cities

I'm on my fourth game. There are some basic things I don't get. Here's the first one. More later, I think.

1. I read on a forum post and also my brother told me that I shouldn't try to put every building everywhere-- I might designate one city as my gold city, and one as my military city, etc.

So I've had it my mind to arrange it that way, but every time I play I just can't help myself. Every building everywhere, every time. If I need culture, I want to put a broadcast tower everywhere, for example. I don't understand the advantages of not doing that, I guess. Is it that certain buildings you only need to buy once, and additional purchases of that building in different cities don't provide any additional culture, or XP for units, or whatever it is? (and if so, which are which?)

And is there any strategic reason to care about separating out your building types between cities? Why have I been told to do this?

Sort of related question (in terms of being confused about the line between individual cities and your civ as a whole): When your cities start to merge together into one big civilization, how can you tell which tiles belong to which cities? If I need food, and a granary is an option, and there are some deer, bananas and wheat on a growth tile somewhere between two cities, how do I know in which city to put the granary?

Thanks!

On the city screen of nearby cities, you can decide who gets what tile.

That can be a huge help early more than later, as one high food tile can accelerate the growth of two cities.

Separating what you want to do is important because of two major things, money and production. Every single non-important building you produce is a number of hammers not spent on units or important buildings. Every building you buy is money not being put toward units. Every building you pay upkeep for is a unit you don't have on the field.

Of course, you want to keep up with some things, like growth, science, and culture, but making everything everywhere will really REALLY hurt your military, and without a decent military, neighbors suddenly like you a lot less.

If you are finding the game easy enough when you build every building in every city by the end of the game, and you are going anything other than tall (really tall, like 2 cities tall), move up a level, because you are playing below your level and developing bad habits.

Very interesting. I just moved up to King and won my first game there as well. I'm kind of like the OP where I try to build everything I want in every city, putting importance on whatever victory type I'm going for and gold producing buildings.

As a matter of fact I never produce one unit in my cities. My goal is to stay defensive and buy whatever units I need WHEN I need them and ally any military CS's I can find that way I can concentrate on my buildings.

Do you guys think I'm destined for failure with this approach on levels higher than King?

oman19 said:

Very interesting. I just moved up to King and won my first game there as well. I'm kind of like the OP where I try to build everything I want in every city, putting importance on whatever victory type I'm going for and gold producing buildings.

As a matter of fact I never produce one unit in my cities. My goal is to stay defensive and buy whatever units I need WHEN I need them and ally any military CS's I can find that way I can concentrate on my buildings.

Do you guys think I'm destined for failure with this approach on levels higher than King?

Click to expand...

the strategy your talking about may not work on emperour and above. The AI starts getting some massive production bonus's once you hit emperour so having a standing army is very important. Thats not to say buying units isn't a good idea but you need mix.

i don't tend to specialize cities in civ v as much as i did in civ iv. generally i find my capital produces the large majority of everything so it seems self-defeating to designate my capital as a 'culture (wonders) only city' or a 'gold only city' or 'production/military only city' when it excels in all areas. for my other cities i really just see what they seem to need at any one time - if they have low food production ill give them a granary, if they have low production ill give them a workshop, etc. i rarely ever build buildings like barracks, forge, walls/castles etc, i don't find the small combat bonus from an instant promotion offsets paying the upkeep on a barracks and i've never found much value in having defensive buildings unless im playing a specific tall strategy.

I also buy everything all the time. I need to manage this better. I don't pay attention to the costs of things enough. I see some people talk about having 10000 gold just lying around. I think I've gotten up to about 3000 and that was a game where I totally dominated.

Okay this is how I do it. It does not matter in what city places buildings/wonders as a priority so say one city needs production really needs production place production buildings after that done do the national focus of what you need so say you culture have all cities build culture buildings unless one city like the example above reallys a needs a different building. Mainly go this way because one city can't actually produce the gold or culture for civ you all your cities as one body to produce all that is needed one city can't do it alone have all your cities work on the one main goal until a priorty arrives.

Rooftrellen said:

On the city screen of nearby cities, you can decide who gets what tile.

That can be a huge help early more than later, as one high food tile can accelerate the growth of two cities.

Separating what you want to do is important because of two major things, money and production. Every single non-important building you produce is a number of hammers not spent on units or important buildings. Every building you buy is money not being put toward units. Every building you pay upkeep for is a unit you don't have on the field.

Of course, you want to keep up with some things, like growth, science, and culture, but making everything everywhere will really REALLY hurt your military, and without a decent military, neighbors suddenly like you a lot less.

If you are finding the game easy enough when you build every building in every city by the end of the game, and you are going anything other than tall (really tall, like 2 cities tall), move up a level, because you are playing below your level and developing bad habits.

Click to expand...

Wait-- you can decide who gets what tile on the city screens? I'm not seeing that-- i can see tiles that I'm about to grow into, outlined in pink, but that's it.

Yeah, I kind of suspect I've outgrown my easier level. I went up a level and STILL had no problem putting in every single building everywhere and now I'm almost out of buildings to build, and none of this is hurting my military which is exceeding its limit and deleting units. I guess I'll bump up another level.

Okay, I don't think anybody answered this part, unless its a function of the screen that rooftrellen was talking about, and I'm not seeing it: how do you know which tile in your civ belongs to which city? You've got a wheat tile right between two cities-- which one owns it and would benefit from a granary?

You click one of the citys and which everone has the little food icon on is the city that is working the tile. But remember to turn off the icons off to see the city icons.

In the city screen, off to the right are a bunch of sub-menus. The very top one is called something like City Management. Not sure the name of it, but it is the top one. Click on that and it will show a bunch of different focus methods to choose from (Food focus, culture focus, etc.). It will also show a bunch of green citizens on the city map. You can move those citizens around to different tiles to work what you want. So whichever city you want to work a certain tile, go into that city and lock a citizen onto that tile. You can switch it later if you want.

catecalloway said:

Wait-- you can decide who gets what tile on the city screens? I'm not seeing that-- i can see tiles that I'm about to grow into, outlined in pink, but that's it.

Click to expand...

When you are in the city screen (where you can see the pink/purple highlighted tiles where your culture borkers will be expanding), look at the top right. There should be a plus sign next to Citizen Management. Click on that plus sign and you will be introduced to a whole new world of fine control over what tiles get worked. When that tab is open, you can see what tiles are being worked (green profile icon). You can manually assign citizens to work specific tiles (turns intoa green padlock), or you can select different "focus" priorities (food, production, gold, etc.). When you read about players keeping their cities on production focus, while "locking down" the food tiles, they are talking about using this screen.

Thanks! The devil's in the details. I'll try this tomorrow...