Dot Mapping questions?

[kuukkeli]

On my way to perfection (next stop being mediocrity) I'm sure I must master the dot mapping as well as many other skills. Unfortunately I haven't seen too much material relating to it. This far my main study buddy has been, unawaringly I suppose, Sisiutil whose Strategy Guide for Beginners has been very helpful and the same can be said about his ALC threads. So even though I do refer to his material quite often this is in no way meant to be a critique of his work which I do value highly, it's just that I haven't found much about dot mapping that isn't related to him so there's nothing else for me to refer.

I'll start with the Strategy Guide's explanation as it was my first encounter with the idea. My initial impression was that the primary reason for dot mapping was to ensure that all our cities can eventually reach size 20. So that's how I started playing.

This seemed to result the following:

1. Grasslands cities with poor early production
2. Floodplains cities with poor to mediocre early production
3. Coastal cities with poor to mediocre production
4. Cities with half of the tiles eventually requiring a farm

Only rarely did I find a location that could sustain 20 population without excessive farming while being helpful otherwise. Definetely I wasn't seeing enough of such locations to be able to have all my cities built on one. So I went to look the answers elsewhere.

After reading about half of the ALC's and having looked at the dot maps in them I'm starting to think that in an attempt to be beginner friendly Sisiutil's guide is somehow offering a distorted image of dot mapping. At least I have an impression that many cities proposed and built in the ALC threads are much on the negative side on food count.

To get to the bottom of this I'm going to make a bunch of questions about dot mapping and other things I feel are related to the subject. I'm hoping to get some detailed answers from the experienced players who feel they have a good grasp of this tech. I've divided the questions to couple of sub-categories. And I know there is some redundancy in the questions but I hope they're easier to answer when they're split into smaller parts.

Importance of Being Able to Work All Tiles in the End
Q1: First things first, do we really need to be able to work all tiles in all of our cities in the end?

Q2: Is it smart to sacrifice a point or few of the maximum population to gain short term advantage (to get an early resource; to have a city that works well up to a medium size, like 8-12, but would be a pain to grow much further; or one of those space filler cities we often see in ALC's)?

Q3: To my noobish mind it seems that a good early city location can be very different from a good late city location. So wouldn't it be more important for the cities with good late game potential to be able to hit the population cap than it is for the cities that better serve their purpose earlier in the game?

Gaps and Overlapping
Q4: Disregarding very early rush conquests, does avoiding gaps in city placement (i.e. trying to have as many tiles as possible within some city's fat cross) have value in itself?

Q5: How much unused quality tiles (gaps) we can afford to make actual cities better? And to how small gaps it makes sense to build a filler city later on?

Q6: Overlapping obviously limits the number of tiles citizens can work on but on many occasions it's said to be even beneficial or at most a minor nuisance. Is there a clear point where overlapping becomes clearly a burden?

Actual Dot Mapping
Q7: Put the following criterias in order of importance starting with the most important (not considering very specific and rare cities like GP farms):

• Short term value (next 50 or so turns in standard speed)
• Long term value (max population and usage at the time when it's reached)
• Taking resources
• Not wasting quality tiles (i.e. no gaps)
• Strategic location (i.e. blocking AI's in some way)
• Avoiding the cultural pressure from AI civs

Q8: How much can we afford to divert from perfection? What I mean is that AI often builds cities close to but not on the locations we've dot mapped so how small improvement is worthy of building a settler?

Q9: Any words of wisdom about dot mapping that is beyond the scope of my other questions?


Wow, that was certainly longer than I intended I may be a noob but I'm still a HC gamer so I need to learn. Huge thanks to anyone who answers!

 

[Galileo44]

Wow, an interesting post with good ideas. I may be able to help some with your questions.


1. Most of my cities will never end up at size 20. If you are warmongering, then it is less important to get good late cities as the game will probably end before then. For a space race or culture, it is more important to have cities that will end up good late when the pressure is on.


2. Oftentimes I will sacrifice a long-term gain for short term. For example, I placed my third city in a recent game in a place where it grew to size 7 only even into the 1400s! This city grabbed me copper early to fend off Mehmed and barbs. I also used it as a military factory, getting an early Herioc Epic and using the high production to make all of the units for my civ. In this way, I sacrificed the late potential of this city, so that other cities would profit immediatly by being free to build infrastructure. It is much more efficient to build military with a 125% (forge and HE) modifier in one city than with a 0% or 25% modifier in many cities.


3. In a word, yes. Your cities that are important in the early years before the modern age will be starved for health and happiness and unable to grow past size 10-15 for a while. My cities don't usually pass size 15 until the 1500s or later. So, yes, it is relatively unimportant for cities that have the best early potential to have late-game high population potential.

4. Avoiding gaps in placement fills up space faster, preventing the AI from settling there. Also, placing gaps reduces overlap between cities allowing each city to work more tiles later.

