Tips on City Specialization

City specialization is a consistent topic on these boards. I decided today that I would make this thread to show one example of breaking down a map for city specialization. Newer players should find this helpful. Old hands can feel free to chime in and add advice, make improvements on my suggestions, etc.

The first thing that you should do is scout your surroundings. I can't stress enough how important this is!

Once you have a sense of your surroundings, the first thing to do is take note of the resources you have:



Then take note of what the resources give you. Circles here indicate 4+ food tiles. "X"s indicate 3+ hammer tiles. "$"s indicate high commerce tiles. "C"s indicate resources needing calendar (this is important to determine early on). "H"s indicate wine and the need for monarchy (also important to determine early). Note I don't have IW in this game yet so iron is not revealed yet. I can't remember if I have BW and/or AH yet but the message would be the same:



Then it is time to dotmap. The goal here is to collect as many resources as possible, making sure that your cities will have food to grow!



Then the question comes regarding city specialization. What do your cities do best? Here, I suggest the following for newer players (or those wanting to improve their specialization generally as I am trying to do): "X" any tile that when given a basic improvement will produce 3+ hammers (i.e., grassland or plains hill); count the # of tiles that could work a cottage (i.e., grassland, floodplains, and plains if there are high food tiles to support them). Your cities might look like this:









What can I say about these cities specifically? The first three cities will make nice long-term commerce cities working 10+ cottages (or equivalent, such as gems). The bottom ones are coastal, nothing special, but could benefit from the colossus, especially since Darius in this case is financial.

What can I say about this empire generally?

1) There is no clear-cut gpfarm. The 2-fish city can generate specialists early and I would normally convert it to a gpfarm except that the gems and availability of grasslands and a financial leader working coastal tiles all make me feel like this city would be stronger as a commerce city in the long run. Thus for specialists I would probably try and generate GSs for academies for the clear-cut commerce cities as much as possible and then look for a long-term gpfarm in the far north somewhere in uncharted territory.

2) There is no clear-cut production city. Very little production in this empire. Fortunately there are no opponents met thusfar so early on there will be little needs for a lot of production. Once fog-busting is done to control for barbs, can probably get by on low-production for the most part. However, it will be important to look for production cities in the far north as well.

3) With a financial civ and all these cottages, teching will be through the roof. With low production, no nearby opponents I'm thinking the best approach here would be to aim for space or diplomatic victories. Cultural could be hard with no gpfarm and domination/conquest will be tough with such low production. The latter victories could be possible for sure, but I think the terrain is best suited for teching.

4) Normally, I would want to look for production and gpfarm cities (at least 1 of each) asap. The lack of both is disconcerting. However, I am a firm believer in taking what the terrain gives you and in this case it has given a pile of commerce cities. Leveraging this involves teching/fog busting and then pursuing the appropriate victory condition as the game unfolds.

5) With the availability of a number of calendar and wine resources, getting monarchy and calendar earlyish will be important. Taking monarchy off the oracle (chopped probably in the capital) could be a good idea then beelining calendar once worker techs (including IW) are done. Currency/CoL could follow after as the high commerce tiles and cottages could pay the bills in the short term.

Any comments would be appreciated.

I am not one for dotmaps, and never could tell much from a posted game regarding them but I give it a try. Given the leader is Darius this is how I would settle it regardless of tech order.

I have no trouble with any of the cities you sketched out, all look to be good sites and all can be settled fairly early given Darius' good trait combos. In fact he should settle early, to leverage his ORG trait to the max.

To me what is very important on this board is getting 2 early cities settled, ALA Snatty's great post regarding winning on emperor and above in BTS. Cut an AI off by settling the landlocked city directly north of the capital first. Then the northeastern coastal city third although I would settle one tile southwest to completely block the AI, leaving one tile overlap with the second city but claiming the pantation resource (sugar?).. Once culture borders pop, no AI will settle below that unless you delay settling a good long time.

What can I say about this empire generally?

1) There is no clear-cut gpfarm. The 2-fish city can generate specialists early and I would normally convert it to a gpfarm except that the gems and availability of grasslands and a financial leader working coastal tiles all make me feel like this city would be stronger as a commerce city in the long run. Thus for specialists I would probably try and generate GSs for academies for the clear-cut commerce cities as much as possible and then look for a long-term gpfarm in the far north somewhere in uncharted territory.

