Where to place your cities

[Eigenvector]

Generally speaking what do you all think? Is it better to place the city on a useless tile and let the surrounding land pick up the food and production? Or put the city on a great tile and not have to rely on outside tiles as much?

For the most part I'm putting my cities in the arid section of land 1 tile over from a river - figuring any food or production that I would get from the tile would be wasted by having a city on it. But is that a bad assumption on my part?

 

[eg577]

If you are building in a desert it is probably better to build directly next to the river than built 1 square away to get one more floodplain tile. By building on the river you get the health bonus to migitate the floodplain sickness and you'll almost certainly avoid having extra desert tiles by being as close to the river as possible.

 

[dh_epic]

If you build the city on a resource, you can never work that plot. You hook up the resource faster and have a great 'base' plot, but you can never get the bonus from a mine/pasture/farm/etc.

Still, I tend not to care too much about the tile that the city is actually founded on. I've even founded a city on ice or desert just to snatch up some key resources, and keep them out of the hands of the AI.

But these kinds of cities you found later in the game. Earlier in the game, you need to make your first few cities really count.

In your first three cities, you should try to hook up iron, or at least copper... and a couple of other diverse but key resources.

 

[anton_z1]

Try to get some health ressources (At lest near on you capital) and some Happiness. Without health you would grow really really slowly. Copper is not absolute, but make sure you can get iron. It is porbably the most essential resource in the game. (Not counting Oil).

 

[rjjb]

If I have a choice, given some fitting circumstance, between settling on a desert tile or on a better tile beside it, I'll generally settle on the desert tile. Desert tiles don't give you any shields/food/gold so building a city on them will grant you some and you can collect the resources around the city as well. And sometimes you just need a desert city to completely fill out your cultural borders; I don't see them as a problem, really.

Jeremy.

 

[LeSphinx]

Do you found your first 3 or 4 cities close or not ?

LeSphinx

 

[Stuporstar]

Generally, I found at least my first 3 cities as close as I can without overlapping city boundaries unless I really need to grab a resource that's further away or I want to block a strategic position.

 

[panzooka]

place important cities (guarding resources) and border cities on hills, that way, u get 25% permanent defensive bonus

put cities on major resources such as iron, if there is few iron in the map, so your opponent have to take out your city to cut off your iron, or they could have simply pillage ur mine

 

[Batvanio]

you should place a city on fresh water tile if possible - I know you lose a good tile sometimes but you get 2 point permanent health in that city which compensate a lot especially in clasical and mid ages - where actially the game is usually decided.

 

[LeSphinx]

How much cities do you start with ?

LeSphinx

 

[Batvanio]

basicly - I do like that - as many cities as possible.
when slider goes to 60% stop for a while till you start gaining money and then proceed with more and more and more cities.
Verseilles and Forbidden palace also top priorities for expansionism.
At the end more cities = sure win.

The AI is also perceiving the same goal - it never stops expanding when there is space for a city

 

[Romanichine]

basicly - I do like that - as many cities as possible.
when slider goes to 60% stop for a while till you start gaining money and then proceed with more and more and more cities.
Verseilles and Forbidden palace also top priorities for expansionism.
At the end more cities = sure win.

The AI is also perceiving the same goal - it never stops expanding when there is space for a city

Woah, 60% is too low. This won't work every time if the AI decides to declare war before you catch up in science. You'll start losing cities quickly!

You can expand quickly (8-12 cities in the BC ages) without dropping below 80% at any time. All you need is a good economy (cottages, open borders with everyone + currency, Low upkeep civics, markets and of course being Financial will help a lot)

 

[Astax]

I think the plains hill may be a bug, not intentional since its only plains hill that gives extra hammer. Eitehr have em add hammer to all hills or remove the one from plains hills its quite unbalancing and makes for a game more based on luck :/ I start ontop of plains hill you loose GG

 

[tempuraki]

I had to make the same choice once, between desert or floodplain. I chose desert in that game because I had choked off a large section of the continent and pretty much have every possible food resource connected or almost connected. Had I not have all the food resource, I will probably settle on fresh water tiles first.

 

[tproc]

I usually make my first few cities count. I put them on the desert tile, to make it worth something, but I usually make a special effort to put my early cities right next to resources that I need.

Romanichine, 60% science to low, what level are you playing on? I am playing my first noble game and I had it at 50%. 70-80% worked OK on Warlord, but with the increased costs 50% was required (and I am still doing OK with Techs). Please comment if I am playing poorly, I am still learning.

 

[dh_epic]

Truth is you CAN get away with 60. You can even get away with 40. But you're going to start falling behind for a few turns, and should an AI declare war at this point you're done for. You need to ask yourself if it's a risk worth taking. Hence, I respect the intelligence of people who try to keep their research at 70 or higher.

(Something else to keep in mind, though... research rate is not the be all and end all. Scientist specialists can be hugely valuable. Overall size of your empire too. Just because you're researching at 100% doesn't mean you have a strong research economy. But still, if you're still trying to learn what to do, ignore these nuances. The research bar is often the best indicator of how much you can afford to expand.)

 

[tempuraki]

In my last prince game I got to a comfortable tech lead with 30~40% science slider, all while engaged in a long and bitter war with the Greeks. I expanded too much too early, so 30/40 was about the break even point for me.

I was able to keep it up because I was Financial, had a GS built an academy in my capital, where there were 2 food resources and 2 flood plains (farmed one and hamletted the other) nearby so I could afford two forced science specialists. Then I turned the next GS into a super scientist and rushed the Great Library (two free scientists), both in my capital, and then switched to representation (I rushed for pyramind earlier) so I got 3 extra beaker for each of the scientists (3x5 scientists=15), and beauracracy to get more commerce out of the capital. I also have pacifism to double all the great ppl points I get from the scientists. And when I get a GS, I either build an academy on the next highest research output city, or pump research points into a new tech.

Actually with 40% I was still losing about 50 gold a turn due to a bit of over expansion on my part. To counter that, I sell the cheaper tech I got earlier to AIs for gold, usually for around 100 gold. Each tech sold is 2 more turns at 40%, I was able to keep my treasury at around 200-400 gold.

 

[Shillen]

When will people learn that slider percentage says absolutely nothing about how fast you're researching? One guy can be chugging along at 100% research and making a profit in the meantime while another is running 20% research and just getting by financially and they could be getting the same number of beakers per turn...

 

[Steelsmith]

I pay a lot more attention to the tiles that will end up in the city’s workable area, than to what sort of terrain the city itself is on. All things being equal, though, I try not to put cities on hills. I want those hills to be improved and worked. I also -never- build a city on a tile with a resource. Those tiles are much more valuable when they’re improved.

One thing to keep in mind for your first few cities, that I learned by accident. In Civ III, I always made a real effort to connect my cities by roads as soon as possible. In Civ IV, you get the same thing for free using rivers and coastlines. So, a typical scenario is to build the capital city on a river, the second city somewhere else down the river, and the third city along the coast that the river empties into. That way my worker can focus on getting resources online, improving, chopping, whatever, and my starting cities are connected for free without needing roads.

 

[tproc]

Shillen, Good point, but 100 (or 1000) beakers mean very little to most of us. If I actually know how much that is, I just hope my wife hasn't left me.