How many tiles does a city need?

[Soterius]

When I build a new city, I always make sure it's potential of tiles won't interfere with those of another city of mine. A city can potentially use 3 rings of tiles surounding it, so I always try to keep 6 tiles in between cities, assuring they can both use their full potential of tiles.

Is this neccesary? If not, how many tiles does a city need over the course of a game?

 

[bill4747]

I would place cities five to seven spaces apart depending on the overall food supply, and get as many luxury/strategic resources as possible. That being said, placing a city beyond 7 is fine if it grabs a lot of resources. Harbors are a good alternative to an overly long road in regards to trade routes.


Most cities will never fill all hexes spaces three out from the center, so don't worry too m uch about it. In Civ 4 I obsessed over city placement; but in Civ 5 I have found it less stressfull. I mainly just snag as many resources as possible and it seems to work.

 

[Seven05]

Wow, at that spread you must never occupy all of the land

From my experience a BIG city is anywhere from 12-16 pop, most of my cities linger around size 10, some less than that.

For me, my larger cities will normally be running about 3 specialists so a size 16 city with three specialists needs 13 tiles to work. I do tend to give them some extra space though so I can be flexible and switch between food/gold/science and production. That said, none of them have ever come close to using every tile in their 3-tile radius.

Generally, this means my ideal spread is 3 or 4 tiles between cities. Coastal cities can be placed closer to inland cities than two inland cities can be to each other and they are all placed around resources, NOT some arbitrary grid to cover ever tile. Unlike Civ 4 culture is usefull even after you have no more tiles to grab so the waste from packing cities a little closer is minor.

If you will have fewer cities you should be able to make them larger