Supposing I haven't founded any religions or corporations, how do I decide how to differentiate them. In a cottage based economy, most of my science and gold will be coming from the same place, and I tend to build the beaker enhancers first... Any advice/suggestions/thoughts?

well i think you can pick one of many commerce cities, and make it a science city (build oxford and academy in it)

i mean later on, commerce is the base of everything (science, culture and even production) anyway

at later stage, even my GP farm city becomes gradually a commerce city :)

Cottages produce commerce. This is divided into beakers and gold based on your slider. Gold pays the bills and beakers drive your research. You can also get gold from other sources, such as shrines and merchants. Thus, it is a good idea to put your wall street in a city that has one or more shrines and has high food surplus to run merchants. The goal of course is to support your expanding empire while keeping the slider as high as possible to churn out beakers.

In terms of buildings, DaveMcW is fond of saying that a commerce city only needs a granary and should focus on growing and adding cottages. After that, however, I would say science buildings first then gold assuming you are expanding at a controlled rate and have the slider >50%. The opposite applies, however, if you have expanded quickly and the slider has dropped below 50%.

With all things similar, you can freely decide
where to put Oxford University and Wall Street,
and this shall be the difference.

Best regards,

Cottages produce commerce. This is divided into beakers and gold based on your slider. Gold pays the bills and beakers drive your research. You can also get gold from other sources, such as shrines and merchants. Thus, it is a good idea to put your wall street in a city that has one or more shrines and has high food surplus to run merchants. The goal of course is to support your expanding empire while keeping the slider as high as possible to churn out beakers.

In terms of buildings, DaveMcW is fond of saying that a commerce city only needs a granary and should focus on growing and adding cottages. After that, however, I would say science buildings first then gold assuming you are expanding at a controlled rate and have a slider. The opposite applies, however, if you have expanded quickly and the slider has dropped below 50%.
I put a granary in nice and early, but the thing is if I have a bunch of citizens working cottages the town still needs to build something. And if the city is working cottages rather than mines and farms I like to put libraries, markets, universities, grocers, observatories, banks and laboratories. For a city that is working on growing the little cottages into big juicy villages and towns usually doesn't have a lot of production and these buildings are expensive to build. Therefore it takes a bit of mulling over as to whether I want to increase my beakers or if I want to increase my coins. If I increase my beakers, I won't immediately be able to raise the research slider, but i will get an immediate boost to my research. If I increase my coins, I can raise my slider and increase my research that way. Therein lies my conundrum. Eventually I will build wall street in a city with a grip of towns, and eventually I will build oxford university in a city with a grip of towns and an academy. But see, my question is... what's the difference in all these cottaged up cites? How do I specialize them? What's stopping me from having Wall Street and Oxford in the same city? One of these cities is going to have the most commerce and therefore (with all the enhancer buildings) the most beakers and gold, right?

Always choose to make science cities in areas closer to foreign lands. Science buildings produce much more culture than wealth buildings so you'll be putting the added culture where it is needed most.

Always choose to make science cities in areas closer to foreign lands. Science buildings produce much more culture than wealth buildings so you'll be putting the added culture where it is needed most.

Meh, culture, smulture. Anyone with the poor fortune to be spawned next to me isn't long for this earth.

To clarify commerce IS NOT gold. Commerce is raw input, gold is the specific output that commerce can be converted into but which can also be acquired directly through other means.

When deciding where to place your specialty gold and science cities the major differentiator is your expected long-term slider rate. If the gold rate is between 40-60% then any 2 high-commerce cities would work. Given that it costs more to build all the gold buildings, when deciding between two cities looking at possible hammer production can make one be the gold city while the other is the science city.

If you are outside that slider range long-term then whichever you have more of (usually science) should go into your best commerce city while the other (usually gold) should go into a high food city so you can take advantage of the specialist slots. You will still want commerce but your ideal city size is 27 to run all the specialist slots.

The above applies to games where the espionage and culture slider does not have a long-term use.

