Civilization II Hints

City Sites

• I've heard some Civ players claim that it is best to found your first city exactly where the computer places your settlers at the start of the game.  This way you get a really quick start on your science research as well as building more settlers.  I would tend to disagree with this idea however.  Although it is important to found your first city as quickly as possible, I don't think that it is wasted time to take a few (not very many though) turns to check nearby to see if you can find a mediocre city site for your first city.  By this I don't mean that you should go exploring the black, simply that you may want to head for own of the other twenty squares already visible but no farther, lest you desire to give the computer civilizations a serious head start.  Don't worry about opening up all the black within your city radius.  You can do that soon enough with a unit from the city.
  
  For your first city, it is more important to simply get the city running than to find a prime site for it to be built on.  If you are fortunate enough to start out with two settlers instead of the usual one, take a moment to build a road or two for your first city before you go rushing off to found your next one.  This bit of trade is worth the slight delay.  The only time I would not recommend doing this is when your are fortunate enough to be able to found your first city on or near a river running through some grasslands or plains.
  
  Once you have your first city, you MUST EXPAND.  That is the key to the entire game. At the beginning you expand by founding new cities as rapidly as possible and thereby greatly increasing your trade (Advances!)  Later, you may choose to expand my military conquest instead, but either way, you must expand constantly.
  
  The sites for all future cities should be chosen more carefully than the first was.  The thing to remember when choosing any city site is BALANCE.  You don't want all high food terrains, and yet you don't want all high shield terrains either.  Also, you want land types which can be made to yield a decent amount of trade as well or your civilization will become stagnant and inevitably be wiped out.  The actual location of the city should be a terrain type which will yield at least two food, one shield, and one trade.  When making this decision it is important to remember that city squares automatically receive roads (railroads when discovered) , irrigation (or mining if more applicable), and at least one shield.
  
  This last point is an important one to take note of (as it differs from the original Civilization): Any city square, regardless of the terrain type, will produce at least one shield.  Keep this in mind if you ever have the option of founding a city on a normal grassland or on a grassland with a shield; always go for the grassland without a shield (except where this would cause you to miss out on better terrain within your city radius). This way you still get a shield on your city square AND you still can use the shield on the other grassland as well.
  
  These are the top seven places to found a city:
  
  Terrain Type               (Food/Shields/Trade)
  1. Buffalo                 (2/3/1)
  2. Oasis*, Fruit, Wheat    (4/1/1)
  3. Spice                   (3/1/4)
  4. Fur*                    (3/1/3)
  5. Grassland               (3/1/1)
  6. Wine                    (2/1/4)
  7. Plains                  (2/1/1)
  
  The * indicates that before you choose to settle on this terrain type, check out the surroundings carefully for less useful terrain types (deserts, tundras, and glaciers).
  
  Also consider the defensive bonus for settling on rivers and rough terrain.  This would increase your defense by 50% or even 100% if you settled on wine!  I would like to make one quick note on an exception to all that I have said.  It is very important to control isthmuses with a strong defense to keep enemies out.  If there happens to be a mountain in  a strategic position to cut off your rivals, don't just put a unit there or maybe a fortress, instead found a city and buy City Walls for it.  The combination of mountains and walls alone will increase  your defense factor six fold not to mention the possibility of veteran status!  This city may never be productive, but who cares.  That's not its purpose.  If you put the right units there, no one on land will ever defeat it the entire game!
  

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