Hi all, long time player and lurker officially de-lurking here in an online game for the first time! Having seen your plight Gumbolt, I thought I’d contribute a few lines in the hope of being able to help regarding the issue of dotmapping following your initial scouting to 2600BC (posted 21/9). Hopefully this helps because this was one of those instances where the / your map just came to me (as opposed to others when I’m scratching around looking for good city sites, doh!)
Before proceeding however, there is a most important caveat to bear in mind when reading this advice: by playing at emperor, you’re a far better player than me! Briefly, after playing Civ 4 & BtS for two years I’ve managed, (with the help of reading the terrific articles and games on this forum), to work my way up from settler to prince. Although prince is now a doddle, I’m reluctant to move higher since I’m a builder at heart – and moving higher seems to require a much more warmongering style. (That said, I’m beginning to realise that taking the leap seems inevitable to maintain the challenge – resistance, as they say, is futile!)
Anyway, onto your map! To explain things properly, with your permission, I’d just like to digress a little at this stage and highlight the following five factors I’ve begun to realise are key to placing cities. (Not only will this help highlight if I’m misunderstanding something and therefore if my advice is good or bad, but, hopefully, other players at lower levels like me may learn something that helps them in their games too). The first two are simply:
(a) the location of resources – whether strategic / military, health or happiness related; and
(b) the location of chokepoints
Once these two are assessed, attention then turns to what I believe is the most important criteria,
(c) the amount of food available in the city’s BFC – as stated elsewhere in these forums, the key is to work out the food surplus or deficit in that potential city, assuming you work all available tiles. Food deficits indicate the city needs additional farms, food surpluses indicate the city can support specialists or can convert tiles to workshops to boost production.
Talking of production, the fourth factor I look at is
(d) the location of hills and rivers – the former, viewed alongside (a) – (c) can be used to help identify locations that will serve as early game production centres, whereas the latter helps to identify locations that can serve as either mid – late game production centres (when watermills and levees boost production) or commerce centres.
The last factor I look at BTW, is (e) to avoid unnecessary overlap of BFCs – sometimes however, overlapping the BFC’s of cities is entirely necessary (as indeed I’ll illustrate here.)
OK, now onto your game. The first thing that struck me almost immediately about your map is that I think that you’ve actually almost nailed your city locations! All I’m suggesting is actually a slight tweak that I think will boost food, production and commerce output. The second point I noted is that much of the land to the south/ south east of Washington looks like flat, jungle grassland which is almost devoid of rivers. In the context of point (d) above, this means that this land will therefore likely struggle to provide you with early production centres and is instead more likely suitable for cottaging. Early game production from cities in this location may well be much more dependent on the judicious use of slavery to convert food to hammers. Indeed, your decision to try and place a science city in this region is evidence of this point.
By way of contrast, you’ll notice that the land to the immediate south of Washington contains a large number of hills. Indeed, it looks to be one of the biggest concentrations of hilly terrain on the portion of the map you’ve explored. (The other is the concentration of jungle covered grassland hills far to the south east of Washington – however, this area seems largely devoid of food, meaning that you’ll require not only iron working (to clear the jungles) but also machinery (to build windmills) to get a city in that area to grow.) With that in mind, the thing that hit me almost straight between the eyes was that much of your early game production was therefore going to depend very largely on this range of hills just south of Washington (some of which are in Washington’s BFC.) Until you can either chain irrigate, get guilds and caste system to boost the output of workhouses, or build vast numbers of windmills in the far south east of your explored map, your military pump(s) are therefore going to be from cities in this area.
Now when looking for city locations, the next thing that struck me was that you had also nailed the location of Washington! With its corn and flood plains, it could afford to work a mine or two for early production – and remember that I’ve said that working those hills is key to your civ’s early game production. In addition, the city has the benefit of being coastal, meaning that it can build a lighthouse to boost food output from the two nearby lakes (which boosts growth after whipping) and gets a boost to trade route income.
The last thing that struck me meanwhile was that you had also nailed the location of the city to the NW of Washington (which you labelled B). The two reasons are of course that (i) this city maximises the use of the land tiles in the area and (ii) the food surplus from farming the corn allows you work the three plains tiles that would be in the city’s BFC without the city having a food deficit / needing an extra farm (see point c above).
