how far apart should cities be??

[Stolen Rutters]

edit - Sorry, back to Topic...

A city should be packed in a small map if there are many AI players, if you want to build them yourself, since the AI will fill up the map too quick. It would be much better to go on an invading spree and define your spacing based on whichever cities you choose to keep and raze.

I have found that I can spread out easier in a larger map, with the donut style, a border gambit, more skipped tiles and so on. I can even skip entire city placement options for later if I find that I need to backfill. Meeting a well established AI that I can't take down immediately and that I don't want to build inside any more near me, I will sometimes build a forward city or two to block them off and peacefully backfill to have more cities that can churn out units for the takedown. I would normally let them build my inner cities for me but the situation might make it difficult to out culture them, especially if they have the culture bonus and I don't have enough religions to pressure them out peacefully.

 

[MazX_TheDog]

Who cares? Why are we letting Charles fufill his need to feel different? Let him do that in the other game's forums where he can be the l33t h4xxorz!

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Again, back to topic, while playing the continents standard map with the default number of AI players, I can get six or seven cities on my own if I really pack them in, but it seems that four or five really good cities is what I can realistically obtain on my own before I need to expand into neighbor's territory. With Terra map (standard size/standard player count), is a much tighter fit so warring to get to my ideal early size is more necessary.

When I am in a warring mode, I get most of my cities from the enemy anyway, so placement is more or less decided for me.

edit - Oops, I could have just edited the previous post again. I'm trying to slow down my post count for efficiency sake. Threads with tons of off-topic posts are hard to read. - endedit

 

[uberfish]

Getting good special resources within your city boundaries, and access to water, is fundamentally more important than any consideration of optimal city spacing in civ 4.

If I have to leave large gaps between cities or have significant overlap to get the resources, I don't really care. And you shouldn't either.

 

[Charles 22]

Hex is NOT generic*, it is specifically inappropriate
tile, space are generic
square is not generic, it is specifically appropriate

(quadrilateral, quadrangle, or tetragon are also appropriate but they are too long)

stick with square/tile/space and the term-nerds won't go after you and they are just as short.


*Hex means either 6 (and is used as short for Hexagons) or a curse.

Note:if you look at AoA , then Chess is not a "square based" game.
But its not Octagonal either. Its actually a Hexadecimal based game (16 possible moves: four sides, four corners, and 8 different knight moves)

But your position IS always on a Specific Square. So the Tiles are called Squares (because they are)


As was said before all 'tile' based games are made of either Hexes, Squares, or Triangles. because those are the only regular polygons (ie Normal shapes) that will cover a board... Octagons Won't

A square means four sides a hex means six.... saying a square is a type of hex is like saying a dog is a type of cat.

Now if you want to say civ is an "Octagon based" game because of the 8 directions that you can move in fine, but calling the squares hexes is wildly incorrect. (Like when I say the 60 United states... you assume I'm just making a mistake and correct me in your head... we know what you mean, but its Not what you are saying)

I think I see your position here, but when somebody tells me a game is square-based I reject that sort of game out of hand, to say nothing of triagular ones. The reason being that if indeed people are basing the description on the shape of a given tile, but the movements or AoA is different, then the shape of the tile is completely irrelevant to me. It's just that some of us have seen square-based games, that the AoA is also sqaure and that's a huge difference between that and one that has 8 A0A's. I would argue that describing a game by the shape of the tile doesn't work when the AoA's are of a different type. It's not the shape of the tile that's important to people, but how many AoA's there are. Unfortunately it's all too easy to assume that something called square-based has it's AoA limited to it's sides. I mean, afterall, if the tile were of any sort it makes no difference if the AoA isn't what you desire.

Actually Chess is beyond description, but when you were going through the various modes you thought it might be, you were using the AoA as the descriptive, as it ought to be. Unfortunately in my case, pointing out chess was a bad example, but it is a very good example if you want to show how irrelevent it is that something is thought to be square-based because of the tile and not because of the AoA.

I don't know what makes you think an octagon won't cover a board, as I've seen it done and played at least a couple of them (probably none in the last decade). It seems to me that there isn't the slightest difference in playing an oct tile that allows oct AoA, or a square tile that allows oct AoA. One may look prettier than the other, but the action is all the same.

 

[Araqiel]

Actually Chess is beyond description, but when you were going through the various modes you thought it might be, you were using the AoA as the descriptive, as it ought to be. Unfortunately in my case, pointing out chess was a bad example, but it is a very good example if you want to show how irrelevent it is that something is thought to be square-based because of the tile and not because of the AoA.

I don't know what makes you think an octagon won't cover a board, as I've seen it done and played at least a couple of them (probably none in the last decade). It seems to me that there isn't the slightest difference in playing an oct tile that allows oct AoA, or a square tile that allows oct AoA. One may look prettier than the other, but the action is all the same.

Two things. First of all Chess is certainly not beyond descrition. Its a determanistic game with rather simple rules for movement and combat. Thats one of the reasons they've come up with very good computer chess players.

Second, as to what makes us think an octagon won't cover a board (that is a flat plane), that thing would be topology. If you don't believe me take a look at this rather interesting mathematics site I googled. Here's the relevant quote for our purposes.

At the end of the day, only hexagons and rectangles (or, more accurately, parallelograms) can tile a flat plane. It is for this reason that many bathrooms, metro stations and the like are tiled in hexagons and squares.

The octagon cannot tile a flat plane, but it can tile a surface which is everywhere negatively curved. Such a surface cannot be drawn in three dimensions, but it can be imagined as a surface which everywhere has the curvature of a saddle.

