Tightly packed city placement

[Bilko]

I notice when looking at screenshots that the more advanced players tend to pack their cities together fairly tightly, and I have some trouble understanding why.

Myself, I usually try to place my cities so that I only have 1 or 2 tiles of overlap, and usually try to make sure none of the tiles on the map are wasted. But, I only ever place them 2 tiles apart when I've lost the race to a certain resource and want to take it anyway by rushing a temple in the city so my border expands to take the resource.

Even placing my cities like this, corruption tends to be a big problem for me. So why would you stuff twice the number of cities on the same number of tiles and just make the corruption that much worse? I find, the way I place them, that I can usually get around 10-20% from my worst cities with a courthouse and police station, and that can be a significant amount once they get to be fairly big.

So am I doing something wrong, or is there something I'm missing?

 

[Jake5555555]

I think that they try to cram more cities into the same area is that with more cities you can generate more culture an produce more units at the same time.

I'm not really sure though, because I place my cities pretty much how you just said, and I don't claim to be an expert player.

 

[fret]

Originally posted by Bilko
So am I doing something wrong, or is there something I'm missing?

There is no right or wrong method to city placement. It all depends on what your stratagy is for the game.

There are lots of pro's and con's to all methods of city placement, and these pro's and con's will be hugely differant depending on what stage of the game you are at.

Experience is key to learning when and what methods to use. Experiment with differant placement styles in conjuction with trying for differant victory conditions.


A short example of pros and cons throughout the game...

Myself, I usually try to place my cities so that I only have 1 or 2 tiles of overlap, and usually try to make sure none of the tiles on the map are wasted.

For the first 100 - 150 turns of the game you method of placement 'wastes' vast amounts of space. You can get a city to size 12 (the maximum before sanitation) by using only 5 or 6 grassland tiles, so why does your city need 20 tiles to work? Production perhaps? wrong, you can still only work 12 tiles, so you are wasting 8 tiles.

The advantage of course is negated after Sanitation is researched, so then your ineffective early placement becomes an advantageous late game placement.

 

[Jawz II]

i tend to make cities with 3 tiles between them at all side,3 tiles is the minimum for the border to strech and get mne a solid line earl in the land grabbing period,also good since,many cities=many units,more cash,u basicly work the land harder

of course in the later part of the game sometimes i wish i had more land for each city,but hey,by then i have the military/money/tech advantage,that i wouldnt have,or i wouldnt have as much,had i not built many cities very early on

 

[SesnOfWthr]

One of the things I have seen from the more advanced players is to use a combination of both. What they may do is build their cities in an OCS style layout, then fill in the gaps with "temporary" cities. What I mean is, the cities they squeeze in to work all available land will be used solely for building settlers, units etc. until sanitation comes along. At that point, they would abandon the temporary cities, giving their main cities more room to grow. I don't know how this affects unit support and the like, but I know I've seen it. (Svar, I believe)

 

[Bilko]

but, fret, even though those tiles may be wasted in the early game, I still have very low corruption, so the ones that are used are used to their maximum potential.
And not only that, but in the early game, isn't the idea to get as much land as possible? How is that accomplished by placing cities so close together? I find that spacing them out accomplishes that much more easily.

 

[Chieftess]

Some advanced players seem to hate ICS, or tight builds. Everyone just has their own strategy to how to play the game. That's the bueaty of a strategy game. There's no 1 right way to get to a particular victory.

 

[spleen1015]

I have seen mention of ICS, OCS and RCP in a few places throughout the forums. Can someone point me to what these mean? I have scanned the titles of the War Academy articles and I don't see anything obvious.

 

[Serpico]

ICS: Infinite City Sprawl. Placing lots of cities tightly together, about two or three tiles apart.

OCP: Optimal City Placement. Placing cities so that only one or two tiles overlap and no tile is left unused.

RCP: Ring City Placement. Placing cities in rings around your capital. Worked against corruption in earlier versions of the game, doesn't do that anymore.

 

[alamo]

It seems to me that ICS is an early warmonger tactic, best used when you find yourself in the middle of a pangea. In those cases survival to sanitation is problematic.

More cities support more units under despot, monarchy. Also, population spread out in more cities makes military police more effective under those govts. Of course more cities can build more units in parallel, though corruption ranking will take its toll (use RCP). Population goes towards score, too. Of course founding more cities takes more investment per area, but you may not have anywhere to expand.

 

[fret]

Originally posted by Bilko
but, fret, even though those tiles may be wasted in the early game, I still have very low corruption, so the ones that are used are used to their maximum potential.

in the early game, i think(not 100% sure, bit of psuedo guesswork here) that the level of corruption experienced will be more or less the same whether you have (huge map) 32 city's of size 6 tightly packed, or if you have 32 cities of size 6 placed OCP style.

And the big early game advantage is that you can get 32 tightly packed cities up and running a good deal quicker than 32 OCP city's. The territory may not be as large, but the production is, this is the crux of the issue, production.

