes do those since I play with WHoward's _City Working Distance_ mod (and start with range 2 max and add 1 more to radius each full policy up to 5).

 

[hokath]

The first one or two I tend to try and make as good as possible. I like the positions of the sort [4,1] or [1,4] on the grid. After that I usually settle the third or fourth city in a militarily strategic location based on my neighbors. Depends on the map of course.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I place my cities where they can reach the most resources tiles but still be semi-adjacent. Sometimes that means they overlap by a few tiles, sometimes not.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

I feel that I keep my Cities a little too far apart early on. It makes Roads a hassle. It works out later in the game though.

 

[pandasnail]

I used to try to build every city on a river, and just deal with distance. But now that's not possible even on shuffle map, so now I don't really know what to do now lol.

 

[shaglio]

I try to make mine 5 tiles apart. Sometimes I'll reluctantly settle 4 or 6 tiles away if the particular location I'm eying won't allow for 5. I very rarely settle on top of Resources too. I don't know why; it's just my strange quirk. But if I am shoehorned into settling atop a Resource, I make sure it's a Bonus one.

 

[Atlas627]

Sometimes I cluster them tightly, sometimes I spread them out. It depends on the terrain and the strategy I'm going for.

 

[Opera]

I try to cluster them as much as possible so roadbuilding isn't too long or costly. I try to have them not overlap too much, unless it's desert tiles or mountains. I waive this if overlapping means I can get a resource or more I really want... I'm not against settling in a tight spot to get some horses or a NW; usually a city can grow to be useful anyway.

I dislike having cities far apart. It's not pleasing aesthetically and it's a problem to move units between them. I rarely forward settle, though I aggressively nab every inch of territory near my capital, trying to place cities so as to limit AI movement and settlement. I usually build around 3 settlers and get down to ~0 happiness before building more cities, sometimes I go below if the land's really worth it.

Even cities on 1-tile islands can be very useful, so I don't think there's a point in not settling every corner you can settle, anyway. Except maybe snow

 

[XplosiveLun]

I love clustering cities 3 tiles away. A while ago, I settle cities in this fashion. Though, it penalize too much(decreased productivity and barbs). vanilla Civ5 and CPP seems don't encourage ICS playstyle (massive unhappiness from settling and growing territory-limited cities).

 

[Zanteogo]

I find it's a tug of war between short term payout and long term payout.

Cities close as possible are easier to defend and cheaper due to shorter roads. If they are spaced apart you get more use of land once they start to fill out and take less of a research hit because you will tend to have less cities.

 

[glaivemaster]

I try to not let cities overlap too much unless my space is cramped. I place my cities such that they can make use of resources/pantheons, without upsetting more than 2 AI (preferably in the same direction), and sometimes that means that I have plenty of space to spread my wings, sometimes it means a cramped ICS style.

Either way, I find it doesn't matter too much. I think that CBP is less punishing on cramped cities than Vanilla CiV, or perhaps less rewarding for 5-tile gaps

 

[ZZMitch]

It depends, in my last game I settled my cities pretty far apart but then the AI came in and ninja'd the places in between and I had to get in a bunch of silly wars to clear their cities out. So now I settle a little bit closer together in order to prevent this.

 

[Wario Mario]

Less is more, for me.
I prefer a few big cities rather than a massive pile of small ones, especially because the latter gives me more to manage and makes the game run slower.

 

[Iwaylo]

I settle where i think the city will be good, what i mean by that is that the surounding offers good amount of hammers and food. Usually my goal is to have a luxury nearby aswell. I'm not really a fan of clustering my cities so usually my cities are atleast 7 tiles away but ofcourse sometimes happens that i gotta put a city in a 4-5 tile range.
I just had a game on diety where i was near a huge ass lake maybe it was more like a sea tbh and i had my cities surounding it. Inside that sea there were alot of pearls and fishes. Good game i enjoyed it altho i quitted in the late game one reason being that i had some stuff to attend to and another reason that i had like 6 cities and in none of them i got coal like wuuuut.

 

[Crimson13]

I like to do the whole 'Make every city have its tiles and they all interlock' thing, which is a pain in the ass to arrange nicely, haha.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I have this weird quirk, I settle a lot like the AI does in Vanilla which no more than 3, it's very rare if I extend this. I don't know why I adapted it from the AI to be frank.

 

[Gidoza]

I have this weird quirk, I settle a lot like the AI does in Vanilla which no more than 3, it's very rare if I extend this. I don't know why I adapted it from the AI to be frank.

I initially learned how to play StarCraft by mimicking the AI. Sadly, part of this was because most online players were so awful at the game that the AI was a far superior role model.

I don't see it as a quirk - if it works for you, go for it! It's a matter of then building on it and not just staying there static - we can all copy the AI, but imagine the power of an AI that could actually think like a human. Deadly.