Building cities

[Demon of Elru]

Do you suggest trusting the games blue circles for city placement? Also it always seems to suggest placing cities that overlap with another city's cross, does this have any benefit or does it hinder growth?

[Ville Valste]

Just place in the damn circles.

[Purplefairy22]

Depends what YOU want out of that city.

Thing is, until the late game, cities struggle for food, health and happiness which holds back growth, and won't be able to work all 20 tiles anyway.

If you had lots of smaller cities of 9 tiles, yes you'd pay more maintenance but you work more of the land, which is just better in every way.
More gold, more science, more production, More Votes, more specialists, more trade routes, just more everything. smaller cities are the key.
aditionally its easier to defend tightly packed cities and you have more cities to build/draft/or whip troops, should the need arise.

Sometimes i plant cities just to grab resources or to block off land.
Quite often just to work some desert gold i'll purposly take food tiles from another city.

I tend to turn off all of sid's hints as really he's more of a hinderance than help.

He doesn't know what i want to do.

And sometimes recommends really dumb things like building my 2nd city in a jungle to get a calendar good, and so i end up with a useless city for 50+ turns.

My advice is turn all the hints off.

[red255]

Originally posted by Demon of Elru:

Do you suggest trusting the games blue circles for city placement? Also it always seems to suggest placing cities that overlap with another city's cross, does this have any benefit or does it hinder growth?

You should look at the cross.

always look at the cross. a city should have decent food, hammer and purpose. If it doesn't don't build it there.

Purpose includes to get a resource, to build stuff (wonders armies HAMMER) to commerce (cottages, rivers, plantations, gems)

and it depends on the map.

the only good thing about the circles is it shows you where resources you haven't revealed yet are likely to be.

But yeah I'd recommend moving your capitol if theres a plains hill near your starting location the extra hammer early is extremely useful.

[Poppis]

The blue circles are fine for new players. it won't make you any worse than the ai, since they use the blue circles as well. Of course once you start learning the game you will start noticing the downsides of the blue circles(since the ai sin't as good as a human). Like planting a city without a food resource in the big fat cross is generally(but not always) a bad idea.

You could also try the BetterAI mod, which makes the blue circles a bit less aweful.

[Demon of Elru]

I am using BAT better AI, is that the same thing?

[Poppis]

Yeah it includes the BetterAI.

[Demon of Elru]

Ok, I really hate starting around large desert areas.

[Purplefairy22]

Jungles worse at least you can do something with desert usually gold.

[Demon of Elru]

Desert gives no bonus nor can you improve it.

[Purplefairy22]

i had this once.
http://cloud-2.steamusercontent.com/ugc/521625025318210296/341527A0356F14B39E30B2AF39F1EFDBD8F97AF3/1024x0.resizedimage

[Demon of Elru]

lol Yeah I've starts like that, at least you got fur!

[Purplefairy22]

There is no food in that start except 1 from the sea. i played a few turns had monty and shaka as my very close neighbours.
Needless to say i ragequit that game.

[red255]

I've never started that far in the artic I've had tundra to my north but never like that.

you should have moved instead of starting there. probably to the lower edge of the tundra, doesn't care how many turns it takes.