Quick advice for city placement with screens

Handel

Prince
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Nov 29, 2005
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I am starting a lot of new games lately trying to "grasp" more understanding then the mere casual play.
So in my new game I have to put my first city quickly S of Rome to prevent the AI from settling and grasp 2 golds and a lot of flood plains but I try to decide what is better:
Screen 1: NO access to water (very important because of the flood plains) and 1 useless tile; but quick grab of the iron and possibility to place a little bit later a rather mediocre coastal city with quick grab of sea resource.
Screen 2: Access to water and no useless tiles; but lot of turns until the iron is grabbed and either 2 overlapped tiles with the coastal city or forfeiting it. There is a lot of land to grab and the AI will 100 % settle the coastal spot relatively soon at the worst possible place (as usually).
Screen 3: Access to water, quick grab of the iron and no overlapping with the coastal city - but 3 useless tiles.
 

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number 3. Useless tiles are much less important than water or good resources. Overlap isn't that important either for the same reason. If you have less than 5 or so tiles of overlap/unusable, there's no reason to pick another location. It will take most of the game until a city can be happy and healthy at 15 or more.
 
Take city 3. Also settle 3S1E of city 3 for another city grabbing wheat, marble, horse, and more floodplains. City 3 is your classic bureaucracy capital - cottage it up, swap capital there eventually, run the Bureaucracy civic, and watch your research skyrocket. The city south and east of there is a good GP farm - farm it's FPs, grow it up to size-10 or so working like 5 specialists.

Those two sites by themselves might be enough to handle research until Liberalism. Your starting capital and Cumae are great production sites.
 
I like position #3 as well.

One way to visualize it to mentally replace the "worthless" tiles with flat, resourceless plains tiles, which are at the bottom of the pecking order as far as working them is concerned.

Then think about how the city will play out at size 5, 10, 15.

On this map, your cows/clams city might be a bit weak to be part of your initial set of cities. Gold/Iron/Floods is very strong; Horse/Wheat/Marble is very strong, there's a gorgeous wet cow tile to your west. It seems likely to me that these locations are more vulnerable to being stolen, and more costly if so, then the coastal city.
 
I think it is but I'm not sure : is Rome riverside ?
Rivers inside cultural borders connect the trade network even without Sailing. That may be very relevant to early settling :
- you don't need The Wheel before city 2 ;
- you can do with fewer workers for a little time.


Settling Antium by the gold to the south is nice but :
- the city will have a hard time growing to size 2 on floodplains alone. So either the benefit of the gold will be delayed, either the city will stagnate for some time ;
- Rome needs to produce a 2nd worker before the first settler so that you can road, improve Antium fast enough and keep some workforce active near your capital. Quite the agenda.

I would very much consider settling Antium 1NE of the western cows (rice & ivory in 2nd ring ; can share floodplains with Rome ; instant connection) if you go for early Animal Husbandry (sth like Agr, BW, Hunting, AH).
Getting a 6 yield tile in the 2nd city's inner ring would help a lot with further, southern, expansion. Being a central city, it would also help with western and northern expansion.
 
a rather mediocre coastal city

2 food resources, 2 hills, some rivertiles? Where's that mediocre? That's pretty good and easily above average.

I'd take #3 aswell. You should farm two floodplains here to grow into your tiles faster and to be able to grow after you work the gold, as soon as the city has reached ~size 6+ you can still switch those FPs with cottages if you want to.
 
2 food resources, 2 hills, some rivertiles? Where's that mediocre? That's pretty good and easily above average.

True, but I mean it is mediocre in the very beginning of the game when there is a lot of land to grab to block the AI in all directions. The AI capital is S just outside the screen it settled the coast quickly but it is easy pick later through the war.
 
Well, although that city needs a borderpop to be really good, i can see little spots in the vicinity that don't need a borderpop to become really useful. There are cities with less food that also need a borderpop (west of rome), cities with more food and hills that also need a borderpop (copper east), and ofc Antium, but that one will need incredible amounts of workerturns with those FPs, whereas cumae is fine with one worker maxium to pasture the horses and mine the two hills.

