Excelsi
Chieftain
Forgive the newbie questions, but what's the benefit of tightly packed cities? Don't they just lock out workable tiles? I'm guessing it's to do with running lots of specialists but why? To keep maintenance or travel down?
What's this about city overlap?
- Thread starter Excelsi
- Start date
The idea being that most cities dont work all their tiles for a massive amount of the game, so that overlapping them isnt really a disadvantage. Basically dont worry about overlap if it means the city has more/more easily worked specials in it.
Overlap can also be used to grow cottages for a beuro-cap or to share food resources for cottage cities.
EDIT: as an expansion to what mfie said above these extra cities can become more useful when you per city/per building bonuses like AP hammers, mercantilism, UoS beakers, Statue of liberty specs etc.
Overlap can also be used to grow cottages for a beuro-cap or to share food resources for cottage cities.
EDIT: as an expansion to what mfie said above these extra cities can become more useful when you per city/per building bonuses like AP hammers, mercantilism, UoS beakers, Statue of liberty specs etc.
JammerUno
King
You want to be working all your high yield tiles, usually food resources, and the health/happy means you won't get to size 20 average cities in most games anyway.
Gooblah
Heh...
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2007
- Messages
- 4,282
Most cities don't reach 20 population until the late game, and even then they're plagued by unhappiness and unhealthiness to the point that they can't work 20, barely managing 15-17.
Thus, it's more efficient to pack cities tighter together in the early game; it maximizes the amount of tiles used as well as the number of cities. More cities translates into more commerce, more research, more production, and eventually a much better position for three legendary cities or spaceship part production or construction and training of a massive army.
Thus, it's more efficient to pack cities tighter together in the early game; it maximizes the amount of tiles used as well as the number of cities. More cities translates into more commerce, more research, more production, and eventually a much better position for three legendary cities or spaceship part production or construction and training of a massive army.
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2008
- Messages
- 26,892
This is interesting. City placement is one of my probably my weakest aspects and I'm pretty good at Prince now. How does this close placement translate to the blocking stratgy? I tend to try to get my cities a bit farther out to block off land and grab good resources that may not be close to the cap. At higher levels, depending on map, the AI tends to expanded ridiculously fast
My natural tendency is to avoid overlap altogether, and I also tend to play a slow game where I catch up in the modern era so I'm interested in long term potential for cities. I wondered the same thing myself for a while, but I'm starting to see a number of reasons to overlap.
Firstly, it's quite hard to place cities that don't overlap at all, and given the same amount of land you're better off overlapping to work all of the tiles that you own than leaving gaps and not working some tiles at all. Except for worthless tiles like ice/desert/peak of course, and I don't get too upset if a few tundra or even plains aren't worked. When you add in all sorts of other constraints on where to place your cities such as grabbing good resources quickly and early (including putting them in the first ring), unsettleable tiles like water and peaks, not wanting to settle on top of a good resource, blocking with as few cities as possible and working all the seafood that might not be accessible from many tiles, I end up with overlapping cities anyway.
More cities can also mean a 9th city for 3 sets of 3 temples giving a cathedral of each religeon in each culture city. Or in more desperate circumstances a 6th city for Oxford or Wall Street.
The only big downside of more cities is just more total maintanence, which is offset (or even reversed) by more traderoute income, and more hammers spent building the original settler plus infrastructure, which is a one-off cost. If you want a city with a national wonder like ironworks to work all its tiles, you can just assign them away from the other nearby cities, so just make sure you don't plant the national wonder cities too close.
These are my reasons, I think the main reason most people do it though is basically that low happiness/health caps early in the game mean you work more tiles in your land area sooner, as others have kind of said already.
Firstly, it's quite hard to place cities that don't overlap at all, and given the same amount of land you're better off overlapping to work all of the tiles that you own than leaving gaps and not working some tiles at all. Except for worthless tiles like ice/desert/peak of course, and I don't get too upset if a few tundra or even plains aren't worked. When you add in all sorts of other constraints on where to place your cities such as grabbing good resources quickly and early (including putting them in the first ring), unsettleable tiles like water and peaks, not wanting to settle on top of a good resource, blocking with as few cities as possible and working all the seafood that might not be accessible from many tiles, I end up with overlapping cities anyway.
More cities can also mean a 9th city for 3 sets of 3 temples giving a cathedral of each religeon in each culture city. Or in more desperate circumstances a 6th city for Oxford or Wall Street.
The only big downside of more cities is just more total maintanence, which is offset (or even reversed) by more traderoute income, and more hammers spent building the original settler plus infrastructure, which is a one-off cost. If you want a city with a national wonder like ironworks to work all its tiles, you can just assign them away from the other nearby cities, so just make sure you don't plant the national wonder cities too close.
These are my reasons, I think the main reason most people do it though is basically that low happiness/health caps early in the game mean you work more tiles in your land area sooner, as others have kind of said already.
