That should help clarify things for people on building cities.

Good Job

Only thing that I would add is to make it more clear that although a resource inside the city gains protection from the units in the city and walls, it takes up 4 squares of the max of 50 squares. As in for example: I build a new city near a resource build a few houses that cause me to have 46 tiles, then the resource becomes part of the city the next turn meaning there are only 42 tiles now.

This just means not to build a city too close to many resources and hope new ones don't appear adjacent to it. (Had a city one game that had so many resources that I couldn't make anything other than a school and a few basic buildings losing potential to make a lot of money)

I'll add that in. I had just remembered that myself while playing the game. Though I don't agree that having too many resources is necessarily bad in all cases. It may mean you have to just really really be picky about how to build up your city. Though I guess if it leaves you with just a handful, yeah.

That also means refugee camps are 'tricky'. If you leave them outside the city, you gain their 100 pop cap bonus at no charge to space or food versus the 4 huts it would require. If you enclose it, you lose the 4 space advantage. It means you may only want to enclose a refugee camp if its a vulnerable city; otherwise, you may as well leave the refugees outside and save some space.

Thanks for explaining city tiles, that's been bugging me.

So in most cases, it's better to work your way toward a resource than try to settle next to it, since you get no real advantage other than it's "protected" within your city.

That seems like a very costly advantage to have, since there are far more improvements than tile space, and terrain can further reduce your building options.

Yeah, depending on need, I try to daisy chain resources with improvements as much as possible and limit how many improvements I use purely for their bonuses. Especially if you already have a Lost Library or two (or whatever), building a study isn't doing you much unless you have -a lot- of them. You'd need 5 cities with a bunch of bonuses to equal 1 LL with a handful of bonuses. 

And especially if the city is away from any potential conflict (no enemy turf near by, fog of war and tamed lands surround it), encasing a resource is probably just a waste of space since there is little chance of it getting attacked. I suppose this is where less useful improvements can be used as temporary links. If a city is contested, you may want to protect the resource. If the fighting moves past and it's safe, bulldoze the linking building. Resource unprotects and free up space to use for other stuff.

Advantage wise, it depends on how much you want to improve a city. Not every improvement is strictly needed especially by late game. However, I also use improvement crawl advantageously to block terrain. For instance

Mountain - tile - tile - tile - mountain

By building improvements in each of those three tiles, I block off the mountain pass as opposed to a unit running right by the city. Minor benefit there but if there is an opponent with fast units, this forces them to stop at that city. The same can be done with beach tiles though this requires a lot more improvements to block. You can think of it like your own little Helmsdeep.

Another use for improvement crawl is 'highways'. Since you can enter and exit a city at any point, you can make a long city that units enter at one end and leave at the other. So if you have a 4 tiles + 2 resources all in some sort of line, you can have a unit move in 1 turn what it would take for 3. More as the city gets longer.

that's a nice extension to the FAQ thread. I will link to this thread if you don't mind and it definitely needs a sticky.

funny, I think it is one of the best designed mechanics I've ever seen regarding city improvement... 

1.06 8/28/10

Resources

Note: Once wild improvements are linked to your city, they will take up 4 improvement slots. If possible, don’t link wild improvements to your city. Early game it may be worthwhile, so that the improvements are protected by your city’s garrison. Later, once borders have expanded and been secured, there is no need for wild improvements to be a part of the city – you will need those tiles to grow.

Always improve resources before linking them to the city. If they are improved away from the city, they build independently. If they are improved while adjacent to the city, they will be placed in the city’s build queue, holding up other building projects.

If possible as Kingdoms, research Adventure tab early. Get the resource techs. They will boost production massively. Food will no longer be an issue. Or for Empire, research Domination to get Umber’s diary. Gold rules.

Growth

If you really need more tiles, destroy wild improvements, then the tiles linking to those improvements. Rebuild the city away from the wild improvement; rebuild the improvement.

Place buildings you will eventually destroy on the periphery of your city. If these buildings are vital links to other portions of the city, they can’t be destroyed.

