Cities

Cities are what make up your empire in CotG. All cities have identical five-section layouts with a Basilica in the center, except cities adjacent to water, which have a harbor area in their lower right section. In cities, the amount of randomly placed resource nodes are proportional to the surrounding terrain (e.g. a city next to mountains will have more iron nodes).

Early on in the game the main objective is to expand your empire and obtain more cities. Later in the game some people may choose to continue expanding their empires while others may focus on PvP Combat or Temple Building.

Creating New Cities

Your first city is free. After that, creating a new city has three main steps.

1. Advance your Title.
2. Recruit a Senator.
3. Send the Senator with resources to settle a new city.

Title Advancement

Titles are advanced by researching "Title Advancement" in the Research menu. Researching requires Refined Resources, which requires a level 10 Sorcerer's Tower. For your first title advancement (to create your second city), you need 50 of each refined resource (created from 50,000 of each basic resource) as well as 50,000 gold.

Senator Recruitment

A senator may be recruited from a level 10 Academy for 50,000 iron and 10,000 gold.

Settlement

Once you have a Senator, you can send the Senator using the "Settle" command. This requires 100,000 wood and stone (each), 25,000 iron and food, and 250 carts (or 25 trader ships). If someone else builds a city there before your senator arrives, your senator, resources, and carts (or ships) will return to their original city..

City Layouts

Optimizing your cities is an important part to gaining an advantage over your opponents in CotG. A carefully planned city will produce much more resources or troops than a hastily constructed one.

City Location

Many factors may affect what location is best for your cities.

The terrain immediately surrounding your city (as seen in the region view) influences the distribution of resource nodes in your city. For example, if your empire is lacking in wood, settle a city next to a lot of forests. If you need more food, settle next to an ocean or plains (both give more lakes).

Keeping your cities close together, or clustering, is a common strategy to keep your empire easy to coordinate. For military purposes, keeping cities close together allows for faster reactions for defense. For resources, clustering makes moving resources between cities much easier.

Once you join an alliance, your alliance may ask you to settle in certain areas to consolidate control of continents and Shrines. Eventually, people will need to settle around Shrines to build Temples.

Production Bonuses

Every resource production building has at least one associated building that, when placed next to each other, increases resource production multiplicatively. Many have multiple. See the Structures page for specifics. Placing these structures correctly is the key to maximizing your resource production. Many players use the website http://cotgopt.com/ to plan cities.

City Specialization

Specializing your cities is often more efficient than building cities that try to do everything. This takes advantage of the multiplicative production bonuses. If you are playing without Councilors, you may want to build generalist cities to make city management easier.

For military cities, see Military Cities.

General Guidelines

Carefully plan both your city layouts and your future cities. Keeping a balanced production of resources in your empire will ensure smooth expansion.

Build your cities near an ally, even if it means moving a little. Exchanging resources and military support is very helpful.

Keep a balance of resource production and cottages in your cities. If you are overflowing in resources, upgrade your cottages to build faster. If you are constantly out of resources, it means you have too much construction speed.

Castles

Building a Castle in your city is irreversible and allows other players to siege and take your city. Only build a castle when you are sure you can defend it. See PvP Combat for more info.

City Shapes in Region View

Cities increase in score, depending on how many buildings you have inside them, and at what levels the buildings are at. To see a full list of structures and the scores they add to your city, see the Structure page.

As your city increases in score, it will grow in shape and size in region view, as seen below:

City	Castled City	Score Range
		3 - 500
		501 - 1000
		1001 - 2500
		2501 - 4000
		4001-5500
		5501-7000
		7001-8000
		8001 & Up

Abandoning Cities

You can abandon cities in your empire. If you abandon a city, it will be dropped from your empire and become an Abandoned City. You will then be able to re-enlist one Senator. If you want to reclaim this city again, you will need to enlist a Senator and send him to it to re-claim it. Other players can also send a Senator to it, to claim it. Lawless castles have to be sieged by a Senator to be claimed. The enemy forces of the previous owner may still be inside the castle and need to be defeated as well! If the city is not claimed by someone, its score will gradually decrease until it becomes Ruins, and disappears entirely thus making a empty spot you can settle another city on. Lawless Cities appear in region view as shown below: 

Lawless City	Lawless Castle	Score Range
		3 - 500
		501 - 1000
		1001 - 2500
		2501 - 4000
		4001 - 5500
		5501 - 7000
		7001 - 8000
		8001 and up!

Once a city becomes Ruins, it cannot be settled until the ruins disappear, at which time the empty spot can be settled again as a regular spot. The city shapes for Ruins can be seen below: 

City Ruins	Castle Ruins

Depending on your Title, cities will go through a period of time when they are Abandoning, and so cannot be settled yet. Abandonment periods are as follows:

Player Title	Abandonment Time
Consul	8 - 16 hours
Centurion	8 - 16 hours
Equite	4 - 8 hours
Commander	2 - 4 hours
Dux	1 - 2 hours
Magister	30 mins - 1 hour
Supreme Commander	Immediately
Caesar	Immediately