Idea behind settling so close?
- Thread starter Electryx
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Electryx
Chieftain
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Japper007
Prince
Overlap doesn't matter much, it did in civ 5, but that's due to a different design. In civ 5 packing as much pop as possible in a city to work all the tiles in it's radius was optimal, because many things like science yield, or connection gold scaled of population. In civ 6 the main source of science (campuses and their buildings), as well as many other yields, is flat per city, so instead it's optimal to cram as many cities into the space you have as possible.
Esperr
King
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Most of your science still comes from pop. The reason wide is so much better then tall in VI is because of housing and district limits.
Japper007
Prince
Population will never outclass science yields from even one campus. Even a Campus with zero adjacency and no policy cards to boost it will still yield 10 science if you build all the buildings, that's as much as 15 pop! With Rationalism it yields 20! All that can be achieved by a one pop city in the desert if nessesary, ergo pop is a nice bonus, sure, but not nearly as good as cities.
unpossible251
Warlord
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i've also found its easier to manage farms for a cluster of small cities. a stand alone city is going to have less fertile farms at the edge of the border, but a big long stretch of farmland shared between 2 or more cities will be a great idea
To the original poster: whether or not the majority of your research comes from population or districts/buildings is only somewhat relevant (it's tangential) to your original question, why players settle their cities so closely. The key is here:
-Housing limits your maximum population far earlier than number of available tiles. Fresh water plus an inexpensive granary gets a city's housing limit to 5, which means it can quickly grow to only size 3, grow slowly to size 4, and crawl to size 5 or 6. You can increase this limit of 5 a few points with some tile improvements, possibly some cards or government choices, and maybe another couple of points with district buildings, but those are only available in what many consider (please don't derail in disagreement) lower priority districts. You also get diminished returns on rainforest/marsh chopping and food resource harvesting when your city is near its housing cap. SO, you're going to run out of housing far earlier than you'll run out of tiles, even with cities only 4 tiles apart. Now, this situation radically changes when neighborhoods become available, every city can have nearly unlimited housing. But neighborhoods come quite late in the game, arguably after the conclusion of the game is already determined, and what happens during the turns before neighborhoods become available is considerably more influential on a game than what happens after. (side note: this is something that makes the Kongo civilization at least interesting if not powerful, because they can side-step the housing limitations much, much earlier than other civs)
-total number of districts means power (at least in all but the highest difficulties. There, hammer efficiency is so cut-throat that many consider a district-less empire the best way to go at deity, but back to conventional strategy....) There are many reasons for this, but just a quick, non-comprehensive synopsis:
1.) district/building yields are essentially free. While a mine's four hammers are more than a workshop's two hammers, the mine requires that you allocate one of your citizens to work that tile while the workshop is a passive two hammer bonus added to every turn. 2.) adjacency bonuses can increase those passive yields 3.) most of those passive yields that you're getting, from the district or the adjacency or both, can be multiplied with cards. 4.)city-state type bonuses for 3/6 level envoy - this can be huge. 5.) great people - also huge.
So having a great number of districts can allow you to do more things. That being said, there are two (more) advantages to a wide empire vs. a tall empire in this context. First, one city can only build one of each specialty district, a size 40 city can only have 1 campus and 1 of each building, but ten size 4 cities can have 10 campii and a total of ten of each buildings. Second, it is very easy to manage the housing and happiness limitations of ten size-4 cities, and it is also very easy to acquire and build up ten size-4 cities. It is nearly impossible to meet the housing and happiness demands of one size-40 city and would take forever to get it to that status. It's for these reasons that wider is simply much more attainable, practical, manageable, and effective. So placing cities very close to each other helps in utilizing this.
Housing is the chief limiting factor and the total number of districts is the advantage that you want to leverage:
-Housing limits your maximum population far earlier than number of available tiles. Fresh water plus an inexpensive granary gets a city's housing limit to 5, which means it can quickly grow to only size 3, grow slowly to size 4, and crawl to size 5 or 6. You can increase this limit of 5 a few points with some tile improvements, possibly some cards or government choices, and maybe another couple of points with district buildings, but those are only available in what many consider (please don't derail in disagreement) lower priority districts. You also get diminished returns on rainforest/marsh chopping and food resource harvesting when your city is near its housing cap. SO, you're going to run out of housing far earlier than you'll run out of tiles, even with cities only 4 tiles apart. Now, this situation radically changes when neighborhoods become available, every city can have nearly unlimited housing. But neighborhoods come quite late in the game, arguably after the conclusion of the game is already determined, and what happens during the turns before neighborhoods become available is considerably more influential on a game than what happens after. (side note: this is something that makes the Kongo civilization at least interesting if not powerful, because they can side-step the housing limitations much, much earlier than other civs)
-total number of districts means power (at least in all but the highest difficulties. There, hammer efficiency is so cut-throat that many consider a district-less empire the best way to go at deity, but back to conventional strategy....) There are many reasons for this, but just a quick, non-comprehensive synopsis:
1.) district/building yields are essentially free. While a mine's four hammers are more than a workshop's two hammers, the mine requires that you allocate one of your citizens to work that tile while the workshop is a passive two hammer bonus added to every turn. 2.) adjacency bonuses can increase those passive yields 3.) most of those passive yields that you're getting, from the district or the adjacency or both, can be multiplied with cards. 4.)city-state type bonuses for 3/6 level envoy - this can be huge. 5.) great people - also huge.
