What do you think about efficient city placement?

[Slarki]

I know this is an old topic, but since I play this mod again after a few months I notice the difference from other mods. Something that carried over from the main game is that you need to research to see most ressources on the map. Some civilizations like the Indians can only see 2 ressources when they start out, while Persians can see 9. But all civs need to research at least 3 techs to see the most important ressources for early city placement.

I don't know if this is really a good thing. When I build my cities, I prefer to build them so that they are later still efficient, with no plots overlapping to other cities. But I would like to hear the other side why the starting ressources are gated behind technologies with the negative that there is less of a reason to find a good spot for a city.

The second thing that is implemented for some time now is the distance unhappiness modifier. The further you build from your capital, the greater the unhappiness. If you don't start out as humanitarian/charismatic and you want to build cities that don't overlap with other cities when you have administrative level, your new ancient city will start out unhappy.

I like the change of punishing aggressive expansion and rewarding early research, finding new ressources in your old city. But this combined makes it very hard to use cities to their full potential. Right now I don't know if it worth the effort to place cities further away, accepting the unhappiness to use more plots in the late game.

 

[robbyextreme]

I rarely build cities more than 3 tiles away from each other. By the time the city is large you will be putting extra citizens as specialists and employing them with buildings like Villa, Manor, Estate.

In this mod many buildings give food so lack of tiles is never a problem for city growth. Being able to share tiles among cities is also crucial for optimal play. also if your cities are far away you are gonna lose movement point efficiency.

 

[Slarki]

I rarely build cities more than 3 tiles away from each other. By the time the city is large you will be putting extra citizens as specialists and employing them with buildings like Villa, Manor, Estate.

In this mod many buildings give food so lack of tiles is never a problem for city growth. Being able to share tiles among cities is also crucial for optimal play. also if your cities are far away you are gonna lose movement point efficiency.

In the modern era I felt this was a godsend to have my cities far enough from each other because by then in a specialist economy great people appear slower and the additional plots help to compensate that.

 

[robbyextreme]

Which difficulty level do you play on?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I would like all the player to keep one thing in mind: RAND is a generally good balanced mod, which means you can use a broad set of options and the game will run fine. But you can't expect to play the mod always the same way you play vanilla civ or other mods: if you use the same strategy/gamestyle you use somewhere else, you might find it doesn't work in RAND. Not because there's a flaw in the mod, but exacly because the mod is designed to work like that.

 

[Slarki]

Which difficulty level do you play on?

Monarch or Emperor

I would like all the player to keep one thing in mind: RAND is a generally good balanced mod, which means you can use a broad set of options and the game will run fine. But you can't expect to play the mod always the same way you play vanilla civ or other mods: if you use the same strategy/gamestyle you use somewhere else, you might find it doesn't work in RAND. Not because there's a flaw in the mod, but exacly because the mod is designed to work like that.

I had this thing in mind, that's why I ask cautiously what were the thoughts behind both features. I played since Rise of Mankind 2 more this mod (combined with the predecessor) than the vanilla bts version. Recently when I started to play Fall from Heaven 2 in multiplayer I was pleasantly suprised that the starting ressources were already revealed.