I'm just wondering if this is intentional or not really... and I wanted to suggest it become intentional if not.



So I was playing solo recently and went to war with the necrophages whom I consider to be the bane of my existence more often than not.



Anyway, after a long and expensive defensive campaign, the necro army was finally whittled down enough to allow me to invade their land.

As I go in, I'm very disappointed by their city placement. Their cities are almost always placed on the edges of regions, which means they all receive sub-obtimal fids. Because of this, they are all smaller and underdeveloped. This also means that, for the long run, its more economically sound to just raze all their cities and settle your own in those regions if you so desire.



But then I attacked one of those little buggers and received a nasty little surprise. The city I attacked was so close to another city that I was suddenly up against two city garrisons, one of which would never be hurt by my siege. This meant that I'd have to reinforce my initial force to take the city, possibly requiring i siege both at the same time.



Is that an actual AI tactic in the code? or did their poor city placement just happen to work in their favor?

If it IS intentional, the strategy could stand to be improved somewhat by ensuring that cities dont hug the border so closely that they wind up starving themselves... but close enough, maybe via district placement, that each city is supported by another city or two in battle...

And since districts are the necrophage specialty, they could be masters at both offensive and defensive war if this was coded in for them...

I don't think that this was in the AI's code, but it's interesting! One could use that as the element of surprise lol.

I don´t think it cares that much about a city reinforcing another, although it should. Mostly because I´ve seen countless useless border cities which did not follow that pattern, it´s probably just bad coding. Even the Cult will settle shores when it clearly doesn´t have to.



But to do that yourself can be smart, especially when you´re against though opposition such as the necrofages themselves.



Another good use of border cities is to use the same pillar in two different cities as the Ardent Mages.

Ugh. now all I can think about is optimal and suboptimal city placement strategies to make the most out of this city placement thing.... UGH, it's maddening once you start building cities to get the most out of them in terms of both fids and defense. GEEZ...



From what I got so far, so long as ANY part of a city is within range, that city's garrison will join the fight, but I cant quite figure out the rules on range...

Is it no more than 7 tiles away? I think that's it but I dunno... but if that's the case, that means cities can, at max, be only 11 tiles away from each other if you intend to have their districts be in triangle formation with the city as a tip on the far end... ugh...

Suddenly, the "stick" city formation seems to have another up side. Since it's just longer, it's easier to get close enough for multi-reinforcements... and then if you're going to try and get triple or quadruple reinforcements.... ughhh....