If I exclude the lake and three mountain tiles, I get 14 tiles to work with within my second ring. That's perfect for a 10 pop city since 10 workable tiles + 4 special districts, which makes me think maybe I should place my second city 4 tiles away to prevent overlap. But that's when only thinking about the final state and in the process of getting there a lot of tiles will be left unworked. This makes me question, when considering overall gameplay, is it actually better to aim for an end state of a city with few inefficient specialists or maybe even limiting population to something below 10? Since in the end, what matters is how much you've produce throughout the game and not how much you can produce per turn right before the game ends. Thoughts?
[GS] Thinking about optimal city spacing with in-game sample
- Thread starter kryndude
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If I exclude the lake and three mountain tiles, I get 14 tiles to work with within my second ring. That's perfect for a 10 pop city since 10 workable tiles + 4 special districts, which makes me think maybe I should place my second city 4 tiles away to prevent overlap. But that's when only thinking about the final state and in the process of getting there a lot of tiles will be left unworked. This makes me question, when considering overall gameplay, is it actually better to aim for an end state of a city with few inefficient specialists or maybe even limiting population to something below 10? Since in the end, what matters is how much you've produce throughout the game and not how much you can produce per turn right before the game ends. Thoughts?
I can't speak to Civ6 specifically. The general approach in Civ games is to settle cities in a way that they will be productive quickly with mid game considerations being far less important and end game considerations being irrelevant. This is particularly important for early cities that will heavily be involved in expansion. For later cities which are not supposed to supply (many) settlers/builders the principle can be relaxed a bit. Not sure how the district puzzle relates to this.
Futumch
Calm as a Coma
I think optimal spacing is every 4th hex in each of the six directions from the centre hex. You still get some overlap but it's not too bad.
In the diagram below, each dark coloured hex (not grey) represents a city. The lighter shades are the worked tiles, getting lighter as they are further from the centre. As you can see the grey hexes can be worked by either of the two cities alongside.
This really packs in the cities like sardines though, you could space them further apart but the borders take ages to grow into each other.
In the diagram below, each dark coloured hex (not grey) represents a city. The lighter shades are the worked tiles, getting lighter as they are further from the centre. As you can see the grey hexes can be worked by either of the two cities alongside.
This really packs in the cities like sardines though, you could space them further apart but the borders take ages to grow into each other.
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Well, every move you make with a settler before settling is in itself less optimal before you consider the benefits of the target settle. And if the benefits of that target settle are 150 turns away then it is about playing immersive which is 100% down to personal choice.
I have settled a city 6 tiles away just to lose it to loyalty so there is that to consider also.
How many cities do you intend to settle, how big do you intend growing them and how viable it is for them to grow that big. 3rd ring benefits cost a lot unless you can swap them between cities which is a nice early benefit of closer settling.
Settling a city for me is normally based on adjacency or resources rather than distance and that feels more natural to me.
I have settled a city 6 tiles away just to lose it to loyalty so there is that to consider also.
How many cities do you intend to settle, how big do you intend growing them and how viable it is for them to grow that big. 3rd ring benefits cost a lot unless you can swap them between cities which is a nice early benefit of closer settling.
Settling a city for me is normally based on adjacency or resources rather than distance and that feels more natural to me.
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Where can I find city planning tools like this one?
Futumch
Calm as a Coma
Umm, I whipped that up in photoshop.
kaspergm
Deity
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Doesn't leave a lot of room for placing wonders, however ...
Personally, I like a 5-6 tile distance to give me more space for stuff like farm adjacency etc., but I realize it's probably not optimal gameplay.
I dont think there is the perfect answer for this question. It always depends on so many factors. Resources, Loyalty, Terrain, potential of a city, your victory condition and so on.
If you are going for a cultural vicory you usually want more space for your cities so you can build some wonders and national parks. If you have lots of mounain tiles you cant work you might want more tiles for a city in other directions. If the city is just settled for a good district/strategic resource you might want less tiles. And so on.
If you are going for a cultural vicory you usually want more space for your cities so you can build some wonders and national parks. If you have lots of mounain tiles you cant work you might want more tiles for a city in other directions. If the city is just settled for a good district/strategic resource you might want less tiles. And so on.
