Cities that specialize

I've recently started to play Prince/Small settings. I usually focus on trying to get cities to excel in some sort of ability. Cities that spit out science research, gold, production, great people and so forth. This is obviously nothing new but my question is... If you are playing a Prince/Small game. What are the most necessary cities to build? How soon should they be built? How many? What kinds of wonders belong in these cities?

Any kinds of details you want to share about these cities? I'm all ears. What kind of terrain works best with them? Im'a stop da questions

On Small/Prince I would not found any city. I'd build Warriors and Axes or Chariots and win by 2000 BC. ^^

I'm guessing this is not the answer you looked for .

I wrote this only a few days ago in S&T. I think it answers the question if it was asked for higher levels and larger maps:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13785655

Prince/Small is kinda close to the games I'd normally play. Couple disclaimers before I answer: One, I play strictly for fun, rarely try to challenge myself, in fact I hardly ever even finish a game. So I don't normally have "Space race" or "Culture" or "Dom/Conquest" in my head from the begininning of the game. Two, I'm hardly an expert. Having said that...

Burcap. If the RNG gods gave you good cottage land in your capital's fat cross, grow the city as quick as you can and start growing the cottages. Pop a GSci as soon as you're able and use him for an Academy. With a somewhat larger empire I'd probably look for a more pure commerce city to put Oxford in later, but if I'm playing a Small map I'm only looking to have 4-6 cities (plus whatever colonies/conquests later on). So, since I might not get a good spot for a cottage city, I'll plan on building Oxford in the capital. (Along with all the science-boosting buildings.)

GP farm. Probably the most important city to specialize. Find a spot with a ton of food (food resources with riverside/lakeside grassland to farm), preferably with at least some production for specialist buildings and maybe Wonders. Personal preference- I'm a lot happier if my GP farm's BFC doesn't have any commerce resources in it (gems, dye, etc.) That part also applies to...

Unit pump. Lots of hills to mine, hopefully some production resources, enough food to work the production tiles. Build HE here when you can, usually I'd pair it with WP or IW later on.

If there's a spot with decent food, good commerce, and at least a little production, that's where I'll put my money city. It'll get Wall Street and whatever corporate HQs I start. A shrine is nice, but founding early religions is generally not the best idea, and it's hard to justify wasting beakers on Divine Right just to have the RNG drop Islam's holy city in my unit pump.

Most games I try to get a "secondary" GP farm-type city up and running and use it to run spy specialists, but if my entire empire is only 4 or 5 cities that probably wouldn't happen.


Edits and addendums...

Mostly, all that had to do with core cities, because a Small map will probably fill up pretty fast. (Well, I usually play with an extra AI or two anyway, that has a lot to do with it.)

As far as Wonders, that usually doesn't factor in very much for me, but there's a few things I think about. If there's a wonder I've decided to build, I'll put it in my GP farm if I can- unless the GPP goes to a GArtist in which case I might look elsewhere. However, unless my GP farm has more production than normal, most of the time it's building specialist buildings and can't waste the hammers on wonders. If I can, I'll build the GreatLib there.

This rarely works out this way (except maybe Industrious leader games), but if I'm building Pyramids and Hanging Gardens (and possibly Hagia later), I'll try to build them all in the same city for the GEng points.

@ TheMulattoMaker

I agree with most what you've written, but wanted to give you these things to think about:

1. How many troops could your HE city have built, if skipping WP?

2. Why not run Specialists over the whole empire, so have 5 GP Farms?

3. Why does your Money-city need Commerce? Have you thought about farming it completely?

Good idea with the Spy-city btw. That's something I discovered very late, but it's great when one needs to switch the remaining Civs to i. E. Caste, to not get the Emancipation but still be able to run 100% science

Sera

Seraiel said:

Why does your Money-city need Commerce? Have you thought about farming it completely?

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Knew I forgot to mention something in that mess up there.

That's always a toss-up for me, whether I'd be better off with farms or cottages. On the one hand, I wouldn't want to build a bunch of cottages early only to not have the food to work Wall Street merchants later. (Or, since we're talking smallish empires, to watch my commerce-money city not make any money anyway because the slider's at 90% science.) On the other hand, if I go with farms early, I might not notice that cottages would've been a better option until it's too late to grow them.

TheMulattoMaker said:

Knew I forgot to mention something in that mess up there.

That's always a toss-up for me, whether I'd be better off with farms or cottages. On the one hand, I wouldn't want to build a bunch of cottages early only to not have the food to work Wall Street merchants later. (Or, since we're talking smallish empires, to watch my commerce-money city not make any money anyway because the slider's at 90% science.) On the other hand, if I go with farms early, I might not notice that cottages would've been a better option until it's too late to grow them.

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I learned the trick with the farms from Zx Zero Zx. Really very nice when one can hire all those WS-Merchants and benefit from them even while running 100% science.

Well, since we're giving credit where it's due, here's a big tip o' the hat to Sisiutil, who's improved my game on several occasions...

Seraiel said:

How many troops could your HE city have built, if skipping WP?

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I'd probably have a different mindset if I actually went for conquest victories. Most of the time, warfare for me is more of a "strike hard and fast to convince the AI to leave me alone" kind of deal. Massive stacks and huge continent-wide warfare require a) more attention than I can usually spare and b) more electrons than my pathetic laptop can push. (Hence the smaller maps.) So if I'm at the point of the game when West Point is available, and my military's big enough to handle whatever wars might happen, I'll go for quality along with quantity.

And there's also quite a few times where I pair HE with Ironworks anyway.

