The best (favorite) city ever?

[Dracosolon]

If you build a Jail in Marseille you should have an event that generates a Great Merchant/Spy.

 

[Zaddy]

I'll also give some general feedback regarding city spots right now. Overall I think the new map does a pretty good job encouraging "canonical" city spots and makes sure there are very few "useless" cities, so I'll just touch on a few pain points:

The post about Marseilles is right, there's really no use for the city, it works almost no valuable tiles Lyon doesn't. It FEELS like there should be a fish resource somewhere in that area. Maybe have a seafood tile placed near Northern Italy to especially encourage the French to fight Italy, à la the Italian Wars? Also kinda ties in to my point below.

Northern Italy is extremely barren in terms of food compared to Southern Italy, especially when it has to support all three of Venice, Florence, and Milan. Rice spawns later, but that is very late in the game. If we would like to avoid adding resources to that general area, I would suggest moving a food resource from Southern Italy northward. Naples/Syracuse has a very high amount of food, whereas Northern Italy/Southern France feels extremely barren compared to the rest of western/central Europe.

Budapest basically requires taking half of Vienna's food to function as a city which leads to both cities feeling rather underwhelming, especially compared to Cologne.

In my games as America and Japan, I didn't see anything feel too weak or objectionable.

 

[manio curio]

I would argue a lot of the issues are due to the map resolution, you can only put so many productive cities in France, Italy and so on.

 

[AOS9001]

Is there any more feedback on this that people would like to share? Sites that are better than they should be? Sites that are underwhelming for the city they are meant to represent?

I think Syracuse is too good, at least if you manage to steal the wheat tile from Carthage. I think this has been brought up before? Moving a food to northern Italy would be a good idea I think.

Let's talk about China.
Chengdu sucks. It's not a worthwhile city despite its historical and current importance.
Chongqing being on top of salt is also unfortunate because it pushes the AI and player to settle elsewhere nearby.
Luoyang is decent if you don't have Xian or Kaifeng founded, and Xian will always be there without a human player's influence.
Did I miss anything?

 

[Leoreth]

Any ideas on how to improve Chengdu? I am also unhappy with the Yellow River situation but I think even with this map Luoyang and Kaifeng are mutually exclusive and there is not much to do about it.

 

[manio curio]

I think Syracuse is too good, at least if you manage to steal the wheat tile from Carthage. I think this has been brought up before? Moving a food to northern Italy would be a good idea I think.

Let's talk about China.
Chengdu sucks. It's not a worthwhile city despite its historical and current importance.
Chongqing being on top of salt is also unfortunate because it pushes the AI and player to settle elsewhere nearby.
Luoyang is decent if you don't have Xian or Kaifeng founded, and Xian will always be there without a human player's influence.
Did I miss anything?

I would argue Messana can grow even faster if the player doesn't assign the fish resource to Rome. However both Messana and Syracuse production plateaus to lackluster values. In conclusion they are useful on a Rome game especially if you implement despotism and sacrifice plenty of population to crank out legions, but otherwise not that strong of a city neither.

 

[AOS9001]

Any ideas on how to improve Chengdu? I am also unhappy with the Yellow River situation but I think even with this map Luoyang and Kaifeng are mutually exclusive and there is not much to do about it.

A quick recap on what goes on in Chengdu, Chongqing, and Sichuan in general in the RFC time frame: in the times before the Qin conquest, it was known for bronze and gold production, and was a center for rice and wheat cultivation. After the Qin conquest a long-lasting salt industry developed west of Chongqing. Silk and tea were also profitable industries in Sichuan. These days there is significant rare earth element extraction in the south of the province. Chengdu and Chongqing are two of China's major cities in terms of population and commerce, and have been for quite some time. I believe these can be considered "canonical" cities for the China civ.

Right now, Chonqing is a decent city but Chengdu lacks in production and really lacks in food, which is a strange for a region that historically has been very populated and productive (there's over 100 million people living in these two cities and the land around them today). The rare earth resource is there already, and there's a coal too to help with late game production, but Chengdu was already a production center for weapons before gunpowder was invented, so I think there's merit for having it get more production earlier than later.

Conservative proposal: copper in one of the red circle tiles, rice in one of the cyan circle tiles

Dramatic proposal: copper in one of the red circle tiles, rice in one of the cyan circle tiles, tea spawns in the yellow circle tile, and either wheat in the magenta circle tile, or move Chongqing's salt into the magenta circle tile

 

[FraggleJock]

A very dramatic proposal is have an extra trade route between cities that are within the 3ring zone that a city influences but that is a noticable change that would cross the entirety of the map

 

[manio curio]

I'll make an edit on the cities situation from what I have already said. Venice and Milan need tiles in France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia to grow properly. If you are playing with rome, no problem at all, by the time france and hre spawn you will have enough culture points to keep a good chunk of the outside of italy tiles, things change if you are playing with italy. It may get rough

 

[Gen1_]

I think Syracuse is too good, at least if you manage to steal the wheat tile from Carthage. I think this has been brought up before? Moving a food to northern Italy would be a good idea I think.

Hey, at one point it was the largest city in Europe, way before Athens or Rome.

 

[banzay13]

In Classic and early ME times Merv need more love to, one of the biggest city on Earth at time

 

[AOS9001]

Since some of my Chengdu suggestions got implemented, I can confirm Chengdu is now a city worth keeping when you flip it/conquer it from the barbs. Much more productive and the population doesn't linger at 5 forever now.

 

[lethrgy]

does anyone else think Yekaterinburg is too unappealing of a city to found? the nearby resources are better served to other cities, the tile is not part of the siberian area so doesn't contribute to the UHV, and to top it all off is one of few cities without access to fresh water. just gauging interest on adjusting the area to make it more appealing, or if it's completely fine in everyone else's experience to just ignore this city altogether

 

[AOS9001]

I like Nihinzhy Tagil, 1N of Yekaterinburg. It's on a river and can still grab the copper and uranium nearby. I always settle Orenburg 1S of the Urals stone to speed up production of the Kremlin and city walls.

I think Chita/Nerchinsk area between Lake Baikal and the Amur region should count as Siberia too, since that's where Cossacks and the Qing fought it out in the 1680s.