City size stays 9 squares even if it grows?

[sfc1971]

Every new settlement starts with the same 9 squares. Often however enemy colonies will start close to you and TAKE some of the space as they grow influence earlier then you. I got several games that show enemy colonies larger then mine incroaching on my land and in that case in the colony screen those tiles are red and in accesible.

In some place, I see those small fishing vessels at sea in extended areas of enemy colonies, it seems the AI can make use of those extra spaces.

Yet I am so far unable to spot anyway to make use of land OUTSIDE the first 9 spaces. The colony screen never updates, never changes, you can only have 8 production tiles.

I have been scouring the internet for pictures and videos of the game and they all seem to confirm that the game just doesn't allow the player to have any benefit from an expanding city. But the AI can.

It ain't just an AI imbalance, in these type of games it is pretty typical to try to optimize your cities so you can have as much terrain for each town as each town in this game needs a lot of base resources just to function as a town. I really do NOT want a map filled with 3x3 towns each with their own church and newspaper and warehouse and stockade and army.

So, am I doing something wrong or has an important element of the game be left out?

[Larry250]

The manual specifically indicates that only the core 9 squares will be usable, and that even though if culture expands, these 9 squares never expand like they do in CIV4. I've actually been playing the (yes, DOS (w/DOSBOX)) version of colonization recently quite a bit since I heard this was coming out, and I'm actually quite happy about how close they kept it conceptually to the original game.

The original game DID only have 9 squares available, it also had the same 'encroaching' issues of other colonies. Only difference in the original was that once you were using a square, unless the other player went on and fortified on it, it generally remained yours.

In the original game, there was no "culture" concept..(512k memory and all). I have not tried, but If you can't now, if you fortify a unit on that square, being able to utilize that square would be appropriate, and close in parallel with the original game..

What I think your issue is, is that the other play (AI) culture is encroaching into your 3x3 grid.. I'd say that you need the target square to be within the 3x3 grid AND be in your culture... I'd recommend doing things to improve your culture to push it out of your 3x3 space, that's all I can suggest.