Early Expansion City Placement issues

[Paddy]

as requested by Donegeal:

This settlement plan is proving more difficult that I thought with our limited knowledge. I have all kinds of ideas running through my head about it, but I think city placement is important enough to have a thread all to its own. Could someone start a thread titled "Early Expansion City Placement issues" for me? Doesn't have to have anything in the first post, I just want a place to write down my thoughts on the subject.

[Donegeal]

Thank you Paddy.

Here are some mitigating City Placement issues:

We need our cities to be easily defended. This means that we need to be able to move units from one city (our capital) to our core cities in one turn. In order to do this, we will need two tile placement (ie: City, Tile, Tile, City).
There are some additional factors to consider to this strategy. Our incredible rive must be taken into account. Cities on the other side of the river are going to be harder to defend (as units expend a full movement point crossing a river).

Now I know that alot of people don't like tight city placements, but we have a couple of situations that actually make this a smart idea:
This game is most likely going to be over no later than the early mideval age. If this is indeed the case, what are the chances of our cites becoming anything but marginally over size 6 (with river)? Are we really going to build an aquaduct over three to five military units?
We are also playing on Emperor difficulty level. Corruption is going to be an issue quickly if we build our cities out much further than two tile placement.

[Paddy]

you have a point here for close city placement.

[Arnelos]

Let's keep in mind that once we start exploring, that's going to make the city settlement plan easier to make. We won't even have our first settler out the door for a while and our first exploratory warrior should give us a relatively good idea of our immediate surroundings by then.

What's the rush on making a plan then under such limited information?

[Arnelos]

Btw... ABSOLUTELY AGREED with Donegeal about a tight city plan, probably 3-tile spacing (city-tile-tile-city... at least that's how I've always referred to it). It will be absolutely essential.

The only reason we'd opt for a looser city spacing is if we believed the game would make it well beyond hospitals, which it won't. Hell, this game may even be so short that we might consider 2-tile spacing city-tile-city) because he game might no even make it far beyond the ancient age.

The mitigating factor on THAT is that we're likely to have TONS of free space, so a 3-tile spacing (city-tile-tile-city) is probably the way to go.

The river is going to be an issue for defense, yes. As for emperor difficulty, we thankfully have the commercial trait as a mitigating factor, but this does not make a tight city spacing any less attractive. Our commercial trait combined with tight city spacing will give us a good economic advantage if others fail to do the same.

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Arnelos
Let's keep in mind that once we start exploring, that's going to make the city settlement plan easier to make. We won't even have our first settler out the door for a while and our first exploratory warrior should give us a relatively good idea of our immediate surroundings by then.

What's the rush on making a plan then under such limited information?

This is excatly why I wanted this thread instead of me making one with graphics once I got home. I was sitting here at work with our little map and a cut/paste copy of a single city moving it around thinking to myself "Now here would be a good spot, if this or that. Maybe over here if its that or this." By the time I had stopped I had an almost perfect city-tile-city placement going and decided we just didn't have enough info yet.

:shrug:

Its still good to discuss ideas of general city placement.

[Arnelos]

You know what... I was just writing a post in the main MoI thread and I remember why my initial reaction to "why plan this now?" is stupid.

The reason is the following... if you know where you're going to build your second city, build your first 3-4 improved tiles (ex: road+mine, road+irrigation, etc.) leading toward that city location or at least so that the new city can access the improved tiles along with your capital.

When the settler finishes production in your capital, your capital's population goes down, so your capital isn't using all of those tiles... meanwhile, when you found the new city (which you've conveniently already made a road to ), it will have improved tiles it can immediately access because the reduced population of your capital means the capital isn't using them!

If you try to make enough workers to keep up with your city growth, you'll have improved tiles and roads leading to each city and all cities will have (mostly) improved tiles that they can use. As one city falls in population because it's building another worker or a settler, another city is rising in population and uses a tile or tiles that the city which fell in population gives up.

Eventually, you fill in the areas you didn't get to with your workers earlier such that your capital gets up to 6-7 pop (using ALL improved tiles around it) while other cities at least have 1-2 improved tiles in reach that they can use and all cities are connected by a road network.

Having your cities getting the extra food, shields, and commerce early in the game by working improved tiles (because your city spacing is tight, you built enough workers, and you used them for this purpose rather than just building roads all over the place) can make a huge difference in the long-run.

[conmcb25]

Ditto Arnelos on this one.

