My logic on city placement is very simple:-
- Population is power. It makes civilians to produce gold, shields and food. It makes workers to magnify the efforts of the civilians and to increase mobility and trade, and it makes settlers to make more cities to escalate the whole cycle.
- Granaries make population grow faster, so granaries are powerful. The can achieve acceleration of any or all of these three pop-related power factors. Granaries don't just make big cities.
- Until you get hospitals you can't get past pop 12 no matter how good your granaries are, so there's a limit on the number of civilians you can make using them before then.
- Hospitals don't happen until Sanitation.
- Sanitation doesn't happen until half way through the Industrial age.
- By half way through the Industrial age the good players have either finished the game, or they are in control of the game, or at least they have the infrastructure in place ready to take control.
- I wannabe like the good players
This means I need city placement optimised for pop 1 to 12, when my fastest growth of territory, population, military units and infrastructure are taking place, regardless of whether I'm emphasising conquest, domination, culture, or diplomacy. Once I get past Sanitation, who cares if I have to thin out a few cities to give the others room to grow. If I haven't won already I can afford whatever investment I fancy by then.
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