There are some nice spots, but almost all of them need borderpops, which is always a pita. I'm always trying to look out for a city next to my capital (6 shared tiles for optimum), a food resource (maybe a shared one from the cap) and two (grassland)hills WITHOUT a borderpop - those cities are the best to get your empire going quickly. From what i can see, you don't have something like that anywhere near you, and from the cities that do need a borderpop Cumae is actually one of the better ones.
 
I'm always trying to look out for a city next to my capital (6 shared tiles for optimum), a food resource (maybe a shared one from the cap) and two (grassland)hills WITHOUT a borderpop - those cities are the best to get your empire going quickly.
You mean you overlap with up to 6 tiles your initial 2 cities although there is more then enough land to settle in the beginning?
 
You mean you overlap with up to 6 tiles your initial 2 cities although there is more then enough land to settle in the beginning?

Yes, absolutely.
Minor benefits of overlap:
Shorter walking distance for settler, so city gets founded a turn or two earlier.
Shorter walking distance for workers, so you waste fewer worker turns getting over to improve it.
Shorter distance to connect with roads.
Lower upkeep due to less distance.
Easier joint barbarian defense.

Major benefits of overlap:
You can borrow a good resource tile from the capital which has already been improved to get your second city growing a couple sizes quickly.
You can swap mines and farms between cities depending on which needs surplus food and which needs production at a given moment.
You can jointly work cottages - each city spends part of it's time working a cottage. Neither has early production or growth hurt as much as working a cottage full-time, but the cottage still grows to town quickly.
You may not need a border pop in your second city (capital culture might be enough).

Should your second city always overlap with the first? No. But instead of looking for 20 workable tiles, you should be looking for 2-3 really great tiles (resource tiles, maybe floodplains), plus another 4-7 reasonably useful tiles (grass plains, grass hills, plains hills, maybe floodplains; riverside is a plus). Because your capital tends to get very strong terrain, it often can afford to share the wealth. Getting two strong size-6 or size-8 cities early is much more valuable than some turn way down the line getting a strong size-18 city.
 
You mean you overlap with up to 6 tiles your initial 2 cities although there is more then enough land to settle in the beginning?
The amount of overlap you choose is a personal choice, but its important to recognise that overlap has a number of advantages, and that the disadvantages are easily overexaggerated and by a large amount.

Advantages include
  • More trade routes,
  • Faster pop growth,
  • You can build more of the same building (e.g. more Libraries for more early scientist slots)
  • Your workers and settlers won't have to travel as far,
  • Overlapped tiles can be improved before the overlapping city is built,
  • Food can be shared to speed up growth,
  • Cottages can be worked by sattelite cities to grow them ready for a Bureacracy capital
  • More per city bonuses (GLH trade routes, wonder boosted temples, corporations, free specialists etc)
  • Lower reliance on getting early culture as you can either use an already improved food resource from another city to get started, or by not worrying about overlap your more free to place cities 1 tiles from a good food source.
  • Less reliance on health and happiness sources as each city has seperate caps
The disadvantages really aren't all that bad either;
  • Happy and Health caps start out low, limiting early growth. You won't be growing to large sizes in most cities till a long way into the game, if ever,
  • Super cities later can take the shared tiles from lesser cities if needed,
  • Some tiles, such as flat plains are generally poor till you have later techs anyway so cities don't need extra of these tiles.
  • Cities with lower populations are more efficient for whipping and drafting giving and advantage to having more smalller cities than fewer large ones
  • Few maps allow you to make use of all of your strong resource tiles without overlap
 
  • More trade routes


  • You mean that you have more cities and therefore have more traderoutes? Let's not forget that the traderoute value largely depends on the availability of foreign traderouts. Internal traderoutes don't cover the costs of more cities, so unless you have TGLH and have traderoutes with alot of cities, that doesn't count as an advantage.

