City placement

black cat · December 1, 1999, 21:08

What is the rule of thumb for distance between cities? Is it ok for them to overlap?

Thanks in advance...

Smash · December 1, 1999, 21:47

Well..there is no rule of thumb.In an ICS strategy you build em 1 square apart.I'll often overlap specials so 2 possibly 3 cities can work it off and on.Usually the terrain decides how you lay out your cities.But overlapping is perfectly acceptable.Especailly if you are MPing with 2x production.

The odd overlap keeps your cities closer to the capitol which can be beneficial at the beginning..ie-corruption,unhappyness.

I guess it depends on how large you want your cities to become.More squares=more population-eventually

Campo · December 2, 1999, 14:57

Would someone clarify the effect of overlapping city squares? I had thought that if cities overlap a square, whichever one worked it first got to use it. However last weekend I had two cities with an overlapping square and neither of them could work it. The square had a white outline in both city views, and I couldn't put a citizen there from either city.

I have the MGE version, if that matters.

Sten Sture · December 2, 1999, 15:07

Campo - it sounds like the evil AI has a city working that square. If you want to get it back, place a military unit in that square for a turn and then put it to work. The only problem is with sea squares, they can't be taken with planting a ship in the square, so make sure you keep fish and whale specials working if an AI city is within range.

Do you know that you can rearrange what squares the workers in your city are using? Just in case you don't here is how. Open your city screen by clicking on the city. In the small window that shows the squares being worked in your city, you can click on a square being used to take it out of use and then click on another square to move the worker to that one. This is very helpful since the program default is to work the squares with the most food instead of the most trade. You can also double click a square and the program will rearrange all of your workers.

Smash · December 2, 1999, 15:52

yep.if you see a white outlined square that is not a worker from one of your cities,you've got neighbors.

johnmcd · December 3, 1999, 06:27

I always feel I have begun to slip toward ICS if I overlap at all, every once in a very blue moon I will overlap one tile.

I have a friend, who is what I would describe as ultra-perfectionist, maybe ultra-super-perfectionist. He will not tolerate overlap of any kind. I once saw him disband Washington form a pop of 21 because it overlapped a tile with one of his cities. It cost him the Hoover and dam and Bachs's but he considered it a job well done. So I would recomend some kind of happy medium. Don't waste huge swathes of land because there is no site in the middle of it all that will not overlap with anything, but neither should you ICS.

Campo · December 3, 1999, 08:16

[quote]
Campo - it sounds like the evil AI has a city working that square.[quote]

Interesting situation -- there was no AI city nearby, only my two. However one of my two cities had previously been an AI city -- I conquered it several turns before I noticed that neither could work that square. In fact I had destroyed that entire AI civ. I had several units traversing that area, so I'm sure there was no AI city or unit using the square in question. Is it possible that it was "locked" because it had been worked by my city when the AI previously controlled that city? That was the only overlapping square between the two cities.

[This message has been edited by Campo (edited December 03, 1999).]

johnmcd · December 3, 1999, 08:38

Bonkers! that sounds like the only explanation. Has it remained when reloaded, or was only on that session?

ZhugeLiang · December 3, 1999, 08:42

The only problem with overlapping is when you start to approach late game and your city can't grow to it's full potential because instead of having a full 20 or whatever square is has to share it squares with the others, this doesn't really have that much effect so long as the cities share only 2-4 squares. But if you are stuck on a really small island, it is better to do some overlapping, it will allow you to make better use of the ocean squares and the land square also, while your cities are small anyways.

Campo · December 3, 1999, 10:14

Quote:

Originally posted by johnmcd on 12-03-1999 07:38 AM
Bonkers! that sounds like the only explanation. Has it remained when reloaded, or was only on that session?

I don't know. I looked at it a few times during that session, but I didn't check subsequently. (Got distracted by attacks from the Sioux, then the Vikings.) I'll see if the save files are still there so I can check.

toofergo · December 3, 1999, 10:48

There are no hard and fast rules. While I avoid ICS in order to avoid boredom, I will often overlap cities by a square or three,
especially if the overlap occurs on poor terrain.

One time I had a happy hut city and a nearby conquered city. To this, I added a city on a patch of tundra between two seas, because I dream of a white isthmus. In between there was a leftover space consisting of a central plain, 3 shielded grasslands, a hill, and an unshielded grassland in sort of a "Y" pattern.

I couldn't resist, and so "Wedgewood" was born, despite something like 14 or 15 squares of overlap. It never got beyond size 7, never gave me a lick of trouble, and even coughed up some late game uranium as a reward.

Eddy · December 3, 1999, 20:47

When playing against the AI [singleplayer] I never used to overlap cities, except huts.

But since playing MP [and being thrashed] for my perfectionism, a new strategy is needed. In the beginning, the more cities the greater your chance of survival!

Even if you have tons of room to expand, more cities is the way to go!

The reason for more cities, production! more units, more settlers, more money, more science!

Good enough reasons for me!
Eddy

Dino the Dinosore · December 4, 1999, 14:55

In my current game (going back to "normal" after doing OCC for awhile) I'm trying a city placement strategy which I used successfully a lot in the old days of CIV 1. It's not quite the Infinite City Sleaze of only one square between cities, but instead it's 2 squares between them. (Finite City Sleaze? ;-) The reasoning is that when connected by roads, any military unit can go from one city to the next in one turn, keeping the advantage of having that unit in a city (martial law or no unhapiness, depending on government). This gives a lot of flexibility in "homing" units to other cities (especially useful under Monarchy), and getting more "bang for the buck" out of your units. For example, my high shield city that has a barracks turns out a new phalanx (pike, musket, or rifle) which I move to the next city over. That city then wakes up it's phalanx and sends it to the next one, etc. all the way to the end of the line where settlers are expanding my empire. In effect that new unit is now already available at the edge of my civ. And since every unit is in a new city, I can re-home as needed to best micro-manage production. A 2-move unit can cover any of 5 cities in one turn. Once you get to railroads or the later gov'ts (Fundy, Comm) this all becomes obsolete, but that's a fairly long time.