27-12-2002 16:35									#1
	City placement proposal Full PM-box? Change here!

First of all, I only consider this a proposal, to get us going on the subject. Please give all comments you think are worth mentioning, I'll try to adjust the proposal...

I mailed a screenshot to our e-mail address. Keep that closeby when reading the next things (BTW, sorry for having such thin lines, I know they are hardly readable, but it was either that or a huge filesize)

With this proposal, it seems we more or less keep at ideal distance. To the North, I thought cities with 1 move in between them would be more critical than on the South (as we won't have any neighbours there). South, there can be bigger and smaller steps.

I tried to give each city 12 workable tiles (sometimes on the coast they have a few more, but there is not much to be done about that). Further, I tried to give all 6 workable landtiles (can be borrowed from a neighbouring city when we don't have aquaducts nor harbors).

I would suggest we take our hut-settler to either city 1 or 2, and for the settlers we are building take sites 3,4 and 6 (as they have bonus food). Further, city 11 would be a good one to settler early, and 8 or 10 to control barbs.

Specific city comments:
1: I know that moving it one tile would place it at the river, but that also gives one more desert tile, and one less flood plain.
2: Could also move 3, but we've got plenty of pure coast cities anyway
3: This city has too few tiles as drawn here, but that's only temporary: it should be better once the surrounding cities can move off the land, and use the sea more. It can easily grow to a nice size 6 city.
6: Could move 3, but then city 5 is far less productive. It would mean we can squeeze in another sea-city to the NW of it.
7: I don't like loosing hills neither, but this is the spot... or 6 moves 3, and we build another (tiny) city in between 6 and 7.
8: needs irrigation to grow beyond size 2.
9: the gold city... with the only problem that choosing this site meant that the river-hill at 8-9 could not be worked. I don't think it's a bad choice...
10: also needs irrigation, and it has to come from far.
11: potentially a very powerful city. It could move 1, which would make more hills available, but then it would lose its 1 move distance to site 12. If we aren't pressed for 12, I would certainly prefer moving it one tile.
12: Could move 3 if the terrain asks that much. But I guess we're not settling that one fast, so plenty of time to decide
13: Is the only site that takes some kind of bonus: it's on a shielded grassland. It could move 3 or 2, but then the dessert is split between city 1 and 13... I thought that when we've got some more exploration done, we should try to settle another city on the coast (either where Gronk is now, or one tile 8 of him. Let's say this is still open for the moment.

So... what do you guys think?

DeepO

	27-12-2002 18:00									#2
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IMHO any city so close to the capital must have at least 12 workable tiles, no less.
Additionally, we should try our best to place as many cities near the river that runs by EoTS.

Major kudos for taking the initiative and drawing up a plan!

	27-12-2002 20:27									#3
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Shiber, do you mean city 1? Or city 3? City 1 has only 11 tiles (if I count right), but it will be hardpressed to work them all, as many of them are desert. City 3 hasn't got 12 tiles encircled (9 atm), but can use 2 more from the EotS range, and can use more tiles from the coastal cities surrounding it. These have some extras, but I first of all checked if all cities had 6 land tiles to work.

Thinking on this, I noticed one problem though: if a city is size 12, it uses 13 tiles including the city tile... maybe this layout is a bit too squeezy. I counted on 12 tiles including the city (my mistake). I don't think many cities will have a problem, as we can shift a little towards the sea (most of the coastal cities can use 13-15 in this layout), but if anyone wants to check: please do!

DeepO

	27-12-2002 20:30									#4
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I said i would critisize the dotmap so here it is :

I think city #1 should be one tile NW, that way we would gain 1 gpt more from city central, that means a lot in the early game.

City #2 should perhaps be down south where you have placed city 3. That way we can pump out settlers faster when using the game and wheat.

City #1 position should really be decided before our next turn so the settler could be moved accordingly.

Very good luck indeed that we got the settler from a hut, very rare with non-expansionist civs, having less cities then others helps, but still.

	27-12-2002 21:28									#5
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I'm having a hard time evaluating the city positions because it's hard to see which tiles the cities would be working. It would be nice to have one plot indicating which cities would be working which tiles at size six and another at size 12.

I do see one thing I absolutely hate about this plot: site 13 wastes a grassland with shield. Moving one tile to the southeast (where a warrior is now) would solve that without (as best I can tell) compromising the city's overall value. Other than that, I'll need to look at things more than I have time for now.

Nathan

	27-12-2002 21:37									#6
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For some reason I thought that putting a city on a gold tile meant that you wouldn't get the bonuses from it, but then again I don't recall ever doing it, because why the hell would I put a city on a gold tile if I thought I'd lose the benefit . I’d be thrilled to find out I can do this if I could still play

What would you think of working the gold a little earlier than #9? The bonus trade from the gold can be a real tech boost.

