Do you settle large swaths of tundra if its in the back of your empire vacant or ignore it?

[Artifex1]

Like enough for several cities or do you just maybe post a few troops there and ignore it for the rest of the game?

 

[bbbt]

If I'm russia, definitely! Actually, I usually do regardless of the civ I'm playing if there's a river, though usually more mid-game and later. They'll never grow that big, but you can plant forests and get some decent production, or if there's some mountains, they can often end up as nice national park locations (like Alaska!).

Basically I'll generally settle the most Northern/Southern river in my 'area', but not further.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I might throw a late-game city in there if there is a fresh water source, just to take up space to keep the forward-settlers at bay.

 

[ShakaKhan]

as opposed to the previous two posts (both of which mentioned fresh water), a river usually isn't the biggest consideration for me. The "swathes of tundra in the back of your empire" your referring to, in my experience, are often a peninsula, which indicates that you could probably settle coastal. This gives you adequate housing to size 2. A granary (which is cheap), can bring this to size 4. Size 4 allows you to build 2 districts, a commercial hub and a victory condition district. Also those two districts can be placed in a triangle with the city center giving both a +1 adjacency bonus. It may tale some time to build them, but that's where temporary trade routes come into play. A little more gold (which is basically hammers shipped to more important cities) plus a little extra of the yield that benefits your vicrory condition, plus the GPP for merchants (which are always good) and GPP for your VC great people is a nice bonus. Further, capping at size 4 means that the city is only costing your empire 1 amenity, none if it's covered by another city's zoo. And the all-important extra trade route.

 

[unpossible251]

Russia obviously thrives there. China can do okay, too, if the features look ok for great walls.

 

[cll3]

Yup, but not just tundra. I eventually settle every last possible hex, later on even ice with no fresh water no hills nada. I posted this screenshot awhile back on here but I don't remember where. It's been over a month since this particular game. The outer rim is all ice wasteland, but every one of those cities generates over 200gpt and can sustain at least 4 population for commercial and encampment.

I even place pins on the map as I conquer and pass by patches of empty space, to mark cluster center points. So I don't end up with like suboptimal 5 cities in some same empty patch where I coulda gotten 7. The less useful plots stay vacant for most of the game, when I'm picking and choosing the best plots, but eventually every inch of the map is filled because anything is sustainable later on through trade. Every extra useless city is another 200+ useless gpt. The last setters I buy usually cost almost 100k each, but by then even that cost is nothing. Just a drop in the bucket.

The reason I play like this is I started in civ2 and really got hooked in civ3, but corruption...oh god, corruption... why was that even a thing... So ever since civ 4 I play the majority of my games hyper wide, as wide as possible because it represents the nice thing I couldn't have when I was a kid, but now I can. Kinda like those $300 J's. My only exceptions to hyper wide are Kongo and Arabia. Everything else, I can't resist the temptation. Even a nice guy civ like Egypt because of +4g and iteru. Every civ has some trait that's fun to exploit to the max and see how fast it can snowball.

 

[Rosty K]

Something will likely spawn there later. It may be oil, or it may be the AI. Or both So I'll better settle it.

 

[Zaarin]

@cll3 Managing 575+ trade routes must be fun. How are all your cities not revolting for lack of amenities?

 

[MrRadar]

Yup, but not just tundra. I eventually settle every last possible hex, later on even ice with no fresh water no hills nada. I posted this screenshot awhile back on here but I don't remember where.[...]
View attachment 474509

That... screenshot is just...

The minimap view is something you'd rather expect in Civ III, really... May I ask you, how long does it take to complete one turn of this? Half a day? All day? Even longer? (absolutely no diss, just pure curiosity) And it's marathon, on top of everything

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I fill in everything, just build a harbor or commercial hub and it will more than pay for itself. Commerce, basically trade, is so OP in this game and I also don't like leaving any spots for the AI to plop down a city where I don't want them to.

 

[WillowBrook]

Depends on how much I want to go barb hunting, how interested the AI seem to be in it, how much I care whether they settle there, and how many cities I feel like managing. Also, if I care about faith and have dance of the aurora.

As Russia, yes. All others, it varies.

 

[agonistes]

Settle.

edit: heck, I've settled Antartica!

 

[cll3]

@cll3 Managing 575+ trade routes must be fun. How are all your cities not revolting for lack of amenities?

The outer rim 4 pop cities never go below +1 happy because of Estadio. The bigger cities, and all various 7 pop ones scattered throughout the map for IZ radius are +1 from amenities usually, or entertainment radii. The majority of cities in the middle are around 10-13 pop, and eat up the base amenity distribution, 2 extra each from being aztec, but even without aztec it's still enough to never go below content. Biggest boost is Estadio though. No reason you can't build it first if you're snowballing hardcore.

