What city placement do you use???

I let the land dictate where my cities will go, although, I will lean more towards the OCP method than the ICS.
 
I just put them somewhere; often near the borders of what I want to be my initial empire to keep the AI away. Then later I fill up the land in the corners of my empire; where the AI can't get to easily anyway. In my current game the Dutch penetrated my borders (or rather, what I wanted to be my borders) and put down a few cities behind my "border". I just put some cities near those and started building Temples in them :)
 
I guess I tend towards a slightly crowded OCP, giving my cities anywhere from 12-21 tiles total to use by the end of the game. When settling my main consideration is getting the best tiles out there under production. So a river through lots of bonus grassland will be settled with cities dense enough to use most/all of the river/bonus tiles without hospitals. But if the terrain is marginal (esp tundra), I'll spread 'em out. Jungle too I give them more room because those cities, while slow to develop, grow huge quickly towards the end of the game.

If playing a civ that isn't religious or scientific, I tend to place cities so the best tiles - the ones I need to use immediately - are in the 8-tile ring.

I almost always place cities to make most use of freshwater, so a 4-tile lake will probably have 2-3 cities on it on my map. Freshwater coastal cities are a priority, too.

I admit I dont like overlap on the inner ring of the city radius. When that happens I find I'm constantly MMing the use of tiles in the city screen, trying to give the overlapping tiles to the city with less corruption, etc. Tedious.
 
i always place my cities so that they dont overlap. not even by 1 tile. hehe.
aah! the satisfaction of having a few size 40+ cities is just too great. :lol:
i actually often even raze ,or rather abandon, cities i capture from the AI if they are overlapping by more than 1 tile.. (depends on the situation though)
only strategic resources and a perfect choke point or canal city can sometimes force me to overlap.
 
I don't like my cities to overlap more then 4 tiles

when I take a city from the AI thats too close to another I tend to relocate it.

the reason I like my cities to use as much tiles as possible is because I like those super productive cities in the Industrial age were those cities usually don't go past size 20 but can build me a Tank in 2 turns or if I'm luck enough to have alot of hills in 1 turn.
 
Originally posted by Corrado
TheNiceOne has good points, but there are problems with that strategy as well- in the later two eras, your cities will have twice the maintenance costs (after all, 2 size-12 cities would have two marketplaces while 1 size-24 city would have 1), meaning that your empire will be hit with a much higher maintenance cost as well...
Click to expand...
Yes, they will have higher maintainance cost, but they will have double culture output, and you may often get the added maintainance cost back, because you need a lot less luxury. A size 24 city means 12 more citizens born unhappy than in the size 12 city. They must be made content by luxuries that you buy from opponents or by using the luxury slider. This has a cost that may well be higher than the increased maintenance cost.

Also note that I don't need to build any hospitals (or at least very few), which saves me maintenance and production.

But the major point is that by the time OCP gets to something even close to the same population/production, the same game with a denser build would have been won a long time ago.
 
Originally posted by Corrado
But also- isn't unhappiness affected by the number of cities you control?
Click to expand...
No, it isn't.

However, with my suggested denser build, where each city normally only reach size 12, you avoid most of the unhappiness problem you enounter with larger cities. So by having many, smaller cities, you not only get a much higher production/income during the 2.5 first eras, but you also avoid the happiness problem of large metropolises, where 20+ citizens are born unhappy due to city size.
 
Originally posted by TheNiceOne

Yes, they will have higher maintainance cost, but they will have double culture output, and you may often get the added maintainance cost back, because you need a lot less luxury. A size 24 city means 12 more citizens born unhappy than in the size 12 city. They must be made content by luxuries that you buy from opponents or by using the luxury slider. This has a cost that may well be higher than the increased maintenance cost.

Also note that I don't need to build any hospitals (or at least very few), which saves me maintenance and production.

But the major point is that by the time OCP gets to something even close to the same population/production, the same game with a denser build would have been won a long time ago.
Click to expand...

the max # of civilian unhappy in a city can't be more then the # of them working on the fields all specalist are consider content so its impossible for a size 24 city to have 12 more unhappy civilians then a size 12 city. Thus the max # of unhappy civilians in any city can't be more then 20.
 
Personally, I'm still a bit flaky about city placement. It's nice to be able to fortify a city from another one in a single turn, but the overlapping thing can get annoying. Mostly I try to go for optimal terrain within the first 9 squares. Also, planting a city three squares away, as opposed to four, saves one turn (do you plant your first settler on your starting location on the first turn, or risk wasting a turn for better placement?)...
 
I generally go for nine cities to start in as close to a perfect square as I can get. Ideally, I'll have my capital in the center with the eight cities surrouding the capital in a square. From there, I just start going in the direction where I can get the best locations for cities and cut off AI expansion.

