Your spacing of cities.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Greetings, first thread and post.

I had a question or two about your preferences for cities.

Do you try your hardest to give your cities maximum fat-cross space? Or do squeeze your cities in tighter to utilize the land faster.

Similar in line with that questioning. Do you automate your workers? Do you tell them not to change improvements? Do you go for max possible population for multiple specialists?

Thank you for letting me pick your minds

 

[The Last Conformist]

I space them tighter. No sense letting half your empire lie fallow for most of the game.

I don't automate workers. As for what they build, I tend to concentrate on cottages to maximize income.

 

[lilnev]

My general rules of thumb:

1. Every city needs a food surplus. Ordinary irrigated grasslands don't cut it unless there's no other option.
2. Try to include every good tile in the fat cross of at least one city. Grasslands are always good tiles, hills and plains if there's enough food to work them.
3. Don't worry about overlap. Sometimes it's even good, allowing you to grow cottages for the capital or share a key resource.
4. Try to find a few super spots for key cities: GPfarm, HE, Globedraft. It can sometimes be worth breaking the above rules for these.
5. Don't worry about dead tiles. I see people write, "I would have settled there, but it's got three desert tiles." If it's got a few really good tiles (resources) and several decent ones, the bad ones don't matter. Ask yourself 3 questions: How quickly will this city start to contribute positively to my empire? What will it look like at size 8? What will it look like in the late game? The last question is the least important.

Then there are a few more minor points: riverside is good for the levee, fresh water for health, coastal for trade routes and health, not too many floodplains for health reasons, best tiles in the inner ring to be worked before a border pop, etc.

I never automate workers, except sometimes Build Trade Routes when there's nothing else to do.

 

[Supr49er]

Greetings, first thread and post.

I had a question or two about your preferences for cities.

Do you try your hardest to give your cities maximum fat-cross space? Or do squeeze your cities in tighter to utilize the land faster.

Similar in line with that questioning. Do you automate your workers? Do you tell them not to change improvements? Do you go for max possible population for multiple specialists?

Thank you for letting me pick your minds

I put cities where they are the most effective; overlap is OK, even desirable. You don't want blank areas in your borders where you can't work the squares. Never leave a resource outside your BFC (Cities workable Big Fat Cross).

I never automate Workers.

Specialist City will have max food; seafood, corn/rice/wheat, or cattle/pigs/sheep tiles and many farms.

Welcome to the Forums Rhyshaelkan.

 

[Wolfshanze]

I don't worry about overlap or dead space... I build cities based on efficiency of tiles used (getting as many resources as possible), access (to rivers and the ocean... ie: it's better to overlap if that's the differance between a landlocked city and one that can build fleets), and any special considerations (denial to the enemy, "canal" creation, choke-points, etc). If I overlap a fat cross or miss a square or two to accomplish the above, so be it.

 

[Bushface]

Given suitable terrain, you can have a line of cities each having a full BFC; parallel to this, more lines of cities each losing one tile of its BFC to a city already placed. This means that you can work every tile and grow your cities to the largest possible size; remember, population brings most points, and working more tiles means more food and hammers.

 

[Kesshi]

Rhyshaelkan,

As a SE player, I've found that cities don't need to be big to be useful. There have been a few times I've built a city with the goal of it reaching size 4, working only two tiles. A library + 2 scientist specialists + 2 food squares + manufacturing research can provide a lot of research for a tiny city. Also, this can be done very early game, too. Late game I'll be running Mercantilism and (hopefully) have the Statue of Liberty, thus working only 2 tiles I can get up to 4 (or more!) specialists in a single size 2 city.

Often times I will build a city with the intent of it being small, thusly I don't worry about much overlap.

 

[omnimutant]

I think it completely depends on the type of Victory your trying to achieve. For example if your Going for domination, your better of with well placed cities that have lots of room for the cultural borders to expand, so placing them farther apart is better. To many variables IMO to make a rule of thumb to follow for each and every game. Just use your best Judgment and take account for your Victory conditions and Land Mass available as well as resource location.

It's never bad to swallow all the resources you can in your BFC's but I think overlapping might do you more harm then good in many situations. If you overlap BFC's then your not utilizing everything you can out of one city. This would cause them to compete for Culture and growth which may end up costing you more in maintenance and might not be worth sustaining whatever projected benefit that lead to the overlapping in the first place.

