Ideal distance between cities?

[SalmonSoil]

I was wondering, what is the ideal distance between cities?
Normally I find myself founding them around 4 hexes away, but I was wondering what the average distance should be?
Naturally distance between cities isn't my main concern when founding cities, but I was just wondering if founding too close (say, 2 tiles) would seriously hinder a city.

 

[Bibor]

No such thing as an ideal distance, because it varies by terrain and strategy. Since every city can reasonably work two hex-rings around the city, 4 hexes is a good generic gap.

 

[Airey]

If you going to pack that close, might as well go with 3 tiles
Pre bio every city would be <4...after you pick your production city, let the surrounding one die off and you'll get your space while your science don't suffer...it's kind of a waste to pack 4 tiles apart since most of the game is played during that period.
and that's not even taking road maintenance into consideration... occasionally it'll be 4 tiles due to mountain/coastal, but if you going to go ics, go 3

 

[Nunya]

I'd argue that for ICS 2 hexes would be better than 3. You'll be keeping your populations realtively low and emplying some 2-4 specialists per city so 6 tiles to work per city should be enough to keep your people busy.

 

[Trickster7135]

For ICS/honeycomb, keep to 2 tiles away as much as possible.

For 'normal' playing, 4 tiles is fine.

For small empires (such as cultural victories), five or six tiles, as high populations + high culture to pop borders = a lot of land being worked per city.

 

[Roxlimn]

For normal play, I would say from 2 to 3 tiles. 6 tiles is way too far - you're never going to utilize all the hexes in time for them to mean anything, and higher pop cities relying on Freedom for extra food aren't going to have a large tile footprint anyway - they mainly will take food tiles.

2 hexes is ICS-ish, but it only looks like ICS when you're putting all your cities within two tiles of each other. Going with an average of 3 tiles works fine.

It depends on how many workable tiles there are. If a city has lots of worthless tiles in its 36 hex range, it's going to cover more area, since there are fewer tiles to work. Cities in densely profitable areas can be 3 tiles apart and be a reasonable size and still not work everything.

 

[Airey]

I'd argue that for ICS 2 hexes would be better than 3. You'll be keeping your populations realtively low and emplying some 2-4 specialists per city so 6 tiles to work per city should be enough to keep your people busy.

ya, I agree with you...that's what I try to say originally...2 workable tiles, city on the 3rd tile...silly me

another big advantage with 2 tile sharing is the special tiles...
Horse/Circus, Incense, Wine/Monastery, Marble/Wonders...
these are the only tiles with reasons not to be settle on.

 

[Zenstrive]

I am now trying to pack the cities where in the end two cities can smack a unit wandering in the area

 

[SuperSmurf]

never mind, wrong thread

 

[Monthar]

I try to have no more than 3 hexes between cities, ie 3 that I have to put a road on, because more than 3 tiles of road between cities kills the money you'd make on the trade route. Machu Pichu's +20% trade route income and I think one of the SPs would cover longer roads.

 

[Paeanblack]

If you pack them tightly, you can connect 7 cities using only 8 road tiles.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Whatever hooks up the luxuries is generally best, unless you're going for ICS.

 

[Slowpoke]

Even ICS should start out as luxuries first. I say go whatever distance it takes to get all the luxuries in your area, then backfill as tight as possible.

 

[Azedenkae]

Isn't 6 hexes the 'ideal'?

Given that each city can work on stuff in a radius of 3 hexes around them... I mean obviously it's... not easy to get every city to have all the three hexes around them, but y'know... 'ideal'...

 

[Monthar]

Isn't 6 hexes the 'ideal'?

Given that each city can work on stuff in a radius of 3 hexes around them... I mean obviously it's... not easy to get every city to have all the three hexes around them, but y'know... 'ideal'...

If you only farmed all those tiles, built every+food building, allied with every maritime city state and waited hundreds of turns, you might get a city with a high enough population to actually work all those tiles. That's 36 tiles plus the 1 person in the city center, so a population of 37 is required to work all those tiles. Sure it can be done, but you won't get all your cities that large. Plus you'd be using up most, if not all of your happiness supporting that one super sized city.

 

[Paeanblack]

Isn't 6 hexes the 'ideal'?

No, it's not. Space does not constrain you; happiness does. You never find yourself in a situation where you have excess happiness and not enough tiles to work.

If you want to get the most production out of a finite happiness allotment, you want to work the best possible tiles, and those are the city tiles. Even though there is a baseline penalty of 1 extra unhappiness for "working" a city tile, it's worth more than 2 regular tiles.

Working lots of city tiles with a finite amount of happiness means lots of small cities. Small cities don't need land, and spacing them farther apart just means extra road costs.

 

[Paeanblack]

Isn't 6 hexes the 'ideal'?

No, it's not. Space does not constrain you; happiness does. You never find yourself in a situation where you have excess happiness and not enough tiles to work.

If you want to get the most benefits out of a finite happiness allotment, you want to work the best possible tiles, and those are the city tiles. Even though there is a baseline penalty of 1 extra unhappiness for "working" a city tile, doing so is worth more than 2 regular tiles.

Working lots of city tiles with a finite amount of happiness means lots of small cities. Small cities don't need land, and spacing them farther apart just means extra road costs.

^This is my best description of why ICS is so strong.

 

[Martin Alvito]

^This is my best description of why ICS is so strong.

It's not just that. It's also the way Science is calculated, limited Specialist options and the punitive food curve. ICS yields HPT and GPT at the cost of Science, with the promise of earning back the Science deficit later. If running ICS meant shooting yourself in the foot hard enough on Science, you'd find that it wasn't worthwhile post-REX.

As it stands, the opportunity cost is low enough to make ICS viable.

 

[Slynky333]

Sorry, but what does ICS mean. Thanks!

 

[Azedenkae]

If you only farmed all those tiles, built every+food building, allied with every maritime city state and waited hundreds of turns, you might get a city with a high enough population to actually work all those tiles. That's 36 tiles plus the 1 person in the city center, so a population of 37 is required to work all those tiles. Sure it can be done, but you won't get all your cities that large. Plus you'd be using up most, if not all of your happiness supporting that one super sized city.

Like I said... 'ideal'. Like, the best scenario, ever...