tile overlap of cities...
- Thread starter val13
- Start date
Mulholland
Happy New Year!!!!
Pros: Smaller space to work= more specialists
Cons:
Fewer tile based bonuses wich can be better than specialists once improved. These are especially imprtant in the early game.
Cons:
Fewer tile based bonuses wich can be better than specialists once improved. These are especially imprtant in the early game.
val,
I try to play a bit like yourself in that I'll try to avoid overlap where practicable.
The problem essentially arises because maps rarely seem to allow fantastic city placement;
If you find sites with nice placement of resource tiles, there will be lack of fresh water but one tile away you'll be next to a river, or a mountain or a lake is the feature of the tile where the fax-X sweet spot is, or as you find good early-game strategic resources through technologies (Copper, Iron, Horses), they appear in all the wrong spots forcing sub-optimal city placement, etc. etc. Essentially, if you want to grab the resources, rarely does the game allow for a perfect 'OXXXXOXXXXO' placement across the map.
The benefit of overlapping also allows for your cities to change their roles and be more dynamic during a game. For instance a Cow Pasture provides both
and 
- there may be times where one city will leverage more out of a high food square than the other out of a high production square, so you can accommodate for these shifting dynamics.
Sometimes the damn AI shows up just where you didn't want them to, and forces you to take your Settler and put them in a sub-optimal spot.
Having tighter city placement also reduces the distance maintenance penalty.
Food counts will also not support all tiles in a fax-X to be worked. If your side-by-side placement lands you in brown hills, tundra, and a Silver resource, but there's a Clams tile one away, then you'll endure some overlap for this food poor city that may never actually compete for food because it will never get a high population.
I'm sure there are more reasons ...
I try to play a bit like yourself in that I'll try to avoid overlap where practicable.
The problem essentially arises because maps rarely seem to allow fantastic city placement;
If you find sites with nice placement of resource tiles, there will be lack of fresh water but one tile away you'll be next to a river, or a mountain or a lake is the feature of the tile where the fax-X sweet spot is, or as you find good early-game strategic resources through technologies (Copper, Iron, Horses), they appear in all the wrong spots forcing sub-optimal city placement, etc. etc. Essentially, if you want to grab the resources, rarely does the game allow for a perfect 'OXXXXOXXXXO' placement across the map.
The benefit of overlapping also allows for your cities to change their roles and be more dynamic during a game. For instance a Cow Pasture provides both
and - there may be times where one city will leverage more out of a high food square than the other out of a high production square, so you can accommodate for these shifting dynamics.Sometimes the damn AI shows up just where you didn't want them to, and forces you to take your Settler and put them in a sub-optimal spot.
Having tighter city placement also reduces the distance maintenance penalty.
Food counts will also not support all tiles in a fax-X to be worked. If your side-by-side placement lands you in brown hills, tundra, and a Silver resource, but there's a Clams tile one away, then you'll endure some overlap for this food poor city that may never actually compete for food because it will never get a high population.
I'm sure there are more reasons ...
val,
I try to play a bit like yourself in that I'll try to avoid overlap where practicable.
The problem essentially arises because maps rarely seem to allow fantastic city placement;
If you find sites with nice placement of resource tiles, there will be lack of fresh water but one tile away you'll be next to a river, or a mountain or a lake is the feature of the tile where the fax-X sweet spot is, or as you find good early-game strategic resources through technologies (Copper, Iron, Horses), they appear in all the wrong spots forcing sub-optimal city placement, etc. etc. Essentially, if you want to grab the resources, rarely does the game allow for a perfect 'OXXXXOXXXXO' placement across the map.
The benefit of overlapping also allows for your cities to change their roles and be more dynamic during a game. For instance a Cow Pasture provides both
Sometimes the damn AI shows up just where you didn't want them to, and forces you to take your Settler and put them in a sub-optimal spot.
Having tighter city placement also reduces the distance maintenance penalty.
Food counts will also not support all tiles in a fax-X to be worked. If your side-by-side placement lands you in brown hills, tundra, and a Silver resource, but there's a Clams tile one away, then you'll endure some overlap for this food poor city that may never actually compete for food because it will never get a high population.
I'm sure there are more reasons ...
see.. this is what I run into!
I want ALL tiles worked. To do this, you need enough food. At times, I have to build 5 farms to get the food ratio right, and that leaves few squares for cottages/mines/workshops! So, that city becomes... well... not much really... other then just a city to expand my borders!
Galileo44
Great Scientist
I am an addict to reducing overlap. I need to stop, but i still hate having cities share tiles. Realistically, on the level I play, Maybe 1 or 2 of my cities will end up size 20 before the end. Yet i persist in avoiding the overlap. The maintainance kills you on higher levels, and there is no reason to waste good tiles early just because the last 20 turns of the game will see your cities get filled with citizens.
ratrangerm
Prince
Sometimes overlap can't be avoided, particularly when you capture AI cities (the AI never has a problem with that). I'm usually OK with overlapping one square, as that doesn't really hurt too much, but I avoid having them overlap side by side whenever possible.
