the solution is simply to not make the city a flat line if you dont like that kind of city. I dont know about you, but my city is not nearly square and more pragmatic designs are more realistic than pretty designs for cities anyway.

I do really like this concept, though with parrotmath's snaking mod operating perfectly, it really doesn't matter to me anymore.

However, I currently find little reason to build the +1 ZoC buildings for the +1 ZoC effect. If your city's ZoC did not expand with the addition of new buildings, than these ZoC buildings would have way more importance.

Also a very good point mentioned above in that you have more control over your city's ZoC when it comes to impacting against monster lairs.

This feature would also remove the ability to 'snake' toward other resources like shards or mines. ZoC buildings would be needed to reach out to these.

This feature would also make it more difficult to block an area in through city expansion.

One concern is that all buildings available would still have to be able to fit in a city's ZoC, even if say an average of half of the tiles were unavailable due to mountains/oceans/resources.

Still, seems like a good idea.

Ok, let's screw it a bit more.

Accepting this mechanics, would mean that ZoC do not expand on improvements, so you will need lots of more outposts to get the resources and your cities safe.

Currently, it is necessary spamming a lot of them to connect cities, etc.,

Can you imagine how many pioneers would be needed only to build outposts to protect cities (give them safe ZoC) with this mechanics?

As said above, you fix a problem but other things might get worse.

What will happen with cities built in a tile surrounded with swamps or mountains, with no space to build? Failed cities? And don't tell me don't build there, or I will tell you don't snake.

For me, this new mechanics might be ok, if:

pioneres could build outposts without consume OR

give +1 LOS to the outpost, to not needing so many of them. The High Vision upgrade would give another +1 LOS, so what?

I've already suggested to give +1 LoS to the city themselves, that seems much better than altering outposts.

how does this make it so that you need moar outposts? as Gfirefly said, all it does is make the ZoC buildings more desirable ( they're pretty useless right now ) . monument+town hall should already provide more than enough real estate. allow buildings to be built on swamps and that's another issue solved.

My problem with this suggestion is simply that it is fixing a problem that doesn't seem like a problem to me. The ability to place buildings manually is turned off by default. If you don't like placing buildings manually, then why did you turn it on in the first place? I just don't get the problem. The old Civilization method of no border adjustment sucks. I hated it then, and I hate it now. The current method gives me options if I choose to use them. It also allows for no snaking if you choose so. Again, this seems like the dumbest thing to put effort into changing.  It still upsets me that there are people who can't let this go. You already won! They added an option to turn off the ability to snake, and made it the default. That just isn't good enough for you though, you hqve to make sure that the people who liked the feature can't have it either. 

Edit: I am sorry for getting emotional. I am just upset about streamlining the city building, since that is one of my favorite parts of the original game.

actually, I'm playing with autoplacement right now because the current implementation of manual is lackluster ( which is why it's disabled by default ) . but since many players like manual placement, I tried to come up with an idea to fix the current issues so it can go back to the default state as was intended.

I don't see what the problem with snaking is.... I mean it's a single player game and it's not like it's going to effect anyones enjoyment except your own.... I guess what I'm trying to say leave it alone and spend your time fixing something that really needs it....

the cons of this proposal outweigh the good. How about instead limit the distance from the city square that buildings can be placed in? This allows you to get your pier or logging camp from one tile away (making locations one step better) and does not allow ridiculous straight line cities.

There have been great suggestions of features or rules implemented in the game around snaking, there is no interest in them from the developing side, my guess is the dev's doesn't care for snaking...

I liked the idea where you had to place a certain amount of buildings in each tile before you could expand from that tile.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

@kongdej: post #2 disagrees

@thadianaphena: what would the cons be? I haven't read any convincing ones yet ( except for the line of sight argument which is easy to solve ) .

also, how is your proposal better? it seems to me it would just make the limit arbitrary, instead of linked to the ZoC which imo makes perfect sense.

for pier/logging camps, there's already a nice mod by parrothmath which allows each person to make his/her own decision about that

I find the con being that you can no longer expand your Zone of Control by placing buildings toward a resource. You can no longer create a straight line city, which some may want. (I cant imagine why such a city style would be considered bad.) To be honest, I dont see any pros. I see only cons.

No he doesn't, he stating that he "likes the solution" to "snaking"... What I mean is the developers are hellbent in they're hunt to kill snaking, right now its one of the more interesting features in city building, and there have been lots of ideas around snaking
(it have been talked to death more times than I have fingers... And I am a mutant with 5 arms).
The fact that none of those ideas (which I think was way more interesting) have been implemented or commented upon makes me think that only a few of the development team actually wants manual placement of buildings to actually be an option.

