This is why CXXXXC is VASTLY superior to CXXC

[Spoonwood]

Tone,

First off, you've implicitly admitted that metros work out better for higher scoring games... the main point.

Second, if you read SirPleb's thread, I think you can see him have a sort of uncomfortable feeling about warring with some of the Sid AIs at points. Also, the quicker a player a pounces on the AI, the more territory that player has for more turns of the game. SirPleb writes "The scoring works by averaging your per-turn scores throughout the game. For each turn a (hidden) per-turn score is calculated as:

(Territory + HappyCitizens*2 + ContentCitizens + Specialists) * Difficulty

The total of all your per-turn scores is divided by the number of turns played so far to get your actual game score. I.e. your actual score is the average of your per-turn scores." Later in the article he writes

"To maximize score you want to maximize territory, population, and happiness. And you want to maximize them as early as possible. The earlier you add each increase to your per-turn score, the more impact that increase will have on the averaged result which becomes your actual score."

So, in response to your question "The question is why did they space that way?" the response seems to come out something like "to crush the AIs as quickly as possible and maximize territory as quickly as possible."

To the second question "Was it to be the most effective in beating the AI?", the answer seems to come out "yes."

Here's SirPleb's article on maximizing score:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18729

 

[Aigburth]

Second, if you read SirPleb's thread,

Yes, reading the thread is a good idea

 

[Tone]

Tone,

First off, you've implicitly admitted that metros work out better for higher scoring games... the main point.

Nothing to admit here. It is a well known fact that maximising score is achieved in this way. Indeed I spaced out cities for metros when I did my milk run-I did this because I am well aware of the scoring system in civ.

Is this the main point though? We'll have to ask the OP for that but in my case almost every game I win is by one of the VCs other than Histo. This means that for me the finish date is the principle measure of how successful I've been in virtually every game I play. Score is of little importance for me. If that is different for you then we are bound to disagree on how to space out cities.

So, in response to your question "The question is why did they space that way?" the response seems to come out something like "to crush the AIs as quickly as possible and maximize territory as quickly as possible."

I'm afraid that I don't agree with your conclusion if you are saying that spacing cities spacing cities out enables you to crush the AI more quickly. In playing this game, his sole aim was to maximise his score. He had to balance his need for a powerful civilisation with a need to gain territory asap. If you look at other games that he has played, such as early GOTMs you will see that when he wanted to crush the AI as quickly as possible he would not be quite so generous in his land allocation per city.

I repeat that it depends what you feel is most important in a game. SirPleb and Moonsinger wanted to maximise score in the games you mention and some of their decisions sacrificed a degree of power for greater long term scoring potential. I am not trying to nail my colours to any particular pole, I am just questioning your citation of these games as examples of the most effective way to win a game.

Oh, and by the way...

Second, if you read SirPleb's thread, I think you can see him have a sort of uncomfortable feeling about warring with some of the Sid AIs at points.

This is down to trying to take out the AIs asap. To maximise the score you need to act quickly. All I said before is that these players could win with any spacing. Your comment does not alter my opinion on this.

 

[Spoonwood]

Tone,

The precursor to this thread I take as Pyrrhos CxxC or CxxxxC thread? In this thread, Chamnix said

Here we go again – nobody is telling you that you must play a certain way or must like playing a certain way. Most advice threads and discussion threads are about how to play “better”. I don’t think we are arguing about which is more “fun”. Everyone has his own opinion on fun, and nobody is going to convince anyone else his way is “more fun” than anybody else’s way. Play however you find enjoyable, and I am not trying to convince anyone to play a style he hates. However, if we are talking about which strategy is “better”, I define “better” in this context as:

* Reaching a victory condition in fewer turns, or
* Getting a higher score, or
* Winning a higher percentage of games on whatever level you happen to play at.

Granted, this is just my definition of “better”. There may be alternative definitions, but I have yet to hear one advanced. If you tell me what “better” means to you, then I may completely agree that metros are better based on your definition, but based on my definition (which is the only definition I’ve seen), it is my opinion that scientist farms are better than metros in corrupt territory.

