Civ 3 City Placement Tutorial
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- Edit: There's a mistake in this video.
The city square generally produces the same commerce that the tile would otherwise if it was roaded. So there's no problem with planting cities on luxuries or bonus resources that only give bonus commerce (like tobacco, gold, silks, spices, etc.)
The exception is your capital, which produces a minimum amount of commerce, 4 IIRC. You still get the bonus commerce if you exceed the cap, but you weren't close to exceeding the cap, planting on tobacco or whatever won't add commerce. - Hry
Really appreciate all the guides for this game as no one else seems to be making them.
I would encourage you to go to Civ Fanatics and see their info. I learned tons by reading succession games played by the masters.
forums.civfanatics.com/categories/civilization-iii.4/
Once again, thank you for the guide. Well said.
Dude I'm French and understand nothing, bruh
When you reached the "best tiles to plant on" part my eyes nearly popped out of my head lol, I almost exclusively plant on grasslands/hills and avoid deserts and tundras! Crazy to think of how much I'm doing wrong
My Civ 1 experience also advised against bad tiles as in Civ 1 there were no city tile bonuses (building on non-bonus grassland / river was a bad idea then, pesky "diagonal stripes"). On the other hand, founding a city on a spec. resource tile allowed to reap all the benefits.
I would say "it's better to build on a tile you're fine deleting", rather than say "you want to build on tundra". If I can avoid it I wouldn't build a city in pure tundra at all. If you have an area of tundra mixed with other tiles, yeah, plant the city over the tundra.
In an area of only tundra, tundra, hills and mountains your city is forever limited to size 2(or size 3 if you are an agricultural civ).
@@lagg1eIf you have enough food tiles you can make good use of tundra by planting forest on it. It would be an ordinary forest with 1 food, 2 prod. River also gives trade.
The rule I like to apply for not placing cities too close or too far is "No city may be placed within the Fat Cross of another". It allows for dense placement if you wish it, but loose enough to allow most cities to get to size 12. It's also not so strict that you would leave any land tiles inaccessible.
The other nice thing about keeping spacing to about 3 tiles is that cities can reinforce each other with units in a single turn. Although 2-tile spacing is even better for that, since they can move and attack from the city, very nice for artillery.
I relax all limits though when it comes to islands, because there's just so much water and ocean resources to grab.
When I was younger, I was all about trying to make sure each city could grow to max size with no overlap, but later I realized how expensive most of the buildings were (the main benefit of large cities), and how much of the game I spent with un-used land (40% of your land empty because your size 12 cities are waiting for sewer systems).
Although a 3 tile spacing only in theory allows you to get to size 8, the extra space comes from the edges of the continent with the un-shared coastal tiles that let you shift all the citizens outwards. And if you really *need* a large city, just pick one in your empire to grow and shrink all of its neighbors with workers.
Hi Suede, forced to stay home I started CIV3 and I would be lost without your tutorials (it seems there's no other material than yours). Even if i'm not familiar with english language, it helps me a lot ! Thank you
I always knew this game was amazing but you made me realize the great depth of then game. I played as a kid on a desktop my dad bought for our fam, never changing governments and never using gold. Thank you so much for what you do, you are a solid lad.
Another thing to consider is *cultural boundaries.*
1-tile wide gaps in cultural boundaries are 'bridged' (boundaries expand to cover such gaps), so when placing cities 4 tiles apart (3-tile gaps between cities) more land could be covered before temples (or any other buildings that give culture) are built.
Like at 9:25 two forest tiles between the cities get 'bonus' territory coverage.
God i love these videos i wish they were around a few years ago when i was really into it
Shades the best I find myself coming back to the videos years later to teach my son
Yep! Useful insight. Thanks much. I don't have much time to play... an hour here or there... but it's helping me get a lot more from it.
Thanks for this. You've helped at least one person.
great channel, my favourite Civilization! thank you for you videos!
Dude, so glad I found your channel. Thanks for the videos
No problem! Let me know if you have any questions :)
Keep this up I still love Civilization 3 over the newer versions
Great little guide. I think the situation with city tile yield is probably more complex than you're saying here, as cities often have very different yields from each other in all kinds of situations. I think the basic principle of saving the best tiles for future improvements is right, though, and aside from this nitpick everything else seems really on point. The points on city spacing especially are really good. Legacy players who never got that good like me are all about avoiding overlap by nearly any means necessary and your arguments on why that's not necessary are pretty compelling.
