[Poll] Generally, what do you prioritize when settling a new city?

[Victoria]

If you have plains or grassland then unless you are a civ that benefits from these you will struggle.
This means for the majority, hills and trees +resources
Hills are great in this game, 50% better than flat at the start but can be mined for so much more.
Woods/jungle can be worked slowly or chopped fast depending on how you want to play your game.
I seriously struggle with peoples chop concept, deforestation is everywhere in real life with some exceptions.

just like I struggle with the options in the poll. A primary driver for a city would be for a variety of reasons like a coastal to explore further faster, a grassland area for Rapa Nui, a double reef or triple mountain for campus adjacency, a river for an early market planning for Big Ben. These should be why you are settling cities unless playing immersively. Beyond primary driver you chose good food/production tiles and city growth as well as what resources are around.

but if you play a faster game, chop is you main driver in most cities because it is so strong.

 

[Karmah]

I really can't answer this poll, I could remove the balance of food vs production because I can do without for some specialized city but all the other criteria are each enough a reason for me to drop a city. And which of the five remaining criteria takes priority varies from game to game.This variation that makes the early game so interesting. And early game is really the most exciting time in civ.

 

[kryat]

Occasionally, I will settle somewhere for the fun of playing an aggressively defensive city (though this is less common than for general expansion), especially if I have a hostile neighbor.

It’s hilarious watching the AI mount a cavalry charge across a river into a row of fortified anti-cav sitting atop wooded hills in their attempt to flank one of your border cities.