Why not run Specialists over the whole empire, so have 5 GP Farms?

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I've never really tried it, but I always thought spreading out GPP just made it more inefficient for all your cities. Does it work to have one main GP farm, making most of the GPs, and several other cities that'll still pop a GP from time to time? (I guess the spy city already falls into this category, and so would the farmed-out merchant city...)

Seraiel said:

I learned the trick with the farms from Zx Zero Zx. Really very nice when one can hire all those WS-Merchants and benefit from them even while running 100% science.

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Interesting idea for when you don't have a nice shrine to capture, or aren't going with corporations. This means one could actually put the NE and WS in the same city, and it wouldn't necessarily be a waste. Something to consider for my current game, perhaps.

Couldn't even guess what WP stood for, which must be an indication I don't often build it. It's so expensive and seems like such a waste for little benefit. For instance, assuming you put West Point in the Heroic Epic city, those 600 must be compared with 1200 into units. That's 11 Rifles. Pretty decent sized stack on its own.

Edit: I read the wrong line in the War Academy section. WP costs a whopping 800 so the math is even worse (unless you have stone). A pretty good rule to follow is probably DON'T BUILD IT.

WP sometimes is nice in the IW-city, because that city at least got the hammers to build it. WP in the HE-city is waste. I tested it in Replay #4, the HE-city should really always build units. Combining IW and the HE is overkill, because a city can't produce more than 1 unit / turn. For a fully farmed / workshopped city with the HE, that's usually np, therefore it's better to build a 2nd MC with IW and WP.

Regarding GPs: As long as a city will generate 1 GP, it's worth to run Specialists in it. Ofc. only when going for max research, when one needs Hammers, working tiles ofc. is superior to running Specialists.
Having multiple GP Farms is very powerful, especially during a GA. Then I often even let the Cottage or Hammer cities work max. Specialists.

Suppose you can make an exception for Rep-boosted specialists, as 7.5 per scientist (with a library) is pretty good.

Keeping in mind small map and thinking early/mid game only, I would suggest:

1) Military city, 1 or 2 food specials and lots of green hills, Heroic epic
2) Bur capital, rivers and cottages, Academy and maybe Oxford
3) GP Farm, lots of food, National Epic and maybe Globe theater (it can later be a drafting city)

I usually would have another 1 or 2 cottage cities and probably another hammer city for extra units, World Wonders and maybe Iron Works later. It's good to have the Military city or hammer city on the coast if boats will be required.

GP production is usually spread across most cities but I might also have another food city with Wall Street but I don't see the game going that late on a small map unless specifically trying for the spaceship.

Sometimes the map will dictate that all cities are hybrid cities, it all depends.

I wrote the 3rd issue of “CIV Illustrated“ yesterday and today , which is all about city placement. I would never have thought that this is so difficult, but it actually took me 10 full pages to only explain the normal + the National Wonder cities. I havn't integrated any screens yet, so the guide will be a lot longer in the real version. I hope it'll still be interesting and not longish.

You'll find it in the Strategy Guides subsection next week.

GP production is usually spread across most cities but I might also have another food city with Wall Street but I don't see the game going that late on a small map unless specifically trying for the spaceship.

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Why Wallstreet? It's the most expensive NW of all afaik, and only has little benefit in games without corps or games with 100% slider at most times.

Seraiel said:

On Small/Prince I would not found any city. I'd build Warriors and Axes or Chariots and win by 2000 BC. ^^

I'm guessing this is not the answer you looked for .

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You'd better found a capital.

In CIV II we did a "can't found any city challenge" where your initial settler had to wander and open huts to build an army to conquer the world.

A result of the initial crap that III was. We were so bored we started trying some weird things.
Kind of similar to what happened when V was initially released

sydhe said:

You'd better found a capital.

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You use your initial settler to found a capitol, then do nothing but build units to conquer the world. Did it today on prince, and won a conquest in 29 minutes. Captured the Zulu capitol which was near by, razed all other cities, even a barb city on my way to the final civ. Rarely do I do this, not much fun. Game is over too quickly. I prefer to build a nation, then conquer the world, but occasionally a straight up early rush is a nice change.

On the topic of commerce. Does it make sense to still build cottages in the early game before you're able to spread irrigation? Then just build farms over them once you have more options on what your workers can build?

jjochems78 said:

On the topic of commerce. Does it make sense to still build cottages in the early game before you're able to spread irrigation? Then just build farms over them once you have more options on what your workers can build?

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Cottages are often the best improvement, why would you farm over them once they're grown?

Cottages are definitely the best improvement for the capital, because of Buro. In the arbitrary cities, it's either farms and mines for more production or also cottages for more research or to be able to support masses of units.

Irrigation chains are of minor importance. Using them to bring freshwater to a resource is worth it, but I even played the first 2y of CIV without using them.

Seraiel said:

Why Wallstreet? It's the most expensive NW of all afaik, and only has little benefit in games without corps or games with 100% slider at most times.

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I agree that it is not a great wonder. Corps is a reason and also sometimes I like to make a commerce city and run merchants to create GMs. I play as England so that gives me an extra reason to build so many banks.

Seraiel said:

I wrote the 3rd issue of “CIV Illustrated“ yesterday and today , which is all about city placement. I would never have thought that this is so difficult, but it actually took me 10 full pages to only explain the normal + the National Wonder cities. I havn't integrated any screens yet, so the guide will be a lot longer in the real version. I hope it'll still be interesting and not longish.

You'll find it in the Strategy Guides subsection next week.

Click to expand...

This should be interesting, I look forward to reading it