Which city should be my science city?

Agree with your second point. If the city with the highest science bonus is not your highest science city (leaving aside the question: how on earth did that happen?), you should rush buy your, e.g., lab in the city where it will have the highest impact on total beaker output.

As to your first, I agree that a Tradition capital has an inherent growth advantage (and head start) vs. any other generic city (even before accounting for the fact that an observatory city will often have fewer food tiles than a city settled in the open). That said, if your capital is going to struggle to grow, and you can quickly settle an observatory-eligible city that will ultimately far outstrip your capital's population, a player should be open minded about where to build NC.
 
If you're not planting a lot of academies, it would often be better to put the NC in a non-Observatory city, because it's easier to grow two cities to pretty big size than it is to grow one city to ridiculously big size.
 
Well, if my NC city (usually my capital) is also observatory eligible, I would not go out of my way to build NC in any other city (particularly since observatories come somewhat later). Early NC still beats other observatory alternatives.
 
Browd said:
Agree with your second point. If the city with the highest science bonus is not your highest science city (leaving aside the question: how on earth did that happen?), you should rush buy your, e.g., lab in the city where it will have the highest impact on total beaker output.

As to your first, I agree that a Tradition capital has an inherent growth advantage (and head start) vs. any other generic city (even before accounting for the fact that an observatory city will often have fewer food tiles than a city settled in the open). That said, if your capital is going to struggle to grow, and you can quickly settle an observatory-eligible city that will ultimately far outstrip your capital's population, a player should be open minded about where to build NC.
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I agree with this.

My main point was not about which city needs the NC, it was that an Observatory does not really make the NC better. It's the base science output that makes the NC good.

My 2nd point was that is that the best city is almost always the capital, though I recognize it is not always the case, but the capital has lots of advantages.
 
Agree that an observatory doesn't move the needle on benefit from the NC itself. But, if you have the option of building NC and an observatory in the same city, total beaker output in that particular city will greatly benefit from the double 50% boost. Whether that city or another city is the best city for NC itself requires assessment of the growth and other factors we've discussed.
 
Uzael36 said:
I agree with this.

My main point was not about which city needs the NC, it was that an Observatory does not really make the NC better. It's the base science output that makes the NC good.

My 2nd point was that is that the best city is almost always the capital, though I recognize it is not always the case, but the capital has lots of advantages.
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The argument isn't about how the observatory makes the NC better. Its about how you can feed the observatory city so that both the NC and observatory can benefit from the growth.

There's is also the problem of using your capital as the "culture" and "specialist" city with guilds and wonders. In which case your capital will never grow as fast as the second observatory city. Now you may wonder why don't you make another city as the culture city. The reason is your capital most likely has the most hammers and hence the potential to pump out most wonders. In the case of OP's situation, he also has fresh water in the capital but not the observatory city, which makes the capital the best place to run all kinds of specialists.

The argument here isn't just about whether to build NC in the observatory city but how to keep NC and guilds separate to maximize both science and great person generation.
 
Vitruvius said:
The argument isn't about how the observatory makes the NC better. Its about how you can feed the observatory city so that both the NC and observatory can benefit from the growth.

There's is also the problem of using your capital as the "culture" and "specialist" city with guilds and wonders. In which case your capital will never grow as fast as the second observatory city. Now you may wonder why don't you make another city as the culture city. The reason is your capital most likely has the most hammers and hence the potential to pump out most wonders. In the case of OP's situation, he also has fresh water in the capital but not the observatory city, which makes the capital the best place to run all kinds of specialists.

The argument here isn't just about whether to build NC in the observatory city but how to keep NC and guilds separate to maximize both science and great person generation.
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From my experience, the capital, even as a production city, has the highest growth almost always. Because when your city is size 10-15 at turn 100, even as a food focused city, your production is higher than any other city. As your city hits 20-25 at turn 150, you are completely maxed out on food, and producing like crazy.

Now this may be a style issue. I used to sacrifice food for hammers, but now I do not do that much at all, because the best production comes from a tall city. If you sacrifice food for hammers early, for a little better early production, you are sacrificing mid and late game production in that city. You are usually better off growing all your cities, regardless of their function.

