City Specialization: A small tip for beginners

[Immaculate]

I've played a few succession games with various people i have met over these forums and i've noticed something about the empires i have inherited in certain games. Namely, city specialization is not as extreme as i would initiate in my off-line solo games or solo succession games.
Here's a really simple little trick, explained step by step to help you with your city specialization:

1. Use the signs. 'alt-s' will allow you put a little sign on the screen anywhere. Put one on each of your cities.
   Your signs might read:
   'commerce'
   'hammers'
   'great people points'
2. now use them. if i a city says 'commerce' then don't build mines or workshops or watermills. Build windmills, cottages and the mininum number of farms you need to feed your people. Don't build barracks as your first build, focus your hammers on libraries, markets, grocers, etc. If the sign says 'hammers' then build mines, watermills, farms, and workshops. You shouldn't build a single cottage. Leave cottages to 'commerce' cities. Build a courthouse, barracks, forges, and units (or wonders). Later build theatres, aqueducts, markets and grocers but only for health and happiness. If a city says 'great people points' build farms and windmills. Thats it, don't build any mines or cottages or anything else like that.
3. as you progress, you'll get a feeling for how to specialize cities even further. You probably want to specialize a city for troops, so write 'troops' on the sign and build heroic epic there. settle great generals there. build military academies there, etc. one of your cities may become a holy city with a shrine, well then write 'coins' on the sign and build markets and grocers and banks there preferentially. build wall-street there. settle Great merchants there (if you settle any). Another city may become specialized for science, so write 'science' on your sign and remember to build oxford there, settle scientists there, etc.
4. you may play a different style completely and you may need to write 'specialists' on a sign to indicate you are running a farm economy for that city... if you are doing this then build the farms you need to support your specialists and the buildings you need to run them.

The point is that using signs will remind yourself what to build in that city and how to specialize tiles. Its just a reminder, but if you see it, you'll know what the city is supposed to do and won't end up putting cottages around a city with the heroic epic in it (which is a waste usually). Too many times people forget and end up building a city that tries to be a bit of everything and ultimately isn't really anything at all.

 

[futurehermit]

Nice read and so very true. I always plan to hyperspecialize my cities but then when I get going they end up being a bit of everything and nothing at all!!!

 

[Immaculate]

Okay, so part 2.
This part is dedicated to those players who have figured out what i'll call, for the purposes of this article, 'static specialization'.
Its assumed that you can figure out which cities need what types of improvements both in terms of tile improvements by workers and city builds (barracks vs. libraries, forges vs. monastaries, etc).

Once you have figured that out, you are ready for the next phase, the 'dynamic specialization' stage.
Basically, what this means is that a city will serve one function at one stage of the game, then gradually (or suddenly) end up serving another function. Most cities DO NOT undergo this sort of maturation, but many do.

Let me take for example the game i am currently playing. I am sure this scenerio will sound familiar to many players.
I was playing the Zulu (lovely civ and really wonderful UU- best pillaging/strangling unit in the game in my opinion) on continents. I started out the game by attacking and eliminating first Cyrus (impi and later catapults), H. Capac (impi, catapults and macemen) and Victoria (impi, trebs, macemen).

The point is: Firstly, i needed lots of production to build the army that i would need for so much conquering and later i would need lots of commerce to not go broke and to consolidate the land lead that conquering provided.
So, i wrote signs like this for myself:

