A Guide to City Specialization and Land Improvements

[Excl]

Well, I should have been more clear, thanks for pointing this out: the point is you could move a specialist to work a tile to grow, but then when you grow you won't be able to move him back, if all you have is 2f tiles left.

Well you could put your specialist back, you will just run a food deficit ... which is fine. Like I'm saying, your city max size is apparently 12. So if you pop up to 13 by switching off a specialist for a few turns, then you will have an extra square worked for a few turns, until you pop back down to 12. (Which is where you should be) You don't really lose anything, because you are working an extra square. If anything, you gain an extra hammer or commerce for a few turns before you go back to 12.

My point was just that growing for the sake of growing isn't necessarily optimal. You are correct that you can run deficit food for awhile, and this might be a good idea in some situations.

Also, I didn't mention slavery, which may be a good reason to grow beyond health limits too, or even max grow in your GP farm for awhile, removing ALL specialists. It depends highly on the situation, and merely saying "don't worry about health," is imprecise.

I don't think anyone is advocating growing for the sake of growing. You're right about slavery though, that's the only time you would do it. Otherwise, you should grow to as large as your city can sustain normally.

When they say "don't worry about health", they are implying that you don't necessarily have to worry about the health limit (as I was suggesting in the original article). Unlike happiness, it's okay to breach your health limit, as all it does as start to eat away at your food surplus. At some point you are going to reach a point of diminishing returns and be unable to grow anyway. It's still important to add health buildings though, as you want to maximize the point in the population where this occurs ... especially for the GP farm.

 

[RemoWilliams]

Well you could put your specialist back, you will just run a food deficit ... which is fine. Like I'm saying, your city max size is apparently 12. So if you pop up to 13 by switching off a specialist for a few turns, then you will have an extra square worked for a few turns, until you pop back down to 12. (Which is where you should be) You don't really lose anything, because you are working an extra square. If anything, you gain an extra hammer or commerce for a few turns before you go back to 12.

Well, okay, but don't forget to factor the following: when your city loses a pop point due to starvation, the granary is set to *zero*, not half, so you have to grow all the way back up.

Also, after it loses a pop point, if you are still in deficit food, you will lose *another* pop on the very next turn.

It still may be the best thing to not worry about it and grow max..... I think we'd have to do some math to prove it though. It goes without saying that if you are using this strategy, the governor isn't going to work out. The governor will do whatever it can to avoid a food shortage, so if you want to run one, you'll have to do it manually.

Anyway, if you have the slavery civic and you are trying to rush a building, all this goes out the window. In fact, you don't even have to worry about happiness cap at that point.

 

[leo84]

nice guide... great job...

 

[Codeman]

very helpful, both the article and all the additional feedback. thanks everyone.

 

[Paeanblack]

Well considering that if you build a farm on a grassland, and a cottage on a plain ... it will work out exactly the same as cottage on grassland, and farm on a plain. I'm not sure of the micro-advantages though.

There is a big difference in the golden-age bonus. Grass Town + Plains Farm will get two bonus hammers, but Grass Farm + Plains Town will only get one.

This can make a big difference for a space-race golden age.

 

[Paeanblack]

The only way you can afford that would be if you have a holy city with Wall street and a religion that is spread to quite a large number of cities. You would also have to have a low number of cities to avoid maintanence costs, and a small military to avoid upkeep on them as well. It takes some time to get up to that point (where you can afford to run 100% science, and not be in the red.) In the meantime, you're leaving yourself wide open for an invasion, with your small military numbers.

A large military will usually earn more money than it costs in upkeep. Taking cities and/or pillaging is obviously very lucrative, but even during peace time you can constantly demand money from the other Civs.

It's not that hard to constantly demand several hundred gold from some civ every turn or every other turn if you have a big stick.

 

[VirusMonster]

So, is letting my city size grow a good thing despite unhappiness?

Say I am about to hook up some luxury resources, and my size grows beyond its happiness limit. Do you I get any extra penalty apart from having to pay 2 food per the new guy? If so, I would rather have the guy out and be waiting for the luxury resource rather than staying at low pop?! Does this logic make sense to you?

 

[Excl]

So, is letting my city size grow a good thing despite unhappiness?

Say I am about to hook up some luxury resources, and my size grows beyond its happiness limit. Do you I get any extra penalty apart from having to pay 2 food per the new guy? If so, I would rather have the guy out and be waiting for the luxury resource rather than staying at low pop?! Does this logic make sense to you?

