Your 2nd city

[Makavcio]

When and where do you settle your 2nd city on immortal/deity difficulty, on large and huge maps?

I find it extremely difficult to find the best moment. If I do it too early, I'm behind both with growth of my capital and military force more often than not needed to defend myself. If I wait too long, I end up behind in science, because my combined population is too small. There's also the issue of enemy hunger for lebensraum. The Iroquois sometimes have 5 cities before I fund my 2nd one.

Placement is also a dire issue. The most valuable spot, in theory, is something with at least one food resource, two unique luxury resources, by a river and on coast. It's almost impossible to find such spot so a compromise is a must. What should I forgo as the least important? Some production? Coastal location? Rivers? Or maybe I shouldn't trouble myself with production? Now I usually come close to the theoretical perfect location, though it tends to be quite far from my capital and seldom on coast.

 

[Keirador]

This exact issue is why I find the Liberty tree worth pursuing even if you only plan on founding 3 - 6 cities. A free worker, a free settler, and 50% faster settlers frees up a huge amount of production and growth capacity in the Capital.

If I'm not going Liberty, I like to buy the first settler with money from meeting City-States, excavating ruins, and charging other civs to set up an embassy in my capital. If I have to hard-build it, it might be a while before I build my second city.

As far as placement. . . is it just me, or is the fixation on building near rivers a holdover from Civ4, when it was actually important? Especially since BNW nerfed rivers even further by stripping away the gold bonus, all rivers really do is contribute an extra food to farm output in the period between researching Civil Service and Fertilizer. I'd say skip the river in favor of a nice food resource. If you're waiting long enough to build that second city, scoping out a location that provides horses or iron can be pretty important, as my capital very rarely has both and often has neither.

 

[PhilBowles]

It's going to depend a lot on what your capital is, and also whether there are overriding considerations such as: suitability for a pantheon that you'll likely want (coast becomes more important if God of the Sea is something you expect to find useful) or Natural Wonders (my second city in my current Immortal game as Byzantium is next to Uluru, but further than I would usually settle and otherwise in need of improvement).

Multiple luxuries and coastal situations (unless you're alone on nearly so on an island) are the least important of the features you mention - the value of a coastal location is heavily dependent on who you have to trade with and whether they can be reached by sea and unless you have an option to prioritise cargo ships, it's probably not a key consideration for early game stages - caravans are going to carry much of your trade and are much easier to defend in the early game.

Multiple luxuries are somewhat unimportant because you can trade duplicates (which you're quite likely to be able to settle) and you only really want a diversity (which can include strategic resources as well) in trade cities.

Finally rivers too are somewhat optional if your second city is not going to be a trade hub, and if you have cows or wheat elsewhere the food return will be better than insisting on a river spot with fewer useful food tiles.

As for timing, that's going to depend very much on map layout, how contested the best spot is likely to be, and whether my capital is growing fast. I'll aim to produce a settler at 5-6 food, however if my capital is in a bad food spot it may be better to settle immediately and set up a food caravan from the second city. If I don't have the food or production to obtain a settler quickly that way, I may simply go Liberty instead and use that to found a second city.

As far as placement. . . is it just me, or is the fixation on building near rivers a holdover from Civ4, when it was actually important?

More likely from earlier incarnations of Civ V - many people seemed to use rivers as their primary source of gold, particularly with associated trading posts.

 

[mrwho]

Rivers also allow for watermills, which are a very good early-game building, and the importance of all that extra growth in the early game is also very important. Personally I think you (Keirador) undervalue the importance of early game growth. Of course that my no means means that a good city requires a river, but rivers certainly help a whole lot, and if you can build a city there with decent resources you definitely should. Not every city needs to have a river; if you find really good food and luxury sources without a river then by all means go with it, but I'd always settle with a river when the opportunity presents itself and is sufficiently strong, with good food sources nearby. I'd also prioritise a river over coastal, as theoretically you only really need one coastal city (although if the opportunity presents itself, having all coastal cities and having internal cargo ship food trade routes is very strong), and I don't think that having two luxuries is a necessity. I frequently settle cities with no luxuries if it's a good location. It entirely depends on your happiness surplus.