So having a great number of districts can allow you to do more things. That being said, there are two (more) advantages to a wide empire vs. a tall empire in this context. First, one city can only build one of each specialty district, a size 40 city can only have 1 campus and 1 of each building, but ten size 4 cities can have 10 campii and a total of ten of each buildings. Second, it is very easy to manage the housing and happiness limitations of ten size-4 cities, and it is also very easy to acquire and build up ten size-4 cities. It is nearly impossible to meet the housing and happiness demands of one size-40 city and would take forever to get it to that status. It's for these reasons that wider is simply much more attainable, practical, manageable, and effective. So placing cities very close to each other helps in utilizing this.
Electryx
Chieftain
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Thanks, ShakaKhan for your reply.... I learnt alot from it
Community in this forum is really good
Tall= building less but bigger cities
Wide= building more but small cities
What I also wanted to know that one can go wide by having cities 6 tiles apart rather than cramming 4 tiles
Why many players prefer to go wide with cities 4 tiles apart rather than going wide with cities 6 tiles apart generally? Are there any advantages to it?
Community in this forum is really good
Tall= building less but bigger cities
Wide= building more but small cities
What I also wanted to know that one can go wide by having cities 6 tiles apart rather than cramming 4 tiles
Why many players prefer to go wide with cities 4 tiles apart rather than going wide with cities 6 tiles apart generally? Are there any advantages to it?
Nigel_Tufnel2
King
You will get more efficient city/district overlap if your cities are closer together (like you will only need 1 Factory or Zoo to cover perhaps 6 cities vs. covering maybe 2-3 cities). Also, since most players build Commercial Hubs, it is easier to get trade routes from the new cities at the edge of your empire to the older, more powerful cities if the distance is less. And it is easier to defend a smaller area from invasion than a more spread out area.
I almost always space my cities 4 tiles, the inside tiles do get shared, of course, but a lot of cities are at the edge of my empire, and I almost always buy tiles to get good tiles (deny them from the AI, or block mountain/coast bottlenecks so I can expand that direction later). So even though the city centers are close, many cities can work a lot of outer tiles = it is not hard at all to get to size 10 if I want them to with just Farms and maybe a Granary.
I almost always space my cities 4 tiles, the inside tiles do get shared, of course, but a lot of cities are at the edge of my empire, and I almost always buy tiles to get good tiles (deny them from the AI, or block mountain/coast bottlenecks so I can expand that direction later). So even though the city centers are close, many cities can work a lot of outer tiles = it is not hard at all to get to size 10 if I want them to with just Farms and maybe a Granary.
I prefer settling 5-6 tiles apart, though I do occasionally settle at 4. Playing at Prince/epic/huge continents (with techs/civics/great people at 2x cost), I try to extend the game out towards the time limit instead of trying to win as soon as I can, to see how high a score I can get, so many of my core cities end up with population in the 20's, perhaps one or two in the low 30's.
While I have not won any domination/conquest victories I generally do have an empire containing several conquered cities (I rarely raze) and may eliminate a few civs. Of course, many of the cities I take end up are 4 tiles apart, and may end up with 20-40 cities.
While I have not won any domination/conquest victories I generally do have an empire containing several conquered cities (I rarely raze) and may eliminate a few civs. Of course, many of the cities I take end up are 4 tiles apart, and may end up with 20-40 cities.
Klinn
Warlord
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My preference is cities placed 5 hexes apart so each one has two rings of tiles to itself, but when placing cities I actually care more about utilizing hills.
That little bit of extra production is really handy to get an early city up and running before you've got enough internal trade routes to help out. Also hilltop positioning of your archers helps them fire over flat-land woods and rainforest. Hills along rivers are my dream city locations and I'll compromise on the exact spacing in order to use them.
That little bit of extra production is really handy to get an early city up and running before you've got enough internal trade routes to help out. Also hilltop positioning of your archers helps them fire over flat-land woods and rainforest. Hills along rivers are my dream city locations and I'll compromise on the exact spacing in order to use them.
