Hello and welcome to this guide. Using my experience of Civilization VII at launch, I will be aiming to give you a thorough guide on how to best plan out your cities to make maximal use of adjacency bonuses and avoid mistakes that will punish you in later ages.

I will be doing my best to provide practical examples, including a play-by-play playthrough at the end of the guide to show my decision making and why I'm placing things where they are

While we're all still new at the game, I've got quite a few campaigns under my belt in my attempt to grind all the leaders, and I feel confident I have the basics mostly down. Proper city planning is more than min-maxing and can be the difference between floundering with barely productive cities, or absolutely rolling over the AI, all because you clicked the correct tile.

To start with however, it is important that I introduce all the basic game rules and concepts we will be using for this guide, as some of this terminology may seem obscure at first, and be unintuitive even to veterans of Civilization VI

I will be doing my best to provide visual references, but don't expect amazing illustrations!

To begin with, there are a hefty amount of game rules we have to consider before we can hope to plan anything out. I will be doing my best to introduce most of them here so they can be referenced for later, though I will be re-justifying all my placement advice and decisions.

I will be providing emphasis on specific concepts that are easy to forget but critical for city planning.


Settlements are all cities and towns in the game. This is equivalent to what existed in previous Civilization games.

You start the game with a Founder, who provides you your first capital city. A city is, in a way, a fully enabled settlement. You will be using production to build, or gold to purchase, units, buildings, wonders and projects. This guide mostly covers this kind of settlement, both your starting one and any future cities.

As you create settlers and set them down across the map, you will be creating towns. A town is a more restricted settlement that is only able to use gold to purchase specific buildings, which for most leaders is warehouse buildings, religious buildings and Modern age factory buildings (Port, Railway Station and Factory) and bridges. The only exception to this is Augustus, who is allowed to buy Culture buildings in towns.

Towns have limited output, with all production being converted into gold at a 1 to 1 ratio. They can also be set to "feed" their food output into the nearest city by specializing them, alongside a specific boost to their resource output. This connection requires a direct route through land or sea.

You can upgrade a town into a city at a gold cost, scaling on the population amount in your town and the amount of existing cities, with a base cost of 200 gold in optimal conditions (heavily populated, few existing cities).

You are limited by the settlement limit, provided in your empire banner. You start with a settlement limit of 3, which increases from various sources (tech, civics, leader attributes and abilities, civilization abilities)


Every time your population grows, you are provided with the option of placing that population on a tile. This creates a rural tile with an improvement depending on the terrain type. When you do this, you will begin to collect the yields of that tile and also expand your borders around that tile (also known as a culture bomb)

Each tile in the game is comprised of a base terrain type (Grasslands, Plains, Desert, Tundra, Coast, Ocean, Mountain), with land tiles able to be Rough, Vegetated or Wet, providing modifications to their terrain type and interacting with a large amount of game rules.

The game also features normal rivers, snaking over an existing tile, or navigable rivers which have a terrain type but override the entire tile and can be sailed through with ships and blocks most land buildings and movement.

You can only grow to new rural tiles that are adjacent to existing rural and urban tiles, including your center tile (Palace in capital, City Hall in other cities and towns). You are not allowed to grow on mountain tiles until the Exploration Age, where you will unlock Expedition Bases which improve mountains for production and happiness yield. Ocean tiles cannot be worked at all.

There is an universal range of three tiles out from the city center for all settlements. You are not able to work tiles, or expand your cultural borders to tiles, beyond that point under any circumstances using your existing settlement.

You do not collect any yields from unimproved tiles under any circumstance

Specific civilizations unlock unique improvements. These improvements are always built on top of rural tiles and either further boost the yield of those tiles or provides a special effect. These will carry on through the ages but can be replaced at any time, they also always preserve the "natural" yield of the tile and tile improvement under them.

Urban tiles are any tile on which a building is placed, including your starting Palace or City Hall. Urban tiles override the natural yield of a tile (with specific exceptions, like Antiquity Era Khmer with river tiles).

Urban tiles can only be placed strictly adjacent to other urban tiles or wonders. This means that you have to build your city out with a direct connection to your city center. Urban tiles can never be placed on Mountains, Ocean tiles or any resource tile. Most urban tiles must also be placed either on land, or on navigable river or coast tiles, depending on the building type.

Urban tiles contain a population, and purchasing a building will actually "spawn" in an additional population for your city. It will also refund the population of any rural tile you build over, allowing you to place it elsewhere. Every urban tile has room for two buildings, each containing a population.

Once you place a building, the tile permanently becomes urban even if you cancel the building. Urban tiles will also culture bomb surrounding tiles, but only on completion.


At the start of the game, you will unlock all Antiquity Era Warehouse Buildings in your first four techs (Granary on Turn 2 with Agriculture, Saw Pit with Animal Husbandry, Brick Yard with Pottery, Fishing Quay with Sailing).



Warehouse buildings are special buildings that do not have an adjacency of their own and instead buff rural tiles with additional yields. They are also Ageless, which means that they are permanent and can never be replaced or removed. As a result, they have to be placed carefully and thoughtfully, as you will be stuck with them for the rest of the game.

You will be unlocking more warehouse buildings as the game goes on. Three more unlock early in the Exploration Era (Stonecutter, Gristmill and Sawmill) and two more in the Modern Era (Grocer and Ironworks).

Every single other building in the game is considered a "normal building". Normal buildings all have specific adjacency rules that increase the resource yield they provide, based on the tiles directly adjacent to them. As a result, it is obviously important to place every building with careful consideration for what they will be adjacent to. Buildings also usually come with a small special bonus that is city wide and can affect your gameplay.

If you put two buildings on a tile, it becomes a Quarter. Quarters are "full" urban tiles and provide a variety of buffs and adjacencies to specific buildings, leader abilities and attributes and civilization attributes. Warehouse Buildings also generate Quarters..

Unique Buildings are always specific to a civilization in a given age. While they collect specific adjacencies, they are unique in two ways. Unique Buildings are always Ageless, meaning they will persist to the end of the game, and placing both Unique Buildings of a specific civilization on the same tile will create an Unique Quarter, providing a further, usually powerful, special effect.