So, again the *main point* comes as that metros work better than towns for high scoring games. If someone think me too imprecise or unclear, I can cross off metros and write *tight metros*. CxxC has a scoring disadvantage in comparison to CxxxC metros, so you've admitted CxxC as inferior in one respect already.

Also, I don't know what to say about your conclusion about crushing the AI faster with CxxC as opposed to CxxxC. I think we need to test this really to have a tighter reasoned conclusion. One could argue that if CxxC actually works out better for crushing the AI faster, since if someone other than MoonSinger or SirPleb could have crushed the AI faster and thus had more territory early on.. thus getting them a higher score early in time... thus netting them a higher scoring Sid game... again since they would have taken more territory faster and thus raised their score faster that way... they would have had a higher overall score. That does seem hard to determine though, so I'll agree on it as a moot point.

You'll also see that MoonSinger didn't start a *real* war until he had military tradition (obviously) and his saltpeter hooked up a few turns after 400 A.D.... unless she fought some *real* war with horseman... and I don't find that all that believable. I wouldn't call that quickly. Moonsinger also made other moves which probably slowed down her conquest, like her 60% luxury rate (happier citizens... higher score early on, I think) and building J.S. Bach's Cathdral (again happier citizens) (both debatable since they decresaed corruption... which increases production in some places).

 

[Chamnix]

I get the feeling that this thread is becoming less about what city placement is good and more about what we should call the city placement that we all agree is best. In Moonsinger's first ring, I count 3 cities at CxxC and 4 at CxxxC. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'll bet that Moonsinger did not have a single metropolis until she was already at the domination limit - she probably stopped at 12 citizens per city until she had already beaten the crap out of the AI.

 

[Aabraxan]

Well, if there's going to be a big discussion of Moonsinger's 80K game, the least we can do is include a link to "My 80K game journal," so that everyone can find it.

 

[Mursi lives]

Tone,

The precursor to this thread I take as Pyrrhos CxxC or CxxxxC thread? In this thread, Chamnix said

So, again the *main point* comes as that metros work better than towns for high scoring games. If someone think me too imprecise or unclear, I can cross off metros and write *tight metros*. CxxC has a scoring disadvantage in comparison to CxxxC metros, so you've admitted CxxC as inferior in one respect already.

Also, I don't know what to say about your conclusion about crushing the AI faster with CxxC as opposed to CxxxC. I think we need to test this really to have a tighter reasoned conclusion. One could argue that if CxxC actually works out better for crushing the AI faster, since if someone other than MoonSinger or SirPleb could have crushed the AI faster and thus had more territory early on.. thus getting them a higher score early in time... thus netting them a higher scoring Sid game... again since they would have taken more territory faster and thus raised their score faster that way... they would have had a higher overall score. That does seem hard to determine though, so I'll agree on it as a moot point.

You'll also see that MoonSinger didn't start a *real* war until he had military tradition (obviously) and his saltpeter hooked up a few turns after 400 A.D.... unless she fought some *real* war with horseman... and I don't find that all that believable. I wouldn't call that quickly. Moonsinger also made other moves which probably slowed down her conquest, like her 60% luxury rate (happier citizens... higher score early on, I think) and building J.S. Bach's Cathdral (again happier citizens) (both debatable since they decresaed corruption... which increases production in some places).

IMO the *main* point is Moonsinger and Sir Pleb play another game, named "sid level".

 

[Bartleby]

I just want to point out that when playing for score, "near-OCP" is the best city spacing during the milking phase, because you have maximum worked tiles and minimum city squares. But before you get to this stage your goal should still be to have all the tiles you control worked by happy citizens. This means you need temporary (tightly spaced) towns, something that has already been touched on on one or other of these recent threads.

 

[Ansar]

Just out of curiosity, Pyrrhos, does this count as CxxC spacing also?


(By the way, to see the image better, you have to click on it)

The blue lines represent roads.

 

[Pyrrhos]

As the distance between cities always obeys CXXC, imo yes. It's a sort of "square CXXC" pattern whereas my example was "offset" or "staggered".

The "problem" is the placement of the outer towns. If you want more towns in order to use the coastal tiles, you'd have to resort to ICS (CXCXCXCXC). If you don't build any more cities, you haven't availed yourself of the commerce and food provided by the coastal tiles. Perhaps you have very good reasons for this placement? If so, please share!