With city B ideally located, my eyes then turned south toward the pigs west of Washington. In brief, I noticed that placing a city 1S of the pigs in the blue circle 1NW of where you dotmapped city A would enable you to work the corn 1E of city A (on 1 border pop) and all other tiles - including the two hills to the south. Most importantly, it can also work all the tiles in the city’s BFC even if the city does not work the corn tile - if you farm the grassland tiles adjacent to the lake (ie. the tile labelled A, and 1N of A.)
This last point is important because I’d suggest building the “next” city 1S, 1SE of the corn (which means its 3S, 1SW of Washington, or 2SE of A). (When I say next BTW, I’m just working anticlockwise, from West to East of Washington because that’s how I saw the cities in sequence – this is not the order you’d settle the cities in though!) By working the corn, the flood plain and farming the grassland river tiles, you’d be able to work the hills in the city’s BFC (which are currently 3S of Washington.) Indeed, using this setup, you’d be working all but one of the hills to the south of Washington for maximum early game production. Better yet, post biology and steam power, you’d be able to boost production even further in this city using watermills, workshops and a levee and still have a food surplus. As a result, this city (the closest to which you have in game is Philadelphia) would be an early candidate for the heroic epic city – and all this because the city can grab the corn from the coastal piggy site. Who said overlap was universally bad?
Having this city south of Washington and Washington itself setup as early production centres is important because the lay of the land suggests the next two cities will be commerce centres. Firstly, as you noted, moving direct east of this new city (ie. to the area SE of Washington), I’d also be inclined to place a city 1W, 1SW of the gold – right where you have Boston! With the corn and farmed floodplain, this city can work the gold and ivory, boosting early research and happiness, and still grow. Further production however will have to come from either whipping population, using watermills when available, or placing lumbermills in the two available forests.
All of which leaves us with the piggies East of Washington that have prompted so much debate! My solution for them is simple – settle a city 1N, 1NE of them. (which is 1S, 1SW of where you located city C on your dotmap). The reason for this goes back to factor (c) above – food. By working the clams (with a lighthouse in the city), pigs and farming a couple of the grassland tiles, the city has enough surplus food to work the surrounding plains tiles. Early game production can come via slavery while late game production will be boosted by a levee since the city is riverside. You could conceivably cottage or watermill the riverside tiles as needs dictate – and all this comes by losing just one plains tile to Washington – as mentioned earlier, sometimes overlapping BFC’s are not just unavoidable but in fact necessary.
Of course, all the highly intelligent people reading this post (yes that means you!) will doubtlessly note that this setup does not work the copper visible to the far east north east of Washington. I assure you, this was quite deliberate for two reasons: (a) I was quite reluctant to settle city C (as dotmapped) and include too many desert squares in a city’s BFC just for the copper – particularly given the impact that the positioning of this city has on the other sites (as the debate regarding the piggies testifies) and (b) further exploration north east (which I performed offline) revealed a better located city site for the copper. In addition of course, this setup does not contain a GP farm either (although Washington could be used as one if really necessary). However, this reflects that fact that I noticed in the lower of the two screenshots you posted on 21/9 that there seems to be a potential city site which could include pigs and two sugars in its BFC. IMHO, this may be your best candidate as a GP farm – unless of course, one of your rivals has one waiting for you to take!
OK that’s it. I hope this helps. BTW if anyone cares to draw the dotmap I’m referring to, please do! (Oh, and if there’s any chance of a link to a post showing me how to do it in a reply, that’d be great!) In a similar vein, if anyone can see something wrong with my suggested layout, please let me know – I’m always looking to improve my Civ!
PS. Gumbolt: by way of return, is there any chance of posting a couple of domestic adviser screens (the ones you get by hitting F1) whilst you prepare for any wars, either in any re-run or continuation of the game please? As mentioned, I’d love to learn how best to prioritise military buildup in my cities (ie. see how many cities better players have building military units) ahead of war on the higher levels. Many thanks and I look forward to reading your game updates!
I'd like to see your dotmap if you still have it. Could you post it?
