Settlement Distance, in practice

[Alchemy101]

Do you have a tendency to found your cities at "close range" (i.e. 4 tiles) to maximize regional effects or at "long range" (i.e. 6 tiles) to have space to develop tiles. Again, I understand this will be highly dependent on the map and your tall/wide philosophy, but I'm curious as to your approach, rational, and practice.

Additionally, how large have you been able to get your cities pre/post neighborhoods?

I have a tendency to go with a closer approach (4 or 5) or "jump expand" toward an ideal distant location then back fill, which has the effect of closer packing. The regional effects just seem too good to pass up. Do to a lack of play time and experimentation I don't have a lot of late game experience. Is the closer packing trading away late population game "growth"?

 

[xDaunt]

Growth doesn't really matter that much for the late game. You can get by just fine with a bunch of 10-15 pop cities for your end game if you go wide enough. In fact, I kinda wonder whether that's close to the optimal range for most cities given amenity scarcity and how districts scale best with city quantity as opposed to quality. In my deity game that I just finished, I don't think that I even bothered building a neighborhood, and wasn't any worse for wear. I have a new immortal game going now where I built a neighborhood in one of my cities that was badly housing capped at 12 pop despite having a lot of room to grow, but I have no plans to build neighborhoods anywhere else. The rest of my cities are sitting in the 10-15 pop range (granted, I have a lot of them), with my capital sitting at about 19. I'm totally running away with the game and can win easily through science or domination. In my first game (emperor), I did build neighborhoods and grew some of my cities into the 25-30 range, but frankly, it didn't really work all that well until I got some late game policies online that gave me enough amenities to make it work.

All of that said, the primary consideration for city density is the map itself. Resources, fresh water availability, and good tiles are all more important considerations than some rote application of ICS.

 

[MadDjinn]

city spacing for me is more about the map than anything else.

I don't like 3 hexes between cities as that leads to a lack of space. my minimum spacing is 4 hexes between cities, as that allows both cities to work their first and 2nd ring. but normally I'd go for 5-6 hexes in between.

 

[JustMormegil]

"jump expand" toward an ideal distant location then back fill, which has the effect of closer packing.

that approach has some serious downsides:
1. remote cities can be taken easily with early rush, which increases your empire vulnarability.
2. new founded cities have extremely low production, even with trade routes early game. If they are far from your production center, you will spend some time to get builders there, which decrease your development speed. Also 'wholes' in your territory vulnarable to barbs (can pillage your trade routes) and other civs (can found their city, break your communications and, back to 1, take your 'good spot' city.

Taking cities early is very good in civ6 - there is no penalty for this, bonuses only (setler for free...). Jump expand is possible, if you have good mobile army (Shumeria, Scythia?), or target place is naturally defended by relief.

 

[joncnunn]

city spacing for me is more about the map than anything else.

I don't like 3 hexes between cities as that leads to a lack of space. my minimum spacing is 4 hexes between cities, as that allows both cities to work their first and 2nd ring. but normally I'd go for 5-6 hexes in between.

The game doesn't allow 3 hex settling.4 is the minimum the game allows, which is extremely tight unless the city has no fresh water access.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Without wanting to speak for MadDjinn, I believe when he says '3 hexes between cities', he literally means between the cities. That is, you can see 3 hexes between the 2 City Centers. (This would be a 4-hex distance.) This also makes sense with what he says about 1st/2nd ring as that is true for 5-hex cities (4 hexes between).

It's what I do. Even then, late game I suffer from... board chaos? Time to play more Japan...

 

[King Jason]

Yea, a city settle 4 tiles out has 3 tiles between the cities.

That said, it's definitely the optimal path, I've found. The full city radius, or even close to it, is simply wasted space. The growth-bursters come too late in the the game to make it worth leaving room for high-pop cities to breath when you're expanding in the early game. You're already winning the game with an empire of pop 10 cities by the time you need to worry about pop growths.

For me, the only thing neighborhoods really translate to is non-water cities. I don't settle on water quite often; again because you only need 5-11 pop for a city to be viable. Put a granary in a waterless city with nearby food resources and you can chop yourself to pop 7 quite easily. That allows 3 distrcts; So long as 1 is a commercial hub then the return on your investment is way worth it; all the better if it contributes to your industrial network. The last district you can specialize based on your needs/goals - Science, Culture, Amenities.

 

[Ryika]

As tight as possible for as many cities as possible. Leads to a bit of cluttering during later parts of the game, but 8 slightly smaller cities are just better than 6 slightly bigger cities on the same space.

Also gives more overlap for Entertainment/Industrial Districts.

 

[MadDjinn]

The game doesn't allow 3 hex settling.4 is the minimum the game allows, which is extremely tight unless the city has no fresh water access.

Without wanting to speak for MadDjinn, I believe when he says '3 hexes between cities', he literally means between the cities. That is, you can see 3 hexes between the 2 City Centers. (This would be a 4-hex distance.) This also makes sense with what he says about 1st/2nd ring as that is true for 5-hex cities (4 hexes between).

this is exactly what I meant. It's clearer to discuss hexes between cities because that's what you see on the map.