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Yeah, I aggree with Pyrrhos here.... Even though I try to use OCP, I'll violate that in order to grab coastal real estate, and, if it's workable, fresh water tiles (beside rivers and lakes)... Also, if I can link inland lakes to the ocean with a town, I'll try to do that as well (in one of my FF mod test games, I had two cities, one built by me, and one in captured territory), that, using a large inland lake, created a NICE shortcut through the center of the continent.

In your pic, I would have settled Hamburg 1 tile NE, Konigsburg 1 tile NE as well. I'd have moved Heidelburg and Munich 1 to the SE, and Lepzig 1 NW..... The other cities would work, because they're not wasting any coastal tiles.

 

[Ansar]

Yeah, I aggree with Pyrrhos here.... Even though I try to use OCP, I'll violate that in order to grab coastal real estate, and, if it's workable, fresh water tiles (beside rivers and lakes)... Also, if I can link inland lakes to the ocean with a town, I'll try to do that as well (in one of my FF mod test games, I had two cities, one built by me, and one in captured territory), that, using a large inland lake, created a NICE shortcut through the center of the continent.

In your pic, I would have settled Hamburg 1 tile NE, Konigsburg 1 tile NE as well. I'd have moved Heidelburg and Munich 1 to the SE, and Lepzig 1 NW..... The other cities would work, because they're not wasting any coastal tiles.

Well, I wouldn't settle that way either.

No one plays strict CxxC anyways.

 

[ThinkTank]

No one plays strict CxxC anyways.

Pyrrhos already knew this before he started this thread. But I agree and it cannot be said enough:

No one plays strict CxxC anyways.

Yes!

No one plays strict CxxC anyways.

Absolutely!

 

[anaxagoras]

This is true CXXC where every town has no more than a three-tile move to all its neighbours. As can be seen, there are no more than eight tiles per town.

I don't know anyone who advocates a strict-grid CxxC placement.

 

[RFHolloway]

There are so many varieties even of CxxC placement that this makes the whole thing nonsense - if you work on a grid where all the cities are 3 diagonal moves from each other you have far more space than if you have 3 non diagonal moves from each other.

Secondly - if you are keeping population at 6 or below then your population will grow twice as quickly as you only need 20 food (10 with graneries) rather than 40 food (or 20 with graneries) and you won't have to build aqueducts. These two facts allow a tighter city placement to grow quicker. The productuctivity of a nation is not primarily due to the number of cities but by the total population. By having smaller cities your population can grow faster. In fact because you have more cities your total surplus food is higher, since you have more city centre squares that produce 2 fpt.

 

[Sweetchuck]

I get a kick out of this endless debate on city placement, it almost approaches the liberal vs. conservative status.

The basic answer is simple - your city placement highly depends on your level of playing difficulty. Playing at high levels? Keep them cities hugged close together. Playing lower levels? Spread them out and grab land.

I play middle-of-the-road difficulty, varies between warlord and regent depending on the terrain and number of rival civs. Having said that, I try my hardest to place my cities CxxxxC, and of course that depends on workable tiles (I might lump desert cities closer) and junk like mountains where I might keep them spread a little farther apart.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I get a kick out of this endless debate on city placement, it almost approaches the liberal vs. conservative status.

And let us not forget the Tastes Great! Less Filling! debate

 

[anaxagoras]

..and I also love the easy-opening can!

 

[bryanwallace]

someone beat me to it-but the only point i wanted to make was that this discussion is really only a theoretical one..
in practice if you can get on a river that takes you to a cxxxc from a cxxc ,then youre going to do it.
similarly if theres a resource that an ai is hovering near and that you can get if you move one more square-then youre going to do it..

having said that-enjoying the debate^
as long as its civil lets have more of it

 

[bryanwallace]

one another thing-people are suggesting that the ai boxes you in very quickly if you go for a tight placement.
i dont really see this as a problem as you should be strong enough to take their cities that you need..and be adequately protected in a tight cxxc/
again - this goes back to playing styles-if you dont like to war then maybe cxxc isnt what you want..