That first decision in a strategy game, where to plant your first city, is everything. It’s a choice that can define the rest of the game, setting you up for a booming empire or a settlement that’s always struggling to catch up. While every map is different, I’ve learned that understanding the core principles behind a great starting spot can completely change how you play, shifting you from just reacting to the game to truly dominating it. I want to share some of what I’ve learned about the art and science of placing cities, so you can make every settlement a key part of your victory.
The Big Three: Food, Production, and Growth
At the heart of any strong city is a balance between three things: food, production, and the space to grow. Getting this right is the first step to mastering city placement.
Fueling the Engine: Why Food Comes First
Food is the absolute lifeblood of your early cities. It’s what grows your population, and more people means more hands to work the land, generate resources, and eventually become specialists. In the early game, you have to prioritize food. A city that grows fast builds a strong foundation, unlocking new buildings and speeding up its development across the board.
You’ll want to look for tiles with high food yields—think grasslands, floodplains, or resources like wheat, rice, and cattle. Settling near a river or lake is almost always a great move, not just for the housing bonus many games provide, but for the food-rich tiles that come with it. A classic mistake is getting tempted by a tile with great production but almost no food. Production is vital, but a city that isn’t growing will fall behind, unable to expand its borders or use the very resources you settled for.
For example: Let’s say you can settle on a plains hill (2 production, 1 food) or on a grassland tile by a river, with a 3-food wheat tile nearby. The hill’s production is tempting, but the grassland spot is the smarter long-term play. The fresh water will boost your housing, and the wheat will fuel rapid growth, letting you work even more tiles—including any high-production spots—much faster.
Forging Your Empire: The Power of Production
Production, your hammers or cogs, is what builds your empire. It dictates how fast you can create buildings, train units, and construct wonders. Without good production, your city will be sluggish, leaving you vulnerable and behind in technology and culture.
Hills, forests, and resources like stone or iron are your best friends here. When you’re scouting, you’re looking for a healthy mix of both food and production. A city with tons of food but no production will just have a large, unemployed population. On the flip side, a high-production city with no food will be a ghost town, unable to grow the population needed to work those powerful tiles.
For example: You’ve found a spot with plenty of food. Now, look at the production. Is it all flat plains, or are there hills and forests nearby? A location with just two or three hills can make a huge difference early on, letting you quickly pump out a scout, a warrior for defense, and a monument to grab more land.
How They Work Together: Growth as a Catalyst
Food and production aren’t separate; they’re locked in a powerful cycle. More food means more citizens, which means you can work more high-production tiles. This, in turn, lets you build things that improve your food and production, creating an amazing feedback loop.
I like to think of it this way: Food is your investment in the city’s future, and production is the return you get on it. A smart player invests heavily in food early on to reap the benefits for the rest of the game.
Reading the Land: Using Geography to Your Advantage
The map isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a resource. From rivers to mountains, the terrain itself is a strategic layer you need to learn to use.
The Lifeblood of Civilization: The Need for Fresh Water
For your first few cities, access to fresh water is basically non-negotiable in most strategy games. Settling on a river or lake usually gives a big housing bonus, letting your city grow much larger before you have to worry about building new housing. That early growth is a massive advantage.
Beyond housing, rivers often create fertile floodplains with great food yields and can become trade highways later in the game. While coastal cities have their own perks, the immediate boost from fresh water makes it a top priority for your capital and first few expansions.
The Natural Fortress: Mountains and Defensive Terrain
Mountains are more than just walls; they’re strategic assets. A city tucked against a mountain range is naturally protected from one side, making it much easier to defend. Mountains are also key for district planning, often giving huge adjacency bonuses to your science or faith districts.
When you’re looking at a potential city spot, always check for defensive chokepoints. A city in a narrow valley or on a peninsula can be a fortress, letting a small army hold off a much larger one. This is especially key for “forward settling”—placing a city near a rival to claim land. A well-defended forward city is a huge strategic win; a poorly defended one is just a gift to your enemy.
For example: You spot a narrow pass through mountains that leads right to your opponent. Placing a city there creates a powerful chokepoint. You can stick a single fortified unit in that pass and completely block any land invasion from that direction, freeing up your army to focus on other things.
The Untamed Wild: Forests, Jungles, and Resources
Forests and jungles present a choice. Early on, they offer extra production. But you can also “chop” them down for a one-time burst of production or food, which can be a lifesaver when you’re trying to rush a wonder or a critical unit. Deciding whether to keep them or chop them is a strategic call you’ll have to make based on your goals.
Luxury and strategic resources are also a huge deal. Luxuries (wine, spices, etc.) keep your people happy and productive. Strategics (horses, iron, etc.) let you build your best military units. As you expand, you should be aiming for spots that give you access to new resources you don’t already have. A diverse collection of resources gives you a major edge in both trade and war.
Beyond the Basics: Next-Level Settlement Strategies
Once you’ve got the hang of food, production, and terrain, you can start using some more advanced strategies to really elevate your game.
The Art of Adjacency: Planning Your Districts
In many modern games, like Civilization VI, where you place your districts is just as important as where you place your city. Districts get bonuses from being next to certain terrain, resources, or other districts. If you plan your cities with these bonuses in mind from the very beginning, you can get incredible yields of science, culture, faith, and gold.
Before you even settle, scan the area and plan out where your key districts will go. Look for spots where you can cluster them for maximum effect. For instance, a Campus gets a bonus from mountains, and a Commercial Hub gets one from a river. A well-planned city with great adjacency bonuses can easily crush a poorly planned city, even if the latter is in a spot with more raw resources.
For example: You find a spot with a river running next to a mountain range. This is a dream location for a science and commercial hub. You can place your city on the river for the housing, then build a Campus next to the mountains for a massive science boost, and then place a Commercial Hub on the river right next to it to maximize your gold income. This kind of planning creates a synergy that turns your city into a powerhouse.
The Forward Settle: An Aggressive Expansion
Forward settling means planting a city deep in contested territory, often right on your opponent’s doorstep. It’s a high-risk, high-reward move that can secure valuable land and resources before your rival can get to them. It can also serve as a staging ground for an invasion or put loyalty pressure on their cities.
But it’s dangerous. A forward city is hard to defend and might have loyalty problems. Before you try it, make sure you have the military to back it up and are ready to invest in it to get its defenses and loyalty up quickly.
Tall vs. Wide: A Tale of Two Empires
There’s a long-running debate in strategy games: is it better to play “tall” or “wide”? A “tall” empire has just a few, highly populated and developed cities. A “wide” empire has a large number of cities that might be less developed individually but are powerful as a whole.
The best strategy really depends on the game and the civilization you’re playing. Some civs are built for playing tall, with bonuses that make individual cities stronger. Others are designed for going wide, with bonuses to producing settlers or benefits for having many cities.
Generally, a tall strategy is often better for science or culture victories, while a wide strategy is great for domination or religion. But the best players are the ones who can adapt, maybe starting with a few core “tall” cities and then expanding “wide” later in the game.
Conclusion: The Ever-Evolving Metropolis
There’s no single formula for the perfect city. It’s a dynamic process of weighing your short-term needs against your long-term goals. By understanding the fundamentals of food, production, and geography, and by mastering the more advanced strategies of district planning and expansion, you can turn your settlements from dots on a map into true centers of power. The next time you start a new game, take that extra moment to really look at the land, to weigh the potential of every tile, and to lay the foundation for an empire that will stand the test of time. Your path to victory starts with that very first, critical settlement.