Specialization Woes

[Secret]

I'm just beginning to specialize, and I'm having some serious concerns- some of which have to do with "overspecialization".

A. Commerce city. This one requires a significant amount of production, due to all the money/research buildings that can be built. It's very hard, short of a gold mine, to get production and commerce in the same vicinity. I also have the problem of not knowing when I should halt city growth and start Working cottages.

B. Production City. I've tried this, but in the most production-rich areas there's generally very little food. When my city grows to size two, that's generally it, because I don't have enough food on a single available tile to support another population point. The tiny size of the city prevents me from harvesting the available production.

C. GP farm. I have rather the reverse of the Production city here; more than enough people and not enough production to build the Wonders I need. Sometimes, if I have an especially fertile area, I can build Workshops to counter that, but then I feel that it would probably have been better to build a Farm and then be able to work a tile with greater production while still increasing my population. I'm also not sure at what population level I should allow the city to stagnate for the sake of specialists. I also have problems popping Great Engineers...

Any ideas to help me?

[DarkFyre99]

Originally Posted by Secret

I'm just beginning to specialize, and I'm having some serious concerns- some of which have to do with "overspecialization".

A. Commerce city. This one requires a significant amount of production, due to all the money/research buildings that can be built. It's very hard, short of a gold mine, to get production and commerce in the same vicinity. I also have the problem of not knowing when I should halt city growth and start Working cottages.

Before the late game, I usually have a few tiles that are heavy hammer producers... usually mines on hills. When a new commerce building becomes available, I temporarily switch my citizens from commerce producing tiles to hammer producing tiles. After all, I usually have more tiles than citizens at that point of the game.

Once you switch to Universal Sufferage, towns start producing hammers, so hammers are no longer an issue.

Originally Posted by Secret

B. Production City. I've tried this, but in the most production-rich areas there's generally very little food. When my city grows to size two, that's generally it, because I don't have enough food on a single available tile to support another population point. The tiny size of the city prevents me from harvesting the available production.

It sounds like your building production cities on sites more suitible for commerce cities. You need a cite that has a lot of hills to build mines, a few food-producing resources to support the miners, and/or a river running through the area to irrigate farms. Here is a screenshot of one of my production cities. Notice that it includes a banana resource, lots of hills for hammers, and lots of grasslands for farms, plus a nearby source of fresh water. (You can see farmed floodplains to the north)

Originally Posted by Secret

C. GP farm. I have rather the reverse of the Production city here; more than enough people and not enough production to build the Wonders I need. Sometimes, if I have an especially fertile area, I can build Workshops to counter that, but then I feel that it would probably have been better to build a Farm and then be able to work a tile with greater production while still increasing my population. I'm also not sure at what population level I should allow the city to stagnate for the sake of specialists. I also have problems popping Great Engineers...

Any ideas to help me?

The secret to GP farms is to rush buildings, not build them... early in the game, use slavery to sacrifice population for the necessary buildings. There'll be a lot of food handy, so it doesn't take long to recover. Later in the game, you buy the new buildings. Note that it doesn't hurt to save a few heavy hammer tiles until late in the game. You'll be rushing your buildings anyways, but a few turns with citizens moved from specialists to the hammer tiles can reduce your rush costs.

You might also want to consider using Caste System: you don't need to build buildings to get unlimited access to Artists, Scientists, or Merchants... but those buildings come in handy anyways. Engineers are always problematic, since you only can have them when you have: forges, factories, and the Iron Works (which you wouldn't want to build in your GP farm anyways...) so if you might want to consider building some engineering wonders in your GP farm.

As for at what population level to start running specialists: when you reach your happiness cap. Any citizen after that will be an unproductive rioter anyways, so that's a good point to go to ZPG.

Here's an example of a GP Farm. It's not an excellent GP farm, but it is pretty good. You can barely see that I have two Lumbermilled Forests remaining. It was once heavily wooded, but I chopped most of the trees to help rush most of the necessary buildings.

It might've become a production city, but I had three much better ones already either founded or located, so I opted to make it a GP farm. My first candidate for a GP farm became my chief Science City.

[jayron32]

Originally Posted by Secret

I'm just beginning to specialize, and I'm having some serious concerns- some of which have to do with "overspecialization".

A. Commerce city. This one requires a significant amount of production, due to all the money/research buildings that can be built. It's very hard, short of a gold mine, to get production and commerce in the same vicinity. I also have the problem of not knowing when I should halt city growth and start Working cottages.

The trick to any of these is to have MOSTLY grasslands/rivers. A good commerce city has at least 1-2 hills or plains or metal resources to boost production. Also, Universal Sufferage helps GREATLY since a) you can gold-rush a building and b) towns = hammers.

B. Production City. I've tried this, but in the most production-rich areas there's generally very little food. When my city grows to size two, that's generally it, because I don't have enough food on a single available tile to support another population point. The tiny size of the city prevents me from harvesting the available production.

Again, the trick here is to include a few river/grassland OR food resources here. Sheep often show up on hills. Cows/plains makes a great combo as well. You don't want ALL hills. You still need some food to support the hills.

C. GP farm. I have rather the reverse of the Production city here; more than enough people and not enough production to build the Wonders I need. Sometimes, if I have an especially fertile area, I can build Workshops to counter that, but then I feel that it would probably have been better to build a Farm and then be able to work a tile with greater production while still increasing my population. I'm also not sure at what population level I should allow the city to stagnate for the sake of specialists. I also have problems popping Great Engineers...

Any ideas to help me?

