Picking Settlement Spots?

[sreo3]

Hello,

Does anyone have advice for picking spots? I know the AI sometimes provides the blue circle but are those always the best spots? What are some minimum resources you should look for?

Thanks in advance. I've been playing a long time but I just realized I never really thought in depth about such a simple topic.

 

[yanner39]

Pick spots with food resources. Food makes your cities grow. With your earlier cities, try and settle them with a food resource in the first ring to make that city productive from the get go.

Also, you for spots that have production like hills or a strategic resource such as copper, iron or horses.

Another good spot in a city besides fresh water such as a river or lake for Health.

A city with lots of forests is also a good play for chopping trees for production.

Look for special tiles such as gold or gems, etc...

Don't always go by the blue circle.

 

[Gwynnja]

Pick spots with food resources.

^^^This. A wise old sage used to say "settle near resource clusters." That's good advice too. Settling on rivers is beneficial because it adds health, allows trading, and enables levees. Settling on the coast is beneficial because you can build harbors to increase health, allows trading, and enables you to build naval units. If you haven't learned to specialize your cities yet, you should.

 

[gorf37]

Once you have scouted around your capital (try to scout all the way around out to a distance of 5-10 squares), it is useful to stop for a minute to plan city sites. This is often called 'dot-mapping' on the forums, as it usually involves putting a note on each of your planned cities to remind you.

Other than when grabbing a strategic resource (copper,iron,horse, sometimes stone/marble) there aren't many cases when your 2nd city won't be within that 7-12 tile radius from your capital's tile that you've scouted out. Putting the first couple of cities close together will help with establishing roads and not wasting turns walking your workers all over the map.

I'd say the #1 thing to focus on in terms of what tiles make up your cities' big-fat-crosses is

Food Although cities without a food resource can work sometimes, it's definitely sub-optimal. If they don't have a food resource, they'd better be mostly grassland. (I expect that higher level players would actually say NEVER found without a food resource.) Cities with only one food resource should generally also have grassland tiles, or else plan on having them stagnate at a low population and be used for a specific purpose. (Eg. tundra cities that capture a silver resource.) Cities with more than one food resource are very flexible. If the food is farmable, think about how to get it irrigated. If the food is from calendar, think about how long it will be to get calendar, and consider if founding another city first and delaying this one is the way to go. Cities with more than 2 food resources are generally very good city spots. You may want to settle them first, as they'll be great at producing workers/settlers, and can generate infrastruture from slavery with ease.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Hello,

Does anyone have advice for picking spots? I know the AI sometimes provides the blue circle but are those always the best spots? What are some minimum resources you should look for?

Thanks in advance. I've been playing a long time but I just realized I never really thought in depth about such a simple topic.

One quick add - pay very little attention to the blue circles. A clue can be found in the AI city placement. I find blue circles are SELDOM the best spots. The AI is famous for settling one off the coast, for example.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

You might want to try reading through some sample game threads, there is often extensive discussion about where to settle. Check out the various dot-maps and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various sites.

 

[xenex]

I agree with Ataxerxes, its probably better to just turn them off, so your decision are based on what you can see and your own determination of what is better, then to be tempted to see what the blue circle wants you to see or even worse putting a city where it wants and when you look at the site you cant figure out why the game wanted you to put the city there.


Its better to put a city in a bad spot, because you want to put the city there, say for example putting a city near the only horse resource nearby but which doesn't have food, in other words the city is there just to claim horse, then moving to the blue circle which is on the coast and on a plains hill, but which doesn't give you that horse you want.

In general you want to be on the coast and you would like to be able to settle on a hill, but if its the horse you want then the blue circle is pretty pointless.

 

[Riflin'Joe]

Thanks to its defensive programming, the AI often seems to want to settle on hills for the defense bonus, which is why so many of those blue circles are on hill tiles. But that's usually a waste of production potential. As other posters have said, ignore the blue circles or turn them off altogether.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Blue circles might tip off resources before you can see them. In that sense they can be useful.

 

[jgroth1978]

Blue circles might tip off resources before you can see them. In that sense they can be useful.

This is a good point, and one that I've experienced in my games.

 

[Mylene]

After scouting a bit, click on "toggle show all ressource display".
You will get a pretty nice overview on what you have nearby.
Some res. are more valuable than others, with the best being the big food ressources like Pigs, Corn or Fish, and the worst a dry rice.
Gold and Gems are the best hapiness ressources, these can provide a big boost to your economy early, so that is a very nice 2nd city with one of those.
Ivory is great also. And the ones for units, copper and horses.

So the perfect second city would have Pigs and Corn, Copper & Gold
But being more specific as that never happens, look for what you need early. Copper or Horses on higher difficulties are very nice for defense, as a bonus a city with copper gets a nice early production boost for settlers and workers.

If you don't have so many ressources around, a rule of thumb is that you want at least 1 food ressource in a new city. Else you can forget the whip here, and everything takes forever. Hills are also good, but they are not as important. Thanks to slavery, you can make up for the production lack if you have enough food.
And finally, a city on a river > a city without.