Plan cities for specific purposes. Many small cities work better than one large city. Focus on: food, materials, gildar, arcane research, tech research, metal, or armies if possible. Avoid building armies in cities focused on research or gildar – the more population spent on armies, the slower the city grows. Growing cities to level 5 is difficult. You won’t make it to that level 5 gildar building if your city is also focused on maximizing food and metal production.

A level 5 cities takes a long time to grow. Try not to produce armies in this city. The fewer armies a city produces, the faster it grows, the quicker you get those level 4 and level 5 buildings.

In order for a city to grow, it needs prestige. Various buildings, and sovereigns or heroes with the Royalty trait increase prestige. Since most prestige buildings come up much later in the game, prestige is the best choice for a sovereign’s profession for a medium to long length game.

Misc

Small cities/outposts are good for protecting clusters of resources on the periphery. Once resources are linked to an outpost, they can all be defended by a single army. This is especially important for resources near forests – wild monsters destroy improvements.

Caravans are great for roads. They also provide some kind of economic enhancement. I have no idea how trade works. Sending caravans to other empires/kingdoms doesn’t seem to add any gildar. But roads speed up movement.

Low level housing automatically upgrades to higher level housing for higher level cities.

Name cities for what they produce. It makes it easier to remember what to build where. Moreover, when a city upgrades, you cannot check to see which city it was. If you don’t have every city memorized, it can be difficult to know which level up upgrade to take.

Use the cloth map as often as possible. It makes managing an empire much easier, and improves performance.

Always use the cloth map when expanding notifications on the right toolbar – they load A LOT faster.

*Exploit* Infinite build tiles

This has worked for me; I don’t know if it has worked for others. When a city reaches a significant negative number of slots, building slots no longer matter and one can continue building anything well into the negatives. Find a collective of wild resources (perhaps 3-5), build on them, and then build towards them. Once the city is near its limit for tiles, build a link to the collective of resources. They should become part of the city, plummeting the tile limit, and allowing for infinite building henceforth.

This may also work with gildar / turn and army maintenance. If somehow one's income could forcibly be dropped well into the negatives, one may be able to build a massive army without regard to maintenance. This remains to be tested.

sometimes i can build two improvements in one city. usually i get negative current gold as a sideeffect.

like i can build 2 merchants or 2 basic arcane research buildings or 2 irrigations. and the bonuses actually stack. i wonder if this is a bug or some odd game mechanic?

there seems to be no logic to how and why i can sometimes build 2 improvements of the same kind.

Updated with some fresh information about the Town Hall.

Thanks for this I just had to start a new game because I was constantly building up to resources and encasing them in my city limits. Now I build close to them so the army can jump on them if an baddie shows up close to them.

Edit, sorry, I know inns and pubs increase prestige, but these heroes that do...I have never seen any effect from them and my last game I had 3 I think.

I noticed one thing while building a city close to the enemy. He had influnce that overlapede a resource, he then started building on that resource, but before it was done my influence bubble expanded and now the resource was in my zone of control and it became my resource.

 ..and the resouce was not enclosed to either of our 2 citys btw

Wonder if your zone of control could get so high you would take over another players city...just wondering, but at leas you can lose resource that way to the one with more influence.

Greate post btw

I don't disagree that it presents issues - especially in instances with resource popping and other mechanics. However, I don't think it's a necessarily a bad idea. And to an extent, it may be a means to encourage city development - destroying and rearranging buildings - and/or to combat city crawling and otherwise just dropping cities at a whim. It also creates interesting dynamics in the game as cities and factions fight to control space using cities; you can project your influence though the shape and size of your city. 

Again, the issues with the mechanic and the hangups it creates with other mechanics should and do need to be addressed. Better UI for the mechanic, a better system of deciding where resource popping happens (or a better system in general), 

This presented an issue for me in a game:

Had 2 specialized cities, one for gildar, one for food.

Somehow I built something which caused a massive pile of resources to jump from the food city to the gildar city.

Since the gildar city had no food enhancement buildings, my food production plummeted. This caused all kinds of problems.