Firstly, I am a big perfectionist, so all this optimum game mechanics stuff really makes my day! Cheers to all you hardworking people!
Now, onto the subject. I like the idea of combining several of the techniques that enable me to be a 'builder' to the fullest. In case you don't understand the title above, they are Ring City Placement (obviously), Optimal City Placement, the Palace Jump and
Alexman's hybrid idea. First, at the beginning of the game, plan to have the centre of your rings not at the current capital, but at the first city you found. Note that the (then) capital should be in the first ring of the future RCP arrangement. After the position of future RCP centrepoint is sorted, build rings around it as you normally would your capital using RCP.
OCP comes into it with what ring distance you choose - on larger maps I'd choose maybe 5.5 (/5) as the first ring. What's important is to keep as many workable squares per city available - in the case of the 5.5 distance ring you just have to put a city on one city site, then miss out the city site to the side, then put one on the next site (i.e. every other city site). This leaves you with a ring of minimal corruption cities with ~16 workable squares each! The second ring could then be all the way out to distance 10 or something similar, again trying for as many workable squares as possible (preferably without wasting land). Loadsa workable squares = big production ring.
The Palace Jump comes into what I was saying earlier about how the capital wasn't the centre of your rings. You should have worked out by now that at some point (well, as early as possible) you're meant to build the Forbidden Palace in the centre of the rings. Then that can lead to the almighty Palace Jump...and guess what. You can start another load of rings around the new Palace site, whether it's on the other end of your continent, the other side of the world or whatever!
And finally we come onto where to put the rest of the cities...well, we use Alexman's hybrid approach of course! Shove the remaining cities in whatever beneficial positions you want (coast, wheat floodplains, resources...) knowing that it won't adversely affect your ultimate production rings, and knowing that you don't have to have the hassle of calculating any more distances (or that you don't have to settle on that bonus resource). Plus, the corruption in the outer cities won't be too bad anyway, unless you have a huge empire, at which point it won't really matter.
Welp, that's the basic theory behind my idea/combination of other peoples' ideas. One of the beauties of it is that it is fairly flexible - put the rings at whatever distances suit your playing style, and it won't make it any worse (unless you're perfectionist builder types like me), and you could have more than two rings if you want. Another
big benefit is that you get a much wider choice for your FP centre position than you would for the starting capital (without making things more difficult for yourself). If you're on the coast, place the FP centre inland to get as large a production ring as possible. If you have scouted around and see mountains or bonus resources in annoying positions, try to place the FP centre so that all other cities can be founded on the ring without having to miss out. With Qitai's x.5 ring discovery it makes it even more flexible. etc etc.
Finally, note that this is all blissful speculation - I have yet to try it out due to my addiction to strategy posts until I find the ultimate playing style that best suits me. What do you guys think of it?