Wonders are special tile features you can build that are neither rural nor urban tiles. They occupy a full tile and cannot be paired with anything else, and once built can never be replaced or destroyed, they will also persist for the entire game. They are obviously unique, and are permanently lost if the city they are contained in is razed or the age they are built in ends with them unbuilt.

Wonders have very specific placement rules unique to each wonder, often requiring specific tile types or adjacencies. You can always expand new rural tiles around a wonder, but urban tiles require the wonder to be connected to the city center with urban tiles.

A concept that is introduced later on in the Antiquity Age and Exploration Age is specialists. Specialists are population that you can manually assign to work on an existing urban tile to provide additional yields. By default, a Specialist provides 2 Science and 2 Culture alongside half the total adjacency bonus of each building in the tile, in exchange for a cost of 2 Food and 2 Happiness.

Specialists, like other populations, persist through the ages. They cannot be replaced or removed even if their urban tiles are overbuilt, with the exception of building a wonder over them, in which case they are killed without refunding.

Once entering a new era, all buildings of the previous era not marked as Ageless automatically become obsolete. They persist in your city but provide a fixed yield of 2 of each yield type (3 in Modern) that they used to provide (even if they provided less in the previous age, for example the Monument goes from 1 to 2 Influence in the Exploration Age).

Obsolete buildings also permanently lose their adjacency and special bonuses and cost full maintenance, making them very costly for a city to maintain for meager yields. While they provide a baseline for your city to rebuild out of, they are inherently fairly undesirable and should be built over as you unlock new buildings.

Overbuilding is unlocked in the Exploration Age, allowing you to build over obsolete buildings. This allows you to replace buildings in a tile one by one with new buildings that will once again collect adjacencies. Ageless buildings can never be built over.

You can also overbuild with wonders if both buildings on a tile are obsolete. This allows you to turn an old urban tile into a brand new wonder if you have no further plans with it.


There are multiple small factoids of how settlements interact with eachother that are important to know for optimal city planning:

• There is a strict three tile lockout for settling near an existing city. Optimal spacing is six tiles between all cities if you want every settlement to have its own tiles to work without collisions.
  
• It is impossible to claim tiles outside of the three tile range of a settlement. This means that there will be gaps between your settlements that you can't fill. Claiming the third ring of tiles will not culture bomb them, even if they are in valid range of another settlement.
  
• Settlements can expand to any tile within three tiles of their own city center. This means you can steal tiles from other settlements. You currently cannot swap tiles between cities, even featureless tiles that were culture bombed, so be cautious.
  
• If you settle within 11 tiles of your existing settlements, you will automatically build a road to the nearest settlement. This connection is mandatory to feed food from towns to cities, unless you have an (invisible) sea connection. Naval range is 15 tiles in Antiquity, 30 tiles in Exploration and 45 tiles in Modern, it also universally requires a Fishing Quay in both cities to initiate.
  
• All adjacency rules are universal regardless of which settlement owns the tile you are getting them from. You can get adjacency from neutal, unimproved tiles, or even tiles in your other cities or foreign cities. You will also grant them adjacencies when applicable.
  
• Directly touching the border of another empire will cause a rapidly escalating "Borders Touching" diplomatic penalty, even if both cities are not stealing tiles from eachother. Be careful as this can quickly turn another civilization hostile to you even for a single settlement's worth of borders. Ironically enough, the AI doesn't care who settled close to whom for this penalty, so they will get righteously angry that your empire is next to their forward-settled settlements.

Fresh water is a specific concept for settling cities that can have an important impact on your global and local happiness. Every tile in the game either has fresh water or doesn't, depending on the terrain type it is on, or adjacent terrain. The following rules are used:

• If the tile is a Wet tile (Lake, Oasis, Marsh, Mangrove), it will provide fresh water to its tile and surrounding tiles. These tiles can be settled on directly.
  
• If the tile is run through by a normal, non-navigable river, it will provide fresh water to that tile only.
  
• Any tiles surrounding a navigable river are automatically considered to be fresh water tiles.
  
• If a full group of water tiles form with no direct contact to Ocean tiles, they will become fresh water tiles, known as a Coastal (Lake) tile ingame.
  
• There is currently no known way to irrigate or otherwise spread fresh water in this game. If you settle off of fresh water, you will permanently lose the fresh water bonus.
  
• Fresh water has absolutely no effects on farms or other adjacencies.
  
• Settling off fresh water automatically causes a -5 Happiness penalty to the settlement, which will debuff all your outputs unless countered.

You can always check which tiles have fresh water or not using the Settler lens, as long as those tiles are available to settle. Fresh water tiles are cyan/blue, and non freshwater tiles are a pale yellow:





In this case, all four possible fresh water sources are featured in this screenshot:

• A full navigable river runs down the middle, providing fresh water to all tiles around it. The navigable river itself is not settlable, leading to the red outline.
  
• A smaller river runs two tiles to its right, providing water to the tiles it crosses. There are additional tiny rivers dotted around the image, notably in the fog of war in the top left.
  
• A tile feature lake is provided both under the Kaolin between both rivers, to the bottom right of the small river extending its freshwater out, and to the top right of the image by the dates as a clearly visible Oasis. All project fresh water in a ring around them.
  
• A full fresh water lake is visible to the north, providing additional fresh water tiles all along its edges.

Note that figuring out if a tile will support fresh water or not can be difficult at a glance, especially for tile lakes that can be obscured by resources. You should always use Settler lens to doublecheck before settling!

You are also forced to manually figure out if a tile can host a city if the tile is obscured by another nearby settlement. To the north of the image, despite valid water tiles, settling is blocked, presumably by an independent power hiding in the fog of war.

With all of these concepts explained, let's now go back to the most important part of city planning, which is planning out the adjacencies of our buildings.

As established previously, every single building in the game has a base yield (including Warehouse Buildings and even Wonders) which replaces the yield of the rural tile they were sitting on in most cases. This means that you are replacing the natural terrain of your settlement with purpose-built urban tiles.

With specific exceptions clearly listed in the adjacency rules, almost always on unique buildings, buildings do not get base yields from being on specific terrain tiles. For example, your Saw Pit does not care if it is sitting in the middle of a dense forest, or in the middle of a steppe or desert, and your people will happily go to an Amphiteater wherever it is lost in northern taigai or in a beautiful grassland meadow.

