How far apart should I build my cities?

[Genia4]

Hi, one of my first posts around here
Anyway, what I'm asking is how many squares apart should I build my cities?
Right now I'm building them 4 squares apart, so that every city can potentially utilize all of the squares around it, but I don't think it's really working out, or it's really efficient.
I'm playing C3C btw.

Thanks in advance

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Hi, and welcome to CFC...err...your first post anyways.

A screenshot would be nice, but here's a couple different styles of placing your cities:

OCP - Optimal City Placement - Here, you try to place your cities far enough apart so that when they get to size 21, they do not share any tiles with any other cities (they can share one or two tiles, but usually you try to get 18 tiles or more for a city). It's usually City - square - square - square - square - City.

Tighter OCP - This takes advantage of the fact that your cities won't get 21 tiles until hospitals. You place your cities so that they get about 12-14 tiles. This is mostly for pre-Industrial games where you don't think it'll last until the Industrial Age, or you don't have much space. It's usually City - square - square - square - City.

ICS - Infinite City Sprawl - Here you place your cities City - square - City - square - City. It's just to get as many cities as possible. In a government like Feudalsim (5 units per town), you'll get lots of unit support.

Keep in mind that if you have lots of cities, you'll get more corruption, but if you place them far apart and far from your capital, you also get lots of corruption. Usually what works best is just going by the layout of the terrain; building by food bonuses, building on rivers, on the coast, etc.

 

[Chieftess]

There's several ways. Look at the war academy section on the main CFC page. There's some articles there.

ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) - This way involves building in a checkerboard pattern.

Tight Build - This is building every 3 tiles (i.e., C**C - C = City, * = tile). This is most common in MP games.

Loose Build - This is about every 4 tiles (i.e., C***C).

OCP - Optimal City Placement - This is every 5 tiles, and in a way so that only 1 tile overlaps. This is a strategy from the Civ2 days (you could terraform to have 2/3 hills, and 1/3 grassland, giving maximum production then - funny how I figured that one out after 10 years of playing. ).

There's others too, like selecting the best spots even if you're wasting tiles in between, though the above are the most common.

 

[Genia4]

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I only have a few comments:
Let's say i build cities 3 tiles apart (C***C), my cities won't be able to grow much above 16 or so, right? and for the tighter formations it's even less.
Do you think that the increased amount of cities is worth the decrease in pop per city?
Can you please be more specific and tell me where it's most commom to use every formation?

Thanks again

 

[Bagatur]

Its rare worth to have city producing 80-90 shields, than two producing 50-60 shields. Pop of these both two cities, added is more than one single city. U will have two universities, two libraries, two banks, two marketplaces, almost doubling output from these two cities( minus buildings support of course). I use C**C placement, depending on land, but in this case, my core consists on lets say 15 cities able to produce tank and infantry for two turns, which is far than enough for huge wars, two. Add also 20 cities able to produce them in 3 turns. My cities usually grow to size 14-15 max, thus giving me metropolis unit support and giving me options to add some policeman to round the shield needed for particular unit production. I never calculated them exactly, how better it is, but overall look tells me its lot better to have core of relatively small metropolises, but many of them, than only few really large metropolises. Ah, also, its good to have one well developed, really large city, for wonder building, although, when wonders are available, u cant reach pop over 12. For such city its good to hit Shakespeare theathre, so it will become descent before availability of hospitals. Also - the more cities - the more units support. Usually u wont get all land u see on EMperor and above levels, so get it used in best way, meaning all tiles worked at earlier stage

 

[Hunter Noventa]

What i try to do is build cities 3 or 4 tiles from my capital, and then 2 or 3 tiles from each other depending on terrain. That wayt he ones closest to your palace will have less corruption as you grow, but you'll still end up with a decent number of cities.

That really goes out the window on most archipelago maps, as you want as many cities as possible to be coastal you you can fill in the culture and keep other civs off your island.

 

[Genia4]

Thanks Bagatur, I really liked your explanation.
I need to start a game where I'm building my cities C***C and C**C and see which works best for me.
I also think that having as many metropolises as possible is the best, for all the free units.

Thanks again guys, going to play some civ3 now

 

[WackenOpenAir]

It depends on some things.

First you should estimate how long your game will last.
Conquest or domnation victories generally are much earlier than cultural victories. Good players get these victories usually by knights or cavalry.

This means you won't ever get to hospitals and thus won't be able to grow your cities past size 12.

If you think your game will last to hospitals, but not much beyond it, it still is best not to go for more than 12 tiles for each city.

With multiple opponents on the map, certainly on higher difficulty levels, the amount of land you can grab is usually limmited. You don't want to have only 5 cities that each have 21 tiles but can only use those late in the game. So if ground is limmited, don't space them too far appart.

This makes, in most situations it is best to have 12 tiles to work for each of your cities.
Only if you expect the game to last till the very end (2050) and you have loads of land available, it could possibly be good to give your cities more than 12 tiles each.
Sometimes you should have less than 12 tiles per city. This is when you have very little ground to expand on or when you expect your game to end in the ancient age or first half of the middle ages. (and thus most of your cities wont reach size 12). This i think is only in issue for the more skilled players, others wont get their victory that early and probably don't play a difficulty so high that the AI grabs most of the available ground before you. Small islands or penensulas can still benefit the tighter placement for anyone though.

There are also players who start out with a very tight placment in the beginning so they can have very many cities and then abandon part of their cities later on to give more space for the remaining cities.

