Specialist Cities

I been looking through the forums.

There are ppl who can win the game with 2-3 cites, as appose to 5+ cities.

PPL who only builds a few cities. I guess you do not specialize the cities. IE science, gold, production.

Do any veterans of the Civ Franchise, still specialize you cities or not.

Obviously I'm not referring to cities placement.

Obviously if you wanted a production city, you would settle near hills/forest
Food would be flood plains and grassland.
Gold I would assume near the coast/rivers.
What about Science?????

Just a query on the way ppl settle there cites and whether they specialize them.

It's not hard. A few guidelines:

- each city has to grow as fast as possible and as much as possible (because population leads to science)
- each city must get all the science buildings as soon as possible
- the top science city gets a national college
- internal food routes to pump up growth
- gold from external routes (although you won't be needing that much anyway with a small empire)
- build East India Company to a good trade hub and fire up all external routes from there
- scientist, engineer and artist slots always filled for GP generation (merchant slots naturally always empty)


In fact, when playing tall, most of my cities are fairly unspecialized - the only major differences are coastal vs non-coastal (I focus more on coastal cities' production for navy creation), National College vs not, East India Company vs not, art guilds vs not. Other than that, each of my cities is a science machine with enough production to produce the needed buildings, wonders and a defensive force.

I sorta' specialize in some cities:

1. My capital almost always becomes my science city, especially after I plant 2-3 Great Scientists there. Given the chance, I will blow my first 2-3 turns to move my settler next to a mountain -- building an observatory gives the city a 50% science boost.

2. I try to make at least one military city; the basic requirement is good production. There I will build all the XP-producing buildings, the Heroic Epic natlional Wonder, and will try to build the Brandenburg Gate wonder.

3. Given the proper circumstances, I will try to make a culture city where I can build the Sydney Opera House wonder.

4. For gold cities, I usually rely on getting a few puppets, which are gold cities by default.

Culture focusing one city is very useful when going for culture victory. Ideally, it'd be a holy city on a coast with as many wonders and landmarks as possible. For the French, just use the capital.

I sort of specialize.

One city is going to be the tourism city I want it to have enough production to spam out culture wonders the second they are available. Always the capital for France.

A city preferably next to a mountain will get the national college and oxford and I will drop great scientists in and it'll be my science city. Always the capital for Korea.

The first and often best modifier for money in trade routers is the income of the city so that city will have a bunch of counting houses/trading posts and make crazy amounts of money. Always the capital for Venice/

They aren't as drastically specialized as civ one but still somewhat specialized due to so many one city only % bonus things.

Remember that if you get a Great Prophet and think there's any chance of getting your religion to be a world religion, found the religion in the culture capital. +50% tourism, lo!