With the AI civs, since they tend to do overlapping, the best you can do there is keep the cities that are worth keeping and raze at least a couple others, taking care to ensure you don't raze a Holy City or a city with a Wonder.
With the AI civs, since they tend to do overlapping, the best you can do there is keep the cities that are worth keeping and raze at least a couple others, taking care to ensure you don't raze a Holy City or a city with a Wonder.
val,
The benefit of overlapping also allows for your cities to change their roles and be more dynamic during a game. For instance a Cow Pasture provides both
I'm sure there are more reasons ...
This is a civ 4 forum, you can no longer switch tiles between cities as you could in civ 3. this is an attempt to reduce the endless mictomanagment that some people get into.
as said, it is a comparison of the extra maintenence, and dificulty of defending spead out cities, vs resource plaement, late game extra space etc. spreading the teritory might also prove useful later in the game when some gunpowder appears at a random location. having more teritory also increases your chances of getting later resources.
Yep - here's how to do it. Suppose a square is in both city X and city Y. If neither city is working the square, you can go in either city's city managment screen and click on it to put people there. If city X is already working it and you want city Y to do so, simply go into city Y's screen, and click on it (twice, once to put it in that city, and a second time to put a guy on it). The displaced guy in city X will be reassinged to someting else in city X.
Bushface
Deity
Only rarely can one create a row of cities whose fat crosses touch at three tiles each - the map usually shoves a peak or lake just where the next city ought to be, or an AI city breaks the pattern. And then the cities in an adjacent row must each overlap one tile into the first row if every tile is to be within a fat cross and thus workable. But the point has been made above that very often city placement is heavily influenced by the placing of resources, rivers and sea; getting Iron is better than covering some desert tiles, to take an extreme example.
Boy, it's been a while, but I seem to remember that in CIV3 you could do some extreme tile swapping in between turns, by breaking into the queue during the build phase (but after the commerce-calculation phase). This may be the kind of extreme micromanagement that Vulcans means.
(Breaking into the queue like this was generally regarded as an exploit, and it is disallowed in the GOTM's.)
Buntaro's quite right, of course, that normal tile-switching remains a powerful strategy in CIV4. I'd say that tile-switching is more important than ever in CIV.
Even if I cannot get away from my old CIV2 habits, in which I'd try to cover every tile (water included) with nothing but BFC's, heading for the maximum population possible....
- Codex
You get more population with 2 cities working 30 tiles than with 1 city working 20...
It's very different to
1) try to have all tiles of the map covered by BFCs
or to
2) try to avoid at all cost that a tile is in 2 BFCs.
I have no problem with 1. It's a waste to have good tiles unworked.
2) is wrong.
Why?
a) because sometimes you need overlapping (going cultural, you want to grow the cottages, and the pop. you do this by letting "helper cities" grow the cottages and working food tiles in the main cities)
b) because sometimes (or most of the times ) you cannot grow to size 20 before the game ends or is mostly finished anyway. This means that if you don't overlap, you don't use all the tiles for most of the game.
You get more population with 2 cities working 30 tiles than with 1 city working 20...
It's very different to
1) try to have all tiles of the map covered by BFCs
or to
2) try to avoid at all cost that a tile is in 2 BFCs.
I have no problem with 1. It's a waste to have good tiles unworked.
2) is wrong.
Why?
a) because sometimes you need overlapping (going cultural, you want to grow the cottages, and the pop. you do this by letting "helper cities" grow the cottages and working food tiles in the main cities)
b) because sometimes (or most of the times ) you cannot grow to size 20 before the game ends or is mostly finished anyway. This means that if you don't overlap, you don't use all the tiles for most of the game.
All true, and I'm (slowly) coming around to the fact that you can't just lay down a city grid and improve all of the tiles eventually, as you could in earlier incarnations in the series.
It's also true, however, that the CIV3 response -- city spamming, including "temporary cities" in the core that would later be abandoned -- has also been nerfed. City rank maintenance costs, the "no abandoning" rule, the "2 tiles between cities" rule, and unimprovable useless land have all done their part to encourage larger cities founded farther apart. (City distance maintenance costs, on the other hand, encourage a tighter build pattern.)
A few things that haven't yet been said:
- Cities built closer are much easier to defend, since troops don't have to march as far between them.
- Cities built closer together can be improved faster, since they can share worker improvements, and workers don't have to travel as far between them.
- Cities built closer together can sometimes (especially around the capitol) allow for unescorted settlers, since the new build site will either be inside or adjacent to cultural borders.
I have to confess that I still find myself drifting towards build patterns that include useless or near-useless tiles, because I remember the days when they could (eventually) be terraformed or aquaformed into something useful.
Happily, the cure seems to be: More CIV!
EscapedGoat
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2005
- Messages
- 204
A lot of people try to avoid fat cross overlap because they mistakenly think that it is optimal play. It is not. It is simply compulsive.
What is optimal play? It is working as many tiles as fast as possible, for as many turns as possible. Especially special squares. That's not achieved with 1 city getting 20 squares, it's achieved with more realistically every city having 10-15 squares, and letting some super cities with the right wonders work more(like a commerce heavy capital running bureacracy and oxford uni).
