A Guide to City Specialization and Land Improvements

Krikkitone said:

Actually, that doesn't appear to be tru, Ive had cities where overlapped tiles were fogged out even though I made sure the other city wasn't using them.

I think the fogged out ones are automatically allocated based on distance rather than usage.

Click to expand...

I am sure of this one. By default, tiles are assigned to cities based on proximity. So if A and B overlap, a tile in the overlapped area will be lit (and available) in one city, fogged in the other. However, if you open the city viewer where that tile is fogged, and click the fogged tile, it will be lit. You can now assign to that tile in the second city (and if you switch back to the first city, you will find it is fogged there).

More details: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=603

Excl said:

The fat cross is the set of 20 tiles within 2 squares of your city. This is the maximum number of squares that you can work, so any resources you hope to get have to fall into this cross area.

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So, assuming I've got enough culture to encompass the 20 tiles, I can work these 20 arbitrarily at any time? For example, suppose I've got a pop of 3, but have had 2 culture expansions. Can I work 2 tiles that touch my city and a 3rd that does not? For example:

c= city
w= worked

...|_|_|_|
|_|w|_|_|_|
|_|w|c|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|
...|_|_|w|

And if you can only work these 20 tiles, cities should always be place within 2 squares of a resource, assuming you want to work it?

Fetch said:

And if you can only work these 20 tiles, cities should always be place within 2 squares of a resource, assuming you want to work it?

Click to expand...

From what I understand, if you have wheat, and you want to put a farm on it to get the extra food for your city, then yes, you want your city within 2 squares of it. But if you have copper and you just want the resource and aren't going to be using the extra hammers you get for building a mine, you don't need that to be in that 2 square radius, you just need it to be within your Civ's borders.

I may be wrong. but that's how it seems to me.

Great posts,Excl.
One thing not to forget:the gold from the shrine(s)doesn't come from commerce;so,it doesn't depend on the science/gold/culture slide;so,IMO,it is safer to put the Wall Street there,even if another city is generating more gold.
Best regards,

Fetch said:

So, assuming I've got enough culture to encompass the 20 tiles, I can work these 20 arbitrarily at any time?

Click to expand...

Yes, you can work whichever of those tiles you want as long as it A) Fits in the cross, and B) is encompassed in your Civ's culture. So like Voice was saying ... you can start a new city nearby another city, and with the large culture of that other city, you could work tiles you would normally not be able to work with a starting city's weak culture.

For example, suppose I've got a pop of 3, but have had 2 culture expansions. Can I work 2 tiles that touch my city and a 3rd that does not?

Click to expand...

Yes, you could even work 3 tiles completely away from the city.

I'll try to draw a better example, but it's tough with the text restraints:

C= city
+= workable spot
X = unworkable spot ... too far from the city.

|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|+|+|C|+|+|X|
|X|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|

As long as the culture incompasses the "+" squares you can work it, with no other restrictions. (Well other than moutainous terrain or whatnot). You can stretch cultural boundries either by building culture improving buildings in that city, or by building close to another larger city, which already has large culture.

Some times you can get a "streched" culture effect if you build a new city fairly close to an older one. You culture will "span the gap" and look something like this: (& = workable tiles, in stretched culture, so same as +'s)

|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|C|+|&|+|+|C|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|

Kind of hard to see, but I hope that makes sense. Remember, that will still have access to all 20 +'s once the culture encompasses them.

And if you can only work these 20 tiles, cities should always be place within 2 squares of a resource, assuming you want to work it?

Click to expand...

Yes and no. Depends on if you want just the resource, or if you want the tile bonus on top of that. Usually you will want both, so you build it within two tiles. Sometimes, you might want the resource itself, but also a more favorable terrain spot (like on a coast), so you can build it three spots away or more. Once the culture expands past the resource, you can build the improvement on it and get access to the resource itself. But you won't get the tile bonuses (like added production or food) in the city. You will however get any +health, +happiness or whatever the resource itself provides in all cities that are connected to that resource by a road.

