Is AI settling its cities too dense?

[historix69]

I noticed that AI usually settles cities very close using only the minimal distance of 3 tiles (City - Tile - Tile - Tile - City). This causes a huge overlap of the cities' influence area. Since many tiles are unusable being water or mountain or have restricted use due to resources, this leaves not much space for the cities to build districts or wonders and later to expand and grow. It is also no fun to conquer and keep such cities later.

Would it help to set "CITY_MIN_RANGE" Value="3" to "CITY_MIN_RANGE" Value="4" or would it limit the human player too much?

 

[slowcar]

I prefer to do that myself as well, huge cities are a thing of the past, in VI you can keep a lot of cities around size 7, no need for 20 usable tiles.
You can easily mod that (or change it yourself) to try it.

 

[isau]

I think a distance of 3 to 4 is pretty good. I personally often settle around 5 tiles away. But from a defense perspective, generally closer together = better.

 

[historix69]

If you build City - Tile - Camp - Tile - City ... it is easy to defend once you have built walls ... but it looks more like an organic structure but not like a country with small towns which later grow to cities.

When cities are build 6 tiles apart (City - 6 Tiles - City), each city has the full 36 tiles in its radius to place improvements, districts, wonders.
When cities are build 4 tiles apart (City - 4 Tiles - City), the number is reduced to 24 which is still ok.
When cities are build 3 tiles apart (City - 3 Tiles - City), the number goes down to 15. Reduce the number for tiles with water, mountains, districts, wonders and there won't be many tiles left to work.

 

[Rosty K]

Since it almost never grows them too large, this seems to be adequate behavior.

 

[Locke_Daemonfire]

I just started playing this game recently, so I admit I'm a bit late to the party on this topic. I'm sure there have already been in-depth analyses of why it's better to build 'wide' than it was in Civ 5, but here is what I'm discovering.

Low benefits of tall cities
- Flat vs percentage based modifiers. The districts and their buildings do the same amount of work regardless of the population size. There are like two wonders that have a percentage bonus, but I think that's it.
- No inherent penalty for extra cities. In Civ 5 there was a happiness hit for having additional cities. In Civ 6, actually you get one amenity-free population in every city.

Limitations on tall cities
- Nonlinear growth. This was always true, but each population point is progressively harder to get than the last. Small cities grow much faster.
- Housing. Each city gets some free housing, and provides the chance to get more housing through buildings. This is especially important earlier in the game when housing is harder to come by.
- Border growth seems slower. I'm not sure about this one, but I get the feeling that borders grow more slowly in this game. If I place cities with more than 4 tiles between them, I find that there is unowned land between them for a lot longer than I would expect. I suspect that this is partly because I rarely build cultural districts unless going for that victory condition specifically.

Benefits of densely packed cities
- Increased number of copies of a district. Some districts are much more important than others.
- Increased efficiency for AOE district buildings (eg. factory, zoo).
- Fewer dead tiles. Border growth aside, putting cities at the maximum distance makes it likely that some tiles are not in range of any city.

As a result, there no longer seems to be a benefit to maximizing the number of tiles worked per city. Instead, there is a focus on maximizing the number of tiles worked overall. There are some small benefits to getting very tall cities, such as saving on settler production and centralizing production for wonders. But I think those benefits are outweighed by the benefits of just putting down as many cities as possible, as counterintuitive as that is.

 

[historix69]

You are right. At the moment in Civ 6 many small cities are better.

I think amenities from religion, district + buildings and wonders can sum up to around 10 for each city, so in theory you could have endless number of size 20 cities without using your luxuries. Excess happyness grants a nice production bonus up to 10%. So the free base amenities favour smaller cities, too. (Which is also kind of good since different map sizes have different number of cities while number of different amenities is limited.)

If there would be a happyness bonus based on number of happy citizens in the city (e.g. +1% per happy citizen), tall cities of the right size would be more powerfull, e.g. 25 different amenities from several sources, size 50 city is happy -> +50% bonus to everything.
Growing cities would be easier when happy population would grow faster (-> "We love the President-Day" - Bonus).

 

[joncnunn]

Under Civ VI mechanics, it's best as is overall. Now there may be specific instances where perhaps the AI should have founded a city one tile away from where it did, but since there's no global happiness with a number of cities component in Civ VI it doesn't matter as much as it did in Civ V.

 

[gettingfat]

I love tall, but this game encourages wide too much. Even getting a 4 pop city as a satellite town building only a commercial hub and an encampment and then just run commercial projects will give you more return and defense than adding 4 pop to the original city.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I love tall, but this game encourages wide too much. Even getting a 4 pop city as a satellite town building only a commercial hub and an encampment and then just run commercial projects will give you more return and defense than adding 4 pop to the original city.

preach on, brother!

My experience has been that the AI will found it's original 2 or 3 cities (depending on what difficulty level you're at) as close as possible, but then they are usually a little more spaced out with the settlers that they actually build.

 

[Disgustipated]

Even if it's not optimal (although I think it still is), I like large cities. It makes my empire feel more grand having powerhouse cities. The reason why I say its still optimal is because larger cities do generally have more production. Who doesn't want things built quicker? Of course you run into amenity problems, that's why I build entertainment complexes (which I know diminishes the actual turn savings from higher production, but I don't build that many of them, I wait for overlap with zoos). From a role playing perspective, having at least 3 great, thriving cities is satisfying. I like to shoot for 3 powerhouse cities, and most of the rest average with maybe 1 or 2 small cities that are for strategic use only (or for resources). For my definition large is 20 +, average is 10 to 20, and small is less than 10. I would love to get 30 + cities, but that almost never happens before game time runs out.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I shoot for a few in the 20s, majority 10-20, and a few that are going to be smaller.
I prefer 5-6 tiles between major cities, so I have room for districts and wonders.
(I go after the ones with a policy slot and I love the Venetian Arsenal)
After the major cities, it's all a matter of what I'm after (resources, cut off their settling etc)

I stick smaller cities in places just to close off borders so they can't forward settle (and I've seen them do just that)

 

[nzcamel]

Under Civ VI mechanics, it's best as is overall. Now there may be specific instances where perhaps the AI should have founded a city one tile away from where it did, but since there's no global happiness with a number of cities component in Civ VI it doesn't matter as much as it did in Civ V.

It's just annoying for us if we're conquoring their cities

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

They do like to settle either very close, or all over the bloody map.

I wish razing a city worked like the old Call To Power. You got a settler when you disbanded a city.
(of course, pounding a city with arty would reduce the population too)

For dom games, I may just decide "frack it, I'm gonna raze everything but capitals and put my own settlers in where it makes sense)