Minimize the economic radius overlap restricts the potential
growth of one or both cities. When just beginning, explore
nearby lands as soon as possible to begin planning the placement
of future cities to best take advantage of the terrain. A few
large and powerful cities are more useful than several smaller,
weaker ones.

STRATEGIC VALUE: The strategic value of a city's site is a
final consideration. Because the underlying terrain can increase
the defender's strength when under attack, in some circumstances
the defensive value of the terrain may be more important than
economic value. But good defensive terrain is generally poor for
production and inhibits the early growth of a city.
However, defending a city is generally is easier than defending
normal terrain. In a city you can build the City Walls
improvement which triples the strength of defenders. Also, in
cities only one army at a time is destroyed in combat. Outside
of cities, all armies stacked together are destroyed when any
army in the stack is defeated. So, in certain cases where a
continent bottlenecks and a rival is on the other side, the
defensive value of a city site may be more critical than
economic value. Placing at least a few cities on the seacoast
gives you access to the ocean. This allows the launching of ship
units to explore the world and transport your units overseas.
With few coastal cities, your sea power is constrained.


CITY MANAGEMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STABILITY: Cities that don't maintain a favorable balance of
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