Well, if you know you are about to bump up happiness with another resource in the very near future, it probably won't hurt you. This was more of a GENERAL guide, and there's no way I can cover every single possible combination.

But let's go over your case. If you are to the point where you're about to go up one pop point, and you are about 7 turns away from linking up a resource ... then what? Well, going up in Pop with unhappiness means you are basically getting a useless square, but depending on your food situation, you may still be growing. Unless you plan to keep growing very quickly past, your current level, (ie: You're at lvl 7, but want to grow to 10 ... and want the extra food to get to the next level quicker) there's no real benefit for doing this. Plus you better have more happiness resources in the queue for the next bump, or your back to the same problem. It also might effect the chance of rebellion if you are in an unhappy state ... not sure about this.

However, if you hit the growth brakes right before you pop-up, then you will get an increase in production and commerce as you switch from food squares to hammer/commerce squares. You could also have a scientist or other specialist for a few turns. As soon as the resource becomes available, you take the growth brakes off and pop-up to your next population level on the very next turn.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Say I am about to hook up some luxury resources, and my size grows beyond its happiness limit. Do you I get any extra penalty apart from having to pay 2 food per the new guy? If so, I would rather have the guy out and be waiting for the luxury resource rather than staying at low pop?! Does this logic make sense to you?

All you are paying is the opportunity cost (what you could do with the food instead of throwing it away). Assuming some reasonably flexible city planning, 1F = 1P, so you are losing a handful of hammers (or the corresponding amount of commerce).

 

[Possum Stu]

I have a beginner's question about cottages built beyond a city's fat target. I understand mining a resource or building a camp beyond a city's radius will give the culture access to that resource.

But it wouldn't have occurred to me to build a cottage on spaces between my cities's maximum "fat target" area because they can't be worked, and thus presumably won't grow. Yet on a tour of an AI's continent I saw many cottages spread across the land, beyond the city limits. And I'm pretty sure some of them had grown bigger than cottages.

Does a cottage built beyond a city grow? Does it add to a culture's overall commerce? Or is building one a waste of a worker's time?

 

[Beamup]

A cottage outside any city's fat cross is useless. It will never grow and never produce any commerce, so it is indeed a waste in general.

Now, it can be possible to prebuild cottages where a city will be in the future, or to build cottages for a city that is later razed (hamlets/villages/towns outside a fat cross can only occur this way). So occasionally it can have value.

 

[gcp2006]

Just started reading your guide. It's already helping,

Thanks

 

[Irthor]

To improve, you will want to get a farm or two going to get the population up. Then start a mine or two, and alternate back and forth as you grow.

Im sorry but i am a bit of a newbie still. What do you mean alertnate back and forth?

Thanks very much

Irthor

 

[RKR]

Im sorry but i am a bit of a newbie still. What do you mean alertnate back and forth?

Thanks very much

Irthor

He means that say you have a city population 2 (for simplicity) and you have 4 developed tiles, 2 farms and 2 mines. You click on the city and take over tile management and tell the citizens to work the farms or work the mines.

 

[NuWorld]

To improve, you will want to get a farm or two going to get the population up. Then start a mine or two, and alternate back and forth as you grow.

Im sorry but i am a bit of a newbie still. What do you mean alertnate back and forth?

For instance, you found a new city, coastal. You have a fish resource (3 food/2 coins), you need to build workboat to hurry your growth. There is a forrested hill nearby (3 hammers) and some other tiles, but this has highest production capacity. What you do is, you work that hill to produce workboat ASAP, although you're not growing. When workboat is done you use it to improve the fish resource to 5-food tile. Now you switch the working tile from forrested hill to fish, so you'll grow very fast. Now, you won't be producing much, but generally, this is the fastest way for young cities to develop. This is often done if you quickly want to emphasize growth or production or commerce for some important goal - aka micromanaging

 

[FatNoob]

National Wonders should go to your best production cities, and are usually better when paired up. National Epic and West Point are great to have together, as you will turn out some elite units very quickly.

(emphasis added)

Heroic Epic (not National)... right?

or am I missing something?

(Since this is destined for War Academy, I thought I'd ask...

 

[wioneo]

I have a question about coasts. What type of city would you build on a coastline? I usually play continent maps and have to build ships. Up until now I haven't had specialized cities, but I just started I think that a commerce city would be best on the coast. A production city would waist half of its tiles. I guess that a GP farm would work, but in commerce or farm cities, it would take forever to build transports.