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I agree with the GP idea. Do the best you can to get a few academies by running a few scientists, and worry about GP farm later. Perhaps an AI capital will offer itself

2) There is no clear-cut production city. Very little production in this empire. Fortunately there are no opponents met thusfar so early on there will be little needs for a lot of production. Once fog-busting is done to control for barbs, can probably get by on low-production for the most part. However, it will be important to look for production cities in the far north as well.

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I would consider the second city to be a watermilled and/or workhouse prodcution city, limiting the forrest chopping here. Cows and Rice with a farmable floodplain. Some mountains but you do not have the work all tiles for a productions city.

Actually the capital looks like a good production city. Darius will have excessive economy becaise of the two traits, so using the capital as a production mega is an idea here. In fact you could start and obsolete wonderspam game, building production through settled prophets and engineers.

Finally the city to the east of the capital may be decent if you build the Maori statues there.

3) With a financial civ and all these cottages, teching will be through the roof. With low production, no nearby opponents I'm thinking the best approach here would be to aim for space or diplomatic victories. Cultural could be hard with no gpfarm and domination/conquest will be tough with such low production. The latter victories could be possible for sure, but I think the terrain is best suited for teching.

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Agree although culture is an option with all those cottages, you'll get a high yield on the culture slider. Also look's like sid's is a decent option here with the rice and seafood. If you start popping wonder in the capital, build the Parthanon in one of the three cities, and get Music first culture is an option. However, I would likely target space and diplo if I were in your shoes.

4) Normally, I would want to look for production and gpfarm cities (at least 1 of each) asap. The lack of both is disconcerting. However, I am a firm believer in taking what the terrain gives you and in this case it has given a pile of commerce cities. Leveraging this involves teching/fog busting and then pursuing the appropriate victory condition as the game unfolds.

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Yep, I agree.

5) With the availability of a number of calendar and wine resources, getting monarchy and calendar earlyish will be important. Taking monarchy off the oracle (chopped probably in the capital) could be a good idea then beelining calendar once worker techs (including IW) are done. Currency/CoL could follow after as the high commerce tiles and cottages could pay the bills in the short term.

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If you could get calander off the oracle (need math right?) that would be better than Monarchy as you get more resources to work. The resources get you the happy faces, eliminating the need to get heritary rule early.

I would go currency/CoL before Monarchy.

But all the best laid plans depend on you nearest neighbors!! Best to see who is out there and where to horses and metals pop. They can alter the production picture fast (or make it worse!!!).

Any comments would be appreciated.

I would consider the second city to be a watermilled and/or workhouse prodcution city, limiting the forrest chopping here. Cows and Rice with a farmable floodplain. Some mountains but you do not have the work all tiles for a productions city.

Actually the capital looks like a good production city. Darius will have excessive economy becaise of the two traits, so using the capital as a production mega is an idea here. In fact you could start and obsolete wonderspam game, building production through settled prophets and engineers.

Finally the city to the east of the capital may be decent if you build the Maori statues there.

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Good call on these. They sound like good options. With the northern city as a production city it could fend off any pesky AI invaders. The Maoi city could handle the naval production needs.

If you could get calander off the oracle (need math right?) that would be better than Monarchy as you get more resources to work. The resources get you the happy faces, eliminating the need to get heritary rule early.

I would go currency/CoL before Monarchy.

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Calendar off the oracle is interesting, very interesting. I was thinking monarchy mainly for helping drive the cap up, but if calendar is doing that then currency and col could come before monarchy, that is true.

One point that I would disagree with is the idea that you dotmap first and then decide how you want to specialize the cities you've placed. Normally I'm considering city specialization as I'm making the dotmap.

I think this is most important with production cities, since they usually have to be carefully placed to maximize their output.

In most cases I'll make up a couple of different dotmaps where I start off trying to accomplish different goals. In one case I'll just try to maximize land coverage/resource acquisition. In another I'll focus on getting the best possible city sites. Another may focus on blocking terrain from a nearby AI. Then I'll decide which is best, or in many cases I'll try to come up with a compromise.