I think this game is ripe for 3 tile spacing.

As our first warriors are cranked out we wil begin exploartion and soon know about the surrounding area.

Once we get a look see we can start planning the city placement and in what order we will place them.

Paddy BTW in my quest to help out the MOI, I recruited Arnelos for you.

From my experience he has an exzcellent working knowledge of maximizing our production, food and commerce. Please use him as a resource.

I would if I were you, start beginning to build a simulation. It needs to be a two player because of the different worker sequences in PBEM.

You can start now and add to it as we get to know the surrounding area. Then you can work differnet scenarios that will lead us to a proper WF implementation, proper sequence of units and improvement builds, and a proper sequence for building our cities.

Good luck, your work is cut out for you

[Dominae]

With the limited information we have now, it makes sense to put our second city within workable distance of the Cattle. This way we can benefit from the extra growth without wasting any Food. Our capital and second city would each grow every four turns.


Dominae

[Paddy]

Originally posted by Dominae
With the limited information we have now, it makes sense to put our second city within workable distance of the Cattle. This way we can benefit from the extra growth without wasting any Food. Our capital and second city would each grow every four turns.


Dominae

Yes that does make a lot of sense

[Kloreep]

From the limited knowledge we have now, I would suggest the site 2-3 of Apolyton. It can share the cattle, and assuming that's the ocean rather than a lake down there, we can build an early curragh for exploration.

Also, one thought on C3C placement in general: With founding date now being the tie-breaker for rank, the order in which we found same-distance cities matters.

[Donegeal]

I don't think curraghs are nearly as valuable in this game as in SP or a normal MPDG.

The map setting for this game is Continents. I don't think that we will even contact the other continent. Actually, here's to hoping we are isolated on an island with no contact with anyone!

[SirOsis]

How about building on the Tobacco? Would the city get the extra commerce? The city would have access to the cattle and be next to a river. Quite tight spacing but we need some MM to do early on.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by SirOsis
How about building on the Tobacco? Would the city get the extra commerce? The city would have access to the cattle and be next to a river. Quite tight spacing but we need some MM to do early on.

yes, building on the tobacco means +1 trade in the city square *not assumign despotism penalities). building on "trade-only" resources have no bad effects.

[Kloreep]

I believe the tobacco would be lost to the cap; +1 for being roaded (or just call it the base city commerce production if you want), +1 for being on the river, +1 for the tobacco.

However, we'll be in the same situation once the tile is roaded, so no comparative loss to settle on it.

[BigFurryMonster]

I think it doesn't matter where you settle with respect to the overall trade in the long run: all trade modifiers add up anyway. Gaining +1 Trade in your city means one less trade on a different tile.

[Donegeal]

Well, here is an early defensive city placement proposal.

Sites 1, 2 and 3 are all one tile distant from the capitol because of the river. Geting to these cityies will cost at least 1 MP no mater what. The are also spaced such that they are CxxC between each other and unit would then be capable of moving between them efficently.

Sites 4, 5, 6 and 7 have much more leway in there placement for defensive purposes. Infact, maybe making a plan for 7 extra cities might be too ambitious. An alternative would be to move site 4 NW of its current position, leave 6 and 7 where they are and eliminate 5.

Let me know what you think.

[Dominae]

It's too early to tell about site 2, but I doubt settling on the Bonus Grassland is a good idea. +1 Commerce is simply not comparable to +1 Shield. That extra Shield will do more for defense than 3-tile placement between sites 1 and 2.


Dominae

[notyoueither]

With placement that tight I would say that the capital is a camp city, yes?

Depending on the other land around, I would see a city between 6 and 3 and another NE (9) of 1. Both on river, neither taking bonuses, both able to use multiple good tiles... but we shall see a lot more after the second warrior sets out.

[notyoueither]

Oops, is 6x3 on the river?

[BigFurryMonster]

Same Q for site 2 - is that one on the river?

(maybe it's better to produce a list of tiles that are adjacent to the river)

[Donegeal]

Site 2 and 3 are on a river.

Yes this is very close city placement. It is not designed to make Apolyton a camp. I only came up with it as a Maximum defense plan (thats the name of the pic). The only two factors that I put into it were troop movement and as many as could fit. I can redesign if you like. give me a list of prefered sites and I can make up the pic.

[SirOsis]

The game is not likely to progress far enough for close city placement to be an issue is it?