5. I generally try to avoid losing high-value tiles. In general, it is bad to lose resources, floodplains, and large amounts of grassland (particularly on rivers) to gaps. If you think about it, adding a late filler city may cost you 15 gold through maintanance. This amount is brought nearer to 10 gold with a courthouse. So, if the city produces more than 10-15 commerce then it is good. I would say that 5 grassland tiles is certainly enough to warrant a late game filler city, as with a town, that is over 40 commerce unmodified by buildings.


6. The reasons that overlapping can be good are that closer cities reduce maintanance, and the cities can swap tiles. The former is more important in the early game when the costs can ruin your economy. The tile swapping though, can be used at many times. For example, placing a small city with overlap onto the grasslands that your future commerce city will use. While the commerce city builds the requisite buildings, like library, university, oxford, the side city will work the cottages, so that when the larger city is ready, it can take control of mature cottages that will have large modifiers. Also, cities can share food bonus resources for quick growth and hammer bonuses when they need to complete a building.

7. In order:
1. Block AIs (if possible to secure large future areas I will settle poor cities but only if the secured terrain is worth it ie food sources, floodplains, many resources, lots of cottageable land)
2. Long term value
3. Short term value
4. taking resources
5. not wasting tiles
6. AI culture (rarely a problem, as I can ramp up culture much more efficiently than the AI to steal some tiles that I want. Or, just raze teh offending city)

If it is my second or third city, blocking, shortterm potential, and resources will be more important.


8. When taking AI cities, I raze only when the city does not fit at all with my dotmap, or when other civs will have culture crushing it. Otherwise, the advantage of having a starting population of 7+ and some buildings (granary, forge, courthouse) immediately outweighs the bad positioning.


9. Just remeber not to sacrifice functionality for getting a perfect dotmap that fits wonderfully with little overlap. If the game will end by domination in the 1300s, then don't plan cities to end up at size 20.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It's especially unimportant for your first few cities to have maximum ultimate potential. By the time they reach their full size, you will have many more cities. It makes more sense to position the first few cities for the most short-term benefit. E.g., you might put them where they can grow well even before cultural expansion (if you're not Creative), even if that means the positions are slightly inferior in the long run.

 

[axident]

I agree with the previous 2 replies. I would like to stress that you can't work all the tiles early on, so go for quality over quantity. So if a spot could work only a few good tiles and the rest is desert, that could conceivably work better than a spot with lots of good normal tiles but no resources at all.

Anecdote: one game, I decided early on that my capital was going to try to build a lot of wonders, so I outsourced worker/settler production to my 2nd city (New York). New York proceeded to spend the next several thousand years producing nothing but settlers and workers, pausing once in a while to help build military units early on, or to build a library or something. So New York never really grew beyond size 5 until late, late, late into the game when I stopped building workers and settlers and built a lighthouse there. The kicker was that New York was founded near a rice pad that could never be irrigated, some seafood, a desert hill gold mine, and... not much else, the rest being coastline and desert! Didn't matter though because I had fishing early and farmed the un-irrigable rice, mined the gold, and then left that city alone to do its thing. That game resulted in my highest score ever on Prince, after which I never played it again and went to Monarch.

 

[Carnage04]

I think at the lower levels planning out the best possible city locations with few overlapping tiles is quite nice...but at the higher levels where you have to be good early or get crushed, grabbing strategic resources is more important. In my latest game, my capital was able to get huge, but my next three cities that I slapped down never got over 15! One had some ice tiles and tundra tiles but surrounding it was Stone, Iron, Copper, and Marble. Turned out to be a cool little military production city.

 

[Heffling]

Imagine you have two city locations:

City location one is entirely grasslands.

City Location two has 4 grasslands including a corn (that will be irrigated), 4 hills, and the remaining land is coast or sea.

To me, early in the game, the second location is vastly superior. The corn will allow the city to rapidly grow to the happyness cap and then work the mines for production. The first city will slowly grow due to no food resources, and not have any hammer production for a long time.

Long term planning easily leads to short term losses.

 

[DaveMcW]

I only plan for two cities to work all 20 tiles: Oxford University and Iron Works.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I think there are plenty of CivIV specific examples and some great advice here, so I'll make a few general, otherwise useless comments based on ideas and imaginations instead of anecdotal game experience.

Think about our real world, Earth, and her cities.

Jerusalem is one of the oldest and most culturally influential cities in the world.

As of last year's census, the population of Jerusalem numbers 724,000.

Los Angeles was founded just 225 years ago but is home to 3.8 million inhabitants (12.9 million if you count the entire Greater Los Angeles).

Even inside every country are large cities and small cities. It's going to be just like that in CivIV.

--------

I almost always work my strategy inside microcosms like "pre-CoL", "pre-Renaissance", "post-Steel". As such, most of my priorities are geared towards short-term strategies.

"I need that Iron before Tokugawa takes it and comes after me with Samurai" or "if I can block this peninsula and hold out on Open Borders, I can give myself time to close off these culture gaps before getting settled inside of."