Instead, the yields of your normal buildings are universally boosted by the tiles directly adjacent to them, while warehouse buildings boosts the yield of all rural tiles in your city of their specific type. As such, an urban tile is less about the tile it's placed on than the tiles it's surrounded by. Understanding this is critical to city planning.

The game has five major adjacency types, each providing a boost to two different types of buildings:


The first adjacency type is resource adjacency, which is used mainly by Science buildings and Production buildings across all three eras, with production buildings further fawning out into military buildings which also yield precious hammers on top of their special bonuses.

This adjacency is fairly simple to understand and the only way to obtain it is to find resource tiles on the map of any kind and building your Library, Blacksmith, University or Aerodrome next to them.



This otherwise unremarkable tile is flanked by three resources, turning it into an engine of progress and production with an automatic +3 to any Science or Production from relevant buildings. The tile to the south east provides a +2 for an additional two buildings, if we choose to build it this way (note the lake for later)



The resource type does not matter in the slightest. Your researchers will easily divine the world with dates and camels, while your military academy will boost the production of your entire city using fish and wine.

As science and production are both critical yields in cities, any tile that is flanking two or more sources, let alone three or four, tends to be very high priority for these specific districts, even if other adjacencies exist (usually coastal/river).

Note that since you cannot build on resources, obtaining those adjacencies can sometimes be awkward if all the resources are bunched up together. Be careful about how you plan to expand your urban districts to these tiles, and don't hesitate to discard single adjacencies to other buildings to get better yields.

Some resources will disappear or appear as the ages go by, which means this adjacency type is the only one that is altered by age transition. You can only plan for it by knowing which resources become obsolete and vanish, and you can't really plan where new resources will appear (they will appear on any tile not blocked by an urban tile or wonder)

This is less severe than it first appears as most of your city will be open to overbuilding, allowing you to pivot to new locations for your brand new science and production buildings, but it can mean a city can permanently lose good resource adjacencies, or force you to extend out to new sources.


The second adjacency type regards both Culture buildings and Happiness buildings, the latter covering a wide range of building from pure happiness buildings, to the temple and even the late game radio station which comes with a hefty influence output.

This adjacency is also fairly simple to understand, though it comes with two possible adjacency types which (rarely) overlap. The first one and most common is mountain ranges.



This rugged mountainous valley provides not one or two but three opportunities for inspiration and pleasure! Each Cuture or Happiness building in the center two tiles would benefit from a +3 boost, with a lesser +2 boost available next to both in the north east.



Rarely, you will have the opportunity to find a natural wonder. Besides the effects innate to them, which are often quite powerful and can be a massive boon to your empire, you can also use them for the same adjacencies. Sadly, as they are quite rare and hard to get adjacency from, this is more of a situational bonus.



This beautiful mountain is none other than Torres del Paine. Besides providing units we send to its base with a permanent movement buff through rough terrain and fine food and happiness yields, we can spot out two spots that would provide us with amazing +2 buildings.



Culture and happiness yields are both critical to the progress of your empire, and as such it's always a good idea to try and range out a mountain chain for those buildings. As mountains can sometimes spawn in less organized clusters, even a single mountain adjacency can be valuable on its own right.

Volcanoes count as mountains for adjacencies, albeit with obvious ongoing costs attached if they damage your buildings due to volcanic eruptions. Also, be careful not to mistake mountains with cliff sides, which are tile edge features and only provide a movement blocker and no adjacency.

Obviously, you are unable to build anything on mountains except for rural tiles (Expedition Bases) in later ages, and the very specific wonder of Macchu Pichu (which massively boosts the adjacency bonus). Careful planning will be required to push a building into a very optimal mountain valley, and said mountain tiles come at the cost of being useless outside of some late-game yields.

Mountains and natural wonders will remain through the ages, so those mountain valleys your bronze age civilization sets its eyes on will still be a valid place to host a heavily boosted Opera House or Department Store in the far future!

The third and final "major" adjancency type is water-based. Any Food or Gold building built next to navigable rivers or coasts, including many buildings placed on them will have its yields significantly boosted, making both features quite valuable to have, and a landlocked, waterless plain decline in potential even if it has endless, barren land to work with.

This adjacency can actually turn out to be surprisingly complicated at a glance, as coasts and navigable rivers can easily stack together as the landscape bends, leading to missing massive +4-5 adjacencies. It is important to always check navigable river bends and coastal isthmuses for optimal Market, Inn, Hospital or Stock Exchange real estate.



This valuable (if slightly chilly) coastal real estate, currently being surveyed by a Russian scout, provides two massive coastal adjaciences. The top central tile already provides a hefty +3 adjacency, with the bottom right tile further expanding this to a crushing +4 adjacency. Any city here would be able to churn out more food and gold than meets the eye.



While plain coast is a more basic form of adjacency, you may also have the opportunity to settle a major navigable river. These provide by far the most complex adjacencies for food and gold buildings, but used properly can turn your empire absurdly wealthy and prosperous while providing you with an useful barrier against invasion.



This river here provides three amazing land spots, and two amazing coastal spots for food and gold buildings. With the lake tiles to the west counting as coast for adjacencies, and the river bends providing the rest, we are looking at two +4 adjacency spots, and one +3. Additionally, the river at both ends provides incredible tiles for natural harbors, with the left lake harbor providing a +3 adjacency, and the right one providing a massive +4.



Small rivers do not count for any of those adjacencies. You must have a full navigable river. Besides this annoying point, a city settled near a big navigable river or coast, while potentially stealing a lot of possible urban tiles from the city, will boost your gold and food output to the stratosphere. Self-contained but efficient natural harbors or small river bends, much like in real life, can allow you to stack a lot of extremely productive food and gold buildings.

This also introduces the concept of adjacencies for buildings on coastal terrain. Thankfully, they are simpler, with all but one building having gold or food adjacency and this getting more powerful the more coasts and navigable rivers directly surround it. The only exception is the Shipyard in the Exploration Age, an age where coastal buildings especially shine, which has a Production base yield and thus adjacencies off resources. Weirdly enough, no equivalent exists to this building in the Modern Age.

Thankfully enough, rivers and coasts don't get altered at release, with climate change not being a problem due to the game ending in the 1950s, so you can also plan out your beautiful market and housing districts from the very first turns of the game.


