Optimum City Distribution

[molesworth]

When building cities do you try to avoid overlapping their territory? I usually do as a habit I developed playing Civ II. I have done this ever since reading in the Civ II manual to avoid city overlap. However I wonder how essential other players deem it to be. Obviously it is very rare for all cities to get to a size where they use all the terrain around them. This maybe a reason not to be too concerned about avoiding overlap. What do you think?

 

[Tomoyo]

Trying to avoid overlap wastes tiles. Before the industrial age, each city can only use thirteen tiles (including the city tile). Any tile not being worked is wasted.

Tight cities look ugly though. There once was a great player named Sirian who always played with loosely spaced cities, and it never seemed to bother him.

In the end, unless your cities are so far apart that you are actually missing multiple tiles with your spacing, it's just a matter of personal preference.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

The advantage of loose spacing is needing fewer cities, and getting less corruption, thus when you have a really good place 8 tiles from the capital (maybe a city with gold and wines), it is much less corrupt than if you did tighter spacing. Your cities may grow faster, because you aren't expanding quite as much. (ie, if you have a settler factory, you can stop it earlier and have it start pumping out workers who can be used to drive growth in size 7 cities, because they grow slowly)

At higher levels, it's almost always more efficient to use closer spacing, though, because you get more cities, more unit support and more productivity, to offset the AI advantages.

 

[Jazzmail]

Overlap has big advantages:

1. settlers have less far to travel
2. roads connecting cities are shorter
3. less tiles have to be worked
4. close cities are easier to defend
5. settler factory cities can share the same tiles (build in counter phase)
6. more cities
7. less distance corruption (more rank corruption ofcourse :-( )

The only compelling reason not to is city ring placement.

 

[-Fate-]

You can have ring city placement with loosely spaced cities too. (Also, ring city placement works against you in C3C)

(Off-topic) Tomoyo, you have my name in your title!

 

[iguana1]

I'm pleasantly surprised with the balanced answers here so far. Most city placement threads I've seen all expound the excellence that is tight placement and decree that having them spreadout is the worst thing in the history of gaming (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but just a little ).

Anyway, depending on your playstyle, closer placement can definitely be the much more powerful way to go, particularly if you are a warmonger type. Personally, I like to develop big, sprawling cities with lots of improvements and generally play more of a peaceful game. That said, I generally build quite a few of my cities closer together than I ever did in previous civ versions. As Tomoyo points out, it will be a LONG time before you have hospitals and can make full use of the 21 tiles available in a city radius. Basically I build my cities more to fit the terrain so if that means a few tiles overlap, then so be it. However, I sometimes still have to fight the powerful urge to move an extra square away to prevent it from happening when I'm not really gaining anything by it.

 

[molesworth]

Thanks for your answers. To increase my understanding further please could you explain these concepts: 1. building in counter phase
2. distance corruption
3. rank corruption
4. ring city placement

 

[Tomoyo]

1. No idea what counter phase is.
2 and 3. The corruption a city gets is based on two factors: the distance from the capital and the 'rank' of the city (e.g. fourth closest to the capital). A city that's ten tiles from the capital but is the eighth closest city would have more corruption than one that's ten tiles from the capital but is the second closest city.
4. Ring City Placement (RCP) involves placing your cities in 'rings' so that each ring consists of cities that are equidistant from your capital. In vanilla civ, this is an enormous advantage, since all the cities would be counted as the lowest 'rank' when calculating corruption. In C3C, all the cities would be counted as the highest rank, so it backfires.

 

[molesworth]

Thanks for that Tomoyo. I understand RCP now. Still find rank corruption and distance corruption a bit confusing though. I.e if there are 2 cities 10 tiles from the capital how can one be eighth closest and the other second closest? Is it to do with when they were established?

 

[molesworth]

Ok, just thought about it, think I get it now. Eighth closest would mean other cities were close to it while second closest would mean no other cities were that close. Does that make sense?

 

[Tomoyo]

I plucked this screenshot from Crazyluke's game in another thread.

Thebes is the capital; rank corruption is 1 (It just is), and distance corruption is 0 (it's zero tiles away from the capital).

Memphis, Elephantine, and Heliopolis are all tied for second closest. If this were vanilla, they would all have a rank corruption of 2. If this were C3C, they would have rank corruptions of 2, 3 and 4, in order of founding.

Pi-Ramesses and Alexandria are both 4 tile away, and would be 5 and 6 in C3C, but just 5 in vanilla.

Ok, just thought about it, think I get it now. Eighth closest would mean other cities were close to it while second closest would mean no other cities were that close. Does that make sense?

Yep, exactly.

 

[molesworth]

Thanks for the examples and explanation Tomoyo!