I feel like if you emerge the winner of the early game, your late game is very likely to follow suit. (Likewise if you lose the early game.)

In the meantime, if I see a site clearly suited to become an excellent specialized city (like a GP farm, Wall Street or Ironworks), then I'll often deviate and settle at the expense of my short-term goal. I know just how powerful those cities can be when done right!

The only tiles I don't waste are resource tiles; all the other stuff is just ... land. So I've never even thought about this until the end when I want lots of temples to support more cathedrals.

If I need to take a resource or avoid cultural pressure badly enough, I don't do it with a Settler ... I do it with the work end of a blade or barrel.

 

[cabert]

This seemed to result the following:

1. Grasslands cities with poor early production
2. Floodplains cities with poor to mediocre early production
3. Coastal cities with poor to mediocre production
4. Cities with half of the tiles eventually requiring a farm

grasslands cities have early production limits but cottages are what they shine in. Same for floodplains cities, except that those can whip a few improvements .
Coastal cities are necessary for sea food resources and navy, but are usualy a lot weaker than land cities in the end game (water tiles can't be improved!).
Farms are not the devil. Half the tiles farms and the other half mines is a great production city .

Only rarely did I find a location that could sustain 20 population without excessive farming while being helpful otherwise. Definetely I wasn't seeing enough of such locations to be able to have all my cities built on one. So I went to look the answers elsewhere.

you seem to think that every city needs production and commerce
It's not so.
Specialize cities and enjoy a tech lead and large armies .

Importance of Being Able to Work All Tiles in the End
Q1: First things first, do we really need to be able to work all tiles in all of our cities in the end?

certainly not
the goal is victory, there is no "you worked all tiles" victory.
For some victory conditions (cultural and in a lesser way space race), a few cities need to be fully grown to win faster. For all the rest of the games, it's not even a question.

Q2: Is it smart to sacrifice a point or few of the maximum population to gain short term advantage (to get an early resource; to have a city that works well up to a medium size, like 8-12, but would be a pain to grow much further; or one of those space filler cities we often see in ALC's)?

Any city paying for itself or building units at a decent rate is good to have. 90% of my cities never grow past 10 (I whip a university as soon as they come to size 10 )

Q3: To my noobish mind it seems that a good early city location can be very different from a good late city location. So wouldn't it be more important for the cities with good late game potential to be able to hit the population cap than it is for the cities that better serve their purpose earlier in the game?

your noobish mind is right.
But you won't see the late game if you don't leverage the best early city locations. In some situations, it's more important to have the copper or the horse in the first ring than to have a perfect fat cross (for example, when you plan to axe rush your opponent in the next 50 turns and you're not creative).

Gaps and Overlapping
Q4: Disregarding very early rush conquests, does avoiding gaps in city placement (i.e. trying to have as many tiles as possible within some city's fat cross) have value in itself?

not really, but building close cities (including overlapping ones) reduces maintenance which is the very important in the early game where most of your commerce comes from the palace!

 

[Giaur]

AD 7)
-----
1)Short term value (next 50 or so turns in standard speed)
2)Strategic location (i.e. blocking AI's in some way)
3)Long term value (max population and usage at the time when it's reached)
4)Taking resources
5)Avoiding the cultural pressure from AI civs
6)Not wasting quality tiles (i.e. no gaps)

edit: 1-3 - except cultural case. I won't spoil city placement only because I'm not creative leader ...

 

[Jorunkun]

Excellent thread. Don't have much to add, just some random notes:

In general, I wouldn't go overboard with dotmapping. Some perfetionists like to obsess about having minimal overlap and maximal land utilisation. And sure, it's a sound guideline ... in theory. In an actual game, claiming/blocking land and getting key ressources with your first few cities is much more important, and well worth having unused or overlap tiles.

The exceptions to this are isolated island starts on higher levels, where maximum utilisation combined with a well-staged sequence for founding cities make all the difference ... and games where you are boxed in on a peninsula or an isthmus or are sharing a smallish island with one other civ and you need to set up for an early all-or-nothing war with your neighbour.

On a related note, don't worry about distance upkeep, certainly not wrt overlap. It's the least important factor in the city upkeep cost equation; number of cities (=timing new cities vs. your economy) is the main driver here.

Speaking of timing, here's some factors that influence my decision where to found my first 3 to 5 cities, in order of priority:

1. Food surplus - if the city can't grow fast, it's useless in the early game. For the 2nd and 3rd city, having the necessary worker tech (and workers) to develop the tile matters as well.

2. Strategic ressources - if feasible, settle on the adjacent tile.

3. Blocking off land or securing a way out of a dead-end start - this one gets more important as you go up in level

4. Early happies - gold, ivory, silver, furs

5. Empire balancing - basically, your first cities must include at least one early production powerhouse and a city with early commerce (-potential, at least).

It's only when the lay of the land gives me a choice on where exactly to place the city that I start thinking about overlap and optimal utilisation.