The fourth adjacency type in the game is a special one, a sort of joker you can play in any city to provide all surrounding buildings with a free universal adjacency they can use to boost their yields. Building a World Wonder is no small feat between placement requirements, the opportunity cost of sinking production into it and competing with other civilizations, plus them permanently taking up and filling a tile, but this serves as a sweetener for your efforts.

While this may not be your first priority when building a wonder, you can basically use it to "fill in" your adjacencies. For example, it will substitute a resource for a Library, or a mountain for a Kiln, or a bit of lake or coastline for a Stock Exchange. Placed intelligently within your city, the wonder can thus create a massive boost in yields.

The only buildings that don't benefit from this are the palace (whose rules are explained afterwards) as a world wonder is not an Urban Quarter, and warehouse buildings which don't benefit from adjacency bonuses themselves.

As a result, wonders should never be built in the first ring of tiles in your city if you can help it, as those tiles should be reserved for the -hefty- palace adjacency and warehouse buildings. Additionally, it is wise to build wonders in a way that allows them to border as many good district spots if possible, with priority for "dead tiles" (a concept I'll explain in a bit)


The fifth adjacency is a special one, and one that weirdly enough is obscured by the game but quite real. You may notice as you expand your city and fill it with buildings that you are randomly proposed a +1 Science and +1 Culture adjacency on buildings that is not otherwise explained by the game in any way.

The rule is however simple. Any Urban Quarter next to your Palace causes the Palace to generate an adjacency of +1 Science and +1 Culture on your center city tile. This adjacency can then be further boosted by specialists, yielding to some pretty hefty bonuses for your research.

Any building counts for this, even warehouses, but you need both building slots filled. As a result, it is very wise to ensure all the tiles around your city center are filled with urban buildings if you have nothing else to put there. As a result of them having no inherent adjacency, warehouse buildings are perfect for this, as they have will benefit your entire city regardless.

Obviously, if you happen to have any amazing adjacencies for a science, gold or culture building right next to your Palace, then you should absolutely build the relevant buildings there as a priority, as you will be generating +1 Science and Culture on top of the yields you're getting out of your building. It could be a Fishing Quay and a Bridge next to the navigable river splitting your city, or a Library and Academy next to two resources, or simply a non-adjacent Monument and Amphiteater waiting for wonders to boost its yields.


During the game, you will encounter buildings that are neither Ageless nor Warehouse buildings but don't benefit from any adjacencies. They are few and far between, and built for specific purposes, but no less important:

• Altar. Weirdly enough, this little building, unlike the Temple, only benefits from world wonders for a pitiful happiness adjacency. Much better used to pair with your third warehouse building to finish a second quarter for your city center.
  
• Ancient, Medieval and Modern Bridges. These go on navigable tiles only and provide you with a flat gold yield, can complete a navigable river Urban Quarter for the Palace and specialists, and allow you to move over the river without embarking and thus wasting a turn.
  
• Rail Station. Critical Modern Age building that allows you to rapidly redeploy your army and create a rail network necessary to get factories online. Requires a fully empty tile.
  
• Launch Pad. Flat Science yield, basically only used for the last two steps of a Science Victory (Launch Satellite and then First Staffed Space Flight). Like the Rail Station, needs a fully empty tile.

Take a look at these tiles.



By all the adjacency rules we established, these tiles are completely worthless. These are sad excuses of a tile, surrounded by many good locations for urban tiles. Within a tile of them are all three major adjacencies with easy +2 and +3s to every yield type that could be split between one or two settlements if we desired. Even the worst ones have a +1 adjacency of some type.

So what do we do with tiles like these ? Ultimately, we have a few options:

• Settle them directly. Ironically enough, your Palace or City Center are both inherently unproductive tiles as their only adjacency is to other Urban Quarters, so you ideally want to settle them in a location with fresh water but not overriding great district spots. None of these tiles have fresh water, so this is a less attractive option, but depending on resource and district spot layout this may become an attractive idea. After the Antiquity Age, settling off fresh water is especially manageable due to escalating global happiness yields and your resource inventory.
  
• Use them for warehouse buildings. As warehouse buildings take up a tile and give you massive city-wide buffs to rural tiles, you will usually want those early in every settlement, including (and especially) towns. Tiles like these devoid of any adjacency means that such a placement will be consequence-free for the rest of the game, and free up other tiles for more productive buildings.
  
• Use them as a wonder spot. While wonders can definitely have strict placement requirements, many simple require open or rough terrain, or a vegetated tile or simple climate. Wonders will boost other buildings significantly but don't provide anything for the tile they're placed on, putting them in the same logic as warehouse buildings.
  
• Keep them as rural tiles. Rural tiles may not be as flashy as a well-built city, but the food, production and happiness yields inherent to them are still better than a poorly-placed building. Rural tiles can also be overriden for a building or wonder later in the game, making them flexible.
  
• For zero adjacency buildings late-game. If all else fails, later on in the game you may simply build there to have buildings you need. An Aerodrome may have production adjacency, but if you need to make one to house planes or build Science Victory projects, you may not be overly concerned with getting a +1 or +2. Some late game buildings like Rail Stations also have a fixed yield of +8 Gold and need a fully clear tile, making these tiles perfect candidates

Remember that you can only place urban tiles next to other urban tiles and wonders. Such empty tiles are the main enemy of city planning, as they force you to carefully consider how you are going to access more desirable tiles, and potentially force you to work on other things in your city or push out a less desirable wonder to fill the tile. You may also just give up and sacrifice buildings with lesser adjacencies available to fill the tile.

Later in ages, when the age is close to coming to an end and your victory conditions are fullfilled or unreachable, it may be wise to backfill your city with all the buildings you have skipped (if any) to both reach more desirable tiles for the next age, and provide yourself with the base yield. Remember that all adjacency bonuses are removed when the building becomes obsolete!

Depending on how your city is laid out, a +1 adjacency may also be a dead tile as far as you are concerned. If you already have two tiles with +3 resource adjacency in Antiquity and have put your four available buildings there (Library/Academy and Barracks/Blacksmith), it's not the end of the world if you fill it in with a warehouse building or wonder.

