/vr/ - Retro Games

>>331884
civ2 screen but it also applies to smac.

you want to fit as much cities as possible on as small area, this means you shouldn't have any gaps between city tiles (sometimes gaps can be worth it in civs if it means better city location. this really isn't issue in smac because lolforests and you can terraform anything you want so it doesn't matter as much, you can't do so in civ or it takes too much time to be worth it.).

from there, it's up to you how much cities do you want to cramp in one location, more shared tiles = city won't be able to grow as much. on the other hand, you'll only really get very large cities that utilize all tiles they can rather late so rushing cities on small area will get you more overall production quicker (it's pretty much what AI tends to do). so it really depends on how you want to play and how you like your cities, but you don't get any benefit (in smac, at least) by making cities far than on 'touch' of workable tiles.