city screen. default focus

[maddskillz]

I have moved up to king now but have a question on how I should set my city focus ... I always use default unless I need some cash or international games come around. I assume this allocates my specialists too. I do fine and still manage to win, but I think this could be holding me back from moving up to emperor ... am I missing the boat here? Also how or can you fix unemployment?

Thanks

 

[SULOMON]

You should manually manage and lock down your citizens and specialists. Generally early and mid game you should focus on growing your cities.

 

[inthesomeday]

Lock every tile and specialist you want to use at all times; don't rely on the poor AI to dictate the tiles your cities are working. Focus on the tiles you need, compare yields, micro manage to the absolute for every construction project or period of growth; poorly chosen tiles can mean the difference between a great city spot and an awful blocker city in a questionable strategic position, the difference between getting the wonder and not doing so.
The usage of governor dictation of tile usage-- production focus, growth focus, etc-- is ideally only for where your citizens will go immediately upon being born; typically, as good worked on the first turn of a citizen's birth does not count towards the next citizen's birth, production focus is ideal for growth, with new citizens being manually locked the turn after birth.

 

[Mesodius]

Like others, I manually manage tile use and specialists. You're really hindering yourself if you do not.

 

[Illianor123]

Manage your specialists as well. Lock science specialists, and guilds specialists when you can.

 

[Primacide]

I think micromanaging citizens sounds intimidating to many players, but if you want the easy version: if there is a four food tile available, lock it down. If there is a science slot, lock it down.

To play at immortal or above effectively, you will have to do more than this, but if you just do those two things, it will improve your game greatly.

 

[maddskillz]

Thanks for all the input! I will start locking down my science slots and guild slots for specialists.

 

[beetle]

Locking down science and guild slots is something I do now that I am paying more attention and found that the default governor was not doing as good a job as I though.

if there is a four food tile available, lock it down.

This kind of rule vexes me. I cannot grow my cities like I want, but do I really want to lock down four food tiles at the expense of three-food-six-yield tiles?

 

[Browd]

As with all "rules" they are just "rules of thumb" -- gotta exercise judgment based on circumstances.

First of all, you can find some tiles in the early game that will provide 6 yield -- for example, a grassland stone tile with quarry and the Stone Circles pantheon will yield 2 food, 2 hammers and 2 faith -- but they aren't all that common. And those yielding 3 food and 3 other-kind-of-yield are pretty rare -- one that comes to mind is a post-Civil Service farmed riverside desert hill in a Petra city, which will give you 3 food and 3 hammers (and 1 faith with desert folklore!). No doubt we can think of some others, but it feels like that particular combination is fairly rare.

In any event, when it does occur, the decision whether to prioritize a 3-food/3-other-yield tile over a 4-food tile should (in my view) depend on what the other 3 yields are:

• 3 gold? Eh, probably not -- gold is pretty plentiful in the game, and the extra food from a riverside grassland farm (post-Civil Service, 4 food) or a jungle/bananas/granary tile (also 4 food) is probably more important.
  
  
• 3 culture? A bit more compelling, but do I need the culture right now, or the extra early growth?
  
  
• 3 hammers (like my Petra tile above)? Yes, please -- I'll take a 3 food, 3 hammer tile every day of the week. (Which is just a personal rule of thumb, of course.)

 

[Chum]

A forested deer camp will be 6 yield after economics too, 3 food, 2 production, and a gold.

But really, the amount of 4 food tiles you have shouldn't really be a problem. Basically the advice is valid from Civil Service until you get to Fertilizer. Obviously working non freshwater grassland farms on turn 250 isn't your main priority, but growing in the early game is. By working all your freshwater grassland farms early enough (civil service onwards), you will have enough population to work all the specialist and other tiles you want.

4 food feeds 2 citizens. You should be working all of them that you possibly can early on in the game unless your cities are ridiculous, like having a 4 river confluence or something over flood plains and that's all there are, in which case, well, good luck with the production piece.

 

[phillipwyllie]

6 with a flood-plain wheat tile in a granary city probably should be worked all the time.

 

[meatpardle]

With regards to specialists, as soon as you build your first building/wonder that generates a specialist slot then go into the city screen and check the manual specialist option. I always deactivate my least valued worked tile to create an unemployed person before assigning a specialist, I find it easier to track what I'm losing from my yield rather than just clicking the specialist slot and having the governor choose which tile to take a person from. Play around with the results of deactivating different worked tiles and what you get in return from the specialist slot.

Generally I will fill all my specialist slots except the Great Merchant ones; this brings the issue of how you support the specialists, so I will build any wonders that have specialist slots in my capital and support them using internal trade routes from other cities. It's a pretty simple system but it works for me.

I've always struggled with optimal yield management, I just don't understand enough about the vaules of each yield. I usually try to start with a ratio of 1.5 hammers to 1 food in my cities; this is probably completely wrong but it's a hangover from early civs and I like to try and get through the early build order asap. Once the scouts/shrine/granary/library and settler/archer units are nailed I'll release the hounds and switch to focusing on food.

As Browd says it's highly situational and not as simple food vs hammers - you may have luxuries that generate gold or pantheons that give culture or faith that mean you might want to work a tile other than those which give maximum food. Most will say food always win but there will be situations where even if only temporarily you wan to switch from maximum food to generate more money/faith/culture.

Important thing to remember is that, as with specialists, as soon as a city grows and gets another working citizen go into the city screen and allocate to the tile you want worked. Do not trust the governor!

Not sure what you mean about unemployment - you should only really have unemployment when your city is so large that there aren't any workable tiles or specialist slots free when your city grows. If you have severe happiness issues and want to prevent a city growing you could unassign food tiles and take your yield down to 0, and take the 1 hammer for each unemployed person. Just remember to go back and re-assign the citizens to working tiles when you're happy for the city to grow

 

[inthesomeday]

What if the poor choices made by the governor are actually a brilliant and under the radar implementation of a corruption mechanic? I notice the governor works gold tiles a lot, usually over production tiles... Ulterior motives?

 

[beetle]

Assuming Freedom (so SoL, Tier 1 food, Tier 2 happy), am I better off working a mine or a production specialist? I have been working mines unless struggling to keep happy out the red. For Order and even Autocracy, I work the mine.

I notice the governor works gold tiles a lot, usually over production tiles...

Managing better than the Default governor is something I have really struggled with. So many people claim they do better, many of the same people who clearly play better than I do, but there are so few concrete examples. And there are plenty of example of people micro-managing badly, so I maybe I am being overly cautious.

Based on this thread, I plan to experiment with locking down more early 4-food plots and see if that feels like it makes a noticeable difference for me.

But to your point, the Default governor seems to be oriented to maximizing total raw yield, which seems very sensible to me. I have been trying to just correct mistakes the Default governor makes instead of locking down every tile. I agree with its choices 90% of the time. So I have to wonder if my judgment is bad! The only thing I find it doing wrong consistently is not working a faith mountain. Yes, the default governor values gold more than I do, but not terribly so I do not feel, so I tend to live with it.

 

[inthesomeday]

The governor can be smart, when founding cities into unhappiness it knows to work production rather than food. But working a 4 food tile instead of a 2 food, 3 gold tile means a 1-2 turn difference in population growth. Population is science, and allowing your population to suffer as many times as it grows equals several turns on many techs throughout the game. It might mean the difference between getting Hubble, it might mean missing out on your last spaceship part by one turn.

In the mid game when two units of food are less noticeable in terms of how many turns difference between growth, working production is better, and in the late game with 200 hammer projects working gold is more noticeable.