As a general rule of thumb, you need a good adjacency land tile for each yield, and a single good water tile for all age-specifc buildings, with the exception of gold in Exploration Age as you have three land gold buildings (Bazaar, Guildhall and Bank), and Happiness in the Modern Age as you also have three (City Park, Department Store and Radio Station)

Towns are far simpler settlements, and yet there is still some planning to do. The most important thing about towns is that they can still have all warehouse buildings, and some specific buildings (Villas during crisis, Ports, Rail Stations and Factories in Modern). As such, there is still some things you can achieve with them.

First of all, warehouse buildings will be inherently far, far more powerful in a town, as towns are dedicated to working rural tiles. An average late game Grocer can easily yield a casual +20-25 food in a basic farming town, and Ironworks can yield about as much production (which would then be turned into gold).

Warehouse buildings also allow you to reach tiles for further warehouse buildings. This is far more important than it first appears, as some warehouse buildings have very specific placement requrements, without which you will lose the ability to place them for the rest of the game:

• In the Antiquity Age, the Fishing Quay is a Coastal/Navigable River building. If your town is near either a coast or navigable river but not directly adjacent to either, it is critical that you bridge your way over to them with the buildings available for that age to enable you to boost any fishing boats.
  
• In the Exploration Age, you unlock two very powerful buildings, the Gristmill and the Sawmill. Both require placement on a river or navigable river, but will give you an additional boost to the food and production yield of all relevant tiles. A farming town thus benefits massively from even a single tile of river you can reach
  
• In the Modern Age, you unlock the Port. As it provides an additional resource slot and can connect the town to your rail network, it is quite critical to place if able.

In total, across the ages, any civilization can build in total four buildings in towns in the Antiquity Age, seven in the Exploration Age, and twelve in the Modern Age. If you do not overbuild your Altar and Temple (and buy both while available) you can have a grand total of 14, plus your City Hall.

Many leader attributes and social policy cards give boosts to urban quarters. Remember that two paired buildings is a quarter, even in a town..

Additionally, depending on your needs, and if you have easy access to a coast, river or navigable river, you may choose to build warehouse buildings to either push out your borders early, making it easier to compete for and grab important resources, or override bad tiles (for example building over a mine or forest, while focusing rural citizens on farm tiles)

If you are building distant land settlements to extract treasure resources, they must absolutely have a Fishing Quay. Do whatever it takes to sprawl your urban buildings to reach said coast or navigable river. This is no longer true as of the latest update, as distant land cities will now spawn in treasure convoys without further requirements on a turn timer once a treasure resource is improved, which you can then embark at will.

This patch has also added the ability to buy out bridges in towns, which are extremely convenient to allow your troops to move around your empire without losing turns embarking across major rivers, which is always appreciated. You can even force a quarter by building a new era bridge on top of the old one!

Obviously, if your town is slotted in a narrow location, or flanked by resources, you may not be able to fit all the available buildings. Remember that urban tiles can only be built next to other urban tiles. However, if you have a location one tile across a navigable river or coast with empty tiles, you can choose to expand there by bridging your city with a Fishing Quay (or a bridge now, more appropriately).

Remember to leave the option open for a city if possible. Towns with a lot of innate production are prime candidates to turn into cities. As a result, make sure you don't place your warehouse buildings on tiles that would have a great adjacency bonus with resources, mountains or coasts.

There is a big difference between planning out your city for the Antiquity Age, and picking up your cities in later eras. After all, your cities aren't just wiped off the face of the earth, and instead your buildings turn off and give out pitiful yields until they are replaced with age-appropriate buildings.

However, the skeleton of your city and all ageless buildings and wonders will remain, alongside the specialists you placed in previous eras. These will continue to give out their specific benefits, and while you are intended to start out the game slowly, a properly developed city can actually give you a pretty frightful boost to your early game and make it trivial to place your newer buildings.

One advantage of the Exploration Age is that all your existing urban tiles will remain, allowing you to reach for your third ring tiles more easily. Were you eyeing down a fancy triple mountain adjacency that you couldn't easily reach in the previous age ? Perhaps your Kiln and Pavillon will go well there, instead of the single wonder adjacency you placed your Amphiteater and Monument against.

Additionally, this allows you to replan your existing districts. For example, your three resource tile adjacency from Antiquity might now be only two due to a resource disappearing, but due to some wonder spamming you now have a wonderful +5 adjacency tile you could use to skyrocket your science and production.

Remember to save a river or navigable river tile for your new warehouse buildings, especially one next to your Palace. The Gristmill and Sawmill both provide fairly hefty yields that will help your city get off the ground quickly.

Even later on, in the Modern Age, you will finally reach the apex of your urban sprawl. It's fairly likely that every city that has been there since Antiquity will be fully urbanized by now, with space highly in demand for final wonders and other full tile buildings like Aerodromes, Rail Stations and Launch Pads. At this point the game is less about choosing where to build things, and simply saving slots for those critical end game buildings.

Properly placing your warehouse and ageless buildings has knock-on effects through the game. A single lazily spammed out Granary can make you lose a lot of yields through the game, always be considerate of where you place Ageless buildings! Likewise, avoid spamming out less useful wonders just for the sake of having them, or at least spread them out through your empire.

Finally, let us try and play out a basic start to showcase how city planning looks like in a real situation. For this example I will be playing Charlemagne under Rome, with two pre-nerf scouting mementos to allow me to easily scout out my surrounding terrain. I will also be providing my reasoning on my building, settling and sometimes other decisions to showcase what good city planning looks like.




I have settled in place and done a standard Scout - Scout - Scout opening, researching my first three basic techs to unlock my warehouse buildings. My scouting mementos obviously gives me a huge advantage in grabbing early goodie huts, which I am hoping to convert into a snowball advantage

I will be unlocking my Settlers at 5 population. I will be building three of those, to rapidly claim as many good settlement spots as possible. The navigable river to my west seems like a prime candidate for a second city, and the lake to my north east like a good forward city to counter Machiavelli, whose scout I have spotted to the north.

In the meantime however, I am prompted to build something. As the only hostile independent power is quite far away to my north, I will be placing a Granary down.



