Pole City?

[Verbis Doodn]

Can I build a city on North or South Pole?
Ok well, I can't, but I was wondering if there are versions (I only have the 474.05) where this was possible? Or some other way to make it happen?

And yes, I agree, there's very limited benefit from building anything there*, but just for the heck of it ;-)
In this amazing forum so many crazy things have been investigated by you guys ... but I haven't been able to find an answer to this rather simple question.

*except maybe in a game with very limited landmass, to build a pole city next to an otherwise unexploitable fish could grow ones civ a bit more.

 

[Verbis Doodn]

Further thoughts: the ORDERS menu normally adapts to the situation and only shows the available options. For my settler on the north pole, it does show "found new city". Made me wonder: if the entry is there, it should be possible (have been possible in an earlier version?).

Examples:

1. normal landmass, plains:
   new city, irrigation, forest etc. all available (as expected)
   
   
   
   
   
2. normal landmass, arctic:
   new city available, but no entry for irrigation, forest etc. (as expected)
   
   
   
   
   
3. north pole, arctic:
   new city available (but no action when selected)
   
   
   
   

 

[Mize]

You can build cities on the poles in version .01, but it does indeed offer almost no value. Best case scenario would be 2 fish squares, which would allow the city to work 3 more ocean tiles... or 5 if you railroad the fish. But it would be hard to build improvements with no shields. By building on the poles you also risk building near the seam of the world, where the map wraps around to form the illusion of a globe. Cities built there are bugged and can't use some of the squares in their area -- the squares that are in the columns of ocean that make up the seam.

If we're generally taking of building on barren land though, that can be very useful, especially in version .01, where having a large number of cities doesn't compound the general unhappiness of your civilization. Also in version .01, you can turn Elvis dudes to taxmen and scientists even in size 1 cities, unlike in version .05, where you need the city to reach size 5 to do that. What this basically means is that you can milk otherwise useless and isolated tundra and arctic squares with deer/seals for cash and science. Corruption-free cash and science.

 

[tupi]

You can build cities on the poles in version .01

So that's why I remember this! It doesn't work in latest versions so I decided that maybe I just mix up Colonization and Civ or it was just a children dream. Like, maybe I only thought about it, but never actually founded a city on the poles. But I did. Just in .01. Now it makes sense.

So it seems the only reason they removed it was the seam of the world. And if I remember correctly, you still can found some cities on the Earth map in this area, in Australia and 1 square in Alaska. Sad that they didn't wrap the world properly, it's pretty easy.