Rivers - how important for cities?

thele

Chieftain
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Jan 4, 2011
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I know that rivers offer big bonuses for new cities, but under what circumstances should I build a city that is NOT on a river?

-The Le
 
I'm not a specialist in city settlings,but I use at least 4 factors to determinate where I'll build my city:
-The Recourses in the area(I might settle a city upon a Marble source,for example,because quarry bonus is ridiculous)
-If there's a Mountain or Sea next to the tile(Mountain near city is required to build Observatory and Macchu Pichu for example)
-the Luxury Resources spread in the area(I might move a city a little to enjoy more luxury resources)
-And the amount of areas that I can build a farm(If you play with Inca,add hills that are near mountains).

I think about at least these factors before settle a city.
 
One key for building cities in areas without fresh water is the ability to generate food. You can only get so much from a granary. Deer, cows, sheep, or bananas provide an adequate amount of food. Sea tiles with resources and a light house also provide the necessary food for growth. If you can generate enough gold to keep some maritime CSs in your stable, that would also be helpful. Even a non river based start would work well if you have enough plains and/or grasslands. Oncey you research Fertilizer, they will provide an adequate amount of food. The only way I would build a city in an area that couldn't grow adequately is to acquire a rare resource.
 
riverside:

watermill
hydroplant

LOTS of tiles with +1 gold is one of the reasons it is highly recommended to settle riverside

Civil Services come in play much earlier than fertilizer for the extra food from farms with/without fresh water.


I don't overly mind the loss of watermill and hydroplant aside from maybe my first 2-3 cities which I want to grow early in game so I could/would possibly settle 1-2 tiles away from a river (so I still have access to the +1 gold per massive tiles)

Beyond that, I rarely settle cities that don't have rivers in range before having both economics and fertilizer by then most of the decent land is settled anyway. Only exception to this rule is a riverfree settlement which gives me new luxuries to sell. Preferably at least 2 luxuries (can be both the same for so long as I don't already have 4+ of this lux on my own current land)

It's mainly for a GPT issue though. A city that can't provide it's own buildings' GPT is pretty awful and before economics, you basically need to spam TPs and only work TPed tiles which gives awful growth &/or production and hardly enough gold for any building. It only consumes happiness and SP costs. After economics, esp when you have maritimes CSs for growth, it may be wise to just spam leftoverland with new cities with TP spams (basically self made puppets) IF SPs don't matter much in the current state of your empire.
 
Your question includes so many things that it's almost impossible to give a straight answer. A good quarter of this game revolves around city placement.
 
I'll give you a recent example from a game of mine, signifying how important rivers can be:

At turn 0 I choose to move my capital placement away from a river tile in order to grab an an extra luxury early and settle next to a mountain (Observatory). That went pretty well for the early and mid game.

Then I reached the coal/factory techs and prepared to go top tech tree in order to get research labs asap. I discovered to my horror that I had no coal in my empire, no coal in nearby AI cities I could grab and no coal in any of the city states in the game. There was no way for me to boost production with that much needed factory, and because my capitol was not situated next to a river, the hydroplant was out (like the watermill before it) even though I planned to get the tech unlocking that building soon. Solarplants were also out since they require desert tiles to be built.

So, I had to change my overall research plan and go after the bottom tech tree, reaching nuclear power and just in general hope(!) that uranium would be available. I'll estimate that I lost 30-40 turns of research from that and I lost 'early' research labs/hospitals so you could say the advantage of moving the capitol in the beginning, were outnumbered 100fold by the late game disadvantages.

What did I learn from that? Have a very, very, very good reason to settle your capitol without rivers next to it, if rivers are nearby. Or with the Aztecs, small lakes will do.
 
I discovered to my horror that I had no coal in my empire, no coal in nearby AI cities I could grab and no coal in any of the city states in the game.

This seems pretty common, I buy coal a lot from AI's just to get those factories up.
Going for nuclear plants is pretty much a dead end unless you are aiming for domination with nukes, you can easily get by without it when going science, just sell all your GPT and rush buy those spaceship factories. Aluminium is far more important.

But yes back to OP, Rivers are nice, always settle on those if possible, I love the water mill and the gold from riverside squares. It can be crucial early game.
 
This seems pretty common, I buy coal a lot from AI's just to get those factories up.
Going for nuclear plants is pretty much a dead end unless you are aiming for domination with nukes, you can easily get by without it when going science, just sell all your GPT and rush buy those spaceship factories. Aluminium is far more important.

But yes back to OP, Rivers are nice, always settle on those if possible, I love the water mill and the gold from riverside squares. It can be crucial early game.

People actually build Spaceship Factories? Perhaps I've been doing it wrong.
 
