I understand the idea of city specialization, but what I am still miffed to some degree when people say, "you don't need every improvement in every city." I do gear each city toward it's tiles, but it seems to make sense to me that a courthouse in all my cities is better that in half of my cities. The same goes w/ a forge. Again, if I have 6 cities, I don't see how markets in 3 of them is better than markets in all 6 of them.

???

In some cases, a forge would actually be detrimental, as the health penalty would outweigh the shield bonus. But yes, in most cases having every improvement would be optimal, given infinite time. However, in a limited amount of time, you need to prioritize.

In most cases, every city will have a Granary, Library, Forge.

+:) & +:health: buildings come next as needed.

Everything else is going to to depend on what's going on.

Let's take for example a University (200:hammers:). Let's say your city is generating 8 :science: base. Building a University means +2:science:. Just for simple numbers, this will take a hypothetical 10 turns to build. All things considered equal, it will take up to 100 turns more for your University to generate the amount of :science: you could've built directly with your 200 hammers.

Likewise, you could've also built 2 Grenadiers or 2.5 Musketmen -- both of which could be used to capture an enemy city (or two or three) capable of producing far more than +2:science: per turn over the next 100 turns.


It's impossible to make a blanket statement over what should or should not be built in any of your cities. What it IS possible to blanket is, "before building an improvement, consider what else those hammers might make and weigh their benefits against how long it might take the improvement to yield its equivalent return-on-investment."


-- my 2c

Thanks for the comments.


Let's take for example a University (200:hammers:). Let's say your city is generating 8 :science: base. Building a University means +2:science:. Just for simple numbers, this will take a hypothetical 10 turns to build. All things considered equal, it will take up to 100 turns more for your University to generate the amount of :science: you could've built directly with your 200 hammers.

Built directly how? By pop-rushing or gold-rushing?

Thanks for the comments.
Built directly how? By pop-rushing or gold-rushing?

By building research :)

By building research :)

By selecting the "research" option in the build queue? I don't get it. What's the math?

By selecting the "research" option in the build queue? I don't get it. What's the math?

There's different math in Vanilla and Warlords..

In Warlords 2.08, 1 :hammers: = 1 :gold: / 1 :culture: / 1 :science: and does NOT receive any bonuses.

I THINK Vanilla was 2 :hammers: = 1 :gold: / 1 :culture: / 1 :science: and DID receive bonuses.

There's different math in Vanilla and Warlords..

In Warlords 2.08, 1 :hammers: = 1 :gold: / 1 :culture: / 1 :science: and does NOT receive any bonuses.

I THINK Vanilla was 2 :hammers: = 1 :gold: / 1 :culture: / 1 :science: and DID receive bonuses.

Hm, this is good. But, what happens when I switch to build a unit or something else? Is there an overflow?

Back to your example, I certainly wouldn't build :science: for 100 turns. How many turns would it take building :science: w/ 200 :hammers: to better the benefit of the university? Five turns here, then another six turns after building a unit - hypothectically.

Hm, this is good. But, what happens when I switch to build a unit or something else? Is there an overflow?

If there was overflow the turn before you started building research, it would be applied to the next build, not to the research. Research itself does not generate any overflow since every hammer is converted every turn.

Back to your example, I certainly wouldn't build :science: for 100 turns. How many turns would it take building :science: w/ 200 :hammers: to better the benefit of the university? Five turns here, then another six turns after building a unit - hypothectically.

No, No. The point was the university would take SO LONG to recover the 200 hammer investment back in a low-commerce city like a production city (100 turns in the example case) that it'd be worth it to build something else with those hammers first, like muskets.

Build units in the production city and send them to the science city if it needs defense. Build science improvements in the science city so you can free up the hammers in the production city to build more units.

You will actually get ahead faster this way, by intentionally NOT building every improvement in every city. ;)

It's an efficiency thing.

My $0.02,
SR

the point was made but I think of this way: generally I would build a university in a city that has very high science rate already to get the most benefit from investing in that university. so a city with 60 science, adding a university might be worth it (everything's relative to your game, of course)

what i don't like about the game is how it forces you to build X number of a certain kind of building to have access to something else like a key wonder. that reduces your ability to specialize. you need X number of universities to build the Oxford University, for example. I guess it makes sense in real life that a civilization would not have one super great university without several others also, but for the game it seems to hinder the specialization tactic on smaller maps. back to the courhouses example, you also need one in many cities if you want to build the Forbidden Palace (I think that's the wonder)

Hm, this is good. But, what happens when I switch to build a unit or something else? Is there an overflow?

You've actually touched on a very interesting oddity where overflow and Research/Wealth/Culture (R/W/C) is concerned.

To answer the question directly, building :science:/:gold:/:culture: cannot create overflow. However, it also does not use or reset overflow.

Let's say your base production is 20 hammers. After building something, you have an overflow of 5.

Switching to R/W/C means the next turn, your city will produce 20 of the appropriate :science:/:gold:/:culture:.

So ... where'd the overflow go? It's still in there.

No matter how many turns later you switch off of R/W/C, you'll notice you've still got that original +5:hammers: overflow from previous build.

I hope that makes sense.

This can be utilized as a type of exploit in which you build an otherwise useless unit (like an explorer) a few times in a row to maximize your overflow (equal to your base production) before switching to R/W/C. Some turns down the road, you can use the stored overflow to 'jumpstart' a Wonder or other important unit. However, this is almost always counterintuitive since excessive overflow is only common in high-production areas where you should not stop to build something as 'useless' as R/W/C.