    [*]Faster pop growth

    I fail to see how overlap enhances the pop growth, beside the sheer fact that you can share food resources. Is that what you meant?

    [*]You can build more of the same building (e.g. more Libraries for more early scientist slots)

    ?? Could you explain that please.

    [*]More per city bonuses (GLH trade routes, wonder boosted temples, corporations, free specialists etc)

    Although that is true, it's barely an advantage for overlap, rather a good reason for "Land is power!" where land equals cities, naturally. In the timeframe where you settle your cities, none of that advantages apply, except GLH ofc - but then again, as i wrote above, traderoutes have to be available. Packing cities tight solely for the traderoutes is seldom worth it. Still, i have to agree that it's a a reason nonetheless.

    Long story short: overlap YES YES YES! If you want to move up the difficulty ladder, learning to pack your cities tight is one of the most important skillsets to gain.

    As a rule of thumb, try to aim for:

    a) always work your best resources, namely food, high commerce (gold, gems) and high production. Switching tiles between cities is mandatory for that, of course.
    b) at least one city for every food resource
    c) when there are multiple food resources, check which additional tiles you might be able to work in the short run when splitting the resources into two cities. Especially look out for (grassland) hills and grassland overall.
    d) If you plan on cottaging your capital (and you should aim for that in the majority of your games), try to place 1-2 cities that help your cap to grow the cottages. The cap could meanwhile build workers or settlers with it's high food+production tiles - so you get the best out of your land tiles.
 
Sry to say this, but everytime I used overlap extensively in one of my games, I got DoWed early. DanF said in the thread about AI DoW behaviour, that "the closer one is to onesself" so "the smaller the space of the empire and the higher the population on that little space" "the more likely the DoW" and this is what I experienced. He also says that this is a bug in the Civ-Code, normally AI should check for the distance to themselves, not check the distance of the target to the target.

Am I completely wrong? Since I use overlap only sparely, I had not a single DoW.
 
Well, might be true, but:

a) Smaller empires get you quicker in a position where you can defend yourself. (Techs, Production...)
b) They are easier to defend (reinforcements, moving defenders when the AI switches the target etc.)

This whole thing might be an issue in Marathon games where you have to pass tons of DoW-checks, but on normal speed ... normal size... nah the advantages are SO HUGE that i gladly accept more DoW-checks.
 
You overlooked one sentence of me. I said, since I use overlap only sparely, I did not get a single DoW, so the argument of better defense doesn't count, I don't have to defend at all, my army until the point where I break out of my 6-8 cities are 3 warriors for MP, 1 for Capital, 1 for MC, 1 for GP Farm, all other cities don't even need a MP.
 
So... I always thought the overlap is to be done only when there is no way to evade it. As you all say overlap even of more then 1-2 tiles is good I have to accept it is so; but I still don't understand couple of things which are written about this:
free specialists
How the overlap will help this? You can switch an overlapped food tile when one of the cities reaches the pop cap but the excess food still can be used only by one of the cities so how it will feed specialists to both cities?
trade routes, GLH
If in the beginning of the game there is enough good land not to overlap coastal cities why do it? Just for the reason to pack more cities? Isn't the raising upkeep for all cities eating up the income from the trade routes for an added coastal city?
The advantage is clear when there is no source of extra happiness
Is this about the reaching the pop cap and growing another city instead?
d) If you plan on cottaging your capital (and you should aim for that in the majority of your games), try to place 1-2 cities that help your cap to grow the cottages. The cap could meanwhile build workers or settlers with it's high food+production tiles - so you get the best out of your land tiles.
I understand this is about running bureaucracy. Until when to run it? Does it advantages overweight Nationhood and Free Speech?

Edit: Is this all true for marathon speed and huge maps? Because I like games with those settings mainly (actually I didn't like small maps and normal speed at all).
 
So... I always thought the overlap is to be done only when there is no way to evade it. As you all say overlap even of more then 1-2 tiles is good I have to accept it is so; but I still don't understand couple of things which are written about this:

How the overlap will help this? You can switch an overlapped food tile when one of the cities reaches the pop cap but the excess food still can be used only by one of the cities so how it will feed specialists to both cities?