What's stopping me from having Wall Street and Oxford in the same city?

i usually tend NOT to dillute my GPP

but it actually doesnt matter if you have a potent GP farm somewhere else

I put a granary in nice and early, but the thing is if I have a bunch of citizens working cottages the town still needs to build something.

Once you are able, you can build research or wealth. There's really no need for this city to do anything other than generate commerce. When you need a building (for happiness or health reasons, likely), just whip it out. That's why your commerce city should usually have a food resource for growth.

As far as choosing whether to go commerce or science ... identify your two best commerce cities. If one of them has a religious shrine or previously settled great merchants or prophets, that's your commerce city. It gets markets, banks, grocers, wall street, etc. The other one is your science city, preferably with a settled scientist or four and an academy, and gets library, university, observatory, oxford, etc.

Note that either of the cities can be either cottage-based or specialist-based, though the end game favors cottages.

I see the OP's problem. He wants to get the most from his cottages but lacks the production to build the infrastructure for both beakers and gold. My advice is build the library for a few turns until you can whip it. Early game just let your population run a little over the happy cap so you don't lose too many citizens on your cottages. then repeat for a market place. When Grocers/Universities come into play your economy should be stable enough to handle moving a few citizens off of towns to work mines or workshops or whatever you can build on the tiles not yet worked. Just a few in each city, then whip when it only costs 3-4 population. Same with a grocer. When banks/observatories roll around i always go Observatory because banks do not offer bosts to health/happiness. And by that point the age of corporations is coming and I usually have a captured shrine city for wallstreet.

Putting both WS and Oxford in one city can be a great idea in my opinion if:

1/ That city is a shrine city with the religion well spread;
2/ I have another city wonder-spamming and I settle all the GPs into the WS+Oxf city; AND
3/ I run representation, so that the +3 beakers from GPs I settled in that city can utilise the Oxford.

I only ever have 1 gold city and several science cities. My slider is always 70%+ so a banks and the like are useless. My 1 gold city is my holy city if i have one and that is where i will put any corporations and wall street. For Oxford i just put it in the city producing the most raw beakers.

Thx for the responses. I guess what I really want to know is, why not make my commerce cities into gold/beaker producers? I rarely have my slider @ 100% after my initial rex, and when its over 60% it makes me think it's time to go out and do some conquering. By the time democracy rolls around, I want to have the enhancer buildings whipped into place. At that point I usually choose to build units rather than research or wealth because of the US hammer bonus to towns and levees.

I only ever have 1 gold city and several science cities. My slider is always 70%+ so a banks and the like are useless. My 1 gold city is my holy city if i have one and that is where i will put any corporations and wall street. For Oxford i just put it in the city producing the most raw beakers.

Ummmmm, if you eventually put gold multiplier buildings in your commerce cities then you can raise the slider even higher, afford more troops, rush buy buildings in U.S., trade gold to the AI for techs/resources. More gold is never useless.
If you had said your slider is always at 100% with a big gold profit then yes banks wouldn't be worth the hammers.

Putting Wall St and Oxford in the same city is a waste.

If you're running the slider close to (or at) 100% to get the most out of Oxford, you're getting nothing out of Wall St. For a high-slider CE, it's better to farm up the wall street city and run a lot of merchant specialists there. The city will yield far more gold that way (9:gold: per merchant), allowing you to have a higher slider elsewhere.

Ummmmm, if you eventually put gold multiplier buildings in your commerce cities then you can raise the slider even higher, afford more troops, rush buy buildings in U.S., trade gold to the AI for techs/resources. More gold is never useless.
If you had said your slider is always at 100% with a big gold profit then yes banks wouldn't be worth the hammers.


Sorry what i meant was after my initial rex my slider will never be below 70% and it will probabley be at 90 or 100 except during and just after wars. Once i get a corporatian there is no chance it will go under 100. So by the time I get banks or the sort it wouldn't be worth it.