[Vlaix]

City creations are ordered all the time and they do not forcibly fail. Many new world (ie. US, Australia, NZ) cities weren't organically grown. And so were a lot of cities built during Antiquity that are still there in Europe. Greeks and Carthaginians (themselves Phenician colonials) founded colonies ex nihilo that are still thriving today. And so did the Romans, though they often built on top or besides existing urban centers (my own city was founded in -133 on a new spot, but was a few kilometers away from a Gaulish oppidum of which the population was subdued). Most of the cities inside what used to be the Empire have been rebuilt from the ground or created by Rome at some point. It's just a matter of good engineering.