With free Specialists, the Specialists you get by running Mercantilism or having the Statue of LIberty for example are ment. It's very simple, more cities, more Trade-routes, more of whatever Bonuses a city gets without doing anything for it.

If in the beginning of the game there is enough good land not to overlap coastal cities why do it? Just for the reason to pack more cities? Isn't the raising upkeep for all cities eating up the income from the trade routes for an added coastal city?

You have a good point there. People "packing" cities as close as possible, usually talk about cases where they have the GLH and lots of TRs through it. With GLH, every city can pay for itself at about 30% Science 70% Gold even with 15-20 cities. As there is still some Science possible, every city hightens the Beakers while not lowering the GPT.

Without GLH this is a totally different story though, especially on the highest difficulties, there are enough players who teach "stay small" which means 6 cities (8 on Huge), not more, because this can help with tech-rate, though it's difficult to get enough production from them.

I usually follow the principle of "grab what you can, where there is Food, there must be a city" . That's why my Economy always crashes hard, but one can learn to recover it, and after that, one has got so much production that one can finish the map earlier, though being slower in the beginning.

Is this about the reaching the pop cap and growing another city instead?

It is. I usually don't understand the early Happiness problems the people have, even without any Happiness Ressource the cap is 5, even if it's reached, one can grow to 6 and produce Settlers / Workers, because 1 unhappy citizen doesn't cost Food while producing those, one can always stop Growth by producing those units, and until the point where the land completely settled is reached, one has found some kind of Happiness-Ressources or Monarchy is available.

This might be different in rare occasions or other difficulties than Deity, where the AIs tech slower.

What is ment with the statement is, that as long as Happiness is low, cities could not even work their tiles if they wanted to, therefor overlap doesn't hurt. Overlap hurts very late, and the early game advantages through sharing often outweigh it, but read further.

I understand this is about running bureaucracy. Until when to run it? Does it advantages overweight Nationhood and Free Speech?

As long as you can run deficit, Buro is always the best Civic for max-research. If you're low on money because your empire has grown very large, cheap civics like Nationhood are better. Free Speech is only something for very late game when you have tons of towns (I seldomly reach that point because game is over before that) or if you go for Cultural Victory, or, again, if you're low on money.

For Buro to be effective though, you have to learn how to put up a Super Science City, one that can easily have an output of 400 BPT alone at 1 AD.

Edit: Is this all true for marathon speed and huge maps? Because I like games with those settings mainly (actually I didn't like small maps and normal speed at all).

I also play Huge Marathon exclusively atm and Marathon has more AI DoW Checks. AI is more likely to DoW the bigger your cities are, and the less space they take, so the more overlap you used. I don't like to repeat myself, but using overlap for more than 5 tiles imo is killer at least with our settings. If I have something like 8 tiles of overlap with 2 cities because I wanna share an inner ring tile, I made the experience that a DoW is almost garantueed. Therefor I reduce overlap only to share Food or certain kinds of Luxuries.

I. e. if you want to oracle Machinery on Deity, you need something like 3-4 Golds / Gems, but 1 city could never grow fast enough and still be whipping to work all of those, especially with the low-happy-cap. Therefor, one founds 2nd and 3rd city so they can share the gold, making them able to work it virtually at size 1 while the capital is something like size 4 working 2 Food 2 Gold.

For Food, I create something like Food-Chains, i. e. if there are 2 Foods, I found the city so that it can work both, but the next city is founded with overlaping border at the Food so it can work 1 Food from city 1, + the Food it has itself, next city again. Like that you can easily distribute the Food to where it is needed, i. e. if you're IMP and a City produces a Settler, you need no Food because only Hammers get multiplied, so you distribute the Food to the surrounding cities and work hammer-heavy tiles.

Food and Lux must always be worked, therefor overlap for them is great, but don't overdo it, because is horribly dangerous, espcially on Marathon.

Sera
 
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