I say we we should drop it though, its very off topic. I'd say PM me about it if you wish but if you're not going to get something so very basic right in your arguments (and claim you've seen it done which would be very impressive!) then its not really going to be productive for anyone.

 

[malekithe]

I don't know what makes you think an octagon won't cover a board...

A perfect octagon has interior angles of 135 degrees. Triangles work because 6 * 60 = 360. Squares: 4 * 90 = 360. Hexes: 3 * 120 = 360. You can't add 135 any number of times to get 360 degrees. As such, octagons alone cannot be combined in any way to create flush verticies. If combined with squares, though, they can (135 + 135 + 90 = 360). Incidentally, I've never seen any game attempt octagonal tiles. Could you please point me to the game(s) you had in mind? I'm and avid boardgame player and am very curious.

 

[Araqiel]

I just realized I never answered the OPs question. In my opinion your cities should be placed to make the most efficient use of your land and resources. Often times this means you'll have 3+ overlaps in some cities.

They might even share a special resource (like corn/sheep) depending on the needs of your given production at the moment. Micromanaging a food tile to work the most mines when you need units is very useful.

If you don't want to micromanage tile use like this you can just asign the tiles to one city or the other. (they're shaded out) For that cities purposes they're like a mountain square, useless. This limits the upper potential for the city when you have biology and many happy faces, but thats okay. The game is won or lost before you hit the time frame when you'll hit that upper bound.

In short don't be afraid to overlap if its advantageous.

 

[Charles 22]

A perfect octagon has interior angles of 135 degrees. Triangles work because 6 * 60 = 360. Squares: 4 * 90 = 360. Hexes: 3 * 120 = 360. You can't add 135 any number of times to get 360 degrees. As such, octagons alone cannot be combined in any way to create flush verticies. If combined with squares, though, they can (135 + 135 + 90 = 360). Incidentally, I've never seen any game attempt octagonal tiles. Could you please point me to the game(s) you had in mind? I'm and avid boardgame player and am very curious.

Sorry, I can't recall the names offhand. They were old enough that I probably don't even have them any more and if I did they probably wouldn't play on XP.

 

[Charles 22]

Two things. First of all Chess is certainly not beyond descrition. Its a determanistic game with rather simple rules for movement and combat. Thats one of the reasons they've come up with very good computer chess players.

Second, as to what makes us think an octagon won't cover a board (that is a flat plane), that thing would be topology. If you don't believe me take a look at this rather interesting mathematics site I googled. Here's the relevant quote for our purposes.



I say we we should drop it though, its very off topic. I'd say PM me about it if you wish but if you're not going to get something so very basic right in your arguments (and claim you've seen it done which would be very impressive!) then its not really going to be productive for anyone.

What I meant about chess being beyond description was due entirely to the AoA problem. You can't say it's AoA is square-based, nor hexagon-based, nor anything else across the board. So many of the pieces allowable moves completely throw off making an accurate description, since even the queen can't do some of the rook moves, nor the knight moves. The fact that the knight even hops makes AoA description even more implausible (now if we had a chopper unit that could fly 'over' things if we so desired, then we would have something of a knight piece in the game. I suppose that's what makes chess so interesting to a lot of people, that you have pieces which make for very different moves.

 

[Charles 22]

I will remind those who are irritated that we have a side discussion going on here, that it was not I that started it, as somebody decided they would have a go at my hexes, though that wasn't the point of my first post. As I received no comments on anything but the hex observation I responded as such and as I think we've probably pretty much talked this for all it's worth I don't think I'll need comment further on it.

 

[Charles 22]

Ah, I think I have what I need. Now while there are diamonds in this example, this link does show how there have been wargames made as I said. You not only can AoA in eight directions but the hex itself is an octagon. IIRC this example was the way the games I played were, where there were diamonds inbetween the octagons:

http://www.quadibloc.com/other/boaint.htm

 

[malekithe]

Ah, I think I have what I need. Now while there are diamonds in this example, this link does show how there have been wargames made as I said. You not only can AoA in eight directions but the hex itself is an octagon. IIRC this example was the way the games I played were, where there were diamonds inbetween the octagons:

http://www.quadibloc.com/other/boaint.htm

Interesting. Though, the way that particular game plays out, the octagons may as well be squares with diagonal movement costing 1.5 that of lateral (similar to distance measurements in civ). So, what he's really proposed on that page is an overly complicated square-tiled board.

 

[Charles 22]

Interesting. Though, the way that particular game plays out, the octagons may as well be squares with diagonal movement costing 1.5 that of lateral (similar to distance measurements in civ). So, what he's really proposed on that page is an overly complicated square-tiled board.

You might say that. Yes, I recall one of the nuances of the octagon games I had played was that the diagonal moves were 1.5X. I'm not sure if it was really a common thing in the 80's or not, but I do recall there was a time when I considered it strange that diagonal moves didn't cost that.

 

[Charles 22]

I think this may be an example of a game I played, which I did, that was octagon-based. Notice the directional movement in the screenshot. As late as 1986 apparently.

http://www.lemon64.com/index.php?ma....com/games/list.php?type=date&name=2004-03-19

Oh sorry, that didn't work. The game was called Warship on the 2nd page of that link (if this didn't work):

You notice the cursor is actually square, but that was common in those days. Despite what the tiles were done as, I think the cursors were always square.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Ah, ..... but the hex itself is an octagon.

Incorrect the Tile itself is an octagon, there are no hexes in that game.