Of course then an AI will go and found a city in a bad place and the whole dotmap goes out the window.

This is a big help. I never totally understood what cities are best to specialize as what. How do you save your dot maps? When i leave the game and load it back the map is gone. Is there a setting I don't know about?

I can't wait to go home and try this. This really helps explain what speciality the city should be. I would love to see a dot map of at least one of each specialty and explain why the speciality was picked. I noticed there was no military or some other special cities.

What is a bureacracy special city?

I know these are newb questions but I'm trying to improve

You said that you were making any 3+ hammer tile with an 'X', but I see a lot of hills in your map that are unmarked...


You might consider prioritizing Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, and Iron Working, in an attempt to find high hammer resources. You're going to need all three early anyways, if you're planning on expanding quickly.

As for tech path, if you can run caste system, then after you get your basic economic techs you could consider beelining for guilds next -- caste system + guild workshops = make your own hill.

futurehermit said:

The first thing that you should do is scout your surroundings. I can't stress enough how important this is!

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Very true, but make use of all the info this scouting provides. The first step is actually setting your goals in the game evaluating the map.

Your plan attempts to make a dot map for land you have by no means claimed and focuses exclusively on fairly long term development. I.e. too early...

What if nearby AI's are warlike and soon DoW on you?
What if nearby AI's box you in?

Plus there is much value in chosing the first few city sites with immidiate benefits in mind:
-Strategic resources hooking
-Blocking AIs
-Exploiting good resources nearby to get an early boost in both and /.



Other than that, designating a GP farm is very high priority.
As is founding most early cities to be commercialy focused so you dont stagnate. In many maps unlike this one there are resources to be worked that really shine if a part of your first 5-6 cities(pre CoL) instead of cottages . But yes calendar is a high priority on this map along with IW.

Production cities are nice, but its always possible to split military unit production between a number of them. In fact unless one wants a wonder spamming capital or a city to quickly finish costly spaceship parts they may not be needed.
Besides, any food decent city that is mostly grassland (especially a riverside one) will make a fine long term production city with enough workshops.

Quite often the best thing to do with a start like this is simply to wait until workshops for any kind of production. Caste System (in BtS) helps in this regard - you can get the equivalent of a grassland/hill tile after Guilds (1-3-0) which should be good enough if you have food to spare. One benefit to this type of map is that you have the commerce to get anywhere you like in the tech tree with a hurry; so if you have antagonistic neighbours, that might be a plan.

Other ideas for early production cities would be Maoi Statues in a slow grower; if you have 7/8 sea tiles, a food resource and one or two land-based hammer tiles, that's usually good enough to be a very nice medieval production city.

I often struggle, on a map like this, to have any classical production - if someone else nearby starts with a 15-20 hammer site (3-4 hills, some food) quite often that's enough to really worry a start like this.

v8_mark said:

I often struggle, on a map like this, to have any classical production - if someone else nearby starts with a 15-20 hammer site (3-4 hills, some food) quite often that's enough to really worry a start like this.

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Agreed my last few games have been similar spots, perfect for cottages but all around lousy production. To make matters worse I always settle a production city first and then a commerce (while blocking land off) and starts like these with no clear early production spot have always caused me grief, waiting till workshops can be a very long wait with an aggressive neighbor.

Thanks for the guide. I find this very educating. I have 1 question and 1 request.

Question: With the new levee, how would you prioritize river city vs coast city ? Do you put more weight on one over the other ?

Request, next time could you do the dot map with color other than light blue ? It is a bit hard to follow the first 3 screenshots (world view) since light blue blends rather well with the background. (Either that or I need a new monitor )

Dragonhawk - I thought the same thing. The blue is not a good choice for the X's and O's. A color that contrasts with the terrain would have been better - bright yellow or red maybe.

Besides that, it's instructive, so thanks for doing a good job with this Futurehermit.

One point that I would disagree with is the idea that you dotmap first and then decide how you want to specialize the cities you've placed. Normally I'm considering city specialization as I'm making the dotmap.

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True, and I do this as well, but this was intended for newer players learning how to specialize cities. Seasoned vets probably do this whole process better than I do

Of course then an AI will go and found a city in a bad place and the whole dotmap goes out the window.