OCP will take more roads, time wasted due to Settlers-in-transit (every turn they are walking, they are not a city building something - sounds insignificant, but makes a big differance)

And not only that, but in the early game, isn't the idea to get as much land as possible? How is that accomplished by placing cities so close together? I find that spacing them out accomplishes that much more easily. [/B]

This is a difficult question to answer quickly or easily, I'll take the fifth on it, except reiterating you should experiment youself, see what suits your style of play. Personally I think a tight build, bordering on ICS offers the best possible rate of expantion in terms of both territory and military possibilities. Other players of considerable greater skill than me may think differantly thoug. As i said, there is no right or wrong way

 

[Gengis Khan]

ICS- Infinate City Scrawl(or sprawl)- Packing your cities as tightly as possible.

OCP- Optimum City Placement- Placing your cities with a minimum of overlap.

RCP- Ring City Placement- Placing your cities in a perfect ring around your capitol/FP so that they take advantage of the reduced corruption due to rank being the same.

Hope those help a bit, there's a ton more info out there though.

 

[spleen1015]

I have a good idea what they are now. Thanks, folks.

I'm only playing Warlord right now, but I was getting my butt kicked using OCP. I saw a ICS style mentioned some where that puts 2 squares between cities that way, with roads, it takes one turn to get units from one city to another for renforcements. I am winning on Warlord this way.

I'm going to look into some sort of deal where I get rid of some cities in the later years, going from ICS to OCP.

I don't remember the term for killing a city, but how does this effect happiness and the mood of your folks?

 

[alamo]

Abandoning with right-click is like a pillage, I believe. Just build workers or settlers while preventing growth. Once you're down to 2 or 1 make sure there is just enough food for survival. You will get an option to abandon when the next one is complete.

You cannot evade unhappiness this way, though. It will transfer to neighboring cities.

 

[Bilko]

Ok, thanks for your help - but here's another question:

I'm playing my first game on Emperor, my third game using the DyP mod (I'm thinking I'm going to switch back to vanilla soon though; the extra complexity was nice at first but now it's more of a nuisance.)

Anyway, I decided I wanted to start off close to some other civs, and wanted to go back to a huge map, but I hate Pangea, so I did a 80% Continents Huge world. I've started on a pretty small continent with the germans about 10 or 12 tiles to the east, the Polynesians about 8 to the south, and the English and Russians about 12 or so to the North, with the Ocean on my West, North of the English/Russians, East of the Germans and South of the Polynesians.

So far the strategy I've been using is just to use settlers to grab all of the resources and the best city placement spots forst (got one spot with 3 wheat fields, a bonus grassland and forests, perfect for settler factory.)

My question is, once I've secured all of the resources I need, would it be best just to build as many cities as I can closely together, or expand my borders to get the most of this tiny continent? The Germans are taking out the Polynesians right now, and if I'm not careful, I might be next. I'm going for a conquest victory in this game, too, so development of individual cities isn't that big of a deal, as long as they can pump out units.

 

[alamo]

Grabbing real estate is always important, especially since you cannot see strategic resources (while they can).

More important is keeping what you have! Check F3 to see how you compare to your agressive neighbors (weak/average/strong).

Some improvements will be needed. If conquest is your goal then you need to get some basic science infrastructure before mobilizing (libraries, some universities). The alternative is to get a super-science city (large city w/Copernicus+Newton).

 

[Bilko]

Well, I've only been concentrating on settlers, so right now I have the bare minimum of one warrior or spearman per city, plus a scout. The early game isn't really my strong point, military-wise. I can usually out-expand the AI, and even on Emperor right now I'm having no problems keeping up with them in tech (actually, I'm ahead right now, amazingly.) But I'm usually screwed if they attack me. The last game I played, Japan sneak attacked me in the early game and took two of my cities before I could retaliate. I was very luckily able to take Tokyo with a couple of Archers, then took my cities back and got peace with them, churning out a military during the peace to crush them as soon as it ended. But by then, the expansion phase was almost over anyway.

In this game, it's only 1000 BC, and I have 4 cities plus two settlers on the way to get Horses and Incense. Each of the AIs on my continent has 3 or 4, too, but they also all have big militaries, whereas I only have the few spearmen and warriors. England and Russia have been fighting, and Germany is about to wipe out Polynesia. Since I've got all relations above cautious, and perpetually have gpt deals, they haven't declared on me - yet. My problem will come if/when Germany decides to attack. And me being France, I'm sure they will.

 

[fret]

Edited, not relevent

 

[Bilko]

I guess you aren't familiar with the DyP mod then:
Citizens eat three food each, settlers cost more shields, and you cannot irrigate until late AA.
To compound this, I started in an area filled with plains, so my first settler took a while. My second was on a floodplain though, so I got rolling after that. 15 cities by 1000BC is near impossible unless you start out right next to a wheat field and some bonus grassland.

 

[fret]

ahh sorry, I missed that post