The noob question of the week.

[IDaCat]

So how far should two cities be? yea... i'm a noobie... Thx

 

[Heroes]

So how far should two cities be? yea... i'm a noobie... Thx

Quote from my post in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139637

About city placement. The huge difference from civ 3 is now a city must be far from any other city by at least 2 tiles. So no more cxc ICS!

You still get the choice: cxxc ("tight packing"), cxxxc ("loose packing"), and cxxxxc ("OCP"). Same as in civ 3, I still prefer loose packing. The ideal is to use every good tile (or waste as few as possible), catch as many resources as possible (but avoid settling on resource like a sin), and overlap as few tiles as possible. And, every city should have the potential to at least feed itself (a shame for civ, how does Las Vagas exist?).

There are often some water resources which can be reached only from 1 tile, or it's so in practice (the only other option is another resource, for example). Therefore you determine some cities' locations. From these, applying the above rules, you can in most cases determine where to put your cities, -- and where to raze enemy cities.

 

[Harv72b]

but avoid settling on resource like a sin

I wound up with an aluminum resource popping up right underneath one of my cities in a game today. It still gave me the aluminum.

Of course you don't get the other production bonuses that come with resources (added food/hammers/gold), but you apparently don't have to worry about losing the resource entirely...unless this was just a one-time error, because I haven't had this circumstance come up before.

 

[Gufnork]

You still get the resource, so it's worth doing if you gain a resource square by settling on that particular square.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Settling directly on the square is probably not a bad move if it's a strategic resource. (Copper, Iron, Aluminum, Oil, Uranium.)

Here's my thinking:

Units stationed at a copper mine on flatland only get entrenching bonus (+5 to +25%). Copper mine on a hill gets a +25% bonus. But if you put those units inside a city you'll get the city bonus for defense. And sometimes it's easier to defend a single point on the map (the city) rather then trying to defend two points on the map (the city and the mine).

You'd also never have to worry about losing the resource due to a culture war, where the resource tile flips to the neighboring culture.