I find this useful for luxuary items like gems. Sometimes I'll get 3 resources like food, ores and gems close to each other, but they aren't close enough to encompass in the 20 squares of the fat cross. In this case, I let gems slide, and build the city near the other two. After building a few culture buildings the borders will stretch past the gems, and I can mine it, and link it up to a road to get the happiness bonuses.

fed1943 said:

Great posts,Excl.
One thing not to forget:the gold from the shrine(s)doesn't come from commerce;so,it doesn't depend on the science/gold/culture slide;so,IMO,it is safer to put the Wall Street there,even if another city is generating more gold.
Best regards,

Click to expand...

If another city is generating more "gold" then we are talking about the final end product of "commerce". The shrine's gold is added on to the commerce generated gold. So if another city is still producing more gold, it is wiser to build Wall Street there.

I guess this depends a lot on how you play your sliders. If you are playing at 0% Gold, then you are essentially making your banks and such worthless. I almost always play at 10% gold, so there's always a possibility that a pure Money commerce town can outproduce a holy city.

This can actually happen quite a bit, since Holy Cities are randomly picked. If you happen to get a holy city that can't generated a lot of cottages, and a Money Commerce City that's loaded with full cottages. You will probably end up making more with the Money Commerce City.

The other benefit to building Wall Street there, is that if you turn your slider up to 100% gold, you will basically get a 200% bonus in that town, where the holy city wouldn't see much of an increase.

Excl said:

Some times you can get a "streched" culture effect if you build a new city fairly close to an older one. You culture will "span the gap" and look something like this: (& = workable tiles, in stretched culture, so same as +'s)

|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|C|+|&|+|+|C|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|

Kind of hard to see, but I hope that makes sense.

Click to expand...

This was true in Civ 3, but is no longer the case in Civ 4.

Zombie69 said:

This was true in Civ 3, but is no longer the case in Civ 4.

Click to expand...

Are you positive on this? I'm not sure myself, and I have no way of verifying at this second. The other day I remember taking a settler out to a coast, which was two squares away from a crucial resource. I remember thinking that I was going to need to build a temple to get the resource, but when I built the town, the culture spanned the gap. This was also on a city that was signifigantly bigger than a stage 2 culture expansion (21 squares around the city). So maybe it's true that you can't span a gap with one moderate culture city and a new one (meaning my example itself is wrong), but maybe you can with a higher culture city and a new one? I honestly don't know.

Excl said:

Some times you can get a "streched" culture effect if you build a new city fairly close to an older one. You culture will "span the gap" and look something like this: (& = workable tiles, in stretched culture, so same as +'s)


|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|C|+|&|+|+|C|+|+|X|
|X|X|+|+|+|&|+|+|+|+|+|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|+|+|+|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|

Kind of hard to see, but I hope that makes sense. Remember, that will still have access to all 20 +'s once the culture encompasses them.

Click to expand...

Ok. I see. By the way, your grid looks alot better than mine. So the tiles with the "&" in them-- will the left-hand city have access to those then, assuming this scenario happens in Civ4?

Yes. (10 char)

Yes,it depends on what the player will do with the sliders.If you are sure the sliders will remain as they are,so(as you said)the Wall Street stays better in the city showing more gold.But,often,one has to change the sliders(culture for happiness or,at the end,culture victory;research for spaceship,military,wonders,well almost everything)resulting in less commerce for gold;when this happen the gold from the holy city surpasses the gold from any other city.
Best regards,

Excl said:

If another city is generating more "gold" then we are talking about the final end product of "commerce". The shrine's gold is added on to the commerce generated gold. So if another city is still producing more gold, it is wiser to build Wall Street there.

I guess this depends a lot on how you play your sliders. If you are playing at 0% Gold, then you are essentially making your banks and such worthless. I almost always play at 10% gold, so there's always a possibility that a pure Money commerce town can outproduce a holy city.

This can actually happen quite a bit, since Holy Cities are randomly picked. If you happen to get a holy city that can't generated a lot of cottages, and a Money Commerce City that's loaded with full cottages. You will probably end up making more with the Money Commerce City.

The other benefit to building Wall Street there, is that if you turn your slider up to 100% gold, you will basically get a 200% bonus in that town, where the holy city wouldn't see much of an increase.

Click to expand...

Very helpful article indeed, thanks for putting it together.