As established, we are placing the Granary down on the first ring of tiles, next to my Palace. We have six choices:

• West, South West. All of these tiles have a +1 adjacency to my only Mountain. As I will not be getting better adjacency for culture and happiness, I am apprehensive to place anything else on these tiles. I will be marking those purple and reserving them for Culture/Happiness. The South West tile is my easiest access to the navigable river and thus sea, so I will be prioritizing that one for my Monument.
  
• North West. This tile gives +1 adjacency to resource. Sadly my only good +3 and +2 resource adjacency is three tiles out, so I will probably be forced to build an early science and production building there, or leapfrog to the tiles to my north west by aggressively building wonders and other buildings.
  
• North East. River adjacent to my capital without any adjacency. Reserved for my Gristmill and Sawmill, not building anything there.
  
• South East. Backup Science tile if I decide to leapfrog the North West tile with a warehouse building. Keeping it in my pocket for now. It could also be a fine location for a Bath if I don't make it to the navigable river in a decent time.
  
• East. No adjacency, no river, dead tile next to my Palace, perfect for a warehouse building.

With my first building, I have thus developed a game plan for my Antiquity Buildings:

• Reach the +3 resource adjacency by building two buildings to the NW. Probably second or third warehouse building will go there, so I can reach the +3 spot.
  
• Reach the sea by filling SW of my Palace, probably with culture building
  
• Save NE for Exploration Age Warehouse buildings.
  
• Once I reach the south west river and coast, plan out my gold and food there.
  
• This start frankly doesn't have amazing adjacencies overall, so I will be bumping wonders up on my priority list.

I am assuming a very aggressive position in terms of settling. I have four available settlements, and I have already put two down with a third on its way to the west of Ravenna.

Currently, both have good justifications to become cities in the future.

Ravenna is a great navigable river city with plenty of spots for good gold and food buildings, a decent third ring science and production tile, and potential as my Exploration Era capital. The settle to the west of it will help further feed it and give me easier access to the western ocean (this is on Continents, not Continents+)

Pompeii not only settles a great strategic chokepoint with good resources (hello camels), but is also sitting within range of the Redwood Forest, possibly the best natural wonder in the game. I have all three adjacencies handled, and plenty of room for further expansion with possible feeder towns to the north west or south east.

Strategically, I am isolated at the south of the continent. All three AIs are stacked on top of eachother and already forward settling eachother, which means they'll stay out of my business.

You may notice a -slight- barbarian issue in my capital. A Spearman found in a goody hut will help me clear those ruffians. I will also be buying further units if needed, especially since I have Silver online early. But in the meantime, we can build again.



This Monument is more than the 3 culture it gives with the +1 adjacency to the nearby mountain. It also unlocks the ability for me to properly reach the sea. Every building goes into your city planning, and here barbarians are actually preventing me from placing other buildings. I will be putting a Saw Pit to my North West next to prepare my first Library location, shy of the extremely good resource location.

I will also be buying a Slinger, I need it urgently.


The barbarian invasion was handled. Shengle was hiding in the southern, freezing wastes and spamming out galleys and warriors to throw at me. It is no more.

My fourth settlement, Neapolis, is down. The hostile military independent power to my north Khotan is a convenient barrier against the other AIs until I choose to disband them for Production and Army XP.

I have finished my Brickyard and Altar in the NW tile to my Palace. This provides +1 Science and Culture... and +10 % production towards Wonders due to my pantheon.



The Great Stele is a wonder spammer's wonder. As I have established, I will need to be building a lot of wonders as my city has a lot of room to work with but preciously little adjacency to boost.

So why here to the NW ? Why now ?



This could turn this entire city into a wonder, and basically change my game. With this single wonder, I get:

• A +4 Science/Production Tile, another +3 Science/Production tile, both immediately open
  
• A "special" tile that can be either 2 Prod/Sci or 2 Cult/Happy. I will likely be using it for the culture by building my Tier 2 buildings there (Arena/Amphitheater). The slot to the south west of that tile could also see another wonder.
  
• The wonder effect, 200 gold for every future wonder is nothing to sneeze at. I'm also denying it to my enemies.
  
• Progress towards the Wonders of the Ancient World victory condition. One out of seven...

Thus I will be focusing my capital on production. Every new citizen will go to the mines, and I will be using my gold to immediately purchase a Saw Pit. Two production, 1 Science, 1 Culture will go a surprisingly long way.

It is done.



With intelligent assignment of wool and gypsum from my coloniae, and through sheer determination, the Great Stele rises above the gold mines of Rome. I have secured my production and science tiles for the rest of the game, no-one will take these away from me. No-one.



My empire prospers. I have mostly been focusing on my capital, but Ravenna, Neapolis and Pompeii are all being prepared to be potential city candidates. By keeping all options on the table, I am allowing myself as much flexibily as possible if things go terribly well, or terribly wrong.

The southern barbarians are being tamed with gifts and influence, providing me with two scientific city states and one cultural city state. A second cultural city state to the north of Pompeii interests me if the AI is unable to invest in it by the time I hit 170 influence again



As for the northern barbarians... this guide was never meant to be a settling guide, and I'm going to need a puke bucket for that one. At least Greece is making a reasonable effort to expand coherently, even if Egypt and Aksum both made sure that war will dominate the north for millenia to come.

Normally Rome is a more militaristic civilization, but I'm perfectly happy with letting the AIs sort themselves out and using my city capacity to expand my own land. I have already detected one or two settlements I could easily grab, and Rome yearns for a sister city.



Planning one city is all fun and games, but two will be much better. If you have a keen eye, you may notice I have taken the liberty of chaining a granary to the NW of my city center tile, and then a fishing quay on the navigable river to bridge to a -very- desirable +2 science/prod adjacency location. Until I research bridges, the Fishing Quay is my only way across the river, so I had to make it count. I am also not getting the +1 Science and Culture adjacency from proximity to the City Hall, so this is a non-issue unless I move my capital.



Rome is culturally ascendant but scientifically backwards.



Soon, it will be the envy of the world in all ways.



Gypsum and Kaolin are both boosted from being in any city other than the capital. Meanwhile, the production from my wool and cotton is better served making more buildings in Roma than churning out a few extra coins in the outer reaches of my empire.

This is a fundational turn for my game. With one wonder and one extra city, I enter the mid-game. Roma prospers, the Roman Empire is born.




