Elemental Forums
Its turned off by default and serves on obvious purpose that I know about. Was it some kind of a feature that then got dumped so they just disabled it but gave people the ability to turn it on if they so pleased?
The point is you can build towards resources and other cities for faster movement etc. It's off so it's not complicated for beginners, but once you start using it, you don't know how you could live without it 
Also check out the snaking mod, lets you build towards forest for logging camps, and rivers for docks and stuff.
I use it to make my cities look better than what the generic autoplacement can provide for me... using shift and rotate the mousewheel rotates the buildings.
Does anyone know if the AI takes advantage of this option when it's enabled?
I don't tend to use manual placement so haven't noticed.
Thanks.
No the AI just auto builds. Don't worry it cheats so they make outposts everywhere
If you build a city building next to a resource that you've harvested, said resource usually gets incorporated inside the city walls (unless said resource belongs to another city). Incorporating resources inside city walls prevents said resources from being razing targets by maurauding monsters, etc.. Unless the monsters attack and raze the city itself, of course!
Most of my cities look like 'x's and such, because my builds are always placed towards the direction of the nearest resources, so that I may incorporate/protect said resources within the city itself as soon as possible.
This almost sounds like cheating.
And if the AI isn't smart enought to do the same, then it basically is cheating.
I think I will keep manual placement off so that the AI isn't screwed.
yeah snaking is a bit of an exploit. not really a major thing, though. i used it for a while, then went back to the default auto placement. not so much because it's unfair, but rather because i hated that awful look of tentacle cities
I tend to build cities in strategic locations to block access to the rest of my empire. That way, I only need to have a few cities loaded with armies instead of all of them. In order to block passage, I would need to snake my cities across the openings between mountains, chasms, and beaches. Those border cities are usually Fortresses as well, so the defenders have every combat advantage that I can give them.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.