Best use for "meh" cities?

[Pinstar]

You know the type. Not enough hammers for a good wonder/military city. Not enough commerce for a good science city. Not enough food for a GP farm. No resource tiles in its BFC to write home about and maybe a few dead tiles to boot. Assuming the player knows not to bother with these city sites in the early game, what is the best mid/late game use for these "meh" cities?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Production. Farm them up for bio farm + whip, workshop them in state property for 8-10 good tiles (and thus >30 base hammers), or do a combination if you're not in state property so you can feed the shops. Spread corporations and other per city bonuses like AP religious buildings (or those boosted by sankore/spiral) to make these cities fairly impressive.

Commerce takes to long to set up w/o the food, and GPP in a city without strong food tiles doesn't make as much sense as just getting a respectable amount of hammers for a unit crank (or later on wealth builder). Forge/factory/power on 30 base hammers can build an infantry every 3 turns on normal. Other things might take slightly longer, but as you can see this pays back the settler hammer investment rapidly and is pretty flexible. If it's a coastal city, throw in drydocks and you have decent naval help too.

These seemingly weaker cities might even help with a space ship, since you can put parts that you've researched there relatively early and save more expensive/later ones for bigger hammer cities.

 

[Jerrymander]

workshop them in state property for 8-10 good tiles (and thus >30 base hammers)

And build wealth?

 

[s.bernbaum]

I have two of them in my current game. I did not found them until late, after I had both Mining and Sid's Sushi. After that, I founded them both and opened branches of both Corps there. Most of their tiles are workshops, supported by Sid's Sushi. That along with Mining has made them both excellent production cities.