Yeah looking back at this there were some things I got wrong. Most notably, there's basically nothing wrong with planting on bonus commerce, even planting on bonus production tiles is usually good. Nowadays I lean towards 4 tiles away, I think here I said 3-4? It was bias from playing a lot of 80% water or small maps.
I'm glad you liked the breakdown of the benefits to near and far placement. It also drives me crazy when people comment on my playthroughs being like "fun tip: try not to plant so that there's any overlap between cities". Or "why do you plant so there's overlap, isn't that bad?" It's really hard explaining why overlap is ok (or why it isn't) without resorting to "dude, just trust me."
Now this is podracing.
planning out canal cities is one of the things I miss most from Civ 3, they absolutely need to bring this back or add an expensive canal structure that workers could build
Yes! In multiplayer it's actually a serious concern. if you have a tight choke point in a 1v1 then naval control is important, and being able to have your ships on either side of the choke is an absolute game changer. In single player it's good too, but naval combat is just generally not relevant sadly.
I think the desert/floodplain analysis changes for agri civs like the celts, because an irrigated desert produces +1 food, allowing growth even with the despotism penalty.
Absolutely. If you're agri, treat desert basically like plains
Nice video bro, really useful :)
On Some real shit I always do canal cities especially when I fly continents but like almost always in general I just love the idea of controlling a chokepoint and being able to go through an area of the mass faster by having a City there I’ve like lost good cities just to be able to flat canal cities and Cutthrough continents
Could you make a playlist of all your tutorial videos for your channel? I think it would help people find your videos easier
Yeah sure, good point.
Thanks, very helpful
Love the vids, found them and just love it.
Have a question though, is food bad? Why not build on a tile where you get a lot of food?
The bonus food does nothing if you plant on top of it. There's no extra food in the city center. You want to plant next to the food, not on top.
Think about it this way, you could have perfect pasture land but if you pave over the whole thing your cows aren't gonna be too happy.
Wow eye opening, that island near the end I would have put like 3 cities max and you put 2.5x that amount!
I swear to Caesar Suede if an MEM episode is coming next you're getting that donation
Could you email me the scenario? (SuedecivIII@gmail.com) All the links I found were broken.
@@suedeciviii7142 sent
Great tutorial, thanks :-)
Informative. Thanks. -Despite actually disagreeing on alot of the detailed based :)
I concider city-overlap as an absolute must. Without the less corruption, you get more value from you workers, by placing closer. -your cities grows faster because you can switch good growth tiles (like cows & wheet etc) to the cities that are nearest a population increase. By needing less workers early game, you can make (alot) more setlers by this. and thereby still expand in the same speed.
An octagon around your capital on the nearest 8 tiles just outside the capitals reach is the most efficient, both when it regards Growth speed, and production. You don't need a third worker until you have build city number 10. More early cities is the way to best accelerate the production relatively to the AI.
The cost benefit of buildings are EXTREMELY low in comparison to military units. -keep therefore MOST of the cities without any buildings, and make only militaristic units and new setlers. Trust me. That is a winning strategy... Play with Egypt, and go for monarchy asap.
So you're saying you think I place the cities too far apart?
You'd love multiplayer then. The games only last 40-100 turns, so there is no late game. It's all about an early game focus, so planting 3-6 cities 2 tiles from your capital is not uncommon.
Planting super close falls off on later difficulties though. First, you need to claim as much land as possible or it's gone forever. Second, military rushes become a lot more challenging and you can't always rely on them to keep up with the AI
But it can still be done. Check out my infinite city sprawl series, played on deity as the celts.
@@suedeciviii7142Thank you so much, i'll check your series in general, and this one especially.
But yes to put it short. if I have a cattle field, i try to make sure it can be used by several cities, which again require someone who likes some micromanagement.
unfortunatly my available time is too sporadic at current to join a good multiplayer game. But maybe at a later point.
Love your channel! How do you deal with a mass amount of mountains? I just did a game where I had no luxury resources and a huge mountain range on my continent. I reached a point where I just got to the middle ages and was trying to push the Iroquois off the continent but the war was pretty much a stalemate because I had no where to expand and they had a lot more cities. Thanks!