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VERY true!

What is a bureacracy special city

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I just put that flag there to indicate that the capital was indeed a good bureaucracy capital. Bureaucracy gives 50% bonuses to commerce and production in the capital and this capital has a good mix of both.

You said that you were making any 3+ hammer tile with an 'X', but I see a lot of hills in your map that are unmarked...


You might consider prioritizing Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, and Iron Working, in an attempt to find high hammer resources. You're going to need all three early anyways, if you're planning on expanding quickly.

Click to expand...

Yes, sorry I missed some hills. I was doing it kind of quickly and after I realized that there was no good production city I de-prioritized "x"ing all the production tiles. Horses/Copper/Iron could change things of course, but basically what happened was last night I was practicing my city specialization and wanted to play a financial leader that started with hunting for good early scouting so I picked Darius. Once I finished dotmapping I didn't want to play the game out, but I felt I did all that work so I figured I would just post it here in case some people found it helpful.

I will try and do another one to add to this thread that fixes some of the problems with this first attempt.

Your plan attempts to make a dot map for land you have by no means claimed and focuses exclusively on fairly long term development. I.e. too early

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This is, of course, true. In the early game specialization is not a huge issue and other priorities are a big deal, especially if you have aggressive neighbours (in this case no one was met yet so I could be isolated). However, the cities you found early in the game often end up being your strong cities later in the game so planning ahead can be important as well, depending on what you want to do. For this thread I just wanted to focus on long-term city specialization as other threads cover other topics such as warfare and the like.

Question: With the new levee, how would you prioritize river city vs coast city ? Do you put more weight on one over the other ?

Request, next time could you do the dot map with color other than light blue ? It is a bit hard to follow the first 3 screenshots (world view) since light blue blends rather well with the background. (Either that or I need a new monitor )

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If the choice is between settling one tile away from the coast or on a river I will settle on the coast. I HATE having one-food coastal tiles even more than having a mountain or a desert tile It's a quirky thing I have, maybe because the AI LOVES to settle one tile away from the coast. Drives me crazy.

To everyone: Sorry about the blue. I realized while doing it that the blue was hard to see, but I was just doing a quick job and had picked Darius already and posting this hear was a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing.

I'll try and do another one with say Russia or Japan with a nice red labelling system and will try and get a map that has a gpfarm, production city, and commerce city.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

Ok, I've enjoyed doing this so far and hope you guys are enjoying this thread as well. Here is another attempt, this time incorporating your feedback.

First, SCOUT!

Second, check out the resources around your empire:







Then do your Xs and Os and $s. Each tile capable of 3+ hammers with a basic improvement gets an X. Every tile capable of 4+ food with a basic improvement gets an O (I normally include floodplains in my own games, but did NOT in this example). Every tile with 4+ commerce with a basic improvement gets a $:







Then look for your best OOO, XXX, and $$$ concentrations:







It's important that your "best" ones aren't miles and miles away from your capital because you'll never settle them anyways!

From these concentrations, make your first 3 specialized cities: commerce, gpfarm, and production:

GpFarm:



I put "F"s in for where you can do pre-chain-irrigation farming to support your food drive.

Commerce:



I counted out the cottages, looks nice.

Production:



Tough call on this one, but this got the most "X"s with enough food to work most of them.

However, there was a gap between my capital and the production city, so another city would be needed to fill the gap. It would also make a nice production city with a mix of farms and mines, which is good with opponents nearby I'll need to be producing military:



Tada! You're done!



p.s., I didn't dotmap out everything this time. If you followed this far, you can do it!

p.p.s., This city placement reserves a large chunk of the continent for back-filling as the 3 AI opponents are to the North. Hannibal is really close (his 2nd city partially overlaps the commerce city), Sitting Bull is North of the two production cities, and Joao is far to the North. How to play this game out? I would suggest befriending Joao and taking out the other two, Hannibal first, Sitting Bull maybe after his earlier periods of strength (i.e., gunpowder era). After that is up to you.

p.p.s, I'll attach the save in case anyone wants to check it out.

Ctrl+B please!