 

[Ornen]

Now that I'm taking out my closest neighbor at the start of the game (and sometimes following up with more small conquests from there), I'm not pressed for space at all. That said, my sweet spot is still around 5 tiles away. It's not too far apart but not too close, and still allows you to get a lot out of industry/entertainment bonuses.

That said, it's terrain dependent – I might space it at 4 tiles if other cities aren't too pressed in and the placement demands it (ie for fresh water), or 6 or more tiles out if the features just aren't appealing (I might place a couple cities all the way on the other side of a desert, for instance)

 

[Japper007]

Even if I started with neighboorhoods I wouldnt want to grow big cities.

Just look at the science output:
Each pop gives you 0.7 science, with no available modifiers that are based on population (like the library in civ 5)
A single campus easily gives 2 and often can go as much as 6 science from adjacency.
So a campus = about 3 pop at minimum! And that's before you've even built a science building!

And it's a pretty similar picture when it comes to other yields as well, so even disregarding the late-game stacking AoE production/amenity buildings, tall is still very weak!

 

[Roxlimn]

Lol. I don't play on anything that might be considered a high difficulty setting, but I favor varied approach. A single rule is simpler, but it's not often exactly the optimal (in general). Could be true here, though I like varied structures just because I like messing around. For early growth, I like them tight - 3-4 tiles away so my cities grow fast and exploit tile outputs fast. In the early game, that matters the most. These cities will not necessarily grow large, or have many disticts. The core ones, especially will be compromised by design.

The outer cities in the core web will be relatively free both because they'll be up against rival Civs and by design - they'll have the space to make wonders and many districts. If I settle out, then the new core will be 5-6 tiles away and most likely be gridded explicitly for an Industrial network.

 

[Gort]

I find that the availability of fresh water and resources tends to dictate my city positions more than "I must have four hexes between my city sites".

 

[Quasar1011]

Is there any bonus to founding cities on rivers, other than not needing an aqueduct? Guess my thinking
is from Civ 4, when I wanted to have as many levees as possible.

 

[DrJones87]

On rivers you can get a water mill. Which is basically the only reason to settle on a river.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I pack the cities together. There's basically no real gameplay downside to this, because as King Jason pointed out, you'll have the game well in hand before the cities get huge anyway. And the upside is that you have more cities, and thus more yields, more districts, more trade routes, more everything. The real downside is that empires of that sort are a bit of a pain to manage, especially with no build queue and no easy way to refresh trade routes. Still, it seems to me the clear optimal path.

 

[Compound Interest]

I try to build as tight as possible. I only spread out when I have to in order to get water or avoid desert. I do this because I always build industrial districts in all my cities, and I want to maximize the area bonus from those. Industrial districts are great for getting high production without population. And by keeping population low, I have to spend less production on building housing and amenities.

This strategy does however not grab land very well. But I find that the AI isn't very good at grabbing land either, so it's not really a problem to get an empire that's big enough to get you going until the first war.

 

[Gtdead]

I do minimum distance too. I settle as many cities as possible that will give adjacency bonuses to my capital.
In my experience, the only thing that matters is district planning. If it has access to fresh water, it's fine. If it has good tiles, even better. But ultimately, the only thing that matters is maximizing district output. Good tiles will only help jumpstart the city. Beyond that, it's up to trade routes and efficiency.

In my last game, I settled a city in desert, with access to 2 oasis, 2 floodplains, and that was it. Right now it rivals my capital in production because it gains more adjacency bonuses from the captured cities. No petra.

 

[ansa]

Do you have a tendency to found your cities at "close range" (i.e. 4 tiles) to maximize regional effects or at "long range" (i.e. 6 tiles) to have space to develop tiles. Again, I understand this will be highly dependent on the map and your tall/wide philosophy, but I'm curious as to your approach, rational, and practice.

Additionally, how large have you been able to get your cities pre/post neighborhoods?

I have a tendency to go with a closer approach (4 or 5) or "jump expand" toward an ideal distant location then back fill, which has the effect of closer packing. The regional effects just seem too good to pass up. Do to a lack of play time and experimentation I don't have a lot of late game experience. Is the closer packing trading away late population game "growth"?

I usually go like this:

- Ideally you want 4 cities with capital included to bring their industrial zones inside for max bonus whoring, to form diamond-shaped industrial zones block inside. If there are some hills to put mines outside of that diamond, it's even better
- So I count 3 tiles away from capital in the way I want to expand (or conquer) to
- On 3rd tile I put a map pin with a hammer where my industrial will be
- Now, from the hammer tile I put the other 2-3 hammer pins for other industrials, and from there I count outwards in 2-3 directions where other 2-3 cities will be
- Put map pins for where those cities should be located more or less to fit
- If there is some specific crap I want, like a Zimbabwe wonder next to cattle+commercial, or Ruhr valley next to river+industrial, I also put map pins so I dont forget
- And that's it for the first city block, next city blocks I form similar, in general trying to hit the capital and some other cities with industrial zones AOE effects

With these map pins in place you are set for quite some time and always remember wtf u were going to do in the first place

 

[Esperr]

Factory crossover is love, factory crossover is life. I generally want my cap to have six to eight factory crossover. If Toronto is in your game then just go "menu-->main menu-->new game" because its over.