	27-12-2002 22:19									#7
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Nathan, I know it's hard to see the tile boundaries, sorry about that. These aren't really an indication on the size 12 boundaries, but they should be close. As an indication on what is workable at size 6, try using the 9 tiles with the city in the middle... I can't fix these, as they will likely shift when one city is expanding, and another decreasing in size.

City 13 is indeed a problem, I hate wasting the SG too. It could move onto the desert, but then we lose a possible desert coastal site for number 14 (not on the screenshot). We need to wait for a bit more scouting before we can decide on that.

Randolph: a gold city has the commerce bonus in the city just like if it would be worked with a road (not a railroad). It is an easy way of gaining some more commerce without having to sacrifice food for it. Oh, and the numbering was just a way to discuss about specific sites, it does not imply the order of building them. Site #3 would be my first choice, but with the settler we gained, I would go for either #1 or #2 (or #13, but then we have to move back)

DeepO

	27-12-2002 22:23									#8
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Great job!!

A few comments:

1: I would strongly support moving one tile to the NW. First, it's then on a river. Second, it will then have acces to hills, which will nicely counter-balance all the floodplains.

11: One tile to the SW, por favor. I hate putting a 'forward' city next to mountains. I wouldn't worry about 1-turn access to 12 yet... also, please notice that 11 is more than 1 turn from any 'core' city anyway.

12 & 13: Too early to worry about.

Again, well done.

	27-12-2002 22:32									#9
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Hmmm...

On further reflection, I suggest the gold tile for city 4.

	27-12-2002 22:42									#10
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Theseus, nice comments... let me reply.

1: if we move it one tile to the SW, we lose a floodplain, gain another desert, and are very close to our capital. I thought about it, but prefer this position... it has some disadvantages, I agree. if it has to moce towards the river, I would move it NW, even if that loses the 1-move distance.

11: Good thinking on the mountains next to the city. I agree.

13: it may be a bit early, but I placed it there to have an idea on the restrictions on #1. It will be somewhere close, and before we build on #1, we should know where 13 is going to be. on #12 I agree, it is too early for that one, but there are only 2 tiles where it could be.

and about ordering: the gold city for #4 seems fine by me, otherwise it should be #5. The commerce is fun, plus it will save us some barb-patrolling.

DeepO

	27-12-2002 23:10									#11
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My own comments:

First of all, I've always believed that it's best to have fewer cities, even if you don't end up utilizing every tile, and I believe that the figures back me up.
Alexman's excellent thread on the matter of corruption states that the more cities are closer to the nearest capital (palace or FP, palace in our case) than a specific city, the higher the corruption will be in that city. Therefore, with fewer cities we'll have lower corruption, and that more than justifies giving up a few tiles for more optimal locations, corruption-wise.
Now, for some specific comments regarding the immediate city locations:

1: I'd move it one tile N for reasons stated above.
3-6: We should settle in that area (but not necessarily in one of those specific sites) next, with the settler that'll be built in EoTS.
9: Excellent site, should be our third because of the gold tile (and the tech bonus that it'll give us).

	28-12-2002 00:14									#12
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Shiber: that's not exactly right. No matter how much corrpution you have, an extra city is a bonus. Certainly in our case, were cities most likely won't grow beyond size 12. Plus, corruption has ceased to be a problem, because we understand it far better then in the beginning (largely thanks to alexman!), and the patches have made it almost too easy on us. It's more a case of good capital and FP placement than anything else.

IMHO, having lots of half grown cities closeby outweighs having fewer but larger cities far away a lot, and I think most will agree.

DeepO

	28-12-2002 00:17									#13
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I that case, I'm definitely for building it on the gold

I wasn't sure about the numbers, but we should start planing order. The first few should be in food-rich areas of course (I agree that our settler should go to 1 or 2, and our first build settler to 3)

	28-12-2002 00:20									#14
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Although I could see turning the city on the floodplains into a settler pump... get it up to 8 pop, with a granary.

Shiber, don;t forget, in MP the earlier game is more important, and thus more cities, albeit with long-term growth limitations, is a good thing.

	28-12-2002 03:04									#15
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

The first rule of settler pumps is don't let them grow past size six. If you do, they need at least twice as much food to grow. (Having them hit what would be size seven the turn a settler is completed so they end up at size five works fine.)

EotS has (or will have) enough irrigated furs to make a good five-turn settler pump if we put in a granary. I don't think it could quite manage four turns because working three flood plains all the time to maintain the needed growth rate would cost it too much production, but I haven't gamed it out to doublecheck.

Site 3 should be able to serve as a four-turn settler pump if we irrigate both the game tile and a wheat and give it first dibs on the shielded grasslands. As far as I'm concerned, that's our top site for a home-built settler, but it's a bit far away for our free one.