Overlap carries several costs:
1. It increases maintenance. This can be extremely significant.
2. It increased the number of
that have to be devoted to basic infra; two large cities need only two forges between them to get all the modded; 4 overlaps need an additional two forges.
3. It cost more and potentially delayed growth for the settlers.
These are offset by several advantages:
1. You work more tiles sooner (normally).
2. You get more per cities rewards (EP producing buildings, AP/UoS/SM buildings, trade routes, corporations).
3. Lower pops mean fewer cap issues (health in particular, but also happy). This can also allow you to use the much higher potential happy cap to whip/draft down for a quick shot of instant mass production.
4. It becomes much easier to hold key tiles against aggressive culture as you have more cities putting in their base culture (+20 for the rings) on an individual tile.
At the end of the day I normally want my Oxford, IW, HE, MS, and WS cities working close to all tiles. Playing the long game (where the costs of factories, power, labs, airports, etc. are high) also tends to have me do less overlap. The ICS placement strategy is strongest with an EE/RE/CorpE setup, but that is micro hell.
1. It increases maintenance. This can be extremely significant.
2. It increased the number of
that have to be devoted to basic infra; two large cities need only two forges between them to get all the modded; 4 overlaps need an additional two forges.3. It cost more
and potentially delayed growth for the settlers.These are offset by several advantages:
1. You work more tiles sooner (normally).
2. You get more per cities rewards (EP producing buildings, AP/UoS/SM buildings, trade routes, corporations).
3. Lower pops mean fewer cap issues (health in particular, but also happy). This can also allow you to use the much higher potential happy cap to whip/draft down for a quick shot of instant mass production.
4. It becomes much easier to hold key tiles against aggressive culture as you have more cities putting in their base culture (+20 for the rings) on an individual tile.
At the end of the day I normally want my Oxford, IW, HE, MS, and WS cities working close to all tiles. Playing the long game (where the costs of factories, power, labs, airports, etc. are high) also tends to have me do less overlap. The ICS placement strategy is strongest with an EE/RE/CorpE setup, but that is micro hell.
5. You can work almost all tiles in your empire, non city overlap leaves a good amount of tiles in non BFC.
6. Blocking enemy civilizations from key points on the map/spreading to your part of the map.
7. City placement can be more ideal, spreading out food resources over multiple cities.
shyuhe
Deity
Overlapping cities with your capital can allow the secondary cities to grow cottages while the capital uses hammer tiles for units (workers/settlers). Then once your expansion is done, you can return the now grown cottages to the capital for instant commerce (useful with bureaucracy).
From the early game until corporations are available:
In cottage heavy empire you can plan your cities to work around 10 tiles for most of the game. You will see a lot of benefit sharing a set of hills with a production and commerce city, so that both sides tile improvements can be shared (prod works a cottage, while the commerce city mines or whips a multiplier building).
If your science/gold comes from specialists you normally plan more cities and work fewer tiles per city ~5 and 4-5 specialists/workshops.
"Don't they just lock out workable tiles?" City tiles can salvage bad tiles as whatever you settle on is raised to the city tile minimum 2f, 1h, 1c. It takes no citizens to work a city tile, so its free resources after you recoup the cost of a settler (~30 turns?). So a early pop 4 city could work 2 grassland farms and support 2 specialists.
City maintenance costs are not bad with extra cities close to the capital.
In cottage heavy empire you can plan your cities to work around 10 tiles for most of the game. You will see a lot of benefit sharing a set of hills with a production and commerce city, so that both sides tile improvements can be shared (prod works a cottage, while the commerce city mines or whips a multiplier building).
If your science/gold comes from specialists you normally plan more cities and work fewer tiles per city ~5 and 4-5 specialists/workshops.
"Don't they just lock out workable tiles?" City tiles can salvage bad tiles as whatever you settle on is raised to the city tile minimum 2f, 1h, 1c. It takes no citizens to work a city tile, so its free resources after you recoup the cost of a settler (~30 turns?). So a early pop 4 city could work 2 grassland farms and support 2 specialists.
City maintenance costs are not bad with extra cities close to the capital.
r_rolo1
King of myself
The biggest advantage of overlapping cities is that you can take more of the land inside your borders in early times. cities normally don't start with 20 pop, so, if you aim to perfect BFC in alli cities most of the lannd will be unused for quite a while. OTOH there are a lot of bonuses in the game that work on city basis ( shrine cash, mercantilist and SoL specs, ... ) so having more cities in the same territory will give bigger revenues in that regard. The big con is obviously the maintenance, but, as the city maintenance per city does not grow forever, after a certain number of cities ( as long as your cities actually give something back to the empire ) things stabilize and every city you have more becomes a net gain.
If you want to see overlap taken to extremes, I guess this SG is a good reading
If you want to see overlap taken to extremes, I guess this SG is a good reading
Similar threads
