Balancing hammers, commerce and growth

[rantzzz]

My questions pertain to balancing the above mentioned resources in each specialized city.

For example in a GP Farm, how do we balance growth with production? Ideally we want each grassland to have a farm so that it produces 3 food, but in the initial stages, how do we balance growth with hammers?

Likewise for production city, how do we balance hammers with growth?

I always find that I'm inclined to create a hybrid city everytime a specialization is not clear cut. Am I doing the right thing?

 

[Zanttu]

A high-food GP farm doensn't need any production, the most important buildings like libraries can always be whipped. A cottage-spammed commerce city doesn't need any farms, because it should be placed so that there will always be a small food surplus. (For example only grassland tiles on the BFC, or 1-2 food resources to support growth.) A production monster city in the early game should have few food resources to be able to work all the mines in the BFC. Later in the game it is possible to create a production city the same way as commerce city, by building workshops instead of cottages.

Not every city should be one of those three. Production/commerce hybrid cities are good also. But GP farm shouldn't be a hybrid city.

 

[rantzzz]

But if you keep whipping in a GP farm, won't there be alot of unhappy pop? Assuming that I haven gotten to building globe theatre, how can i circumvent the unhappy pop?

And every time I whip, i will have to regrow all the specialists... Unless the buildings that i whip build (stuff like national epic) yields exponential returns in the long run?

This game is awesome, I'm just starting to go into details about city management

 

[Zanttu]

Few things:
1. You don't need many buildings in your GP farm
2. Your GP farm doesn't need to be big, just big enough to work all food resources... A farm pre-biology gives you 1 surplus food, so you need to work 2 farms to run 1 specialist. That's usually not worth it.. So don't work farms, only your high-food squares and assign rest of your citizens as specialists.
3. You don't need the globe theatre in your GP farm, because it doesn't need to be big.
4. You can also use the universal suffrage civic to rush-buy things.

 

[Gliese 581]

What I do is usually a transition, so that early on I build farms even for a cottage city unless it has sufficient food resources that I can use. For example it might be a riverside jungle-city that will have access to a banana and some gems but I don't have calendar yet. Build a few farms, replace them later with cottages.
Also a GP farm can only grow to happy cap which will be limited early on, so you can afford to work some mines there to boost production, later on as the happy cap allows you to grow the city more, you can consider replacing mines with windmills etc.. just general guidelines, remember that workers are very important. One of the most important discoveries I've made as I've improved my game is that I used to build too few workers, you want to make sure that your cities are not using undeveloped tiles and a large worker force can help you transition your improvements smoothly.

 

[Gliese 581]

Edit: double post.