EDIT: Looks like I posted a bit late ... this post was typed without knowledge of the update.

Scaphism said:

Dragonhawk - I thought the same thing. The blue is not a good choice for the X's and O's. A color that contrasts with the terrain would have been better - bright yellow or red maybe.

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When I make dotmaps, I typically make production ticks in red, food ticks in white and commerce ticks in yellow. (I also use Photoshop or paint ... I don't particularly care for the built-in stuff.)

FYI, my ticks are X's and half X's ( like a backslash: \ ). Great resources (like Copper, Iron, Pig, Gold, etc.) get an 'X', and so-so resources (like Cows, Silk, Rice, Wine, etc.) get a '\'. Coincidentally, hybrid resources (like Plains Cow) are a two-colored 'X' consisting of different color '\' and '/' bars.

v8_mark said:

Quite often the best thing to do with a start like this is simply to wait until workshops for any kind of production. Caste System (in BtS) helps in this regard - you can get the equivalent of a grassland/hill tile after Guilds (1-3-0) which should be good enough if you have food to spare. One benefit to this type of map is that you have the commerce to get anywhere you like in the tech tree with a hurry; so if you have antagonistic neighbours, that might be a plan.

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I really hate low production starts. Luckily, it doesn't look like there are any close neighbors spying for an easy kill.

It also looks like this start has enough food-rich areas that whipping out a quick force of Chariots or Axes could be a viable strategy for securing a neighbor's production-rich capital (should one appear, of course).

Porphyrius said:

I.e. too early...

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Though I'm always on the lookout evaluating the land, dotmaps aren't very helpful until after some/all of the strategic resources are revealed. This may look like a production-deprived start, but when Copper, Iron and/or Horses show up, the whole dotmap could change drastically -- especially if they appear near the clump of hills E/NE of the capital around the Cows.


I'm not sure if this helps (or if it's just a shameless self-promotion), but here's my attempt at explaining city specialization.

Are you fogbusting to prevent barbarian cities? Doesn't that cost a lot in unit maintenance, time, and production? How is it best approached?

Although I prefer just looking at a map of the resources and terrain without the Xs, Os, and $s, I believe it will be a great help to the newer players. My congrats to futurehermit.

Validator: I believe you are correct in saying that cities should be placed based on their specialization. Another thing you pointed out: making multiple dotmaps. I've always wandered how best to approach them. You said that you make multiple dotmaps, and then decide on one, or, in a sense, "merge" them.

How I approach them is to lay down the best cities first (based on specialization). Then, I insert fillers if there are relatively large areas unsettled. Most of the time they are weak production or commerce cities. Also, if there is an AI that can be blocked, I usually lay down those cities first (for which I focus less on specialization and more on just blocking the AI). Is there a way I could improve? When is it best to create your dotmap? I usually do so once I've discovered Bronze Working, but that leaves many resources hidden.

Also, I read somewhere that the resource indicator icons could be made smaller. Is this true? And, if so, how?

This could explain some of my weakness. I often go for high production sites, this tends to hurt my long-term gold output. Thanks!!

Re: GP farms. Are they really that needed, or is it just something you like to include?

DaveMcW said:

Ctrl+B please!

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What does it do?

Are you fogbusting to prevent barbarian cities? Doesn't that cost a lot in unit maintenance, time, and production? How is it best approached?

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They're annoying if they occur, because 19/20 times they're in the wrong place. I usually raze them with my first half-dozen military units.

Re: GP farms. Are they really that needed, or is it just something you like to include?

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At the minimum you should have one dedicated gpfarm that gets the national epic and runs specialists. Great people can do a LOT for you and you should be doing your best to generate a bunch of them over the course of the game. You can of course win without generating any, but think of how much sooner you could have won if you had generated 20 great people.

General comment: There is no "best" way to go about the business of dotmapping and city specialization. I'm just trying to give some general guidelines/tips here to help newer players (noble and below primarily). Experienced players should already know what I'm talking about here and can probably improve on what I am saying. I've just seen a lot of newer players posting city specialization threads recently and so thought to post this since I'm trying to improve my specialization as well.

How do you save the dot maps? Mine always disappear when I reload a saved game. Maybe it only happens in vanilla.