I might be reading too much into it though, I am but a silly 5 armed mutant who's account is hacked by batman once in a while, so don't think too much into what I say, just see it as "another" opinion .

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Because I like expanding my ZoC, I like having the choice of expanding my ZoC one or two tiles to the east to grab that fire shard, your suggestion also have "cons" in limiting how many buildings my cities can have in a perfectly flat world its not a problem, but I had cities at spots in the world where I HAD to snake (I usually fill all the tiles my city is built upon, because it looks better), between a river and a mountain.

(I still wish for the ability to construct improvement upon rivers, ofcourse it should include special art and cost more construction ).

I tried not repeating "Martimus" but I mostly agree with him.
The only thing I currently doesn't like about cities (sorry for repeating myself) is the fact that cities tele-port units right now. (if I have a city in a straight line, I have a 5 tile rail-tele-road-of-supreme-movement.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

ok I see where you're coming from, I agree about cities acting as super-roads

a definite improvement this proposal would bring is for the usefulness of ZoC-providing buildings. right now they're obsoleted by simply building improvements.

also, with monument+town hall we're already talking about 48 tiles. let's say 50% are unusable due to mountains, oceans and chasms, it's still 24 tiles to build upon. if you're really that desperate, you can always upgrade to town.

I don't get it, if you guys hate city snaking so much, why not just keep auto placement on and move on? It's not like the AI is cheating by snaking... why are we arguing over this again even though city snaking has been drastically nerfed many times over already. If people like snaking, let them do it... if you don't, turn it off.

I agree with Martimus and Kalin.  As a relative noob who has no real idea what snaking is good for, has never used it, and can't imagine taking the effort to manually place my buildings, I cannot fathom why I should care if YOU want to do those things.  What are you all arguing about, here?  That some people use "silly" city expansion to exploit the already-stupid AI for their own amusement?  In a game that has no multiplayer support at all, but touts itself as awesomely moddable to meet the player's personal tastes, why on earth would the devs remove an optional feature? 

the devs themselves are unhappy with the current implementation, they provide it as an option but it's unsupported.

autoplacement is not how the game was intended to be played though, it was just a hard choice made through development to avoid some issues.

so it seems reasonable to take a look at the qualms many have with snaking and try to come up with simple ways to address those.

I see a bunch of people jumping through hopes to reconcile opinions, divine the developers' intentions, and solve problems... that no one defines the same way.

So here is my take:

Snaking is great, snaking is an art, snaked cities look great.

Trying to weaken snaking was a stupid idea in the first place, and the developers were pushed into it by a vocal minority.

Trying to eliminate snaking has led to only two things: a hell of a lot of confusion from inconsistencies, and less enjoyment from the still prevalent snaking.

My solution to the snaking problem?

Allow snaking to grant access to piers and logging, remove the stupid auto-placement, and teach the AI to get as many of the benefits of snaking as possible.

My proposal to not allow cities to snake past 2 tiles of city tile itself allows come creative leeway to get that pier and logging camp that is ONE tile away, which makes starting locations better - without allowing snaked cities to "abuse" the map.

Snaking should allow this leeway - without allowing a player to "run" their city into a straight line all over the place like some tetris shape. 2 tiles from capital is reasonable and it would not cause a rethinking of outposts.

This is because it would not matter if an improvement or outpost increases ZOC - the city will have a "spread zone". that spread zone allows SOME benefit from snaking and likewise does not become ridiculous.

I concur.  If you don't want to bush the button, then don't push the button.  If you do push it, don't complain about it afterward.

Sheesh, here we go again.

I love my snakes.  Why ya wanna spoil my fun?  I'm not spoiling yours...

(p.s. Man, square ZoC's everywhere are just sooo uncool, dig?)

what about thadianaphena's suggestion then? works as it does now, but snaking limited to 2/3 tiles in each direction, 3/4 for towns. seems like a reasonable restriction that allows maximum flexibility while still keeping +ZoC  buildings useful.

Exactly a ZoConstruction around each city, but then people don't like the artificial feel that makes in the game. I would be happier if they made building things further from your city center more expensive. Every tile away from the city center add 5 gildar to the cost of the building or +5% production cost. That would encourage rounder cities and keep the city snaking as is. Cities snaked 15 tiles away would be less efficient to build further away from the city center. Makes sense and keeps the ability to snake your buildings.

I rather keep snaking in the game, but I do like the fact that people must make significant choices in city placement and building buildings. I am in the mood to make more specific building types for swamps (like pitch fields) and other such items for the game. Specific to the tiles now that I know how snaking works . I hope everyone keeps snaking and the dev's don't turn a blind eye to the open field they have here.