How many tiles between cities?

[Carver]

I know this may be a difficult question as you must adjust your strategy for topography. But what I'm asking for is the theme, knowing that there will be variations on the theme.

Untill you have aquaducts (or natural size 12 cities with rivers) you can only work 6 tiles. So at that point you may as well only have 2 tiles between cities, one tile worked by each city.

If you leave 4 tiles between cities then you have room for expasion up to a size 24 city (larger than 24 if you include specialists. But in the mean time you will be leaving lots of tiles unworked, limiting your production.

Looking at screen shots and watching what the AI does has me thinking that I build too few cities. I try to do what the manual suggests, which is plan for future expansion when locating cities. In other words, cover as much territory with as few cities as possible, building high quality cities. And fewer cities spaced farther apart should help you expand faster during the early game land grab. But then again, quantity counts for alot, especially in terms of culture. Any thoughts?

[Worthingtons]

You have a point about Early Production, but I like to plan for the Future, So I leave 5 tiles unless resources dictate otherwise.

[Mars]

I haven't played civ3 in awhile, still waiting for scenarios, anyways back on topic i try not to leave to much space between my cities. I guess i was still stuck on old ICS strategies in Civ2, cuz i usually didn't amount to much because of crippling corruption. I try to space them slightly farther now that i have started playing a little bit again

[KithrupFugitive]

After reading the posts on this board everything points to placing my cities closer to one another, but I just can't bring myself to intentionally limit a city to size 12, or worse, size 6! I usually ahve little or no overlap in the 21 tile radii of my cities.

[ixnay]

I try and overlap as little as possible...but if need be, I'll space em closer together.

[PGM]

I can't stand cities that share more than 1 tile, if any. Unless dictated by resources, cultural or military purposes, each of my cities is built towards a 21-tile goal.
What I frequently do is place a city of mine next to an opponent city, having in mind a future razing, and thus, the whole 21 tiles.

[Sandman]

The fat 21 square cross irritates the hell out of me.

It's both unrealistic and unfun.

A flexible system would have improved this game no end for me.

[Zachriel]

The higher the level, the more crowded the world, the closer together.

[kailhun]

I used to build for future growth, but in my latest game I've gone for the 3x3 block (2 tiles between cities). Therefore my cities won't grow very large in the modern ages, but I'll use more of my land up till then. So far, things are going very well. I'm stuck on an island and have a small empire (landwise), but the fact that I have a lot of cities jammed together give me a lot of production power.
It also means you have more cities (and production power and units) before you hit that first AI civ. You have less resources because you cover less ground, but your vaster armies will ground the enemy ground into the ground so you can take the resources on their ground (which they have been guarding for you until you came along and ground them into the ground).
Another advantage is interior lines. Your units don't have to move as far from one corner of your empire to the other to attack or defend.
So far the 3x3 block is working very well. But as this is my first outing with this strategy, I'm sure I've made some mistakes already. I haven't razed the Egyptian cities I've taken, so that they are spaced further apart. Basically weakening my empire because I use the land less effectively. I must make amends!


Robert

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by kailhun
I used to build for future growth, but in my latest game I've gone for the 3x3 block (2 tiles between cities). Therefore my cities won't grow very large in the modern ages, but I'll use more of my land up till then. So far, things are going very well. I'm stuck on an island and have a small empire (landwise), but the fact that I have a lot of cities jammed together give me a lot of production power. Robert

Good example of the hive technique, and a good reason to use it. If you concentrate your city improvements on every other city, using the other cities for workers, then you can eventually disband a few to create a couple metropolises.

[SpencerH]

The higher the level, the more crowded the world, the closer together.

I agree. I used to space my cities to give maximal growth a la CIV2. But I've found that at the highest levels its more important to put down "strategically placed" cities in order to prevent AI expansion into the land you plan to claim.

I usually play with default world settings etc and I dont usually play expansionist civs. It may be different with bigger maps though.

[Saurus]

I build three kind of cities actually.

1) First Class Cities
Theese are cities that are given priority.
In situations of overlapping, they are given the tile.
Typically theese cities build all my wonders and try to build
city-improvements as quickly as possible.

2) Second Class Cities
Theese cities may be built everywhere where there is free potential bonus-tiles available for them to use even if it means overlapping. Thanks to the bonus-tiles, the city will somewhat quickly be able to build whatever needed.
Theese cities does suprisingly well despite overlapping thanks to the bonus-tiles witch often can sustain several points of population just alone. Theese cities are basically used
for military-unit/settler production. In time, many of theese
will become first class cities. Some of theese will newer become anything but has at least been pumpng out settlers and units
during the course of the game


3) Junk cities.
Theese are built anywhere a vital resourse need to be
protected.
(E.G I cannot risk losing my only source of coal by letting
the Egyptians build a city on a certain tile near my outer borders since that would cause the coal to fall inside the egyptian borders) thus my settler will build a city close to the coal
REGARDLESS of any overlapping or terrain.
Thus most of theese cities are extreamly overlapped AND
built in the middle of tundra or desset.
Their only purpose is to protect that resouce and that´s it.
I even turn the only population point into a specialist so that
I will never have to worry about that city again.

-Saurus

[BillChin]

Here's a cool strategy for peninsula starts or other starts with very little land:
Build the first two cities one square away from the capital on the diagonal square that the capital can not access. This will provide an enormous boost at the start of the game. Later in the game, if there are a mass of cities near the capital build the Forbidden Palace in one of these two suburb cities. Once the FB is complete, disband the capital (produce a settler when at pop 2 and have no extra food) and get a free palace jump to the city with the highest population of native citizens. If planned correctly, this will be far away in a nest of other newly productive cities.

The advantages are that a player builds very fast early, and gets a fast Forbidden Palace without using a leader.

As for the poll, city spacing is not that important. Resources, terrain bonuses, and strategic location are more important considerations than spacing, so I vote for bananas

[Carver]

Originally posted by BillChin Once the FB is complete, disband the capital (produce a settler when at pop 2 and have no extra food) and get a free palace jump to the city with the highest population of native citizens. If planned correctly, this will be far away in a nest of other newly productive cities.

Thanks for explaining how the capital moves. Its probably written somewhere but I could never figure out why those AI capitals bounced around to far flung cities as I razed their capitals.

[KrazyHorse]

I try to minimize overlap of city radii. I don't usually allow more than 3 shared tiles between any one city and all others.

[Adalbertus]

I have left playing Civ3 (for a while at least) after 3 half-played games. And as terraforming is not as flexible as in SMAC, it is not so easily comparable. But in SMAC, when I switched from a city every 3 tiles on the diagonal to every 2 tiles, it made a reeally huge difference. On the highest level, Transcend, I used to every other early game Secret Project (=Wonder), now I miss usually only one of them. As IIRC the corruption model of Civ3 is distance based, this should give even more advantage -- but the relative ease with which you can combat unhappiness by use of luxury resources might speak against. And securing resources, and the roads to the civilisation's centre, of course is a special thing.

[cassembler]

My goal is to utilize as many good terrain squares as possible. Especially on islands, I'd rather have two cities that overlap by 3 tiles than to only have one city with three unused squares.

I like bannanas as well.