Tightly packed city placement

[daengle]

Many of the screenshots that you are seeing with very tight city placement are from games where the corruption model has been altered.

Under the standard rules lots more cities means lots more corruption. If corruption is eliminated or the OCN (optimal city number) increased, then building lots of cities becomes a much more attractive strategy.

Furthermore, since the AI can't change the way it places cities in response to these changes, it tends to do less well under these mods. So, the human players are able to beat the game at higher levels than they would under the standard corruption model.

It's an invisible change to the rules that some people like because they want huge, globe (cylinder?) spanning military civ's where every newly conquered city adds fully to the empire. But it has an enormous impact on what constitutes a reasonable strategy.

There are high level players who tightly pack cities on the standard rules, but a lot of what you're seeing is people playing a very different game.

 

[Catt]

Don't know about tighter city spacing being linked to any corruption mods . . .

I tend to place early cities in a 3-4 tile spacing regime (I use "3-tile spacing" to mean City-tile-tile-City) but follow the lay of the land. 3-tile spacing has a number of advantages, as well as disadvantages. Some of the principal advantages include: (1) full use of tiles under cultural control for the half or more of the game before hospitals arrive on the scene; (2) sharing improved tiles - because city radii overlap, your early workers can improve several tiles which are then available to multiple cites from turn-to-turn (i.e., as your capital pops out a settler and tiles become free for other laborers, a nearby city can use the already improved "capital tile" until the capital regrows and needs the use of the tile); and (3) more effective defense -- even slowmovers can move from one city to the next in one turn -- when you're surprised by a looming AI attack on one city, the threatened city can be reinforced by any units in all nearby cities in one turn.

 

[Bilko]

But, what do I do about the Germans? I'm posting a screenshot of my game to show you what it's like exactly. Like I said, my military is very small, and I've been concentrating on just making settlers. So far, every city except one has been placed on or next to a resource, and the one that wasn't was placed because of the wheat fields.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Bilko: You can still expand to secure resources, you simply have to do so with a plan. You could have put Chartres a bit closer to Paris in order to prevent the Germans from sneaking a city in between the two (though it appears as though you built Chartres AFTER Germany built Konigsberg). If your own cities are too close to each other, the AI won't try to get into the gap between them. One of the things I like to do when playing against the AI is to prepare a tightly-spaced plan but start from further out and backfill as time goes on. You build certain cities in locations that will eventually pan out to be tighter spacing, but you build the cities farther away from your capital and each other first, preventing the AI from getting the land near you.

I personally find a tighter city-spacing to be vastly superior to a wider one, especially early on. Later on in the game larger cities with more space are superior, but hey, that's, what, 1/4 of the game or less that you will use almost all of the tiles in a city's radius? Most of my games end before Hospitals take effect. I almost always use 2 or 3 tile spacing in my games (I've always thought of ICS as 1-tile spacing, personally...) since that gives the biggest bang for your buck early on, when it really matters. Later on you should have an advantage over the AI so the fact that your individual cities aren't maxed out isn't as important.

This screenshot shows my city placement during one of my recent Demigod games. I was by myself on a relatively small island, so spacing my cities closer together was even more important than in most games. I was able to get much more productive capability out of than if I had spaced my cities further apart. I ended up winning that game, despite being far behind on techs and having much less land than most of the other AI civs. Why? Partly because of my city placement.

I have written a new article on how to make your economy strong early on in the game by use of food, and one of the topics I discuss is city placement. I suggest you check it out.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86630

 

[Bilko]

Thanks a lot for the help, I'll keep that in mind for future games. I ended up doing pretty well in the expansion phase anyway: I ended in 110 AD with 19 cities. The most any AI has is 9, and the four of them on my continent have a grand total of 25 all together, so I did pretty well in that area. Plus, I managed to get one of each of the three luxuries on the island, and all visible strategic resources. I even managed to deprive England of Horses and steal spices from Russia (though they still have one , as they built a city on one of the tiles containing them.)

I've started mobilizing for war, and plan on taking the continent in the next few hundred years. The only problem if I do that is that all of the other civs will have each-other to trade with, and I'll be alone until Magnetism is discovered. And at emperor, the AIs could be well into the IA by then

 

[Bilko]

If anyone could take a look at this map of my island, and give me any criticism, that's be great. It was taken in 270 AD, 9 turns after I placed my last city (the southernmost one.)

 

[Chieftess]

If I can find my demigod game on my other computer, you can see the placement I used. It's very tight, and I was able to have a nice core of cities building Mounted Warriors every 2-3 turns. I even culture flipped a Hittite city! (Never thought that would happen on a demigod game - didn't have much culture, either...). I was actually behind in techs when England attacked me with Medival Infantry, but it's still MI's defense of 2 against a MW's attack of 3. They even took down a couple of pikes, and now, I have the only source of iron and horses on the continent!

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by Bilko
If anyone could take a look at this map of my island, and give me any criticism, that's be great. It was taken in 270 AD, 9 turns after I placed my last city (the southernmost one.)

Without any comprehensive view of the map or your game, the one piece of advice I'd give is: "Lots more workers!"

A bunch of workers irrigating all those plains would dramatically increase the power of your empire. It is sometimes hard to commit builds to workers when there is land to be settled, units to build, and improvements to construct, but you can very, very, rarely go wrong with worker builds. Suck it up and pop out lots of workers early, and you might find the game significantly different -- you could easily have twice as much population (and therefore power) even after taking into account the population cost of pushing out 10 more workers.

 

[Bilko]

Catt: Again, I have to point out, this is the DyP mod, so I can't irrigate until late AA. That screenshot is in 270 AD, and I think I ended up getting the tech for irrigation around 450 or so, right after I started my war with the Germans. (Wiped em off of the continent, by the way. They had put a city on an Island though, and I had no Navy so I just settled for peace for all of their money and techs.) I got about 15 slaves from that war, plus the 10 I already had and another two I built is enough for that Island for now.

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by Bilko
Catt: Again, I have to point out, this is the DyP mod, so I can't irrigate until late AA. That screenshot is in 270 AD, and I think I ended up getting the tech for irrigation around 450 or so, right after I started my war with the Germans.

I don't play DYP (or any mod other than the AU Mod occasionaly) so

But my advice still stands in one form -- there are lots of unimproved tiles (even though not yet worked by citizens) and lots of forests that are ripe for harvesting (assuming the DYP mod gives a shield bonus). If anything, mining the plains in the interim before irrigation would provide a boost. While unfamiliar with DYP and its implications, I still believe that the single greatest boost to human power for most players would be building lots of workers early.

 

[fret]

Originally posted by Catt
I still believe that the single greatest boost to human power for most players would be building lots of workers early.

I'm with you on that one. Definately a top priority... and like you I'm speaking without experience but I would guess that in a mod designed to limit expantion they are of even greater importance.

 

[Bilko]

Well, I fear that if I had concentrated more on building workers, with 4 other civs on that tiny landmass, I wouldn't have been able to get nearly as many cities.

It's not a great idea to harvest forests in DyP, as they are essentially the same as hills (ie minable) only with 1 extra commerce.

Also, as for mining: You can't do that until you get construction, and I didn't get that until sometime just before taking that screenshot. If you look, you can see my workers putting the first mines in some of the forest tiles.

So, early game, pretty much the only thing workers can build is roads, which, as you can see I did, roading every worked tile, and connecting all of my cities together.

I'll take your advice into consideration in my next game, though, which will be without DyP. I'll try building a nice fleet of workers. But my question for this game was more in regards to city placement than workers. Your criticism is still appreciated, though.