My revised version of site 13 could make a nice settler pump as well once it builds a temple. With access to two flood plains and three shielded grasslands, it should be able to serve as a six-turn settler pump once it gets a granary. I'm inclined to view that as our best use of our free settler. (It would be especially good for settling points farther to the north.)

More later if I have time; my brother and I are going somewhere in a few minutes.

Nathan

	28-12-2002 03:33									#16
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I like the idea of moving site 13 one tile SE, but if we do we certainly can't move site 1. And we have to accept that site 1 will be a bit short on tiles later on.

As to granaries: what about risking all for the pyramids? it looks like EotS could be the first city to build it, if we immediately start on it instead of on our second home-built settler. We don't have granaries yet, and if we want to get them in time, we either need to prebuild and research pottery right after BW, or start on it now.

I'm a bit hesitating on having our first 3 cities turned into settlerpumps, though, without at least one other city which can build 'normal' stuff, like more scouts, and WCs if we get horses.

I like the ideas on this thread, though, a lot of good discussion going on! For once, let's hope we don't get the next turn early, so we have some time to make group-decisions...

DeepO

	28-12-2002 03:46									#17
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Sorry Nathan, you're right about the size for settler pumps.

I guess my point is that especially with the popped Settler, the great floodplains, and the SWEET site to the south, we should REX like crazy. We can use EotS and other newly founded towns for everything else.

	28-12-2002 03:53									#18
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO Shiber: that's not exactly right. No matter how much corrpution you have, an extra city is a bonus. Certainly in our case, were cities most likely won't grow beyond size 12. Plus, corruption has ceased to be a problem, because we understand it far better then in the beginning (largely thanks to alexman!), and the patches have made it almost too easy on us. It's more a case of good capital and FP placement than anything else. IMHO, having lots of half grown cities closeby outweighs having fewer but larger cities far away a lot, and I think most will agree. DeepO

IMHO nothing you have said changes the fact that when a city is built, all the other cities in your empire that are farther from the capital suffer from added corruption.
We should make efficient use of our tiles, and IMHO that means using as many tiles with as few cities as possible.

	28-12-2002 03:58									#19
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Regarding the Pyramids: we should consider this option more seriously. The Pyramids are certainly one of the greatest wonders in the game, and they give a TREMENDOUS advantage in the early game. If we build just this settler and then maybe a temple and then start working on the Great Pyramid, we can most likely be the ones that build it first.

	28-12-2002 04:15									#20
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So, Theseus, you would make 2 pumps, and leave EotS for normal building? It does look like a good idea, but what about having 3 pumps, 2 for settlers and one for workers? The only difference is when we start on it: if we are going to build the pyramids (which I would favor over a better timed GA), we could delay making the 3 cities into pumps building a granary, and time it so they virtually hit size 7, building a settler at the moment we finish the pyramids.

I'm willing to more or less throw away our GA for this, I think the pyramids in our position would be a bigger bonus.

Shiber, Re: the corruption: the whole point (which I more or less failed to make, sorry about that) is that finally we aim for having all our core cities at size 12. Of course, we shouldn't waste any good tiles, but with the current layout, we won't waste any decent or even bad tiles either... ultimately, this is better then picking our tiles more carefully, and trying to use these as corruption-free as possible. Again, corruption has (to me) long ceased to be the scary monster it used to be, simply because we better understand it.

Building a few cities less means that the cities we don't build don't suffer from corruption, but even if they are heavily corrupted they still gain us more then they cost. You are right in that 1 size 6 city is better then 2 size 3 cities, but in all cases adding an extra size 3 city to the bunch of size 3 cities we already have is better, certainly taking into account that later on we can work a lot of extra tiles.

Oh, BTW, if we would be going for the pyramids, we should start on it immediate, right after the settler ends. A temple is welcome, but I'd rather send our worker to connect the incense, it has the same effect. The rest of the happiness problems will be handled by some police, and the lux slider. There is one more (minor) problem here: preferably we should use another city (so not EotS) for the wonder build, to avoid letting others peep into our capital and see how far we are with the pyramids. But, clearly EotS is the most productive site...

DeepO

	28-12-2002 04:42									#21
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As long as all our locations have access to at least 12 workable tiles, I won't complain (much).

	28-12-2002 07:41									#22
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I haven't set up to retrieve from the team mail box yet.

Can someone mail the shots to me at username@hotmail.com ?

