Build every improvement in every city?

[Gerard]

Do you build EVERY improvement in every city?

I´m something new in Civ3 (have played Civ1 and Civ2) and playing Regent and with the Americans edited to be Scientific and Industrious.
My initial strategy is to expand as fast as I can, but, in my first city (before Warrior and Settler) I start building Pyramids till the end or to switch to Great Library.
If I try to build military units, workers and wonders, the science advances rush over me and I have more and more improvements "to do".
Eventually, the game "impasses" (as on Civ1 and Civ2) and one can try to bring up to day, but is necessary?

I post a poll because I'm a "polladict".
However, I want to know your strategies in this case.

EDIT: type

 

[Steve Winer]

No, but you should put something in your cities
i.e. Barracks, temple

 

[Bamspeedy]

You will quickly learn that if you just want to win the game, you certainly do not need all improvements in every city. Some improvements you won't need in any city EVER. All you do with building every improvement in every city is add a very large expense to your civ's budget by paying all those upkeep costs.

Massively corrupt cities, often called 'one shield cities' since they will never produce more than 1 shield often will not need any improvements except maybe a temple to expand it's borders. You'll eventually learn which towns will forever be hopelessly corrupt that not even a courthouse can save it, so you would save the shields/upkeep costs for somthing else (like workers). A town in the mountains or desert that will be limited to size 2 will also not need any improvements (especially happiness improvements, unless you really want/need to rack up culture points for your civ). If a city would never have enough food to get to size 7, dont' bother building an aqueduct. You don't need walls if the city is only a few turns away from getting to size 7. Some towns will not need granaries. Coastal Fortresses, SAM Batteries are useless. Some players (if they can't get Sun Tzu's), will not build barracks in every city. Some of their cities do and those cities will be the ones producing military units, while the cities without barracks will build wonders, etc. If a city is only producing only 1 UNCORRUPTED beaker, it would be practically useless to build a library except for the culture. You MIGHT gain 1 beaker from building the library, but what is the upkeep of libraries?

At the start of the game settler production is more important than trying to get improvements/wonders built. After you have at LEAST 3 cities, you can start on ONE wonder. Of course this varies by difficulty level you are playing and what terrain you have.... By the time you do get the Pyramids built you could have had 8-9 cities, but if you use your first or second city to build it right away you only have probably 5. Whether there is enough room on the map for the Pyramids to help you make up for your lost expansion depends on the map.

I occasionally like to play a 'sandbox' game where I build every improvement in every city. But if you are just looking to defeat the AI, trying to do this just slows you down so much and you end up not making any attacks until the mid-industrial age after you have hospitals and factories and then following the long part of the tech tree (Corporation, Refining, etc.) to the modern age before having more stuff to build.

If you love building stuff try the DyP mod. That mod has 50 Great Wonders, over 20 small wonders, and a ton of city improvements (I don't remember how many, but ALOT!!!).

 

[bbaws]

Yeah I crippled my economy by building too much stuff before now. Your core cities can benefit from most things but really it depends how big a fight you expect to get into. For example I'm trying for three wonders simultaneously in my current game. I only have nine cities. It's clearly a losing strategy but sometimes the only way to get a full feel for the game is just to bull ahead with a colossal error and see what presents itself.
As far as the pyramids go, you will be able to tell when you have been building them from the hitograph, the early build stagnates your whole growth.

 

[JuicyCivNewbie]

A better strat is to give masonry to all the nearby AIs ASAP and try to get them to build it for you.