I'll freely admit that I am noob to this game, so please excuse me if this question is dumb, although i do ask dumb questions alot.

Anyways. I have seen alot of talk about turning cities in to specialized cities, i.e Commerce or Production and so forth. Its there a major advantage in doing this? If so, what would be a good choice for civics? (I'm a big fan of Universal Suff).

My 2nd question is war really worth the hassle? I've beaten the game 3 times now, once by space and twice by diplomatic means. In all 3 cases I never had to goto war. Any help with these questions is most welcome.

A Confused Soul:confused:

The point has been made that by specializing your cites you save yourself a lot of wasted production by being able to skip improvements you don't need, while maximizing the benifits of National Wonders.

For instance, lets say you have two cities, one heavily specialized towards production, and one heavily specialized towards commerce. In your production city you won't have to build libraries or universities, you'll instead build forges and factories. In your commerce city you'll focus on building those libraries and universities, while skipping the forges and factories. Also, you'll make sure to build your Heroic Epic in your production city, while building Oxford university in your commerce city, and so on. So, by specializing, you maximize your total output of gold/hammers/units ect.

Of cource, in practice things arn't so simple. A "commerce" city without any production capacity will mean that it'll be hard to actually build those wonders/improvemens that you need to specialize your city (especialy once you have to get rid of slavery). Also, what do you do if you have a city that happens to have geat productive potential (lots of hills, and hammer resources) while also havng great commercal possibilities (flood plains, commerce resources)? In practice, most of your cities will be generalist, with some being more productive, and others being more wealthy, and others having more great people production.

In the end, it's nice to specialize heavily if you can, but it's not always practical.

Re: Specialization

Well, take a city, and look at the terrain it's going on. Maybe it has normal plains, a couple of hills, and access to fresh water. If you try to build Cottages/Towns in that city, you're going to have trouble, especially before Biology. In fact, this is a PERFECT city to be all Farms and Mines. The Hammer output of this city is going to be through the roof. On the other hand, how many coins is this city going to bring in? Practically none. So, this city is going to be Specialized, whether you are consciously doing it or not.

Benefits? What will you get from building a Bank there? Practically nothing. In fact, all that will do is be a waste of production for your city for however many turns. You might as well have that city produce Commerce (Gold) for those many turns... you'll be much better off.

You might be tempted to make this city "well rounded" and to build a couple of Cottages/Towns. Yeah, this city will be well rounded all right... mediocre at several things and exceptional at nothing. This is especially true of a production city, when you need to get that Wonder built NOW, and a couple of turns delay will all too often mean an AI beats you to completion.

Anyway there you have it. This is just an example... the same is true in many ways of a Commerce city, a Great Person city, etc. though they are slightly different in execution.

Wodan

War will get you more territory. More territory = more luxury goods, better health, and more $$ coming in.

Personally, I think when you compare the costs of the war to what you get out of it, you're probably right, it's break even in many cases even when you win.

Wodan

It's not always so much what you get out of it, but what your enemy loses.

I try to balance my cities on food, commerce and production. If a city is by a food source such as cows, game or fish it will not need farms so instead it will get some cottages and mines. If it's got gold or gems then I don't need cottages. The only time I go for specializing is when a city is in a hilly area then it will get mostly mines for production.