Overlapping city tiles

[Ansar]

I NEVER, EVER, overlap city tiles, guess that means im a builder.
But I also heard that it is smart to overlap your first cities with your capital to get good shield and less corruption, so should I overlap?

 

[Tomoyo]

Of course. The question is not "if", but "how much".

 

[namliaM]

LOL I raised my game from Regent to Emporer by overlapping...

 

[Aegis Shield]

Yeah, overlapping seems counterintuitive when you first out, at least it did for me. But the bonuses of overlapping are pretty tangible. Off the top of my head you get: more cities that are equally productive in the same area(Up until sanitation, anyways), less corruption in more cities, more defensive movement, it takes less movement to go between cities, the AI are less able to squeeze in cities in culture cracks, and some more stuff.

I think I overlap a little heavily, as most of my cities max out at 13-16 spaces available to use. Though when I do find a spectacular city sight and I intend to go into the industrial and modern ages, I'll often give it the optimal 21 spaces just so it can become a shield-power house. This is especially important with 20k cities, I think.

 

[Rittarx the Bol]

LOL I raised my game from Regent to Emporer by overlapping...

I was always paranoid about overlapping, but noticed the computer always did it a bunch in all the Civ games and wondered why.

This is something new I really need to try.

 

[AlanH]

Apart from their adverse effects on territorial efficiency, corruption and shield efficiency, 21-tile cities are a great idea

1. Territory The standard game lasts 540 turns. You rarely get sanitation before turn 240 (1250 AD), and by then you should have your game sewn up. So for the critical first half of your game your "non-overlapping" 21 tile cities are wasting 50% of your tiles, even if they all have fresh water or aqueducts. In practice it's probably much more than 50%. Cities with 12 tiles each are not overlapping until the stage in the game when you should have won.

2. Corruption Your 21-tile cities are, on average, further away from the capital than my 12-tile cities, so yours experience higher distance corruption than mine.

3. Shield usage In order to close your cultural borders all your 21-tile cities have to build culture early. My 12-tile cities are close enough to enclose the borders with no culture builds, saving shields for useful builds ... like military units .

 

[DBear]

That's an opposite view from what I've seen, Rittarx. The AI in my games always spaces their cities loosely. There are usually several tiles between cities unaccounted for.

 

[Aegis Shield]

Yeah, I noticed the AI always seems to go for OCP, with very little overlap.

Which, coupled with their irrigation-fetish, makes AI cities obscenely huge in the later industrial and modern era. The worst offender that I've seen are the bablyons, on one archipelago game I had to invade their home island where the smallest city was size 20something, ranging up to the low 40s. Needless to say, initiating a slash and burn conquest style yielded far more workers than I knew what to do with.

 

[Rittarx the Bol]

Maybe I just noticed it more when on the warpath all the cities were overlapping slightly if not more. I guess I just always liked all my cities to never overlap whenever possible.

 

[madviking]

I some times ICP on an island start.

But on regular maps, CxxC or some CxxxC

 

[Own]

cxxc, plenty overlappage but almost every city has 12 tiles, and I'm not think too far ahead to sanitation. For building fun on low difficulty, OCP is the way to go.

 

[Tesuji]

As always, there's no single correct way. It depends on the map. I mainly distinguish two cases:

- My capital is going to be a settler pump. The first ring is built closely around it because the capital is not going to grow until after the expansion phase. And also, neighbouring cities can use the unused worker improvements of the capital each time it produces a settler and loses two pop.

- My capital is going to grow from the start. In that case I mark the 12 juiciest tiles around it and won't let neighbours overlap those.

In both cases, the second ring of cities are going to be spaced much more closely to avoid corruption and to make maximum use of the available terrain.

 

[Himalia]

I try to not overlap but sometimes it works well when you get a bunch of good land that is clusterd together and you just want to share out some of those food bonus tiles.

 

[Own]

If done right (I think), 3 cows as a non agri civ can make 2 settler factories.

 

[antonio]

I try to space them out near my capital but the further away I get from it the more i overlap.

 

[Tomoyo]

If done right (I think), 3 cows as a non agri civ can make 2 settler factories.

Of course, the cows need to be grassland and there needs to be some ample other good non-bonus tiles.

 

[GoodGame]

In the standard game, overlapping by 1-3 tiles is negligible since the cities never get above size 12 usually (Hospitals are almost always made well past when they're discovered, unless you luck out with an accidentally strong resource pool---most energy goes to securing all the resource types).

I usually overlap 3 cities together by 1-3 tiles, but no more than that. Especially for the capital. They can be settler/worker factories, and abandoned later if they force the capital to make specialists too early (i.e. before 12 pop). It reduces corruption when that 1 lost shield can actually be 10-50% of your GNP.


With harbors and lots of coast (2-4 tiles at least), overlapping is necessary to get the most people, and specialists, while still getting max possible shields from your territory.

With Expansionism, I can see avoiding overlapping, and just going for premium spots, but even then, the first 1-2 cities after the capital are usually best intended as worker/settler factories.
And new regional capitals might be served best by worker factories between them and the capital (using 1-2 overlapping tiles).

 

[GoodGame]

And if you won't be building up your culture for a long time, overlapping might be the best way to max use of bonus tiles/luxuries.

 

[henry k c]

I sometimes have support cities, if my unit support is too high, I squeeze in a city and use the citizen as a taxman/scientist. That way only 1 tile is ruined and you get some cash.

 

[onomastikon]

Questions from a newbie:

- Won't overlapping to save corruption due to distance become negligable fairly soon once you start your domination process, at the latest once you start military or even cultural takeovers?
- Won't overlapping to save corruption due to distance shortly become negligable due to corruption from too many cities (>Nopt)? (THIS, actually, is what I, Newbimus Maximus, find most dissapointing about this game, btw; I liked to have lots of cities, but soon find that new ones are good for absolutely nothing but placeholders for territory and stations for airplanes. I wish that Optimal Number of Cities were much higher, or corruption was dealt with differently. But I am just a newb.)
- What exactly is CxxC vs CxxxC?
- @Alan and other Pros of his League: If the game is "wrapped up" or decided around the time you mention, doesn't that make Civ3 boring for you? Do you usually quit games then, or do you play them out?