I also aim for something that generats culture as early as possible. For Religious civilizations, temples are very good for that. For Scientific civilizations, I'll aim to build libraries.
 
I go for OCP, except that anytime terrain (especially a river or freshwater) indicates that OCP should be abandoned, I move in closer. In practice, this means that I'll average 3-4 squares overlap. In particular, I'll try to make some of the cities that have more squares include the mountains/tundra. It's especially nice when those are the overlap squares. Since those will not be used much until the city grows, it's not really a waste to not have them densely settled early. Finally, I'll try to get creative when there is too much jungle to clear. Sometimes a bunch of cities on the edge of the jungle can get 12 good squares with just a bit of clearing, but still have close to 20 by the time ever square is cleared.
 
OCP all the way, unless the terrain does not permit it, or you are trying to culturally push back another Civ's borders. I would prefer to have my cities farther apart then closer together, and wasting tiles . . .
 
Originally posted by Revolutionary


the max # of civilian unhappy in a city can't be more then the # of them working on the fields all specalist are consider content so its impossible for a size 24 city to have 12 more unhappy civilians then a size 12 city. Thus the max # of unhappy civilians in any city can't be more then 20.
Click to expand...

But you must consider that:

1. Depending what level you play, you get at least one content citizen per city.

2. It's easier to keep 12 citizens happy in each of 12 cities than it is to keep 24 citizns happy in each of 6 cities (144 citizens total in either case). A marketplace when you have 6 luxuries connected is all you need to make size 12 cities stable. Size 24 and you need cathedrals, wonders, and/or the luxury slider.


To those of you who won't let cities overlap because you hate to "waste" tiles: well, I hate to break it to you, but you're wasting tiles. Look at your games: if you have river tiles, luxuries, bonus resources, or even bonus grassland that you aren't using but could be if you allowed overlap...

I once had a start near an incredible cluster of 7 cows on grassland. I had to think long and hard...the idea of one city with them all was tempting (28 food in a size 7 city, after all), but in the end I let 3 different cities benefit from that bread basket. There was 4-5 tiles overlap between these cities just around that cluster, but I had two easy settler factories AND a fast-growing wonder-building city.

Now, I don't go as far as TNO and try to get EVERY (though I probably should) tile under production as soon as possible by crowding cities, but any tile that produces an extra food(above 2), shield (above 1), or commerce I target to be put to immediate use, which often means building cities closer.

Jungles are the exception - because of the time required to make them productive, I give jungle towns more room (though I'll crowd around any iron to imrove my chances for Iron WOrks when coal shows up) and build hospitals there. Having my FP near the jungle terrain is good too these cities end up being powerhouses in the modern era. But not this is only because I'm not sacrificing current production for a future benefit.
 
My name is Elmer, and I'm a recovering OCP addict. (clap, clap, clap)

All I can say to those of you who are insisting on OCP is, try closer placement. Just try it once. Maybe you'll hate it, but I think you'll have one of those "Wow!" moments where you realize that the world is completely different than you realized. I did it, and I've never gone back.

The problem, quite simply, is that "optimal" city placement is really only optimal once you've finished about two thirds of the game and in cities that have a full compliment of improvements including a hospital. Closer placement is admittedly less optimal at that late stage, but it's far more optimal early on.
 
I too used to spread out my cities so I would have few, if any, overlapping tiles. But lately I have been using a much closer build. The ability to improve shared tiles quickly and micromanage production can be quite powerful. A closer build is especially appropriate for the Conquests scenarios where you have a much more limited number of turns and you are not going to end up with huge metropoleis (<--nerdy plural :p ).

Herse
 
@Park Ranger I usually build lots of happiness improvements for their culture so I almost never have happiness problems. And I play in the high difficulty levels usually Demi-god and Deity. I never try to get the max amount of tiles for a city I usually have like 2 or 3 overlaping tiles per near by city, so one city might have like 6 overlaping tiles.

but you do have a point I think I'll try a combintion of OCP and TNO, any suggestions from those of you who swear by this method of city placement
 
Originally posted by Dr Elmer Jiggle
My name is Elmer, and I'm a recovering OCP addict. (clap, clap, clap)The problem, quite simply, is that "optimal" city placement is really only optimal once you've finished about two thirds of the game and in cities that have a full compliment of improvements including a hospital. Closer placement is admittedly less optimal at that late stage, but it's far more optimal early on.
Click to expand...

that depends on the level you play I usually get to the industrial age in the normal epic game well before the first 2/5 of the game is over, for ex. in one Demi-god game I was the Incas and I reached the Industrial age in the 700's AD
 
IS corruption cut to a half when you happen to be making your cities a lot closer by a considerable range from your capital?
 
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