Patavium is founded by right of conquest. (The Legatus can create a free city on his third promotion)

This settlement is in the frozen wastes, away from any fresh water. But it has access to many resources. And it will all feed Roma.

Playing into your civilization's perks is important. While Charlemagne is currently neutered by the lack of cavalry units in the early Antiquity Age, Rome is great at rapid and aggressive expansion.

No AI has dared to forward settle me yet, though Friedrich of Egypt, having ruined Machiavelli's empire, now has a settler lurking to the north of my empire.

I will take the penalty for razing his settlement, if he dares.

In the meantime, Slingers are raised in Ravenna. My plans to build on the river are disturbed by the remaining galleys of those old hostile independent powers I razed. As long as I stand in the city center, I can slowly whittle them away.




Capua becomes the newest reach of the Roman Empire. Two cities will feed into Ravenna, and two into Roma.

The rogue Machiavelli has stolen Khotan from me. I wanted to raze it, of course, not befriend it. Friedrich's settler wanders my lands looking for land to settle. He's well advised not to dare, but I will handle it regardless. The latter in the age he does it, the worse it will get for him.



Ravenna begins to prosper under my wise planning. After building the Fishing Quay to bridge the river and a Library by the +2 adjacency spot, I decide to build a Bath to the north of the Quay, and then a Market on the estuary of the lake.

It is a +5 adjacency. It will soon be joined by a Garden that will produce 8 food. Ravennese coin and delicacies will flood the ancient world.




The Gate of All Nations rises in Roma, placed next to the market I had recently built. With two wonders out of seven, I quickly rise as a power to be reckowned with, and ensure that all the wars I engage with for the rest of the game will be done with particular violence with a free +2 war support... and 200 free gold from the Stele.



My unique quarter, like many, get adjacency from wonders, and additionally from culture and happiness buildings. While I could potentially get a very powerful amphiteater in this tile, the tile to the east will only remove a single culture and happiness in exchange for making my unique quarther that much more powerful. The plan is in motion.

To the east of my capital, in the rocky fields past my old Granary, a perfect spot for a lonely Oracle opens itself. At this point I am clearly leading in Culture. Rome will be wonderful in more ways than one.

The Wonders of the Ancient World are ours. The AI was fairly competitive and even stole the Colosseus from me, which would have made my prosperous market in Ravenna even stronger. Yet seven wonders it is, and my empire looks set to achieve two other victories with ease.



With the new feeder city of Catana, and increasingly powerful funds, Pompeii awakes as my third city. A second feeder city to the north west is in order, if I can get there before Aksum does. With a +3 adjacency resource spot, a +4 adjacency coastal adjacency, and a natural wonder providing a natural +2 adjacency, this city has many powerful yield tiles ahead of it. For 113 turns I have been carefully planning my warehouse buildings to not interfere with any of these spots. It now pays off.

At this point it is clear our age is coming to an end. Hostile barbarians spawning in the north of Capua were immediately crushed by my large standing army. We must wrap things up, and with my cultural dominance assured I begin to backfill all my cities with all the buildings I will need. Yes, they will decline once the Dark Ages come, but the base yield will be instrumental to brave the next age.

It is also imperative I secure two more feeder cities. I will go over my settlement limit, but it will be worth it.

And of course, the Roman Unique Quarters must go up before Rome vanishes in the sands of history. It is not game ruining if I don't, but nothing stops me from doing it now.




It is the end of an era. We delayed it for as long as we could, refraining from slotting in our codexes and resources, but Future Civic finally pushed the world past the threshold. We quickly fill our libraries and markets, triggering a merchant we had dispatched to allow us to refresh our resource panel.



Glorious Roma, once a vulnerable city in the south end of a wild continent, has become a prosperous metropolis. The western half of the city has become a true bastion of civilzation with a science quarter yielding 35 science, a production center yielding 22 production, a cultural center yielding 11, and a beloved entertainment center yielding 16 happiness. To the south of our town, a somewhat isolated market quarter is linked up across the Po river with two bridges, bringing in a sweet 12 gold and 8 food. The eastern half of the city is untamed for now, with lonely world wonders peaking above the wild grasslands, ready for further expansion.



Ravenna, our first foray into this dangerous world, tames the Kitakami river, bringing awesome prosperity to our empire. With a 26 science research quarter, a 13 production workshop, a 12 happiness entertainment district, a 14 yield cultural district heavily boosted by nearby wonders and a world renowned market yielding 13 gold and 9 food with its attached lighthouse, Ravenna is set to become our western capital for the new age. The river is bridged in many points, meaning our empire will not be split in halves.



Our towns in the west open up on a vast ocean that will soon be crossed. Neapolis is a quiet farming and fishing town that has been fully developed with all available warehouse buildings and an altar to carry its faith in the new age. Capua is still the furthest reach of our empire in the west, its prosperity yet to be found in the new age with two buildings missing.



The eastern half of our empire, more newly acquired, prospers proudly. Pompeii was not built in a day, but with large amounts of imperial funds it was rapidly developed to become the equal of our two great cities. While it will become a more forgotten part of our empire as we look out to the great ocean, its bustling markets, inspired orators and intelligent scribes will carry us forward with 34 science, 13 production, 12 culture and six happiness as the arena of the Redwood Forest falls to be founded before the era passes.



And then there's Patavium. A resource outpost in the cold south, but doomed to be worthless until the fires of industry rise. Until then, it will extract all that our other cities need.

Our empire is perfectly set up for the next era, and we are ready to leave this age with three of four victory conditions (and 2/3 on Military with our late settles) and all our settlements having great potential. We have made sure to save up a river tile next to every single city center to build a Gristmill and Sawmill, ensuring our empire makes the most of the early industrialization. And of course, Neapolis looks out into the sea, allowing our ships to moor and set out into the great ocean.

And so our empire goes into the long night.

Ravenna is reborn as the city of Rouen, ready to host Emperor Charlemagne for his great journey into the Western Ocean. As we are playing on the normal Continents map script, we will not have convenient archipelagos to quickly plop cities down on, which means we'll have to go through the hard way. The AI struggles at this, but not us...

We have chosen many perks as a result of our succesful first age. Our Mementos are swapped to Corona Civilis to grant us largely expanded settlement limit to colonize the new world, and Brush and Scroll to massively improve the growth of our cities once we begin to set up specialists.