EpicWestern
Warlord
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Usually I find the spacing of cities to be irrelevant compared to the availability of fresh water, coast access, luxuries, hills, rice/wheat, etc.. Generally though, closer cities equates to more room to build cities. On deity available space gets taken up fairly fast. Also I don't think there's much of a point to the cities versus districts debate. Going wide is powerful mainly because extra cities mean extra districts. An additional victory district (campus, theater, or holy site), will almost always be more valuable than an additional non-victory district. Usually the best time to stop settling is when the game will be over before a city can build up and have a victory district be effective.
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I never bother with overlap. I place my cities where they will get the best production and then work from that.
If I limit my cities to a granary at best then they will get to 7 pop which is enough to cope with 3 districts. Another advantage of getting to 7 is you can take your citizens off food tiles and make them useful making more production and if need be (quite often now) into a campus specialist as that's an extra 2 pop worth of science.
The primary reason you would not place your cities 6/7 apart to me are
Your city will never get big enough and your borders do not expand fast enough
If you leave gaps between your cities the AI like to settle between them
If I find my ideal settling positions leave a gap between them then I'll pop a settler there and with builders chopping and trade routes I can get a campus easily in a 2 pop unwatered city. Having the gold to buy buildings helps... Great Zimbabwe is a good choice for any game and the AI just cannot build it (requirements too complex I guess)
One of the biggest tips in the game... a HUGE tip...is chopping. For example if I place a campus for 100 prod I may be able to chop a forest for 60 prod to really help it.... but.... If I place the campus but change production and later chop the forest I may get 110 production or even higher. The cost of placing a district and chopping both increase at the same speed, chopping later into an earlier placed district is in essence is getting free production.
Now if you think that is cheating then lets look at a granary, it's cost does not increase so instead of chopping at turn 50 for a granary, chopping at turn 80 will get more production for it. Delaying chopping gives great production.
Another chopping technique is using a card increase, so you can chop for 100 production but have a card that gives 50% or 100% to what you are building, the chop also increases that much and any overflow in production is kept for the next build even if it would not gain the 100%
One I like to do now is eureka chopping for population. Plant a city in jungle, delay chopping as much as possible but get a granary and aqueduct in place then chop that city up to 13 pop for a great set of eurekas.
Chopping as monarchy with the 100% walls card after the patch is a consideration as it's 150% as it chopping boats in with Norway. It's worth not getting cartography and late chopping a galley. A galley cost 65 production. If a chop would normally give 100 production, with the ship card you would get 250 production instead. Norway gets +50% for boats.... so without the boat card I can just chop in a district for 100 prod, with the boat card I chop in a galley and can use 185 production on my district.... scary business.... norway with 100 galleys!
If I limit my cities to a granary at best then they will get to 7 pop which is enough to cope with 3 districts. Another advantage of getting to 7 is you can take your citizens off food tiles and make them useful making more production and if need be (quite often now) into a campus specialist as that's an extra 2 pop worth of science.
The primary reason you would not place your cities 6/7 apart to me are
Your city will never get big enough and your borders do not expand fast enough
If you leave gaps between your cities the AI like to settle between them
If I find my ideal settling positions leave a gap between them then I'll pop a settler there and with builders chopping and trade routes I can get a campus easily in a 2 pop unwatered city. Having the gold to buy buildings helps... Great Zimbabwe is a good choice for any game and the AI just cannot build it (requirements too complex I guess)
One of the biggest tips in the game... a HUGE tip...is chopping. For example if I place a campus for 100 prod I may be able to chop a forest for 60 prod to really help it.... but.... If I place the campus but change production and later chop the forest I may get 110 production or even higher. The cost of placing a district and chopping both increase at the same speed, chopping later into an earlier placed district is in essence is getting free production.
Now if you think that is cheating then lets look at a granary, it's cost does not increase so instead of chopping at turn 50 for a granary, chopping at turn 80 will get more production for it. Delaying chopping gives great production.
Another chopping technique is using a card increase, so you can chop for 100 production but have a card that gives 50% or 100% to what you are building, the chop also increases that much and any overflow in production is kept for the next build even if it would not gain the 100%
One I like to do now is eureka chopping for population. Plant a city in jungle, delay chopping as much as possible but get a granary and aqueduct in place then chop that city up to 13 pop for a great set of eurekas.
Chopping as monarchy with the 100% walls card after the patch is a consideration as it's 150% as it chopping boats in with Norway. It's worth not getting cartography and late chopping a galley. A galley cost 65 production. If a chop would normally give 100 production, with the ship card you would get 250 production instead. Norway gets +50% for boats.... so without the boat card I can just chop in a district for 100 prod, with the boat card I chop in a galley and can use 185 production on my district.... scary business.... norway with 100 galleys!
Last edited:
Abraxis
☮
mmm, I don't buy that chopping districts thing as being all that relevant. If you want to delay your districts, all you're really doing is trading secondary resources for production. I don't know that it would give you that much of an advantage save widening your options a little.
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