In terms of city placement, try to position mountain cities such that they have as much food as possible. And then irrigate everything.
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks for the tip 👍
Thanks.
One more advantage to planting cities closer, is that you can faster transfer defensive units from other cities, in case it's being attacked. I had many situations, that this saved my cities. Spear/Pike..etc.. needs only one turn, if the cities are 3 tiles apart, (connected with road, of course). If I have 3 border cities, I usually have one city behind them, with lots of defensive units, that I can quickly send to any city being attacked. :)
Question:
At 12:15 min. you planted city next to a volcano. Should we avoid that, because if volcano is active, it can wipe out the whole city?
So volcanoes don't activate in multiplayer. Might be a force of habit hahah.
If at all possible, yes, it's better to be 2 tiles away from a volcano than 1 tile. But volcanoes become far less likely to go off the later the game goes. So if it's the better city spot, just don't build buildings in that city. If you have to rebuild the city once it's destroyed, so be it.
After all these years now i understand what what does. I only used exploits haha but now i will play it properly
I'm leaning towards choosing bonus grassland over fish and whales for core cities early on. As one would often need culture , a harbor and getting out of despotism to make use of them.
Yeah that's why I only specified cow/wheat/ag bonus. Fish are bonus food, but you don't get it until you switch of despotism, or build a harbour.
I guess fish on lake would give 3 food up front hahah.
3 Tile Island sounds like a nuclear disaster waiting to happen
I've seen conflicting comments about luxury resources outside the big cross but still within your empire (the big cross being 2x2 from the city I think). Some comments claim we still get luxury resources inside our empire cultural boundaries, even if it's outside that big cross where our city laborer's work as long as it's mined/road connected properly. I can't get any bonus from food bonuses outside the cross, but with resources it's a little more difficult to tell.
Without being able to build colonies inside our empire, would mining them make a difference? And is there a difference between version of civ 3/ptw that causes this confusion? I have the original limited edition that came in the tin case. Do the modern version/downloadable play different?
Check the trade advisor, yes you do get the access to the luxury. Just not to the tile yields of course.
The other risk is another civ could plant next to the luxury and steal it from you.
The current version of civ 3 on steam is civ 3 complete. It comes with the conquests expansion too. It's been 15+ years, I can't say I know the differences between the versions very well.
Just so you know, all the bonus production from resources is still available if you plant a city on it. The only one to worry about is food.
Kinda. Food is completely wasted. Shields and commerce are wasted if the minimum shield/commerce value is above or equal to what the tile provides.
So for example, your capital has a minimum of 4 commerce IIRC. So planting your capital on spices won't improve your capital's commerce. But planting a secondary city on spices will.
Same thing with shields. The first shield is wasted, since city squares produce a minimum of 1 shield. But you get the extra shield back when you grow to size 7 weirdly.
This system is super convoluted and I fully didn't understand at the time I made this video. So my apologies for any mistake.
11:05 I think that Pompei could be founded also one square left. Yes, we're losing two sea squares, but we getting horses.
True. But then you gotta move hispalis. That would lose you a grassland... but actually get you a plains tiles. Worth it :)
You are The Messiah
tHANKS. Do you count tiles by the amount of turns 1-moving unit needs to get from one city to another? As for choosing the worst tile for the city itself: Why then the performance of the central city tile vary if not on resourses and landscape?
I wonder how to choose bettween building mine and irrigation on the tile? Looking forward to seeing your video on city development)
Yup. Although I suppose cities 3 tiles apart east-west have less overlap than cities that are 3 tiles apart northeast-southwest.
Thank you for asking your city center question. I realized there was a mistake in my video. The commerce of the city center is the commerce of the tile you planted on (+1 if there wasn't already a road there). So it's completely fine to plant on any luxury resource except wines (you'd lose the bonus food) or furs (you'd lose the bonus production)
Planting on bonus food tiles like cows/deer/wheat doesn't give any bonus food. Agricultural civs often get three food in their city center tile though.
Planting on bonus production only seems to matter on hill tiles. Plant on an iron hill and the tile produces 2 production instead of 1.
As for choosing how to mine/irrigate: I have another video that's a guide on worker management :).
@@suedeciviii7142
1. I schemed and there are two diagonal cases woth overlap of 4 or 2 tiles. And in straight case there are always 6 tiles in overlap.