Desert (unless agricultural) and tundra i don't count for the 12 tiles per city.
Also do i makes sure there is enough land tiles vs sea tiles so that none of my cities will need to use more than half its tiles in sea. (since they don't give production)

You don't need to space your cities so that they each have a set 12 tiles for them. Just place your cities at the best tiles (river, coast, non bonus), count your total territory and so decide your amount of tiles per city (you can also use civ assist for this) You can swap tiles around between cities as needed. If the total number of cities vs the total number of tiles is ok, you should be able to give them what they need.

 

[Genia4]

Thanks WackenOpenAir
My only question is: what is civ assist?
I started a small game with 4 tiles between cities, so far so good

Thanks again, I think I got a full prospective of this issue, I hope I can put this info into good use

 

[DJMGator13]

Civ Assist and MapStat are utiliites that give you your total territory owned and how many more tiles you need for a dom victory. They also help keep track of what techsand resources are available for trading, as well as helping to monitor your overall happiness to keep your cities from rioting.

Both are very good programs and can be found here.

 

[Bagatur]

Very good points from WackOpenAir, which I consider smart player. Rite for tundra - u can make cities even tighter - without bonus they can reach population 3, if not on coast.

I forgot one very important part of tight city placement - u dont need to build culture to cover opened tiles. I rarely build temples and such before libraries, only when need acces to resource, chokepoint, good tiles and similar. I consider them useless and they dont worth its maintenance. But its because I chase my victories by war - domination or conquest. Maybe for culture victories and piecefull builders its different thing. One rule, WackOpenAir mentioned. Dont glue to the exact placement and exact number of worked tiles. Think what u expect from this city. I place sometimes even C*C, if in this way I can grab some 5-6 tiles, which wont be used in other way. This can give u city of size 6-7 which isnt that bad with factory and plant, Leave it with no baracks(saving maintenance cost), e.g and produce artilery in it.

 

[Genia4]

Thanks for the link DJMGator13.

Another thing, the only reason I see to build a city that won't ever become a metropolis is to block some squares the AI might throw a city in, right in the middle of my terriroty.

Thanks for the tips everyone, now I need to decide which assistant program I should use

 

[xiaoafei]

except for a few cities near your capital or forbidden city, there's no reason you want a big city. The corruption is so high that every city far away only gives you 1-2 gold per turn if it deosn't burn your money. Also, the production is very poor. then why should you wait for hundreds of turns to let it become such a gabage city?
My strategy is: place all far-away-cities as close to each other as possible. Never build any thing inside them. then they will have 2-3 pop, producing 1-2 gold every turn, possibly offer some resources in their range and prevent my enemy from expansion.

 

[Khshayarsha]

In the early game, the trick is how to balance spacing your core cities near your capital, and at the same time placing cities to expand your frontiers as soon as possible before the AI moves in and takes away "your" land. This always happens: my exploring units find good sites with luxes, resources, bonus tiles, etc. midway between my capital and the next civ. It's a rush to get my settlers over there before they hog the space, because given enough time, rest assured they WILL hog the space. They are completely shameless and will send a galley to plop a settler right next to your capital if you leave them an opening. This points up how crucial it is to have settler factories and concentrate on moving settlers into BOTH near and far zones as fast as possible during the B.C. years. All this while making enough workers for all these cities, units for defense, and maybe an early wonder or two is a challenge I still struggle with. The AI always seems better at it from Monarch on up.

 

[sourboy]

One thing I noticed that hasn't been talked about is your game settings. How large your map is (in conjunction with landmass to ocean %) and how many Civs you are playing against is also a factor in how to build your cities.

If you are playing a huge map (or larger if custom made), it is possible to reach the city maximum that's hardcoded into Civ. Also, on huge maps, there is the potential for absurdly high corruption in the cities that are furthest from your capitol. The Civ opponent factor is important also, because how soon you come across a rival could be important to your build plans.

In general, the best option is to build a little tighter at the beginning (keeps rivals from building in the gaps of your empire, allows for quick growth in case of early wars, minimalizes corruption, maximizes culture if you use culture flip), then build to control land later on.

One thing I do that seems to work okay is to build to cover all tiles in the beginning (3-4 tiles apart). Then as soon as my border reaches theirs, I plan my invasion. Here's the point - for every 3-5 cities I conquer, I tend to raze 1. The thought is to get rid of the useless cities that are size 2 and not in a place where they will grow (in the hills, too close to another city, on a peninsula - though keep islands just for land mass). Instead I focus on the productive cities and culture pop them to fill in the gaps. That way the cities I have take up landmass, but also can pump out units.

 

[bouncelot]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet (if it was and I missed it, sorry to whoever said it) is that if your cities are placed CxxC, then any units with 1 movement can move between cities in a single turn before you get railroads. This can be a great help militarily in the first two eras.

 

[TimBentley]

Another thing worth noting is that if you build tight in the beginning and want to loosen the build later, you could abandon some cities. I don't do this, but I believe people who milk the score start with an ICS build and later abandon some cities and place their cities as optimally as possible.

 

[Longasc]

I got used to CXXXC, tight build. (OK, some say the correct description for this is loose build )

You usually get the 12 workable tiles you will have for most of the game, until hospitals, and you do not need to abandon city in modern ages usually and still have large and highly productive ones.

Building very dense in the beginning is however probably superior, just more output, but I simply cannot get used to it.

 

[Khshayarsha]

But while you're packing your cities fairly close together, CxxxC, what's to stop your AI rivals from moving into territory that you wanted?