That... screenshot is just...

The minimap view is something you'd rather expect in Civ III, really... May I ask you, how long does it take to complete one turn of this? Half a day? All day? Even longer? (absolutely no diss, just pure curiosity) And it's marathon, on top of everything

Funny you should ask this because I did a Rome game awhile back, specifically to test this.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/40k-gpt-64-gb-ram-test.615704/#post-14757437

The thing that takes the most time to calculate are actually the trade route pathing and yields instead of the cities. I did this test when I upgraded GTX 1080 and also randomly bought 64 GB of ram overkill. Oh someone asked for processor in other thread, I'm still on ryzen 5 1600x, waiting for a good deal. Before upgrading, I woulda ended the game much earlier, or went for high score or something and eventually quit out of boredom.

Anyways, the game never goes much past 5 GB of ram usage, even on 700 trade routes, which is around where this game ended. The Rome game had slightly less, but I timed it using my phone stopwatch. Around 400 trade routes, the turns were taking around 230 seconds. At the end around 700 trade routes, each turn took almost 500 (so it's not linear, rate decreases even more).

8-9 minutes is unbearable if you're sitting there waiting, even the 230 seconds was pretty bad. It increased my cigarette consumption rate, so In the Rome game eventually I loaded up two long movies I'd never gotten around to watching (Cloud Atlas and The Grey), pausing the movie while I took my turn. For the Aztec game I watched 9 episodes of Better call Saul. Basically did absolutely nothing all day one Sunday.

 

[MrRadar]

The outer rim 4 pop cities never go below +1 happy because of Estadio. [...]

That's most impressive. I was more interested in the amount of human input in fact, i. e. how long did it take for you to issue all the orders within a turn, although technical details are also very interesting. 8-9 minutes to process, eh? Bejesus! I seriously doubt if I qualify for an occasional casual now, forget the fanatic status...

On a side note, you struck the right note with me by mentioning Cloud Atlas - although I didn't watch the movie (yet), I've read the book - it was one of the most memorable ones. If you haven't read it, pick it for one of your next games!

 

[Archon_Wing]

8 minutes a turn? :I already get annoyed with 20 second wait times on a small map. >.>

 

[agonistes]

The outer rim 4 pop cities never go below +1 happy because of Estadio. The bigger cities, and all various 7 pop ones scattered throughout the map for IZ radius are +1 from amenities usually, or entertainment radii. The majority of cities in the middle are around 10-13 pop, and eat up the base amenity distribution, 2 extra each from being aztec, but even without aztec it's still enough to never go below content. Biggest boost is Estadio though. No reason you can't build it first if you're snowballing hardcore.


Funny you should ask this because I did a Rome game awhile back, specifically to test this.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/40k-gpt-64-gb-ram-test.615704/#post-14757437

The thing that takes the most time to calculate are actually the trade route pathing and yields instead of the cities. I did this test when I upgraded GTX 1080 and also randomly bought 64 GB of ram overkill. Oh someone asked for processor in other thread, I'm still on ryzen 5 1600x, waiting for a good deal. Before upgrading, I woulda ended the game much earlier, or went for high score or something and eventually quit out of boredom.

Anyways, the game never goes much past 5 GB of ram usage, even on 700 trade routes, which is around where this game ended. The Rome game had slightly less, but I timed it using my phone stopwatch. Around 400 trade routes, the turns were taking around 230 seconds. At the end around 700 trade routes, each turn took almost 500 (so it's not linear, rate decreases even more).

8-9 minutes is unbearable if you're sitting there waiting, even the 230 seconds was pretty bad. It increased my cigarette consumption rate, so In the Rome game eventually I loaded up two long movies I'd never gotten around to watching (Cloud Atlas and The Grey), pausing the movie while I took my turn. For the Aztec game I watched 9 episodes of Better call Saul. Basically did absolutely nothing all day one Sunday.

Yea, I tend to read books during off-turns in my more progressed games.

 

[Disgustipated]

Only if there is oil. Sweet sweet oil.

 

[UWHabs]

Most of the time I don't settle it unless if I can get new resources. Just never seems like they pay off early enough to really make it worthwhile. Too much in terms of settler cost + builder cost + trader cost that by the time I even get a district built in the city, I've already practically finished the game.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Да

Spoiler :

Yes

Regards, Peter
Moderator Action: Per site rules, please include an English language translation of any foreign phrase (no matter how short or easily Googled). -- Browd

 

[MIS]

Logically, it's a trade off. You either settle a city, put a unit there, or accept a barb camp settling. I generally find settling a city to be the least evil of those three options.