Now, you talk about sending all your cargo ships and caravans to that observatory city, over the capital. That can make another city large, but it does come with drawbacks. Your capital has less unhappiness. It can grow taller within your happiness constraints than a satellite and as mentioned, it also has the most growth coming from policies. If you grow another city tall, your civ will struggle with happiness, or at least, your civ cannot grow as tall.

All that said, a 2nd city can be better, but it is rare. I bring this up because when I first started reading the forums, I was guided down the route of putting the NC in my 2nd city a lot, because everyone stated that it belongs in the city with an observatory. The reality, as I have learned with experience, is it is quite rare that any city other than the capital is better suited for the NC.
 
Uzael36 said:
From my experience, the capital, even as a production city, has the highest growth almost always. Because when your city is size 10-15 at turn 100, even as a food focused city, your production is higher than any other city. As your city hits 20-25 at turn 150, you are completely maxed out on food, and producing like crazy.

Now this may be a style issue. I used to sacrifice food for hammers, but now I do not do that much at all, because the best production comes from a tall city. If you sacrifice food for hammers early, for a little better early production, you are sacrificing mid and late game production in that city. You are usually better off growing all your cities, regardless of their function.

Now, you talk about sending all your cargo ships and caravans to that observatory city, over the capital. That can make another city large, but it does come with drawbacks. Your capital has less unhappiness. It can grow taller within your happiness constraints than a satellite and as mentioned, it also has the most growth coming from policies. If you grow another city tall, your civ will struggle with happiness, or at least, your civ cannot grow as tall.

All that said, a 2nd city can be better, but it is rare. I bring this up because when I first started reading the forums, I was guided down the route of putting the NC in my 2nd city a lot, because everyone stated that it belongs in the city with an observatory. The reality, as I have learned with experience, is it is quite rare that any city other than the capital is better suited for the NC.
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I agree that Capital almost always is the tallest and most productive city. I am just addressing the handful of situations where Capital may not be the Best choice as the science city. In the case of OP's post, the 2nd mountain city has a mountain and Lake Victoria and he explicitly stated that both his Capital and 2nd city are equally populous. He also did not state that he is running Tradition. There are no fixed rule as to where to put the NC. The bottom line is, put the NC where you find most fit.
 
Vitruvius said:
I agree that Capital almost always is the tallest and most productive city. I am just addressing the handful of situations where Capital may not be the Best choice as the science city. In the case of OP's post, the 2nd mountain city has a mountain and Lake Victoria and he explicitly stated that both his Capital and 2nd city are equally populous. He also did not state that he is running Tradition. There are no fixed rule as to where to put the NC. The bottom line is, put the NC where you find most fit.
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I thought he mentioned he was running tradition later down the posts.
 
Monarchy is one of the biggest reason people grow their capital instead of something else. As a result it's better to put the NC there most of the time.

There's some rare exceptions (crappy capitals, jungle tiles) but unless you really know what you're doing, stick with the capital.
 
I'm going with Tradition.

Well, I built the NC in Berlin. The 2nd city, at some point, had more population than the capital, but from pop 12 and beyond Berlin became the biggest city again.

Turns out that Lake Victoria gives an excellent growth boost in the beggining, but river tiles are crucial to make a city really tall.

And there's another thing: I'm playing as Germany and I don't want to use more than one trade route for food. Maybe I'll use two later, but no more.
 
Remember that Lake Victoria serves as a fresh water source for neighboring tiles, so you can farm those tiles that don't have resources on them.
 
brasaelal said:
bettle,

I wasn't considering the military aspect. Thank you! I'll change my strategy to take this into consideration.

And since there will be only 3 original cities (maybe a 4th one outside the continent), I'll build every building, with few exceptions.

Trackmaster,

Based on your post, I think I'll limit my focusing strategy to wonders and specialists, since Berlin's terrain (river, 3 gold, 2 stones, 1 marble, 2 sheep) will inevitably rank it 1st for pretty much everything. Thanks!

