Advice on City Specialization Plz (saved game attached)

[Biffa001]

Hi all,

My first post I've played Civ since Civ I and love BTS. I've been reading a lot of the articles and guides and just need a little bit of personal advice please from anyone who has the time

I've attached a saved game (its BTS 3.13 Next War) and just wanted someone to take a look and post some advice on my city's setup as I am really trying in my last couple of games to specialize city's for a particular task.

A bit of background on this game:

I started off on this map with only Mr. Big sharing my small continent, after a failed Axe rush to wipe him out we became best buds (odd!) and I let him grow a bit. I have just captured his top 2 cities and vasallized him so we are friends again

Also on the science side of things I seem to have outgrown myself a bit as my science slider is down to 40%/50%. I beelined Liberalism & got it first and chose Printing Press. For most of the older techs I have traded with the smaller civs although now I have a vassal the civs are disliking me a bit!

As for my city specialization I have earmarked, and hopefully set up correctly (or on their way to be set up), the following cities:

Commerce - Atlanta / Tenochtitlan
Science - Damascus
Production - Damascus
Military - Thebes (not the best production now but it has my extra military specialists here)
GP Farm - Thebes / Mephis

If you could take a look at my city setup and please provide any tips on

1) whether I have earmarked the correct cities for the correct job

2) what speciality / specialities I can use my remaining cities for

3) whether I have my cities set up correctly to utilize the work tiles the best way

Thanks for taking the time to help, I am really trying to improve my game and win a few.....(I lost my last game as Mansa Musa was on a continent with everyone but me as I have my own continent. He vasallized EVERYONE and won a cultural victory! Didn't see that one coming).

Cheers guys
Biffa

 

[Verge]

I just took a cursory look at your savegame, but here's what I noted:

Commerce - Atlanta / Tenochtitlan

You have the right idea with Atlanta: building cottages. You should build more of them in both cities. The two cities have too many hills and coastal tiles respectively to be fantastic commerce cities, but they're passable.

Science - Damascus

I can't say I like Damas at all for a science city. It has tons of production potential, but no space at all for any substantive commerce generation. The ideal Science City should be your absolute best Commerce City, with the majority of the city's BFC tiles available for cottages.

Production - Damascus

You're right on this one. Damas has great tiles for production. Even though you have the Great Library already built, I would tear down any cottages you need in order to get the requisite food to work all the mines. Damas isn't going to be a science monster; might as well cut your losses and make it into something it can excel at.

Military - Thebes (not the best production now but it has my extra military specialists here)
GP Farm - Thebes / Mephis

Memphis doesn't have the food resources to make it a top-notch GP farm. Thebes has corn and clams, so that's a good start. I wouldn't have made Thebes my military production city, but since you settled generals there, you might as well run with it. I'd find some other, food-rich city to be your GP farm, however.


"City-specialization" implies that you're tasking a city to do one thing and do it well. But you've earmarked Damascus and Thebes to do two things at once, and they're going to suffer for it. Instead, pick just one task for these cities to do. That's the whole point of city specialization, afterall

Hope this helped. I'll take a closer look at your savegame later if you'd like.

 

[Biffa001]

Thanks Verge

"City-specialization" implies that you're tasking a city to do one thing and do it well. But you've earmarked Damascus and Thebes to do two things at once, and they're going to suffer for it. Instead, pick just one task for these cities to do. That's the whole point of city specialization, afterall

Yeah, the reason some of these cities have 2 uses atm is that I got carried away with the game (trying to squash Mr.Big at the start...) and forgot to specialize. Then when I came to look at my cities with this in mind these particular ones just seemed to cover 2 bases for now.

Also, re: Thebes, it was my best at production at the time, hence settling Military guys there and building the +100% military production wonder, but now it's lagging behind a bit. But it still pumps out the units at a far wack.

I will certainly take your advice on board and make some changes, thank you.

Hope this helped. I'll take a closer look at your savegame later if you'd like.

It does, and any more advice would be very welcome. Thanks

 

[Verge]

Fair enough; city specialization never cuts cleanly, especially if you forget to do it early on. Move the GP farm somewhere aside from Thebes, and pick a city more valuable in commerce for your science city, and your game will go considerably smoother. Those are the two big things that come to mind.