What City Placement do you use?

[badams52]

Keep those votes coming in, but it doesn't surprise me that most people here use something tighter than OCP

[Artifex]

Back on-topic. I voted 3-tile, and am just beginning to do what Catt described: closer or looser city-spacing based on terrain. I will default to 3-tile, but I'm now actively thinking about which tiles will be accessible from various locations, which definitely influences their future placement.

Can you get away with this on emperor?

[aaglo]

Is this the ICS? This is the first time I've tried this type of game. I had a relatively bad starting position (a few grasslands, mostly plains and desert, a river quite far away).

I usually tend to use "minimum overlap", but I found out that this type of city setting is quite effective.

[edit]: oh, this is a modded game. So before anyone ask for those "gray piles" on the desert, they are my bonus resource Salt. (+1 shield, +2 comm). I've added them to the deserts and mountains to make these squares more worthwhile.

[vmxa1]

Hey I don't use mods, but I like the idea of Salt. If it was uncommon or make it common, but with a low value.

[aaglo]

Uncommon/common??? WTF?

Some another feature of PTW I've never heard of? I still haven't got it, you know...

[badams52]

aaglo,

others can correct me, but I don't think you have ICS going there. When I hear ICS I think of this:

. C . C . C . C      C . C . C . C .
. . . . . . . .      . . . . . . . .
C . C . C . C .      C . C . C . C .
. . . . . . . .  OR  . . . . . . . .
. C . C . C . C      C . C . C . C .
. . . . . . . .      . . . . . . . .
C . C . C . C .      C . C . C . C .

Yours is more of a cross betweeen of C-t-C and C-t-t-t-C. Very intereting.

Edit: formatting

[joncnunn]

That city placement looks like IFC to me. The cites are still 2 Movement Points apart.

And it also looks like the pattern was folloed to rigidly.
Re: That city with 3 turns left to the Marketplace with fish in it's CR but seperated from the ocean so that a Harbor can't be built. (Said city should have been shifted 1 tile [any of NE, E, or SE.])

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by aaglo
Uncommon/common??? WTF?

Some another feature of PTW I've never heard of? I still haven't got it, you know...

He was talking about a mod he made or is using to add a resource (Salt).
I was saying I may like that is it was fairly rare with the values he has assigned, or a bit more frequent, but a very low boost. This makes it a interest, but does not really alter the game.

[Konquest02]

I use a mixture of 3 tile spacing (primarily in my core) and 4 tile spacing elsewhere. When I get the AI's cities, I usually don't move them around.

--Kon--

[Fosse]

I also typically use four spacing, and almost never move AI cities. I only rearrange them for strategic reasons (coastal access, or canal cities).

Tighter than four spaces just feels dirty... but the calcualting side of me just won't let me use OCP.

[Master Zen]

aaglo:

interesting arrangement, of course terrain was very favorable. Looks like a combination of ICS and 3-Tile, flexible because it allows fluid borders and more workable space than ICS. I like it.

[cumi]

Hi,

I have a few questions/comments about the city placement:

1.) I voted for the OCP, and I always try to use it in my games (Warlord or one higher). But later I see that I don't really have use of it: too few cities too far from each other, and I have to wait until modern ages to get used all the possible city tiles.

2.) I can still have hude cities without having the optimal 5 tile city placement (irrigating most of the tiles, even deserts).

3.) If my empire is in Switzerland or Austria (hills everywhere, with only few grasslands) ocn is totaly nonsense. All the city tiles will never be used and can not be used. If I irrigate everithing what is possible when I get electricity, I can get cities by c.a.6 size, but never bigger. It is not possible to irrigate hills.

4.) One of the typical pattern is a coastal city surrounded only by hills and water. Is the ocp still usefull? I don't think so. It will be possible to use 2 mined hills, the rest is water. So you can not get a highly productive city anyway, city size over 12 is useless.

What do you think about these issues?

cheers

[cumi]

cont.

Illustrations for 3.) and 4.).

M - Moutain (no food)
W - Water
G - Grassland or something what can be irrigated or where a city can be placed

3.)

MMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMM
MMMGMGMMMM
MMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMM

In this case I think it is better to craete 2 cities instad of 1.

4.)