 

[floppymoose]

My coastal town is a commerce city that has Collossus and Great Lighthouse, and later has merchants when I get to caste system. I use it to make the occassional GP Merchant, which I then feed to my capital to aid it's growth (which aids it's GP production, which is important since it's my main GP farm).

Of course if my capital IS on the coast then these cities are one and the same, and I'm just switching to merchant specialists after getting caste system for a while until I've made a Great Merchant or two.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I have a question about coasts. What type of city would you build on a coastline? I usually play continent maps and have to build ships. Up until now I haven't had specialized cities, but I just started I think that a commerce city would be best on the coast. A production city would waist half of its tiles. I guess that a GP farm would work, but in commerce or farm cities, it would take forever to build transports.

Commerce cities are a natural fit (coastal tiles give commerce, the harbor improves the commerce yield of trade routes).

If you are anticipating naval action, you will likely want a decent production city somewhere on the coast (Ideal setting: food in all the water tiles, resources on green land).

 

[Calavente]

EDIT : some clarifications
-------------------------
My question makes me feel like a noob, but as I never seems to need ultra specialised cities at the level I play (prince), I may be a noob at specialised cities.
It would seems to me that even in a GP farm you would need some production :

In a GP farm you would want to produce buildings; normaly at least : granary + health and happy structure ... it helps that some of those (grocer-market, temple-cathedrale) also give you some specialist slots(merchant, priests).

You also need to produce buildings with the only aim of producing specialists slots:
scientist : library, univeristy; engineers : forge, and factory; artists : theatre, other (I do not remember). You need a lot of slots if you want to micromanage or have a word in the GP you want produced (thats why I included factory and others). You will need these building as wonder produced slots are limited by... wonders. So only one per map, so if you plan only on those, every such wonder-race lost is a specialist slot lost.

So here you have many (3+) slots for every kind of specialists, and with a miraculous by-product some of the buildings are usefull economically speaking : multipliers for science, for gold and for hammers.

Of course you can whipp all these buildings , but it seems to me that it can be a little counterproductive to whipp so much, as it represents a enormous number of population sacrified (I do not want to do the math but even with the pop-rush bug and the good ressources, it still makes a lot of hammers ==> lot of pop). And so an enormous time lost for producing GPP. It thus ******s the early GP creation. And that does not count producing (whipping) the national epic that gives +100%GPP.

Furthermore: 1) all those specialists are going to produce some commerce($)/gold(G)/beakers(S)/hammer(P)/culture(C) as a by-product, and more with the good civics and wonders; 2) each yield is less than non GP farm cities of the same size but it is NOT NEGLIGIBLE if you have a lot of specialist as a GPfarm should have to produce lot of GPP; 3) by default your river and sea tiles will produce commerce, some tiles may produce hammers and the trades routes will again produce commerce. 4) if you can't have the Kremlin, rush-buying the late buildings will be very expensive.

So we are here in a position were you have a city with a lot of yields ($,G,S,P,C) that are not fully exploited, and I hate underexploiting my "ressource" ie here : yield.

IMO it means that it is still interesting (even maybe necessary) to build more buildings in a GP farm : power central (improve P), banks (use $ or G), observatory and monestries (S), media tower (C?) in my GP farm. so this again means producing hammers.

If you want to really have a GP farm and do not mind wonder produced specialists, you may want to build wonders such as Great library : +2 scientists... ie +6GPP(scientists)+2GPP(wonder)=+8 GPP (+3source for a scientific GP) x150% = +20 GPP/turn = not negligible if you are really aiming to speed up GP production.

All those facts means that IMO you would at least want some tiles in your GP farm that can be used as heavy-production tiles.

SO why do everybody say that all building in a GP farm can be whipped and that a full grass + food ressource is the best emplacement?

Using a heavy-production tile or two (more hammer for a long period ==> more buildings ==> better use of beakers/commerce ..)==> it can amount to gaining one or two tech in it's own right, or permits to build units in place of a commerce city... is it not worth loosing the n+1 GP if n is sufficiently high?

Furthermore, if you do not have to pop-rush so much, it means that more pop can be used as specialist, accelerating a bit the GP creation.

In this case it may even be more profitable for your whole civ to have a less performant GPfarm that gives you only one GP less : the number n+1 one : the one that needs 4000 GPP.

==> is it worth uberspecialising only to (maybe) gain 1 GP or 2 in the whole duration of the game 400-1000turns?

Does anybody agrees ?

or maybe having the (n-X) to n GPs coming each a bit sooner is still an enormous advantage in itself ?