Referring to your comment about religion... I didn't know that a non-capital city could be a Holy City. How is this possible?
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Basaelal, if you want to hear something really absurd, listen to what happened in my most recent game. I was at war with a Civilization who had established a religion already, but I was still working on getting the faith to get my first GP. Eventually I conquered him and all of his cities and razed all but the Capital. The Capital was his Holy City, and he left behind a Great Prophet that he hadn't used yet. I captured the GP, and fortunately was able to use his Found Religion option. Without thinking, I founded the religion in the same city (because he was already there so I didn't move him). This meant that annexed city was the Holy City for two religions! Unfortunately for me, this might that I had no cities following the religion, and had to wait for a GP of my own and waste it to wipe out the old religion and spread the new one.

But once I sorted it all out, it was fine. As I was saying prefer, I do prefer to make my Holy City different than my capital if I can remember too. Party because I don't want to overtax one city, and partly because I want my Holy City to be the one closest to the bulk of the neighboring Civilizations for maximum spreading.
 
Trackmaster said:
Basaelal, if you want to hear something really absurd, listen to what happened in my most recent game. I was at war with a Civilization who had established a religion already, but I was still working on getting the faith to get my first GP. Eventually I conquered him and all of his cities and razed all but the Capital. The Capital was his Holy City, and he left behind a Great Prophet that he hadn't used yet. I captured the GP, and fortunately was able to use his Found Religion option. Without thinking, I founded the religion in the same city (because he was already there so I didn't move him). This meant that annexed city was the Holy City for two religions! Unfortunately for me, this might that I had no cities following the religion, and had to wait for a GP of my own and waste it to wipe out the old religion and spread the new one.

But once I sorted it all out, it was fine. As I was saying prefer, I do prefer to make my Holy City different than my capital if I can remember too. Party because I don't want to overtax one city, and partly because I want my Holy City to be the one closest to the bulk of the neighboring Civilizations for maximum spreading.
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I didn't know that. Interesting!
 
Browd said:
Remember that Lake Victoria serves as a fresh water source for neighboring tiles, so you can farm those tiles that don't have resources on them.
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I know, but one of them has sheep, another one is mountain and the rest are hills. There's only one non-fresh water grassland for Munich. Even with farms, these tiles yield 2 :c5production: and 2:c5food:. So Munich's production is very high too, but now I see it will depend on caravans to grow tall.

Berlin's river is mostly grassland.
 
Mountains plus river grasslands with food bonuses is your best site option.
Best place for the national college is next to a mountain where the total base food is highest, but 4 sheep-on-a-hill is nothing compared to a large number of irrigated grasslands with the best food techs. If the difference in food between a mountain and non-mountain site is like 6 or greater, then the observatory bonus is probably not a good idea.

You can figure the Hangin Gardens makes up the food difference, but that is at the expense of getting library/universities up, sometimes. I'd spreadsheet the time it takes to build a HG at a site versus the cost of a library-university pair at the same site.
 
Shacassanach said:
Mountains plus river grasslands with food bonuses is your best site option.
Best place for the national college is next to a mountain where the total base food is highest, but 4 sheep-on-a-hill is nothing compared to a large number of irrigated grasslands with the best food techs. If the difference in food between a mountain and non-mountain site is like 6 or greater, then the observatory bonus is probably not a good idea.

You can figure the Hangin Gardens makes up the food difference, but that is at the expense of getting library/universities up, sometimes. I'd spreadsheet the time it takes to build a HG at a site versus the cost of a library-university pair at the same site.
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But if you for example start at a river but move one turn to the side to get to a hill it will mean you dont get to build a water mill for two extra food and one hammer and not a garden. But on that hill you get an extra early hammer and if you get the Hanging gardens that is 6 extra food along with the free garden and you will also be able to work the river tile for additional food. And if that is grassland that is 4 food after civil service and if it is plain it will be 3 food and one hammer, both better then the watermill, even do the mill does not require a pop to actually work it. Best is of course a hill alongside a river, next to a mountain but how often do you get one of those starts?
 
Keep in mind that a windmill requires you to build something, while you get immediate hammers from the hill. Early on, every opportunity that you have to free up construction for other things is valuable.
 
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