what city size do you reach?

[kaskavel]

A common dillema I have is when a city reaches maximum tile exploitation, lets say for the sake of simplicity size 20. How do you handle the future of this town?
1. Regardless of the final decided size, when cities border each other I can switch tiles between them. By switching plains, tundras, hills, some resources tiles (like whales, sugar and bananas) and irrigated deserts (only when agricultural) I may be able to choose if my cities are going to have an odd or an even number of food. How do you handle that? Do you stabilize the city or do you leave an extra food to be produced? And if you do, do you leave the town to go back and forth from +1 to -1, do you occasinaly build a worker, do you leave it at +3 and occasionaly build a settler? What do you prefer as a city's "final" food status? This is regardless various strategy choices, I may have split the available shields of the cities at 51 and 55, so as to build bombers and mech infantry respectively, but I may still have options about odd and even numbers. I also tend to occasionaly build a settler in cities that have +3 or +4 food even without irrigated squares (all grasslands and water with one food bonus) when I think specialists are not the favored option
2. Lets say a city has reached max capacity, for example 20. Lets also assume it has 40 food with a lot of mined grasslands and plains (or it has 50 food with a lot of irrigated squares, the dillema is the same). Every tile after size 20 that becomes irrigated removes 2 shields plus factory/plant bonuses and offers one specialist. If it is not seriously corrupted, decisions are not always simple. I think that cities inside first ring need to keep population at minimum, cities heavily corrupted obviously need full irrigation, but communist cities and moderate corrupted cities often give me too much headache to micromanage and decide. How do you handle this?
Obviously, this is a past-railroad thread.

 

[justanick]

A common dillema I have is when a city reaches maximum tile exploitation, lets say for the sake of simplicity size 20. How do you handle the future of this town?

If research is the priority, then going full or near full irrigation for lots of scientists experts is the way to go. But a more balanced approach can also make sense, arguably in larger amount of circumstances.

And if you do, do you leave the town to go back and forth from +1 to -1,

Yes, that is a reasonably choice.

and occasionaly build a settler?

No, this seems a poor choice, metros should avoid building settlers or even workers.

One alternative is to draft TOW Infantry. It takes exactly 20 turns to offset one point of draft-unhappiness, which fits reasonably well with growth taking 30 turns. The TOW Infantry can be disbanded for 30 shields in a city that needs those shields. So that is the better version of whipping.

In the short run this can be done more than once every 20 turns, but if you have 10 unhappiness from drafting, then it takes 200 turns to fully subside, one unhappiness every 20 turns.

I may have split the available shields of the cities at 51 and 55, so as to build bombers and mech infantry respectively,

Fitting the production in such a way is a standard practice. As is leaving room for error in form of pollution. Another option is to build wealth in the metros with the higher production. This takes away the risk of poor fitting production. This may lead to the effect, that only cities with relatively low production end up producing something else than wealth.

Wealth is also a measure of whether factories etc. are worth it. If a factory increases production by only 6 shields and thus 3 gtp from wealth, then it nets zero and is a very poor investment in those terms.

2. Lets say a city has reached max capacity, for example 20. Lets also assume it has 40 food with a lot of mined grasslands and plains (or it has 50 food with a lot of irrigated squares, the dillema is the same). Every tile after size 20 that becomes irrigated removes 2 shields plus factory/plant bonuses and offers one specialist. If it is not seriously corrupted, decisions are not always simple. I think that cities inside first ring need to keep population at minimum,

Yes, that seems reasonable. But if production is set to wealth, then full irrigation even at zero corruption can be the better option, albeit a less flexible one.

but communist cities and moderate corrupted cities often give me too much headache to micromanage and decide. How do you handle this?

If corruption is less than maximum corruption, and thus likely less than 70%, then policemen are the way to go. Remine or reirrigate tiles till the last policemen reduces both waste and corruption by one. So corruption decides the amount of specialists and after that there is either no corrupt commerce or no corrupt shield left. Or both are zero, but such an exact fit is unlikely.

PS: Building Mech Infantry seems like a idea when you can build Modern Armour instead. It has 88.89% the defence value but twice the attack value. And once promoted to elite it even is a better defender than a veteran Mech Infantry.

 

[kaskavel]

Oh, this policemen thing is interesting. It seems like this procudure removes X shields from production and adds approximately 2X in commerce right? Or did I experiment witth a specific city with specific buildings and results typicaly tend to differ from city to city?
Also...how does this procudure work optimaly? We have courthouses and police stations built already?

 

[justanick]

We have courthouses and police stations built already?

That is possible, but not always necessary. In communism you can skip the police stations, they are not meant for communism. Policemen however are.

If corruption is neither too high nor too low, then policemen do shine. They turn one corrupted shield into an uncorrupted one and one corrupted commerce into an uncorrupted one. This enables you to eliminate corruption. Since multiplier buildings such as factories and universities apply after corruption has been calculated the net effect tends to be higher: In the late industrial age usually by a factor 2, and in the modern age usually by a factor 2.5. That depends on your buildings.