Edit: read the article through more carefully and saw that my comment had been addressed.

fed1943 said:

Yes,it depends on what the player will do with the sliders.If you are sure the sliders will remain as they are,so(as you said)the Wall Street stays better in the city showing more gold.But,often,one has to change the sliders(culture for happiness or,at the end,culture victory;research for spaceship,military,wonders,well almost everything)resulting in less commerce for gold;when this happen the gold from the holy city surpasses the gold from any other city.
Best regards,

Click to expand...

Well the holy city is "fixed" gold, so you know what you are getting with Wall Street there. But the only time you would want that "fixed" amount, is if you are going for a cultural win, and need that 100% culture at the end. If you are playing 10% gold on the slider ... that is likely the lowest setting your gold will be on. If a Commerce City is producing more gold than a Holy city, then definatly build it in the Commerce City. You should never have you gold at 0%, as you would be making every economic building worthless. If you are making more gold in the Commerce City at 10%, you will be making a LOT more if you move the slider up to 20% or further.

Although the exception is Cultural Victories. So you are right in that regard. For cultural victories, you will want to set your slider to 100%, meaning your holy city is going to be the only city making you money. In that case, you will want to have Wall Street there to double your only source of income. I'm not sure though, because I've never attempted a cultural victory ... but wouldn't you really need to be running at 90% culture/10% gold? How can you afford to run all your cities and support all your troops, unless you have a holy city and a well spread religion?

Excl said:

You should never have you gold at 0%, as you would be making every economic building worthless.

Click to expand...

That's a terrible argument. If you have more science buildings than economic buildings, you should be happy if you can afford to set gold to 0%.

DaveMcW said:

That's a terrible argument. If you have more science buildings than economic buildings, you should be happy if you can afford to set gold to 0%.

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The only way you can afford that would be if you have a holy city with Wall street and a religion that is spread to quite a large number of cities. You would also have to have a low number of cities to avoid maintanence costs, and a small military to avoid upkeep on them as well. It takes some time to get up to that point (where you can afford to run 100% science, and not be in the red.) In the meantime, you're leaving yourself wide open for an invasion, with your small military numbers.

With universal sufferage, I like to have 10% or more gold coming in anyway, because later in the game, you can pretty much buy anything you want. You are much more flexible that way.

I don't like the idea of running at 100% science anyway, because for the extra 10% gain in science ... you are essentially rendering all your banks and markets useless, and gainining no money from anything other than holy cities. Sure, this can work on the lower playing levels, but when you get into the higher levels, it's not going to be that easy getting holy cities. Plus you're going to need more than a few troops around, to protect your cities.

I'm not disagreeing with your point that 10% gold is useful (and often neccesary). I'm saying that if your banks are obsolete, just let them sit idle.


Suppose you have 100 commerce, +100% science bonus, and +50% gold bonus.

You could run 0% tax for 200 beakers.
You could run 10% tax for 180 beakers, 15 gold.

The 0% case is obviously better, if you can afford it.

DaveMcW said:

I'm not disagreeing with your point that 10% gold is useful (and often neccesary). I'm saying that if your banks are obsolete, just let them sit idle.

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What makes a bank obsolete? As far as I know, they always give 50% bonus.

Suppose you have 100 commerce, +100% science bonus, and +50% gold bonus.

You could run 0% tax for 200 beakers.
You could run 10% tax for 180 beakers, 15 gold.

The 0% case is obviously better, if you can afford it.

Click to expand...

But that's just one city. The max science boost would be 150% (Library/Observatory/University/Labratory/Academy) ... Labratory is one of the last techs you'll research too, and you'll need a lot of Great Scientists to produce an academy (50% boost) in every city as well. On the other hand, banks, markets and grocers come fairly early and give a full 100%. So in all likelyhood, most of your cities are probably going to have more gold enhancers anyway. Setting science to zero, would render all of them useless in every city.

In most cases, you're probably going to have 75% science (lib/univ/obsrv) and 100% gold (mkt/grcr/bank)

All my good cities have academies, which means most of my commerce has a +50% science bonus.

If you ignore rounding, running the science slider at 90% all the time is exactly equal to running the science slider at 100% for 9 turns, 0% for 1 turn, and repeating the process.

Similarly, running the science slider at 50% all the time is exactly equal to alternating between 100% and 0%.

You may want to add one more type if you like slavery, the whipped-city - contains globe theatre and perhaps hero epic. With kermlin, all production buildings, hero epic and lots of farm, you can whip a new infantry every turn.