In the GP farm, the ONLY buildings you need are a) health buildings (grocer, aqueduct, granary, hospital, etc.) b) theater, and c) Globe Theater. Wonders are extra if you can get them (usually rushed if needed. Chop rush some early wonders if you can get them). Farm EVERYTHING. The idea here is you are ONLY looking to support a large specialist population. Engineers are ALWAYS a problem, but the game does this on Puporse: THey are the MOST powerful specialist. GP farms are most useful for producing scientists or artists (esp. when running Caste System). Again, if you don't have ANY hammer producing squares here, then you can pop-rush (with slavery) or gold-rush (with Universal Sufferage). Pop-rushing here is easy, since you will often be running enough food to raise a population point every 2-3 turns.

[cabert]

very impressive production city darkfyre

as for GP Farm, you can't have all wonders built there unless you have only GE walking around (gift from gods ?)
But you can build a few things through chopping and pop rushing (early) then through $-rushing.
My advice is to chop a forge when available (allowing one engineer and giving bonus for rushing after that), to build (pop rush?) a granary asap too, and po rushing everything you need (market, library, ...). For bigger build like globe theater (do you really need it?), you'll need forest to chop, and production specialists. Ankor wat with caste system = good producing machine with priests.

[jayron32]

the globe theater means you NEVER have to worry about in the GP farm. It means that a) you can pass over all of the happiness buildings (market, temple, colloseum, etc.) and b) you never waste any specialists. Even with all of the happiness buildings, you often hit a wall around 25-26 population. With globe theater, you can run a GP farm with 30+ population easily.

That being said, I _have_ run a GP farm without it, but it is usually when I run a hybrid "science/GP farm" with Great Library. In that case, I usually have Oxford instead of the Globe Theater in that city.

[cabert]

Originally Posted by jayron32

the globe theater means you NEVER have to worry about in the GP farm. It means that a) you can pass over all of the happiness buildings (market, temple, colloseum, etc.) and b) you never waste any specialists. Even with all of the happiness buildings, you often hit a wall around 25-26 population. With globe theater, you can run a GP farm with 30+ population easily.

i know that, but i never had a city this big and rushing wonders is very expensive (for the same hammers, you pay double people/cash)

That being said, I _have_ run a GP farm without it, but it is usually when I run a hybrid "science/GP farm" with Great Library. In that case, I usually have Oxford instead of the Globe Theater in that city.

i mostly have globe theater + national epic, but then it lacks oxford or wall street which could be quite handy
and rushing a few temples isn't quite as expensive as globe theater

[Paeanblack]

Keep in mind that putting the Globe Theater into a GP farm wastes its biggest benefit: no downside to whipping. If you put the Globe into a city with 3-4 flood plains and/or a food resource, you can crack the whip basically every turn. If you know another way to get 40+ hammers/turn in a city before 1AD, I'd love to hear it.

Personally, I'd rather have about 30-50 more catapults, 30-50 more macemen, and 30-50 more cavalry than a couple extra great people. A large army can capture more wonders than great engineers can build and demand more tribute than great merchants can earn.

[jayron32]

Originally Posted by Paeanblack

Keep in mind that putting the Globe Theater into a GP farm wastes its biggest benefit: no downside to whipping. If you put the Globe into a city with 3-4 flood plains and/or a food resource, you can crack the whip basically every turn. If you know another way to get 40+ hammers/turn in a city before 1AD, I'd love to hear it.

Personally, I'd rather have about 30-50 more catapults, 30-50 more macemen, and 30-50 more cavalry than a couple extra great people. A large army can capture more wonders than great engineers can build and demand more tribute than great merchants can earn.

It depends on what victory you are going for. In a cultural victory, the Great Artists come in very handy. In that case, you only need enough troops to effectively defend. Since captured wonders don't directly add to culture, they do little good (unless you capture, say, sistine chapel)

In a Space Race victory, it can be much more cost-effective to run GL and lots of Scientists and GP-Scientists and race through the tech tree. Capturing cities can result in more commerce (=more research) but for non-warmongers this can be tedious and time consuming. Its much more efficient to keep pumping out great scientists, and running them in a city with GL and Oxford.... Same result, less effort.

Even for warmongers, a more advanced army (via higher tech rates) can be more effective than a backwards, but large, army. A few tanks can plow through riflemen much better than a ton of riflemen can against entrenched mechanized infantry.

[jimbob27]

I find I tend to build most buildings in most cities.

I specialise my cities, but there seems to be a lot of overlap.

Early on, before I start specialising, everywhere gets a barracks because I'm producing axemen and swordsmen to supress the other civs with. All the commerce cities need a forge and factory because theres so many commerce improving buildings to be built. Production cities need grocers and markets for the health and happiness bonuses, and unless I want to run caste system the whole game, the GP farm needs mostly every building to ensure it can run enough specialists.

I find I specialise my tiles, but as far as the production goes, most of my cities tend to end up with all the same stuff.

On most maps there are tons and tons of good production sites near the ice and tundra, but theres also lots of water up there, so a lot of my production cities end up producing commerce from the water tiles when I've reached my maximum number of engineers..... so even they end up with banks and librarys to capitalise of the few coins they produce.

[Instant_Cereal]

I'm not concerned with city specialization. I build my cities up according to the terrain surrounding them and what they need to function. This way my cities are generally well-rounded and most play a role in every aspect. I've played too many MP games where all I had to do was catch the other player off gaurd, take their industrial cities, and boom, their ability to make war came to a screeching halt.