I also struggle with when to build my first settler. Personally I believe that unless you find a great place to settle and it's under threat, if you're not planning on going wide it's probably best to still go down tradition. With a free monument in your first four cities, and a free aqueduct with 15% growth as a finisher, I think that it's much more beneficial to go down tradition if you're only planning on founding 3-6 cities, even for expansion purposes. There's not really a hardfast rule when to build your first settler. I was very surprised how late MadDjinn got his first settler in his Deity LP, for example ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6kW8VzeW-U&list=SPIn-J5vZXOJMJhoFQgB-FQ7Dkv0jrh5AP). I'd at least have a monument, worker, shrine and scout before getting a settler but there's no strict rule as far as I can tell and I'd be interested to see what others think.

 

[PhilBowles]

Rivers also allow for watermills, which are a very good early-game building, and the importance of all that extra growth in the early game is also very important. Personally I think you undervalue the importance of early game growth. Of course that my no means means that a good city requires a river, but rivers certainly help a whole lot, and if you can build a city there with decent resources you definitely should. Not every city needs to have a river; if you find really good food and luxury sources without a river then by all means go with it, but I'd always settle with a river when the opportunity presents itself and is sufficiently strong.

I also struggle with when to build my first settler. Personally I believe that unless you find a great place to settle and it's under threat, if you're not planning on going wide it's probably best to still go down tradition. With a free monument in your first four cities, and a free aqueduct with 15% growth as a finisher, I think that it's much more beneficial to go down tradition if you're only planning on founding 3-6 cities, even for expansion purposes. There's not really a hardfast rule when to build your first settler. I was very surprised how late MadDjinn got his first settler in his Deity LP, for example ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6kW8VzeW-U&list=SPIn-J5vZXOJMJhoFQgB-FQ7Dkv0jrh5AP). I'd at least have a monument, worker, shrine and scout before getting a settler but there's no strict rule as far as I can tell and I'd be interested to see what others think.

I'll often build a settler before a worker and, if not going religion, before a shrine, but not before a granary since that counts as the equivalent of +2 hammers, drastically speeding settler production (and you want settlers to be fast to limit the amount of time you're not growing).

 

[Keirador]

mrwho, I don't undervalue early growth at all, but on Immortal I've never found watermills to be critical to early growth. . . or really high up on the priority list at all. Granaries with good food resources and food caravans are much more important to growth than the 2 food from a watermill.

 

[PhilBowles]

mrwho, I don't undervalue early growth at all, but on Immortal I've never found watermills to be critical to early growth. . . or really high up on the priority list at all. Granaries with good food resources and food caravans are much more important to growth than the 2 food from a watermill.

While I often do prioritise water mills, I wouldn't settle a city for them - particularly bearing in mind that 2 maintenance is a big chunk at that game stage when you're struggling for gold.

 

[Callonia]

There's exceptions to the rule that make me settle a distant second city and wage war to do it.

My homeland is deep in jungle and marshes and workers still at felling timbers to clear out the land and help raise the productivity of the land. I missed out on stonehenge because of this but at least got the Zeus!

And my scout was starting to find the flatlands. . .

Oh I see marbles on grasslands.

OH I SEE LAKE VICTORIA!

I SEE STONES

I SEE HORSES

I SEE A NEARBY HOSTILE MERCANTILE CITY STATE wait hostile? Bleh. That one shall pay me tributes! PROFIT!

Spoiler :

This location made me delay my planned second city which would've been in middle of delta river crossing for future hydroplant ubar city.

Ethopia Wants the lake victoria too? War it is then!

Protip: The worker you see in this screenshot used to be a settler from ethiopia xD and Hatar is his second city lol.

Spoiler :

That picture is slightly outdated cuz I played for moar turns, it's borders is already huge. And Hatar got razed to teh ground just to ensure my city gets maximum ring of workable tiles and horses.

 

[Bobert13]

Wherever looks like the best place to build Petra within 20 tiles of my capital (assuming I'm not building it in my capital).