Back to your example, I certainly wouldn't build :science: for 100 turns. How many turns would it take building :science: w/ 200 :hammers: to better the benefit of the university? Five turns here, then another six turns after building a unit - hypothectically.

There's really no way to answer that question, because there are going to be a lot of factors involved besides the baseline comparison of production, time and Research.

By the time you can build a University, you're very likely to have a Forge in the city. Let's also assume it has your state religion under Organized Religion for a total of +50% to buildings & +25% to military units. Finally, you have 13 :hammers: base production.
200 / ( 13 * 1.5 ) = 10 turns to build the University
10 * 13 = 130 :science: you could've made instead
( 10 * ( 13 * 1.25 ) ) / 80 = 2 Musketmen you could've made instead
You're going to have to weigh that 130 beakers / 2 Musketmen against all the other factors.

For example:

What if you're in a race to get Chemistry? Why build Musketmen when you're on the cusp of acquiring Grenadiers?
What if Tokugawa's at your door with Samurai? Why build a University or Research if you're going to lose the city anyway?
What if you're nearing the end of a siege on Osaka? What good is a University OR Research if you can just take a whole city from Tokugawa?
What if this city has good :food: production, and you're about to switch your mine-workers over to being 2 scientists? What if you're going to work Villages with the extra food? Why build a little research now when a University will benefit a lot more over the long haul?

Again, there are too many factors to make one answer right all the time. Instead, every answer is more-or-less right in its own way in different games and situations.

EDIT:
No, No. The point was the university would take SO LONG to recover the 200 hammer investment back in a low-commerce city like a production city (100 turns in the example case) that it'd be worth it to build something else with those hammers first, like muskets.

QFT. In all the amount of time it took me to type this wall of text, I coulda just said that, eh? GG me. :wallbash:

I understand the idea of city specialization, but what I am still miffed to some degree when people say, "you don't need every improvement in every city." I do gear each city toward it's tiles, but it seems to make sense to me that a courthouse in all my cities is better that in half of my cities. The same goes w/ a forge. Again, if I have 6 cities, I don't see how markets in 3 of them is better than markets in all 6 of them.

???


Think of building anything as an investment. Since hammers can be converted to research or gold, you are essentially investing now for a future payoff. So what is the return on your investment? It makes sense to build what is going to give the highest return. Building things that give a low return wastes the opportunity to build something that gives a better return.

A granary is needed in every city that you expect to grow to a large size. No question - its probably the single exception to the specialization rule.

Courthouses are needed in any city that incurs a lot of maintenace - eg 10gold plus. You may want to build a few others in lower maintenance cities just to get you over the cap for the forbidden palace.

Libraries are just needed in science cities. Universities are just needed in your better science cities (although you may want to build a couple in production cities to speed up Oxford).

Markets, Grocers and banks will normally get built in either large cities that need the health / happiness, or cities producing a lot of cash. Note that often these should be built BEFORE courthouses in high cash cities.

Only build forges in cities producing a lot of hammers (including through whipping). Same for barracks.

Happiness / Health buildings only when needed, and only when you can balance both happiness and health. No need to build lots of health buildings to raise your cap if you can't also raise your happiness cap.

Generally your commerce cities will have to prioritize the improvements that offer the most benefit - at least until democracy - because they won't have hammers to spare.

Production cities will get their buildings easily - but time spent building buildings is not spent building military units. There had better be a really good return to warrant not building more soldiers.

In general if you are asking questions about building everything in every city, you are not building enough units. Build units instead of a building every time the benefit from the building is marginal and you will probably go up a level easily.

In general if you are asking questions about building everything in every city, you are not building enough units. Build units instead of a building every time the benefit from the building is marginal and you will probably go up a level easily.

You can avoid ever building any sort of an army by diplomacy and win by either diplomatic win or a cultural one.

Keep in mind that growing beyond your healthiness cap isn't usually a problem. It just means that any subsequent citizens you add beyond the cap eat an extra food. Those citizens are still just as productive as the ones below your healthiness cap.
However, the same cannot be said for happiness where growing beyond your happiness caps gives you citizens that do absolutely nothing but still eat two food, thus leaving you in a worse situation than before your city grew.

Forges are also a bit of an exception to the city specialization rule because they add happiness with gems/gold/silver. Build them in non-production cities when you have any of the resources above and need happiness.

In general if you are asking questions about building everything in every city, you are not building enough units. Build units instead of a building every time the benefit from the building is marginal and you will probably go up a level easily.

There's the rub. I generally avoid war, w/ the exception of short wars aimed at specific aims (resources or land consolidation). Plus, war really drags a game out. I keep enough units to deter invasions, building up only to acquire something quickly.

I suppose I could have the best of both worlds though. :)

Building Science/Commerce buildings in productions cities is possible but has very little gain as have been already explained in the posts above, these cities are better used to produce units and build production multiplier buildings.

Commerce/Science cities on other hand are different. You would love to build everything in them, but because their production is so slow you are forced to choose only a select amount of buildings to build in them. You physically can't build everyhting there for lack of production. This all changes usually after switching to universal sufrage, at which point Science/Commerce cities become quite decent production cities as well.