2.So the commerce depends on the central tile and its resourse. But food does not, as well as shileds except from iron on a hill.
@@user-tr2tc2de8k
1) Yup. Although I don't consider overlap to be a problem really. The bigger issue is a) are you making too many cities, causing rank corruption?, and b) do the cities have enough tiles to grow and be useful?
@@suedeciviii7142 Agri civ cities get +1 food at size levels 2 and 3 (>6 and >12 resp.).
And a capital city is considered one level higher for this matter, so newly built capital has 3 food in its center tile.
@@u2bear377 That's not how the ag bonus works. And capitals don't count as one level higher, they're just animated that way.
I’m interested to know if river adjacency works by diagonals , or by the source???
If it gets the commerce bonus, it's adjacent, right click to check.
Doesn't the city itself produce different amounts depending where you plant it? I realize that you cannot modify the square once you plant a city on it but picking a decent spot for a city seems important early on. One advantage to planting a city on a strategic resource is that you get to protect it with the city walls.
So I didn't fully understand how the city square worked when I made this video.
TLDR: definitely plant on bonus commerce squares, except for your capital, don't plant that on bonus commerce.
Maybe plant on bonus shields.
Do not plant on bonus food, it will 100% be wasted.
In the very early game, is it ever worthwhile to walk a settler or two a great distance in order to block off another civ and protect a big chunk of land for later, given that those cities will be pretty useless? Or are they too valuable at that point to use in that way?
Usually it's better to plant nearer in order to snowball. If there's a particularly good city spot that the AI might contest, yeah, that moves it up on your priority list. But it only really secures the city itself. The AI isn't afraid to just walk its units through your land and settle on the other side of your city.
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks. I've really only done it when I've got an isthmus that I could completely block off with a city (which also creates a canal city), but all that time walking seems like a pretty big price to pay in lost production.
@@chriswatts8716 Just send a single unit to block it off :)
is it possible to plant forests and then clear them to accelerate wonders?
No, shields from chops can't be go towards wonders. Whether planted or otherwise.
Do you lose the future luxury if you plant on it?? Welp, so much for managing my anxiety 😭
You do not. The only thing you would lose is the bonus food from a wines tile if you plant on it.
How do you get this Civ edit window that you are using?
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete\Conquests
Click on civ3 conquest edit.
@@suedeciviii7142 Thank you.
Still watching the video. Some times its worth planting city on bonus grass land, particularly ind trait, because the shield is not entirely lost. Also, you do not want sea, you want coast. Sea give 1 food 1 com, coast give 1 food 2 com.
If I get it right, you get your bonus grassland shield back when the city grows to size level 2 (beyond size 6).
what about 5 appart? so every city can use all the land
Not good on most maps. Too much distance corruption in core cities early on, and you waste too many tiles for too long. Your city can't use 8 out of the 20 tiles until you get hospitals, by which point the game is usually won or lost. Not to mention when I see lower level players do this they often place good tiles outside of all cities' BFC.
Ty man
i have a question
I like expand early and get a good economi amd in late ( im pre ww1 ) y conquer
Who i can doing this
Pss:
I like the R&R MOD
Are you looking for a recommendation of a civ that would be good for that?
@@suedeciviii7142 I want to be able to conquer the world fighting from the infustrial era
What do you recommend me
And i need low corruption
I play R&R mod this mod low the air power( the planes are no longer lethal) and add more units ( marine, comando, and paratroper for example) .
its a good mod butt i cant survive or progres to the late ages, or reach tecs so the enemy have more power or more tecs
@@foxshoot3138 Commercial civilizations have less corruption. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the mod to give you more recommendations than that, sorry.
@@suedeciviii7142 you should take a look is a good mod adds a lot without necessarily extending a lot a lot apart from adding
visuals corresponding to each civ
And have more variety in late
@@suedeciviii7142 forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rise-and-rule-revisited-epic-mod.549166/
I've planted on resources and it automatically gives me that resource without building a road
I'm confused about the sea tiles thing. If sea tiles are less useful than coast tiles (1 less commerce, same food and shields), why prioritize them? Wouldn't the more commerce from coastal tiles make coastal tiles a priority?
When I say sea, I mean "sea or coast". Since it's hard to get sea tiles without getting coast tiles too.
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks for clearing that up.
