Overlapping city crosses

[Padmewan]

Correct me if I'm screwing something up, but I just found out to my displeasure that overlapping city "fat crosses" deny tiles to the later city to be found as a hard-and-fast rule, unlike in Civ3 where you could micro-manage your city workers to swap tiles between nearby cities.

I assume this change was made to discourage ICS / encourage OCP or even more spaced-out city placement.

I "discovered" this (probably this was covered already ad nauseum) when I flipped an English city after putting a city near it to grab resources. My city is now starving because the English city is grabbing all of its farms.

Is my hypothesis correct, or is there some way to swap tiles among cities?

 

[eewallace]

I think you may be right that the last city to be acquired by your civ gets the square. I've only had this happen once, but it was the same thing you described.

On the other hand, it is also at least a possibility that the larger of the two cities gets the tile. The one I took over was considerably larger than the one I built nearby.

 

[snepp]

Open the city window and simply click on the tile you want the city to work, it will now become unavailable to the other city.

Edit:

This bit was confusing...

My city is now starving because the English city is grabbing all of its farms.

First you said it flipped, then you said it's stealing your farms, then said it's an English city. Is it your city, or their city that's keeping you from working tiles?

 

[Padmewan]

Open the city window and simply click on the tile you want the city to work, it will now become unavailable to the other city.

Thanks; hope it works. The reason why I thought I was screwed was that in city view, the tile I wanted to work was no longer even showing resource icons at all. Hopefully I can still click on teh tile.

To eewallace: it's not the larger city, the city I flipped was size 1 and the starving city was 12. Also, the flipped city wasn't even working that particular tile.

 

[snepp]

Thanks; hope it works. The reason why I thought I was screwed was that in city view, the tile I wanted to work was no longer even showing resource icons at all. Hopefully I can still click on teh tile.

To eewallace: it's not the larger city, the city I flipped was size 1 and the starving city was 12. Also, the flipped city wasn't even working that particular tile.

This answers my confusion, so yes, the solution I provided will work for you. Once you see how it works you'll find that it's a significant improvement over Civ3's handling of overlapping borders.