 

[CivMonger]

I'll often leave gaps in between my BFC. At the same time I'll often overlap 3 tiles or so between some of my cities. Its largely based on what I think is better for that situation. I also have a tendency to go for mostly commerce cities early on to grab a bit of a tech lead, and switch over to production mid game, around the time I get Levees. So I try to get as many riverside tiles in my cities as possible. And the dutch rule for this BTW.

 

[unclethrill]

Another thing to take into consideration is how fast the AI is expanding and how close they are. This will depend on the difficulty level and who they are but in general the AI expands fast.

You will need to try to block out the AI from space that you want to expand but also not get your first couple cities too far apart. It's a balancing act but it can be done effectively. Also I always try not to overlap so that I can grow my cities as much as possible.

Hope that helps.

 

[Iranon]

It depends on my improvements. Cottage cities will work as many tiles as possible, so I don't need to slow down cottage growth for building infrastructure.

Farm cities will work relatively few tiles, making the whip more efficient and avoiding problems with the growth cap.

As soon as I have sizable per-city bonuses (Great Lighthouse, Mercantilism, offshore islands, overseas trade partners, religious wonders... corporations are the juiciest reason ever but I usually have plenty before) I will cover my empire in cities until I can't found any more.
To remain consistent with the above, in cottage economies these filler cities will often work no tiles beyond the city square, but 2 free specialists and trade routes are better than a cottage and the maintenance saved. Infinity+1 cities get utterly ridonkulous come corporations.

 

[Rhyshaelkan]

Good stuff from you guys. I have always automated my workers(lazy? ) I see that I might have to take them in hand.

As with other Civ versions going back to the first. I always went for max possible city size. I see that with the Specialist Economy I should moderate this ideology.

 

[Dabur]

Hi ,


it depends on the map or mod scen , borg style if needed , for the rest it depends on resources more then anything else , max size needless to say

no auto workers , it might take a bit of time but this way you are sure as to what they do when you want it , for example you might want to shop a forest first or a road before anything else

Have a happy day

 

[Iranon]

Re automation: I'd recommend doing nothing or going all the way.

If you automate your cities as well (e.g. max food, max production, max GPP), AI-controlled workers do a reasonable job because the game knows what you want them to do.
Otherwise, they will create a horrible mess.

 

[say1988]

I try to avoid significant overlap, but if it makes me a stronger empire, go for it.
I prefer to play to the late game, so I my cities will have the time to grow, but there must be a balance.

 

[pxpdoo]

Good stuff from you guys. I have always automated my workers(lazy? ) I see that I might have to take them in hand.

As with other Civ versions going back to the first. I always went for max possible city size. I see that with the Specialist Economy I should moderate this ideology.

I'll only automate workers late-game (with Bh's patch), with the caveat that if I'm gaining new cities (at war or otherwise), will leave some workers independent.
And while I'll generally try for no overlap, I have no problem with it if it becomes necessary. As previously posted, wasted squares are useless...

 

[Woody1]

I usually try to space my cities so that there is very little overlap. I like big cities.

I automate my workers, but set the options to not destroy previous improvements or remove forest. I'll take one off automation if I want to do something different with a particular tile.

 

[Rhyshaelkan]

Back in the day it was far easier to take a personal hand on workers(settlers). I R M was all you needed to know and sometimes B.

I think I will take your advice there Woody1. At least until I get more comfortable with what improvements go where and in what era.

 

[say1988]

I automate workers on two conditions:
1. Build trade network. Once I have my main rail lines are laid out (and all other important improvements), I will automate workers to build trade network as they have nothing else to do, so I build rails on every tile, just in case and that is a pain. So why not auto-build trade network?
2. When I get past the tipping point, where victory is inevitable, and I just have to keep my army moving (and am capturing hordes of workers), I automate them to improve the new cities that, don't really matter.

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

Re: Overlap

It depends on the map. If you find yourself pretty boxed in, you need to get the most out of every tile, and lots of overlap is probably a good thing. But if there's plenty of space that you want to block the AI off from settling, widely spaced cities make more sense. Also, the quality of the land is a factor. Sharing high-value tiles (resources, riverfront grassland, etc.) makes more sense than sharing low-value tiles (plains) because it maximizes the chance that these high-value tiles will always be worked and benefiting your empire (e.g., if city 1 is at its happiness cap, you can allocate its Corn to city 2, which still has some room to grow).