For me it depends on if I'm building tall or wide, if I'm going tall esp occ I need a river to get s big enough pop for research.

Also if ur playing Babylon a garden is a great building, or if I'm being monty for the day the floating farm building is great and both need a river or lake.
 
People actually build Spaceship Factories? Perhaps I've been doing it wrong.

Rush buying them. (hence why you sell all your GPT for lots of cash) You build the spaceship parts ;)

It's 50% bonus, so unless the math is a bit weird it should be better than getting only nuclear plants. It's on the right path, so it's a no brainer really.
 
For me it depends on if I'm building tall or wide, if I'm going tall esp occ I need a river to get s big enough pop for research.

Also if ur playing Babylon a garden is a great building, or if I'm being monty for the day the floating farm building is great and both need a river or lake.

Right I so never use gardens I totally forgot about it in my previous post -_- yet it is situationnally useful. I wouldn't overly worry about settling riverside for the garden itself though.
 
When it's no longer possible to build a city that's on a river.

In fact if there's no river in my starting map in 4000 BC, I restart.

I know that rivers offer big bonuses for new cities, but under what circumstances should I build a city that is NOT on a river?

-The Le
 
Rivers are always priority, but if you need some strategical resource very bad, or luxury resource you dont have or need, then sure. A city with no river but full of grassland/forests/jungles and some special resources is a good trading post city. Trading posts can be built on jungles without clearing them = profit with university, which gives +2 science on jungle tiles for this city.
 
Non-river sites I will typically at least consider, and possibly build depending on the situation:

- 1 or more new luxury
- 1 or more old luxury if city site doesn't completely suck otherwise
- 2 or more seafood resources
- 3 or more stable resources
- 2 or more granary resources
- Lakes but only if there are a few grasslands to farm and hills nearby for production
- natural wonders
 
Also if ur playing Babylon a garden is a great building, or if I'm being monty for the day the floating farm building is great and both need a river or lake.

As Babylon, the garden is mostly 'menh' unless you also get the HS or democracy.

standard university 2 slots: 6 GSpp
as Babylon : 12 GSpp

standard w garden: 7.5 (rounded down to 7)
as babylon: 13.5 (rounded down to 13)

So at most, the garden adds 1 to a city. as Babylon, the +100% far out powers the garden, so it's not exactly a requirement.

Add in the Public School slot and it will start generating a little more.

toss in Democracy and HS: (+25+50+33) and combined, it's worth it just to get it over 100% (x2 normal, x3 Babylon)... of course, that's just getting normal civs up to where babylon started, so...
 
As Babylon, the garden is mostly 'menh' unless you also get the HS or democracy.

standard university 2 slots: 6 GSpp
as Babylon : 12 GSpp

standard w garden: 7.5 (rounded down to 7)
as babylon: 13.5 (rounded down to 13)

So at most, the garden adds 1 to a city.

Never realised the numbers behind it though it would be applied to give 16 gpp but checked and yh 13. I probably won't go for it till later game now when it can tie in with the social policy, thx :)
 
As Babylon, the garden is mostly 'menh' unless you also get the HS or democracy.

standard university 2 slots: 6 GSpp
as Babylon : 12 GSpp

standard w garden: 7.5 (rounded down to 7)
as babylon: 13.5 (rounded down to 13)

So at most, the garden adds 1 to a city. as Babylon, the +100% far out powers the garden, so it's not exactly a requirement.

Add in the Public School slot and it will start generating a little more.

toss in Democracy and HS: (+25+50+33) and combined, it's worth it just to get it over 100% (x2 normal, x3 Babylon)... of course, that's just getting normal civs up to where babylon started, so...

Interesting...I really need to get a better feel of what %scaling is additive and what %scaling is multiplicative because it can litterally make or break the value of a given promotion/sp/building etc.

kinda different topic but I do PA + pentagon = 0 upgrade cost (additive) or 25% upgrade cost (multiplicative)...don't think I even had both together; turning too many PA based dominations into diplos
 
Interesting...I really need to get a better feel of what %scaling is additive and what %scaling is multiplicative because it can litterally make or break the value of a given promotion/sp/building etc.

kinda different topic but I do PA + pentagon = 0 upgrade cost (additive) or 25% upgrade cost (multiplicative)...don't think I even had both together; turning too many PA based dominations into diplos

I haven't tried it either... based upon how the game seems to work things, I'd assume that one is multiplicative similar to happiness/pop reductions. (Monarchy + India + Theocracy = 12.5% rather than -25%)

In other words.. anything that takes a large number --> 0, it's multiplicative. anything that goes away from 0 (like gardens/banks/beakers/etc) it's additive.
 
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