Where to Settle?

[InovA]

Still trying to learn, my previous post's replies were very helpful ^^

This scenario seems much more obvious to me, and based on the ideas from the previous comments I feel more confident about my plan.

Given the map above, where would you settle your cities?

Things to note:
- Asoka [ORG/SPI]
- Vanilla, Prince Difficulty
- Huge, Fractal map with 16 players
- Aggressive AI
- TWO opponents found, one to east, one to west (Random personalities) though only units spotted, no borders

My idea:
- Settle 2nd city at [1], heavy reasoning is based on the pigs, a solid food source, a good plus is that when the culture pop hits, I can claim the copper and prepare any necessary defenses.
I'm unsure if I should settle in one of the adjacent squares instead...
> if North of [1], closer to capital, sharing elephant camp. (So sharing is good?)
> if East, abandoning the copper idea for this city in exchange for the fish food supply. If I went with this, do I want my 3rd city to claim the copper?
> if South, slightly more river tiles to work with, though seems unnecessary. Maybe a bit better for CE.

My next question is would a 3rd city be good at [2]? Dry rice is better than nothing, and the access to Stone allows Pyramids.
If that spot isn't good enough I'll abandon Pyramids and search for a spot with better food, hopefully not too far south.

Any other spots you see that are worth it or insight to why you would/wouldn't choose any of the options is very appreciated!! Thanks guys!

 

[Heti123]

1st of all, why are you building a barracks this early, in your 1st city? You should be making warriors to fog bust, if you already built a worker. For the [1], I suggest settling 1NE, to grab the Fish and the pigs. Overlap can be good, plus the tiles shared between the capital and this city are not that appealing. Ivthink you should grab the Floodplains, Gold and copper by another city, which I think should be placed first to avoid your enemies getting the copper. As for the 2nd city site, I'm not sure where to settle (I'm bad at the game, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt). If you settle where you planned, you would be 1 tile off the coast, but if you settle on the coast, the food wouldn't be on the first ring, slowing growth. Hmmm.....

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Welcome to CivFanatics. Moved your thread to Strategy and Tips as it is a better place given the subject. Best of luck with your game.

 

[MegaLurker]

Spot #2is way too far away. Spot #1 makes the fish tile unworkable.

Your best spots are:

-1SE of the pigs to the east
-1N of the pigs to the south

Both of these overlap with the capital and allow you to work tiles that you can improve before you even settle (pigs or ivory). This way you can work an improved tile right away, which you'll probably want to use to build a quick worker.

 

[Kid R]

1N of pigs for me. Then floodplains/gold/copper as you'll need copper and some commerce. The rice/stone needs ironworking which is a drag, certainly for city 2. After that maybe decide whether to attack an AI and settle in their face, or aim for the longer term and develop all that green land.

 

[InovA]

1st of all, why are you building a barracks this early, in your 1st city? You should be making warriors to fog bust, if you already built a worker.

I built a worker, then warrior so pop can rise, 2nd worker, then settler. I usually don't care to have an extra other warrior so I start building a barracks just to get early production into it until my pop hits 3, then make another settler or worker and finishing the barracks later on.

I guess making another warrior for fog busting does sound good, especially to make contact and trade more tech once I get alphabet.

Thanks!

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Warriors in general are good. Fog busting is a lot better then it seems, imo, often better then contact and any left over will be fine city garrisons later on.

On cities: I echo one north of the pigs. There isn't an abundance of food and wasting the fish is a waste. For barb defense the horses on your right should be fine, settle two below them if you plan on going Great Light House (not necessarily recommended on this map, but could be ok) and build a monument, or just below it otherwise, forget the monument in that case. It can share the pigs of your capital. Your fourth city can grab the gold/copper/marble with floodplanes for food. I assume that will be in time, even for aggressive AI's, on prince difficulty.
Fifth city rice + stone.

 

[plasmacannon]

Welcome to the forums.

My choice for your start.
First City, 1NE of where your #1 is. This gets you the Fish and Pig to build workers and settlers quickly.

Second City, 4 East of your Capitol on the Desert to get the Horses. This gets rid of a crappy desert tile and get you 5 riverside tiles in addition to the valuable Horse resource.

Note: Your #2 is in a poor location. Assuming you wanted to put your 3rd city on that side, you would place it either 1N or 1S of the #2 on the map. Where it is now, the city would have fewer land tiles compared to 1N and doesn't give you a coast for trade purposes like 1S would. So keep that in mind.

 

[Bjarkov]

I'll go ahead and steal the ball and run the other way here.
Your suggested settling sites are suboptimal (see previous answers) and I'm guessing you are focusing too much on avoiding city overlaps. This aversion is a bad habit because it is not until the late game you will be punished for overlapping cities. In the early and mid game, it is often an advantage to place cities close, and this advantage usually outweighs the lategame detriment by far.

Overlapping cities means less improvements to build for your workers because cities can swap around tiles at need. It also means less maintenance (smaller distance to cap) and better coverage of good tiles, like food and metals. (because if the first city can't work the tile, another city can take over while it recovers). last thing, cities can help each other grow cottages that can later be focused to one specialized commerce city where special buildings such as Academy and Oxford University make each cottage much better.

 

[Gumbolt]

Why would you build a second worker before the settler???? What are you hoping it will do?? There is very little forest to chop here. With rice and pigs that city could of easily been size 4 by now.

As for the barracks build, what are you planning here?

First city north of the pigs to get fish.

Are those flood plains or desert near the gold and marble?? If so I would be settling there after pigs city. Your city 2 site is no good. 7-8 tiles from your capital. Ackkkk.

That picture is really hard to see stuff. Can you not post the save???

 

[InovA]

Why would you build a second worker before the settler???? What are you hoping it will do?? There is very little forest to chop here. With rice and pigs that city could of easily been size 4 by now.

As for the barracks build, what are you planning here?

First city north of the pigs to get fish.

Are those flood plains or desert near the gold and marble?? If so I would be settling there after pigs city. Your city 2 site is no good. 7-8 tiles from your capital. Ackkkk.

That picture is really hard to see stuff. Can you not post the save???

I built the 2nd worker usually to double chop the settler, which I believe I did in this game, and then improve both cities at the same time. And I believe it reached size 3 before I whipped the settler too. Could be wrong for this game, but lately I've been doing that style.

The barracks, as stated earlier, isn't meant to finish but to invest hammers into it until I can build library or another settler after reaching size 3-5. I've learned to make warriors to fog bust now, but the idea isn't so bad.

And a flood plains is just a desert tile with a river next to it, so I can see from this screen that there is one flood plains SE of gold, the other 2 to the E of gold are just deserts.

And yeah the 2nd site looks bad now after learning from previous comments lol.

 

[Gumbolt]

Double fast workers with Indians is not a bad thing i guess. From the screenshot it wasn't clear you already had the settler.

Are the 3 tiles below the gold and copper flood plains??

On huge maps the barb situation might be pretty bad. You might chop out great wall?

With 16 players here it will be a long game.