City border expansion (now with graphics!)

[Cashew]

The new hex-tile system is obviously something that will be game changing in Civ V, and while looking at one of the screenshots I realized that city border expansion is going to be dealt with in a very new way.

Click for the image

From right to left in my image:
Black: you can see this is probably the standard city, pretty straight forward.

White: It seems that this tile should have been included in the capital, maybe tiles need to be sandwiched to be included?

Red: This is may be why we have the situation with white. It seems that only coastal tiles that are adjacent to the city can become part of the city borders.

Green: Finally, we come to this peculiar lil' tile. Any way you look at it, it is a third tile away from the capital. The furthest any other tile is from a city is 2. Perhaps border expansion is controllable? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I'd like to hear what theories people have about this tile, and furthermore, about border expansion in general in Civ V.



EDIT: New image: http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/62125/...page=mediaFull

As you can see in the new image, there is clearly an irregularly shaped border that is not at all consistent with the more uniform border expansion we saw in the past.

[Goobleglop]

Maybe you get to set down your own tiles of culture. See that unexplainable tile was set down instead of that forest one. This means that you can push your culture towards your enemies' cities. Possibly the armies have something to do with it, like unopposed units make culture.

[Zhenon]

Do you think it might be possible that some of those strange tile border expansions are "civilization borders," as opposed to individual city borders?

[Cashew]

I think the ability to control your border expansion is increasingly likely since I saw this newest image:

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/62125/...page=mediaFull

I mean, there's obviously a border expansion, but it's completely irregular and mostly inexplicable by a static/uniform increase of your border from culture or population.

[Bob Ilyani]

I think the ability to control your border expansion is increasingly likely since I saw this newest image:

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/62125/...page=mediaFull

I mean, there's obviously a border expansion, but it's completely irregular and mostly inexplicable by a static/uniform increase of your border from culture or population.

Maybe manually changing where your citizens are working will affect where these borders are.

[reb00t]

In some of the screen shots, it seems like terrain might play a role in border expansion. Like if its harder to gain cultural influence over mountains and deserts.

[Rhyshaelkan]

A city expanding two hexes in every direction yields 19 hexes covered. Not terribly different than the original 21 squares in the fat-cross. But much more realistic on how cities sprawl in every direction.

I hope this will be the case with a city covering a two hex radius. It will be far more easy to have cities not overlap. And you can utilize all your land.

[Byph]

Yup, I have two working theories.

1) Different types of terrain have a culture resistance. Open terrain has less resistance than forests, hills, mountains and water. I could even imagine needing a certain technology to spread across more than one water tile. Roads may reduce that resistance as well (the hex SE of the green tile appears to have a road improvement).

2) It's based in part on the tiles being worked by the city. The green hex seems to be adjacent to tile with roads, but I can't tell if it's being worked by the city.

My money would be on the first theory.

[hypex76]

My money would be on the first theory.

See that borders do have two colors. Maybe indicating city and civ/cultural borders.

Roads spreading the city area would be great improvement. I think...?

[Cashew]

See that borders do have two colors. Maybe indicating city and civ/cultural borders.

Roads spreading the city area would be great improvement. I think...?

I think the double color is just to make borders more distinct. Remember how some civs had really similar colors in Civ IV? I think the double color is to make it obvious what belongs to who.

[bombel79]

but in the other screenshot you had only one, yellow line...

those two red cities looks like placed inside a yelow teritorry...

[Cashew]

There's only 1 yellow line because not all borders would need to be double colors....

[MadDjinn]

I'd hope that it has something to do with units being around. Think of the exploration done in the americas (and the random islands in the oceans) at the time. The thought was, 'we came here, so we own it. Anyone else around to disagree? no? good it's ours.' In the early games, that means you could push your borders way beyond where your cities are (ala territories). You're there, no one else is, so done.

granted, from the images, I'd say that the city-worker placement has a big impact. Roads do help secure territory iRL, so maybe they added a small link to that in game.

[fatgordy]

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could trade cultural borders (hexes) via diplomacy? Maybe it would have to be a hex that is adjacent to a hex that you already control. And there would have to be some way for you to maintain control of it (i.e. you also gain the other civ's cultural influence in that hex during the trade. But it could drop over time without some way of reinforcing it.)

You'd have trades like:
"I will give you this hex for 5000 gold"
or
"The cost for peace is to hand over those 3 hexes!"

[Edmundrw]

It seems to me from this screenshot http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/62125/...page=mediaFull
That the yellow portion of borders is the city-state (note: not any particular civ's city - where's the city name, why does the city look so bland with no buildings or wonders?) The City state can be contained within the cultural borders of a civ, a la this screenshot http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...g?t=1266606469
Once you contain a city state in your civ border it joins your civ, conveying some benefit.


As for the evidence of sea squares not included unless they're in the direct city radius, my guess would be that it's simply not possible to expand culture into the sea further than default city radius until you reach a certain tech.