Linklite
Emperor
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That's all very true, on the other hand, it can help to have a baseline to work with. I feel like I suck at the game - I struggle to hit any if the milestones others talk about as being standard - and it would help to get a baseline of what to do. It's helpful to know roughly what to do and then adapt rather than just experimenting with a thousand variables to come to the same conclusion.
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No, not standard.... ideal. They are targets, I miss em often but if I am trying for them I am doing the right things.
Futumch
Calm as a Coma
At first I thought you could have four cities in-range pretty easily. But with a bit of a squeeze - if you have the wonder placed on the inner ring of the centre (dk blue) city, all 7 city centres are within 6 tiles.
I started shading the diagram above but it became a dog's breakfast really quick. But the furthest two cities are both 5 hexes from the wonder position if you stick it in the first ring of the centre city.
If you stick the wonder in the second ring or one of its six grey "shared" spots it should still reach all 7 cities.
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I meant, how many cities could a Coli reach as a maximum because that’s a reason for city placement.
uhu
Warlord
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Socrates99
Bottoms up!
Civ VI is quantity over quality so the honest answer is to pack em in like sardines. The only caveat might be CV for land based tourism (wonders, UI, parks) but even a crowded empire could use great works and rock bands to a similar effect.
I used to play like that. Pack my cities tight. Build just a few districts per city. Maximize trade route capacity, spam my victory district, build a few prime campuses, IZs and EDs. If a city's production is weak use Reyna or Moksha to buy the district and just buy the buildings.
Too much min maxing, too much planning, kind of boring and way too much tile counting. So I went with a mod that increased the min distance by 1 and really enjoy it. I still pack them in, a habit I can't seem to kick. Theres usually good tiles to work and plenty of room for wonders and districts. I like it.
I used to play like that. Pack my cities tight. Build just a few districts per city. Maximize trade route capacity, spam my victory district, build a few prime campuses, IZs and EDs. If a city's production is weak use Reyna or Moksha to buy the district and just buy the buildings.
Too much min maxing, too much planning, kind of boring and way too much tile counting. So I went with a mod that increased the min distance by 1 and really enjoy it. I still pack them in, a habit I can't seem to kick. Theres usually good tiles to work and plenty of room for wonders and districts. I like it.
uhu
Warlord
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Do you have any findings how well the AI players cope with that change?
i.e. ( UPDATE GlobalParameters SET Value = 4 WHERE Name IS 'CITY_MIN_RANGE'; )
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
They seem to do fine. I haven't seen them park settlers 3 tiles from a city and leave them or anything like that. The settler lense shows the 4 tile range rather than the 3 tile range so I assume the AI probably uses that information when settling. I'd imagine they'd handle other ranges just as well. I tried 5 just for kicks and it actually makes "playing the map" really hard and leaves a lot of wilderness impossible to settle. 4 seems to be the sweet spot for me.
As far as competitiveness goes I dont think it helps or hinders.
It does hurt some civs though. Germany and Mali can't get quite as good adjacencies. Germany is still pretty strong so no big deal. Scotland's golf course isnt quite as sweet either. I was placing it between 2 cities where I could drop 1 ED between them and place the GC next to each city center. It made it so I didn't have to build so many overlapping EDs for just 1 culture each. Little stuff like that. I'm sure there are others, those were just off the top of my head. But that doesn't matter, the AI wasn't building super high adj bonus Hansas before the mod anyway. In that light by taking away the player's ability to exploit Hansas, Sugubas or whatever it might help level the field.
Japan does not like that change as well I guess.
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
For sure. Japan was my first deity win. I think Japan is what got me hooked on bunching up my cities and districts.
uhu
Warlord
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I wouldn't mind much Civ specific differences as Civs are supposed to de different and differently strong.
I thought, that having on average per city more tiles at your disposal may lead to another "optimal" mix of tile usage type in general. And that somewhere in the occult AI code might be some Magic Numbers, which refer to a sought distribution of tile usage depending on the standard range 3. And that perhaps the weight of some correlated Magic Numbers should ideally also be adjusted hand in hand ...
Otoh, as we have the best publisher in gaming, I'm sure we can have a look onto the AI code soon.