@@suedeciviii7142 If I'm planting in a way that gets me lots of sea tiles, I'm generally missing out on land (grassland/plains) tiles for that city. Lot's of gold but few shields. Why is this good?
@@grahamshrimpton Because other cities will get those tiles.
If those tiles aren't accessible by other cities, build more cities.
i suppose you could plant forest in tundra and then rail to get 2 food?
No sadly. Railroads don't give any bonus to forested tiles.
@@suedeciviii7142What are the rules for railroad bonus?
@@u2bear377 Gives an additional shield to mined tiles, gives an additional food to irrigated tiles.
@@suedeciviii7142Does RR increase commerce?
No.@@u2bear377
Liked the video! Can you make a video about ideally best city bonuses possible through map editor? Like stacked with cattle and iron/coal or something?
Why does the AI irrigate bonus grasslands?
Because they dumb
I have several useless cities... too much corruption is eating up all my production/commerce. The obvious response would be to build Courthouses there, but that is expensive. Any other thoughts? Place military units there? These are conquered cities from other Civs by the way.
Switching out of despotism and connecting cities by road helps. But with super corrupt cities that won't work. The only thing that works in the corruption buildings, courthouse and police station each give a flat 10% reduction in corruption.
It depends on the map but consider switching to communism if you have a ton of cities.
@@suedeciviii7142 thank you! Do conquered cities from other Civs in general have more corruption?
@@cassini6600 Not inherently. But they tend to be far away from your capital.
What about planting on marsh?
you can't plant on marsh, have to chop first
@@suedeciviii7142 haha I should have tried before asking :-)
why do you want so many sea squares they give like 1 food not enough to support the laborer that made it
Build a harbor for the second food.
I found this fortum thread that says that the resources will still provide commerce and shields, but not food: forums.civfanatics.com/threads/building-a-city-on-a-bonus-resource.98279/#post-2136613
hello, do you still have your powerpoint ? and can you send it to me please ? I am playing civ 3 and I want to improve my game.
sure, email me at suedeciviii@gmail.com
Another Mistake, Placing a City on top of a food/resource/luxury tile still gets full benefits of that tile
food, no. You don't get bonus food.
You do (generally) get bonus shields and commerce for planting on top of bonus shields and commerce.
i know which cow you are talking about
It's good to see tips to play a game, but it doesn't make much sense if you don't *why* that is. Following instructions blindly doesn't help, because the conclusions of what to do is based on future criterias that'll be need to be reached. For example, why should I want as many sea tile as possible? You didn't explain the reason behind that, thus I would probably not do what was expected to be a good reason to do it.
Bro are you serious!, for years i thought an overlap tile can only be worked by one city!
By one city _at a time._
But you can "pass" a tile from one city to another.
AI always wrecks mw and i tried to learn from it. AI rarely builds cities so that they share plots and i though thats what makes it good. So i guess not
Ark ih PEL ih go
1:53 I for one am not surprised you have to say this, some people have been trying to drill OCP into our brains, despite corruption exploits having been fixed and tighter city placement being demonstrably more useful on higher difficulty settings...
THANK YOU!
On high difficulty levels must strats revolve around either A)Gaining a big advantage before the end of the medieval era. Or B) Rushing for artillery or bombers ASAP and using a doomstack to close out the game.
Neither of these benefit much from leaving perfectly good tiles unused until you discover sanitation, which is the majority of the game. It's not a bad strat by any means it's just really misleading to call it "optimal"
Although IIRC the big exploit that got fixed was ring city placement, right? Which was kind of its own thing. Or were there other changes?
@@suedeciviii7142 Excellent info, thanks :-) - about exploits, it's just that OCP was a form of ring city placement that maximized the number of tiles used and minimized the overlap as well as the number of "ranks" - ideally you'd go for two rings, so only two different corruption ranks, very OP indeed! Hard to pull of on anything but a low-water pangea though... or very large maps I suppose :-) but then you'd need more cities in the first place hahaha
@@cheaterman49 AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH that makes so much sense. Thanks for the info.
Man coming from civ2 i build cities 2 tile apart almost exclusively lol
It's called ICS and it makes for a very strong early game.
horrid guide, your cities are too close to eachother you dont even need to try to place them together youll just play accelerated production and everything will be given to you regardless how you place your shit
Planting on gold in hills is good i think.