Our Golden Age Academies ensure knowledge is not lost through the ages, and our Wondrous Heritage retains a great deal of Roman culture. Only Machiavelli comes even close on culture, and we make double the science of every other empire. Fealty means we start with three extra settlement slots for the new world, with many more unlocked through the age.

We will open with Cartography to enable us to rapidly send a settler out if we find a passage to the new world, as our scouting wisdom indicates to us that the new world is just a hop and a skip away from Neapolis, where the cog started. We hope to find many treasure resources, and preferably uncontested ones, but we are pent up to fight if we have to.

We also begin research on Piety, which has thankfully been boosted by our Future Civc. Being first in founding a religion is a massive boon, as it allows us to painlessly set up our faith and punish the AI by converting their cities, extracting benefits from them.

And of course, Pompeii is immediately set back to a city. For 200 gold, this is a non-issue for our growing empire.

But none of this is city planning.



We begin this age with the Bazaar and the Stonecutter. The Stonecutter is our long awaited fourth warehouse building and will replace the Altar we had been pairing with all of our previous warehouse buildings. The Bazaar is a money-making building that also comes with a resource slot, essential to kickstart our empire.

We will begin with bazaars in all our cities, then stonecutters. By then, Cartography will finish and give us the wharf, which will go in all applicable cities. Past that, we expect the Gristmill and Sawmill to join us. Let us move forwards and found a new empire.


Just a few turns in, we have multiple critical strategic decisions to make.



The new world is in sight. I can already see some chocolate, and since my empire is axed to the west, with Chola Hatshepsut dominating the east, I will need to get a settle going quickly. I take the liberty of buying a cheap Scout to recon inlands and pick the perfect settlement spots, before I'm contested by Songhai Friedrich. Spain Machiavelli is for now completely landlocked and should hopefully cause more problems for his other opponents than me.



We have also developed the concept of having a religion. Getting first pick is absolutely critical, so I quickly queue up a Temple. I am finally filling my center palace tile, as I do not want to have the temple interfering with my culture/happiness adjacency tiles, and with the Stonecutter I can fill in the fourth warehouse slot in all my settlements to replace the Altar.




Evangelism is an automatic "I win" button for the Culture victory in Medieval. We pick it without much thought. Interfaith Dialogue and Holy Ecumene are both safe picks with a yield of either 4 Science or 4 Culture per foreign settlement converted. The AI is supremely annoying with its missionaries, but will often only compete for the mainland and leave its colonies converted, turning every tiny fishing village into a free research battery. We pick the former and queue up a missionary.




The AI in this game is suicidally stupid when it comes to settling decisions. I had cased out this perfect little settlement spot to collect three bits of chocolate, but mister distant lands civilization over there decided to travel the entire continent over to settle this city.

I will now have two settlements for one settler's worth. I have discovered multiple nice spots along the coast, including one with a natural wonder.

Distant Lands is simple. You go there early, you settle there early. Send a Scout or two to take a look inland, collect all the goodie huts and generally figure things out.

But also send an army. Your good settlement spots will be stolen. Army Commanders can ford the ocean with Cartography, deploying a surprise to any daring opponents.

My empire development continues slowly. I alternate between putting up Observatories and Temples and churning out settlers, merchants and missionaries. Our religion and resources must be established now, we'll have time to build later.




Enough is enough. It is war, with my Gate of Nations and Military Attribute point providing me with a convenient +3 War Support.

Not that I will need it, my Chevaliers surround this upstart settlement. As soon as they are done, they will upgrade and kill Tecumseh's reinforcements.



A little north, I have sniped Thera from Friedrich, whose settler was lurking in the area. As it turns out, our indian friend has helped me out a little, as the initial settler that was directed for the city of chocolate had to turn around due to it being claimed.



To the south, a sneaky city with three more treasure resources. Gold in Distant Lands is also a treasure resource.

On the homeland, my adjacencies are secured and I slowly rebuild my cities.


At this point, the guided part of our playthrough can end.



The continent is blighted with poor AI settling decisions. The time has come to reshuffle the cards.



The quiet fishing town of Neapolis exemplifies the perfect farming settlement. With a Gristmill and Sawmill hooked up, their citizens feed Rouen with bountiful harvests. 108 food.



Roma and Rouen soar. We will win.

I'm aware this guide is a bit all over the place, but I'm trying to get something out early that helps explain how adjacencies and city planning works out to allow you to create godly cities and towns and develop a prosperous empire in Antiquity that will be used as a springboard in later ages.

As I continue my playthrough, I would seek to achieve all my victories in the Exploration Age. Treasure fleets would rush back to the mainland, aiming to fill my coffers before the age ends. Missionaries would pillage through the new world, while my researchers would create the few more relics I could use. New citizens would be put on productive, improved tiles to reach 5 40 yield tiles. I already have one from Roma.

In the Modern Age, I would likely continue my militaristic rampage, after -cleaning up- my borders.

If you have to remember anything from this guide, let it be this:

• Check adjacencies immediately and plan out your cities based on them. Bad tiles will be used for warehouse buildings, wonders and filler buildings. Great tiles must be reserved for buildings that match their yields.
  
• Remember to save spots for future buildings. A single river tile next to your city center if possible, and otherwise within reach for a Sawmill and Gristmill. In towns, make sure you have room for Modern Age buildings.
  
• Settle early and aggressively. Tiny outposts will grow into cities rivalling your capital, and new towns on the frontier will feed those. Aim to have three good cities by the end of Antiquity, and by the end of Exploration consider adding one or two extra in the new world unless you plan to use leader attributes that restrict you to 3 cities.
  
• Urban buildings must be chained. Remember that finding great spots isn't enough, you need to be able to reach them with the buildings you have! Wonders can be used as a helping hand to reach really good spots.
  
• If you have done your job in Antiquity, Exploration and Modern will be a breeze. Your well-established cities will contain many adjacency batteries, both old ones and new ones created by wonders. These will feed the rest of your empire, allowing you to buy yourself new cities in a dozen of turns.

And always remember, a tile itself is only worth anything if you build a rural improvement on it. If you plan to urbanize it, what matters is always what it's surrounded by!