CIV Illustrated #3: City specialization explained!

Excellent guide Seraiel It's a great help for players at all levels I think, and it's good to have a nice overview with pictures included. Unfortunately little feedback so far, but maybe it's a bit much to take in all at once. Great work in any case.

great guide.Looking forward to trying the oxford whip overflow thing.Ive always rush bought the national park,this is a great wonder for terra maps,just plant your city amongst all them jungles/forests.Rush buying wall st is also good advice.As for west point if you build it I would suggest combining it with moao statues and dry dock,with THEO/FEUD/or a settled great general you have instant lvl 3 naval units.

If,and I mean IF you were to build the red cross then the city with the globe theatre would be a good choice,reason bieng to get drafted rifles/infantry with the march promotion.Ive had very few games where building hospitals has been necersary.

Interesting to see how the other half live,150+ citys on a map!!My CPU has gone into therapy just thinking about it.

edit.you did mention the red cross/GT combo.sorry I missed that.

A couple of questions/thoughts:

For GP farm: combine if possible Great library and NE or have two cities?
In earlier games I sometimes built one (usually Library) in the capital to beat the AI to it and because no other good city was available and then later a "pure" GP farm with the NE. Problem here is often that the Capital is "too strong" with GP points for the other city to keep up, even with the NE. The other difficulty (I did not know about chain whipping) is the often very poor production of NE city so it takes very long (w/o marble) to get it build at all.

Hermitage: I thought I had read once a cultural victory guide that this one should be built in the *weakest* or latest of the three culture cities that it can keep up with the Capital. Isn't the point to get the three cities to legendary within a few turns? Of course this is regulated with Artists creating 4000 culture points in the end, but it is still a consideration. I beat the AI twice (once with culture, once in a Space Race) because it had one city legendary before I had but the two other cities were 10 or even 20 or more turns behind.

I am not sure if I ever built the Globe Theatre... although I theoretically understand the power of infinite whip/draft. Except for culture games I usually trade for drama and it comes rather late so at this stage often building 6 theaters and the Globe seems a distraction. One also needs another city with lots of food besides the GP farm(s)

Kallikrates said:

Hermitage: I thought I had read once a cultural victory guide that this one should be built in the *weakest* or latest of the three culture cities that it can keep up with the Capital. Isn't the point to get the three cities to legendary within a few turns? Of course this is regulated with Artists creating 4000 culture points in the end, but it is still a consideration. I beat the AI twice (once with culture, once in a Space Race) because it had one city legendary before I had but the two other cities were 10 or even 20 or more turns behind.

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Building the Hermitage in the weakest culture city is actually the least efficient use of the wonder. You will get the most out of it by building it in the highest culture city just as you would place an Academy in the best science city - typically your Bureau capitol.

That said, the Hermitage city should be chosen based on circumstances within your actual game, and you will need to do some calculations to determine this correctly. With the right conditions and proper planning you will build it in the bureau capitol to leverage it to maximum efficiency, and then use lots of artist bombs in the other two cities so that they can keep up. However, if you can't get enough artist bombs for your other two cities to keep pace, you may have to build it in one of those cities.

There's an article about this somewhere and, IIRC, the information in it is still relevant and quite useful.

Edit: Found the link. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298093&highlight=hermitage

Kallikrates said:

A couple of questions/thoughts:

For GP farm: combine if possible Great library and NE or have two cities?
In earlier games I sometimes built one (usually Library) in the capital to beat the AI to it and because no other good city was available and then later a "pure" GP farm with the NE. Problem here is often that the Capital is "too strong" with GP points for the other city to keep up, even with the NE. The other difficulty (I did not know about chain whipping) is the often very poor production of NE city so it takes very long (w/o marble) to get it build at all.

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Like everything else in this game, it depends. But if I can build the Great Library, I like to couple it with the National Epic. Then you effectively get 4 scientists + a little more even without Caste System early on, which is great for getting out some GSs. If possible I sometimes like to make a super-GP farm with GLib, NE and National Park. Of course all three won't work in tandem because the GLib will be obsoleted before you can build the NP, but it's a good combo anyhow. That said, it's probably better to have NE and NP in two different cities, so you have two very good GP farms.

Don't think Seraiel included the picture in the end, but here is one such city, doing over 400 per turn. Currently it runs 34 specialists.


See I forgot to turn on resource bubbles when taking that screenshot. Sorry about that.

I wanted to edit your screenshot in the guide already, next to one of my Time-Games GP-Farms that sometimes were size 60 and made at least 600 iirc.

Current Gauntlet is eating up the time as you know yourself.

Wow, this is an awesome guide, Seraiel, and not only a guide to read only once but a compendium one can refer to again and again if one thinks about a new city or how to develop a city!

I haven't read it completely at all yet (but will do step by step for sure), just used it to plan my Ironworks better and now I worked through the introduction of standard city specialization. One question about this chapter: You say that the first thing to build is a Monument (standard way) if the food isn't in the first ring. But I guess you would skip the Monument if you play a Creative leader, right? It's also a bit against the suggestions I have learned to always aim for food in the first ring. However, I often find myself in a situation where having the food in second ring seems better in the long run because it allows me to catch another resource for example. Are there some rules of thumb when you will risk to get a food resource only after the first border expansion (like for example: food must be in first ring at least for the first 2 or 3 cities to let them grow fast, for later cities this rule isn't that strict anymore...)

In any case, thank you for your great work!