The health and happiness costs of huge cities is too high. Think about it this way: if you have 10 happy and 10 health res for resources, that can sustain 20 pop in 2 cities, but not in 1 until end game where you have built every improvement and researched things like enviromentalism to even have a chance to have 20 pop. The costs of doing that are huge, that's hammers that could be better spent building military, wonders, settlers, workers, basically anything.
Obsessing about super cities is simply sub-optimal play. It's the kind of strategy that can only exist on the lower difficulty levels.
What is optimal play? It is working as many tiles as fast as possible, for as many turns as possible. Especially special squares. That's not achieved with 1 city getting 20 squares, it's achieved with more realistically every city having 10-15 squares, and letting some super cities with the right wonders work more(like a commerce heavy capital running bureacracy and oxford uni).
The health and happiness costs of huge cities is too high. Think about it this way: if you have 10 happy and 10 health res for resources, that can sustain 20 pop in 2 cities, but not in 1 until end game where you have built every improvement and researched things like enviromentalism to even have a chance to have 20 pop. The costs of doing that are huge, that's hammers that could be better spent building military, wonders, settlers, workers, basically anything.
Obsessing about super cities is simply sub-optimal play. It's the kind of strategy that can only exist on the lower difficulty levels.
Ankh-f-n-Khonsu
forth-speaker of Mentu
You get more population with 2 cities working 30 tiles than with 1 city working 20...
As one of the aforementioned compulsives seeking recovery, this is my new mantra. Thanks...
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
hubby thinks overlap is the ultimate sin. i like nice non-overlapping cities, but the fact is you won't be working all 20 squares for a long time. i'll sometimes place cities as pure filler (later in the game, not as my first 4 cities), they'll have as few as 5 or 6 tiles that are their own. i definitely have a plan in mind for which tiles truly belong to the main city eventually when i place the filler cities. often they can work cottages for the main city in the meantime, so that they grow into towns for when main city has the pop to use them.
i had a game last week where iron popped up 2 diagonal from my starting city. arrrrrgh! yeah i had access to the resource but i wanted to work it, a grasslands iron is yum! so i planted a filler city later.
hubby has been quite surprised how well some of these filler cities have turned out, but he still thinks overlap is a sin.
i had a game last week where iron popped up 2 diagonal from my starting city. arrrrrgh! yeah i had access to the resource but i wanted to work it, a grasslands iron is yum! so i planted a filler city later.
hubby has been quite surprised how well some of these filler cities have turned out, but he still thinks overlap is a sin.
I'm one of the ones that tries to avoid overlap (except for the filler cities later in the game). When I do overlap, I try not to have more than two tiles max overlaping, if I can help it. Some of those captured cities aren't places so well, but they have access to some good resources.
Maybe Civ1&2 just got me into a whole mentality... because I see where you don't work ALL the tiles until late in the game, but, playing large maps, you are to take until late in the game to win a conquest victory.
I don't open borders, so, I use Libraries/Temples/etc to expand my cultural borders, seal off land for later cities, and park the AI into a corner... yes, my maintenance costs shoot my research early, but, the AI doesn't expand very far either.
I use my outer sealing cities to guard my borders and build "stacks of death" while my inner capital builds, expands, and eventually fills in the gaps.
Or am I just totally wrong????
I my current game, I have 2 civ's to the south and 1 civ to the north. I set 3 cities far north blocking in Victoria (no open border). My capital was already placed to block one side of the coast. I'm working on building 1 southern city, unfortunately I have to take one city from Mansa (he got to the iron before I did
) and then will place a 2nd southern city to militarily lock the 2 bottom civ's into a land grab battle with neither getting too much while my capital works to get my commerce and research balanced out, then building inner cities to fill. Hopefully by that time I can concentrate on taking out both southern civ's... redraw the continent... and work on the 2nd continent.
I don't open borders, so, I use Libraries/Temples/etc to expand my cultural borders, seal off land for later cities, and park the AI into a corner... yes, my maintenance costs shoot my research early, but, the AI doesn't expand very far either.
I use my outer sealing cities to guard my borders and build "stacks of death" while my inner capital builds, expands, and eventually fills in the gaps.
Or am I just totally wrong????
I my current game, I have 2 civ's to the south and 1 civ to the north. I set 3 cities far north blocking in Victoria (no open border). My capital was already placed to block one side of the coast. I'm working on building 1 southern city, unfortunately I have to take one city from Mansa (he got to the iron before I did
) and then will place a 2nd southern city to militarily lock the 2 bottom civ's into a land grab battle with neither getting too much while my capital works to get my commerce and research balanced out, then building inner cities to fill. Hopefully by that time I can concentrate on taking out both southern civ's... redraw the continent... and work on the 2nd continent.Overlap doesn't bother me. In fact, in Civ 2 and 3 it was the best way to play. The objective in those games was to maximize population and thus score. However in Civ 4, because of the way city maintaince is calculated, it doesn't seem wise to try to use every tile in your area.
That said, if there are resource tiles to be had, but it requires an overlap, I will almost always overlap. This is ecspecially true for food resources.
That said, if there are resource tiles to be had, but it requires an overlap, I will almost always overlap. This is ecspecially true for food resources.
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