MMMMMMMMMM
WWMMMMMMMM
WWWGMMMMMM
WWWMMMMMM
WWWWGMMMMMM
WWWWMMMM
WWWWWMMM

I think in this case it is not possible to use more than 2 "M" tiles for one city, so it is better to build two cities (each on "G") and use twice more mined mountines than to build 1 city with eventually 1 additional irrigated tile.

Am I right?

[MyOlde]

Sorry, guys, but what is "Ralphing"?

[Fosse]

Ralphing is building a close knit series of military camps and cities at the start of the game during the REX phase, and then disbanding them over the course of the game to achieve more open city spacing.

Sir Ralph figured out the optimal pattern, barring terrain interferences, for this scheme, thus the term Ralphing.


Check out this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=77451

[Fosse]

And if you don't want to read all of that, (which you should) here's Sir Ralph's specific post...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...56#post1735956

[Catt]

Originally posted by cumi
3.) If my empire is in Switzerland or Austria (hills everywhere, with only few grasslands) ocn is totaly nonsense. All the city tiles will never be used and can not be used. If I irrigate everithing what is possible when I get electricity, I can get cities by c.a.6 size, but never bigger. It is not possible to irrigate hills.

4.) One of the typical pattern is a coastal city surrounded only by hills and water. Is the ocp still usefull? I don't think so. It will be possible to use 2 mined hills, the rest is water. So you can not get a highly productive city anyway, city size over 12 is useless.

I agree that terrain should dictate city locations. As you point out, large mountain ranges severly inhibit city placement. Where coast is involved, but little flatlands are available, I like to build on hills and preserve the flatland as an irrigable tile, and concentrate on exploiting as much of the coast as possible. I am far more likely to stick to a dense 3-tile build (and even occasionally a 2-tile space) along a coastline -- allowing the commerce-rich coasts to go un- or under-developed due to a lack of shields does not strike me as the best decision.

Catt

[Catt]

Originally posted by Artifex
Back on-topic. I voted 3-tile, and am just beginning to do what Catt described: closer or looser city-spacing based on terrain. I will default to 3-tile, but I'm now actively thinking about which tiles will be accessible from various locations, which definitely influences their future placement.

Can you get away with this on emperor?

With all the discussion on city spacing recently, I decided to consciously play my last Emperor game with a looser spacing. The map below gives a good view of my entire empire -- you can see that it is almost all 4-tile spacing; there are even some unused tiles northeast of my capitol Istanbul because I favored coastal acess and didn't force a city into the interior.

I played this game very peacefully -- essentially undertaking only a few offensive expansions. Babylon razed an undefended city in the early ancient age and that cost them 3 cities of their own. When they again attacked without warning, Hammurabi retired. Other than this ancient age land acquisition (and taking one Persian city in my empire) I never again conquered land until the very end of the game -- and then essentially only to shorten a war of aggression launched by others.

The key to this game was a leader-rushed FP in the heart of former Babylonian lands, with the leader coming just as Hammy was seeking asylum. With two functional cores up and running, I believe you can win just about any game on Emperor, peaceful or otherwise. From the point of consolidating the former Babylonians until a spaceship launch, it was essentially all building, trading, and diplomacy.

Three-tile spacing is, IMHO, more powerful and will still be more or less default spacing for me very early in most games, terrain cooperating, but it was nice to see that even with looser spacing and a restriction on warfare, a comfortable win is certainly within reach.

Catt

[BRC]

Nice game Catt. Do you happen to have any saves from the game? I know we talked about this briefly (the 2 cores and resources) strategy, but I would like to see exactly what you managed to "get by" with. Thanks

brc

[Catt]

Originally posted by BRC
Nice game Catt. Do you happen to have any saves from the game? I know we talked about this briefly (the 2 cores and resources) strategy, but I would like to see exactly what you managed to "get by" with. Thanks

I should have plenty. PM me with what you'd like (i.e., ancient age, just after FP, industrial age, whatever) and an email address and I'll send what I have to you. BTW - in this game, rather than do a close FP build, I did use a leader for the FP and managed to have decent (but smallish, overlapping) cores.

Catt

[Odin]

My city placement depends on what part of my empire a city is in. On my boarders I mix 3 and 4 tile spacing; I have a 4 to 5 tile spacing in the interior. I have about 5 "Holy 5 by 5" cities in production rich areas as "wonder factories." I usually play at Monarch on standard or large maps (I don't have enough patience for the huge maps with 16 civs. ). During the REX phase I usually build cities some distance away from my core and then fill in the rest.