If you are non-creative you typically build cities with food in the inner ring. But when you capture cities, it's not uncommon for them to have food in the 2nd ring only. Then it makes sense with a monument first, at least if it doesn't have your state religion.

I skimmed through the post and saw a couple of screenshots here and there and they were really impressive. Lots of production, lots of cities and lots of land.

My only quibble is that more than a few cities show those uber-awesome HoF spots (like 4 food and a few other resources to boot, often no "bad" tiles at all) I will see only once in a blue moon playing ordinary fractal maps and there will usually be only ONE of my cities so good, not one for every specialization.
Still, thanks for the great work!

@ Todelotti: If I have a good religion, that's likely to become the AP-religion, I also settle cities with food in the 2nd ring but I send a Missionary directly with / to them. I sometimes also send a Worker to chop or even pre-chop a Forest there, so that the city has its Monument on T1 or T4 at latest. Depends very much on how powerful your empire already is, that you can build Missionaries and have a Worker to go on tour.

@ Kallikrates: Did you mean any spot in special? The chinese 4 food capital was conquered, so it was no HoF start. The start in that round was much worse, only 1 hills-pigs, 1 Gold, 3 Floodplains and Stone, that's far underaverage for a HoF start.

It's probably natural to pick the best cities for these example, like my NE-NP city above, but it's a good point to consider that perhaps that makes it difficult to relate to for other readers, because the cities are already so absurdly good.

The city I showed an image of, btw, was not my own city, it was a captured one from an early war against India. But it is on the Rainforest mapscript, which has lots and lots of food, but almost every tile is covered in jungle, so you need ample time to cut it down with heaps of workers. Cities like that is exceedingly rare on more normal mapscripts like Pangaea, Fractal, Terra.

I don't see any problems with those screenshots. The only screens about which one could argue, are the capital-screens, because ofc, I play for HoF so I only play strong starts.

All other cities are conquered or self-founded, so they're completely normal imo. If those other screens are still very overaverage, then I'd blame your Fractal or Pangaea mapscript. I think about 50% of these screens, show uncommon maps, like Terra, Archipelagio or Inland Sea. It's not my problem though, that many S&T players don't play them. They imo should try them out, because beating a pangaea-map also gets very boring after 20 times. Better have a little diversion and play all parts of CIV, not only the ones that the Standard / Normal Elitists want you to.

Kallikrates said:

My only quibble is that more than a few cities show those uber-awesome HoF spots (like 4 food and a few other resources to boot, often no "bad" tiles at all) I will see only once in a blue moon playing ordinary fractal maps and there will usually be only ONE of my cities so good, not one for every specialization.
Still, thanks for the great work!

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This is caused by the map type.

I remember the times when I was not able to win an Emperor game on a common map. I was desperate and experimented with some map types and I was really impressed when I realized that it was quite easy for me to win an Immortal game on a Terra Large map. Such a map provides you with so many food resources and overpowered city sites that it is really a cakewalk

Cyborg T said:

This is caused by the map type.

I remember the times when I was not able to win an Emperor game on a common map. I was desperate and experimented with some map types and I was really impressed when I realized that it was quite easy for me to win an Immortal game on a Terra Large map. Such a map provides you with so many food resources and overpowered city sites that it is really a cakewalk

Click to expand...

Map size is also a major factor. Many of those screenshots are taken from Large or even Huge maps, and resources seem to "clump" more together on them. I i. e. know, how hard it is to get a double Gold start on a standard sized Pangaea, on a Huge Big & Small, even 4 Golds are no rarity.

What should not be forgotten though, is, that apart from the capital, the AIs play on the same good terrain as the human does. If an AI i. e. settles a 5 Dyes spot and has Calendar, you can already say good bye to it, because you'll never be able to compete directly against that AI anymore, only tech-trades and bulbs will make you keep on par.

And as Pangaea posted a screen of a NE + NP city making 424 / T during a Golden Age, I had to post this screenshot for you too:



Without Golden Age, but therefore with being PHI. Note that this city is not even starving .

Size 53. Damn! Trade routes really get crazy with so many huge cities I see. Towns? Pah! Useless glitter

I am quite confused by the comment that Terra gives many great food sites though. Maybe I am just unlucky with my map, but that isn't the case at all for me. Rainforest however... you'll hardly find a spot without double food almost no matter where you place cities.

On whip-stacking, there's another trick to increase the overflow. If you whip a building with a production bonus, which could be a resource like stone and/or a civic like Organized Religion, then you get rid of that resource or revolt out of ORgRel, then the overflow will be bigger because the production bonus doesn't get divided away. This can be particularly effective with all of the various religious cathedrals because they allow a huge amount of overflow and the production bonus is 100% or 125% (resource or resource+OrgRel).

No forest preserves seems a waste but if its end game you may as well build it somewhere.The above screen shot-national epic+national park city-size 53 gets me to thinking of the NP and globe theatre combo.I know Ive won a diplomatc victory with 1 of those citys,how about a picture of one of these mega citys on a large/huge map Seriel?

One post missing, in my view, is the concept of having different "normal" cities in your civ specialized for different purposes. The different purposes call for different buildings. This is basic to CIV, hugely advantageous and missed by beginners. The capital is typically commercial because it has the 8 Palace, so it gets research-bonus buildings, like library.

A city might be a settler/worker pump.
A coastal city might whip out galleys or galleons non-stop.
Production cities might get only a granary and a barracks.
Production cities for warring might be settled toward the war targets for fastest conquest.
And so on...