	28-12-2002 07:56									#23
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After some thought, I think if we go for the Pyramids, "2" would be the logical place to do it from. (1) It can eventually use four of EotS's fur tiles. (2) It doesn't need a temple to get to its best tiles. (3) It's probably our lowest-corruption site after EotS itself. (4) It's a coastal city, so there are more alternative possibilities if we lose the race for the Pyramids. (5) It's not a high-food city, so it wouldn't cost as much settler production while it's working on the Pyramids. (6) It's a high-wealth city, so using the luxury slider to keep happiness under control wouldn't cost us a lot elsewhere. (7) As someone else noted, just building an embassy wouldn't tell a rival how we're progressing. ETA would probably be around 60 turns from the time we found the city, depending on corruption. (Someone may want to game that out to see what kind of corruption we could expect; I don't have time for that right now.)

I'm not ready to take a position on whether I think it's a good idea to go after the Pyramids or not. If we do, though, I'd be tempted to go ahead and get our free settler started on the job to minimize the risk of losing the race.

Nathan

	28-12-2002 08:06									#24
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The only time I think it makes sense to deliberately leave empty space in order to reduce corruption is if a city site near the capital would be essentially worthless (thus increasing corruption elsewhere while contributing little itself). Actually, I'm more than half tempted to ignore site "1" (at least for a very long time) for that type of reason; it can't even grow to size six without cannibalizing prime real estate from its neighbors.

Nathan

	28-12-2002 08:35									#25
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nye, I mailed it to you.

Nathan: you're right with the site #2 for the pyramids (if we would go for them). The more I think on it, the more I like it, as it would also mean the loads of tiny cities we should have after initial expansion madness is over grow faster.

Re: competition: I think there are two possibilities on how we could lose the race, first is of course by a leader, but it would be not that risky to assume no-one is going to gain in leader during the next 60 turns (there are at least 40 turns needed to get any sort of archer rush going, and we all know the odds of gaining a leader with that first rush). Second is the possibility that demogyptica does exactly the same: set their gifted settler / city away for pyramid building. Other teams are less of a problem, as they are one settler behind, I doubt it that anyone will set their 2nd city to the pyramids from the start.

As to site #1: it's not really a lost city, it uses 2 floodplains no other city can reach, and possibly a few more when the sizes are still fluctuating (this is taking into account the adjusted #13). It could serve as a worker pump, or even a moderate settler pump without much trouble. Maybe we can leave it open, and settle the other sites first, but I don't really see the reason for it: it won't be our best city, but it will be a decent one once we get some irrigation and mining done.

DeepO

	28-12-2002 09:20									#26
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Thanks DeepO.

re site 2 and the Pyramids. We need to decide fast. Reaching site 2 requires a different set of moves from all other sites. I would suggest:

T1. No move. Hack moves to settler to escort. It would be way bad if our gift stumbled into a barb.
T2 to T4. Move to site 2.
T5. Build city for Pyramids. This coincides with EotS dropping in pop btw.

I favour this. The Pyramids would be a coup for us. Unless... we bump into another civ right quick. Then site 2 is very productive for buildings/units to meet that threat.

Failing agreement, I would propose that the settler not move this next turn. Hack would still move to escort. However, if we do choose a different site then settler would move 4, and Slash would move to escort.

We can start moving Wwnoname to take over the escort duties (and Gronk to protect the capitol) but best to keep settler absolutely safe in the mean time.

	28-12-2002 11:55									#27
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The gold tile town could also be a great GW builder, as could a town south of EotS.

I gotta say, as Egypt could we ask for a better start?! Praise be to the Storm Gods!!

	28-12-2002 12:33									#28
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The gold tile town is only so-so until we get out of Despotism. It can be a real production powerhouse later, but with hills capped at two production and flood plains limited to three food, the only thing it has to recommend it right now is the gold itself.

I won't be all that impressed with our starting position unless we either meet someone else or snag the Great Lighthouse (and the latter only if this is a 'pelago map). If we don't have contact while others have widespread contact, we're in a serious hole even with relatively good terrain on our side.

Nathan

	28-12-2002 16:39									#29
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NYE, I would for the moment assume the settler moves towards #2. Even if we don't agree on the pyramids or not, the site will be good in all cases. If someone strongly thinks that #2 is not good, for any reason, he should be fast to bring it to the board.

Re: starting pos: I'm thrilled with the position too, in SP it would be something to restart a few times for. Indeed, if we would be alone it would be not that good, but looking at the boundaries of the FoW, we have a whole lot of settleable land. We have 13 city sites already, most of them are decent to good (only 2 or 3 are less), and it looks like we should be able to put in at least another 3 cities on our island, if it turned out to be an island. If so, we should be able to catch up, as others need to focus more on defense and less on expansion. (but please Storm Gods, give us a easily defendable landbridge to the rest of the world)

DeepO

[edit: double wording]

Last edited by DeepO on 28-12-2002 at 19:00

	28-12-2002 18:47									#30
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I wouldn't give up on the island idea just yet, having fooled around abit with the editor, it looks as if we nearing the edge of it.