 

[Jazzmail]

Thanks for your answers. To increase my understanding further please could you explain these concepts: 1. building in counter phase

When you complete a settler unit, the city looses 2 population. If the city was about to grow 1 population, while popping a settler that will be 2-1=1 pop face lost.
That means the citizens will be working either 1 or 2 fewer tiles until the city can regrow those lost citizens.

Now if you arrange it so that those unworked tiles are in the overlap zone with a neighbouring city, those tiles become available to that neighbour.

Suppose these two cities (settler factories) pop out settlers at the same time (in phase) there may still be small benefit if one city is surrounded by better food tiles (eg one city could be surround by grass lands and the other city surrounded by irrigated floodplains) so the poor city grabs some better tiles from the rich city while both cities are still small.

Now if the build period is, say 8 turns, then if city 1 pops on turn 4 while the other city pops on turn 8 (counterphase), one settler factory will always be at it's largest while the neighbour will be at at it's smallest size. This means that the best food tiles on the overlap will always be exploited.
You can get away with irrigating fewer tiles, because tiles will always be available for sharing.

 

[Jazzmail]

You can have ring city placement with loosely spaced cities too. (Also, ring city placement works against you in C3C)

After I build my capital, the first thing I do is try to figure out the optimal radius for my ring, taking in account space (coasts are a big limiting factor), bonus resources and the time I reckon I will have undisturbed by AIs.

Bigger radius is better in principle, because I'll be able to fit more rank 2 cities on that ring. I like a big circumfence.
I'll be able to fit more rank 2 cities within the larger disc surrounding my forgotten palace city too.
I rarely space the cities loosely on the first ring. Usually they got enough decent tiles available along the spokes of the wheel, so that's typically a distance of 2 or 3 tiles.

The big question is how much room will I leave for my capital. Sometimes even more than 21 tiles limit, when I feel like taking a risk. Overlap is very good, but RCP works so well, I'm willing to set those guidelines aside for my capital.

 

[Desertsnow]

I have widly varying spacing in my games; this varies somewhat, but as a rule my first few cities are space apart (cxxxxc generally) to get a jump on expansion but after that they tend to get placed progressively closer. This works for me.

 

[RFHolloway]

There is a siginficant advantage in having cities 3 spaces apart, as units from one city can reinforce the other city in 1 turn. This can be useful to deal with happiness issues in despotism. This is also is about the range that gives each city about 12 tiles to work if you make those 3 spaces on the diagonal. Once you get to the corrupt cities 4 spaces apart is better as it will allow you to claim territory faster - useful if you are going for domination, the exception is 100k where you need to pack the cities in as tight as possible.

 

[MAS]

Once you get to the corrupt cities 4 spaces apart is better as it will allow you to claim territory faster - useful if you are going for domination, the exception is 100k where you need to pack the cities in as tight as possible.

4 spaces mean the city needs a culture improvement, and a corrupt city can't pay the upkeep for that.

I would build cities as close as possible in corrupt area's More cities, means more free unit support, more gold/science from specialist, more of the single uncorrupted commerce, and more of the single uncorrupted shields turned into 1 gpt with wealth. And no upkeep cost because you don't build anything in these cities.

 

[Tone]

There is a siginficant advantage in having cities 3 spaces apart, as units from one city can reinforce the other city in 1 turn. ... Once you get to the corrupt cities 4 spaces apart is better as it will allow you to claim territory faster

4 spaces mean the city needs a culture improvement, and a corrupt city can't pay the upkeep for that.

Based upon RFHolloway saying that 3 spaces enables you to reinforce cities in one turn, I read from that that his definition of 4 spaces and yours are different, MAS. His could be described as CxxxC as the next city is four tiles away from the previous one, not a gap of four tiles inbetween two cities.

Note that using CxxxxC does enable you to claim the land as no AI will plant a city inbetween those two cities. The land will not fall within your cultural borders and so you cannot use it but you are free to take it with another settler at your leisure. If the land is mainly grass, I tend to use CxxxC to claim the land for specialist farms and put another town in the middle when I have more settlers as it is more efficient but if the land has quite a few mountains, using CxxxxC to stop the AI for claiming it can be the better option.

 

[RFHolloway]

Based upon RFHolloway saying that 3 spaces enables you to reinforce cities in one turn, I read from that that his definition of 4 spaces and yours are different, MAS. His could be described as CxxxC as the next city is four tiles away from the previous one, not a gap of four tiles inbetween two cities.

Good catch Tone - CXXC is best for city reinforement, my other point is that CXXXC doesn't need a cultural expansion to get all the tiles - the culture will "bridge" over the gap that would otherwise be 1 tile wide. That can be useful in the back of beyond.

 

[Desertsnow]

4 spaces mean the city needs a culture improvement, and a corrupt city can't pay the upkeep for that.

That's another reason that I tend to build cities closer together the further I expand.