1. 'production->SP'
   Meaning that while i was building my army, the city was in 'production mode', but i made sure that by the time i was getting bigger, i had a marketplace and library ready to go, and at some point i stopped working the mines and farms and just ended up using farms and running librarians and merchants to keep myself afloat and solvent.
2. 'production->commerce'
   The city built a barracks (UB for zulu so actually quite good for maintenance costs too- but this won't always be the case) and granary and mostly worked farms and hill mines. I didn't build workshops or watermills though, instead, once all the hills were being mined and there was food enough to grow, i worked cottages so they would start maturing. The city built barracks and later it built a library and stuff like that. When i made the switch, i cottaged grassland hills (instead of mining them) and windmilled the plains hills (instead of mining them) and worked more cottages as i switched those farms i could from farms to cottages. By the time victoria was gone, except for the barracks, you could't tell this city was ever production specialized and yet, it had provided me with many impi and trebuchets.
3. 'GPP->SP/Production->Commerce'
   Early in the game, your GPP factory isn't going to be SUPER specialized, it really only takes a couple scientists to get a super scientist out in time, so all you do is farm a few flood plains, work some grassland pigs or fish some fish/clams/crabs, whatever and the rest of your tiles are mostly allocated to scientists. In my game i had a city that had some flood plains, a hill pig and a fish. This is great for an early GPP city but later, you need much more grassland/farms, food bonuses to run a proper GPP city. Thats what i found when i took the Persian capital: pigs, fish, clams, two wheat and the rest all farmable grassland (except for one hill and one plains iron tile). So i made this my future GPP city. But while that city was growing and building markets, libraries and the national epic, my frist, smaller city was grabbing scientist and later built the great library. So it became my primary GPP center early on. Later, the greater food city (the persian capital) was out-stripping the first GPP city, so i had it contribute to the economy with specialists without pushing completion of great people (they would come in time). It has some production, so when needed it even built the university of sankore. Later, however, it won't be able to contribute GPP very effectively (the persian capital will far out-strip it) and cottages will have become much better (printing press, democracy-related civics) but the city will already have libraries, observatories, markets and grocers. So its a great candidate to be made into a cottage-type city, so thats what the workers will do.

 

[Immaculate]

City specialization is a 'strategic' decision.
Your strategy doesn't stay constant, so your city specalization shouldn't either.
Its in making the transition that i sometimes got stuck. By writing signs as to how i wanted the 'dynamic specialization' of the city to mature, i knew how to improve it at the appropriate times. Then i didn't get stuck as much anymore.

 

[futurehermit]

Very interesting. I've noticed glimpses of that in some of my games, but I don't go about it systematically. Dynamic specialization. I'll have to remember that and definitely use the notes more. Thks.

 

[Shawnosaurus]

I have read some specialization strategies before, but even still that was helpful. You've given some great examples and info.

Thank you!

 

[12thScout]

Thx man ~ Huh..didnt know about the ctrl-s thing. Ima go try it out xdd

 

[Galileo44]

Unless I am mistaken, an example of very fast dynamic specialization would be this. You are in a space race and realize that you need another production city because your science is vastly outpacing your production. you revolt to state property, and take a bunch of workers who workshop over all of the grassland of a formerly cottaged city. This brings the base hammers way up, the forge/factory/powerplant are quickly build and the city has been respecialized.

Is that what you meant by a city suddenly serving another function?

 

[futurehermit]

I get the impression that he meant more like a planned change over time not "oh crap, i need another production city, transform, transform"

 

[Galileo44]

Once you have figured that out, you are ready for the next phase, the 'dynamic specialization' stage.
Basically, what this means is that a city will serve one function at one stage of the game, then gradually (or suddenly) end up serving another function.

My italics and bold

He did say that this change can be gradual or sudden, but i guess he still means more of a planned change as you were saying.

 

[Immaculate]

Well, maybe if you forsee where the city is going by planning a sudden change, you can prepare for the overhaul gradually (stop building banks, universities, observatories and start building forges, factories and a power plant), then when you need it, you implement the sudden changes (workshops, watermills, mines). That way, the infrastructure for the sudden change is in place prior to it actually happening and you don't have to spend turns building factories, etc when you need to build space ship parts.

I confess that i have never, not once, won a victory by spaceship building however, so i can't really attest to this strategy too well.

 

[duezeone]

I actually started a monarch game where I implemented more city specialization and Snaaty's early game strategy. I basically wanted to see if I have the right setup for my cities. If one of you wouldn't mind looking at it and telling me which cities could do better as different things. BTW i have the cities labeled with the signs.

Comm = commerce
Prod = production
GPF = great person farm

I planned for a peaceful start so I moved my settler inland to block off my opponents for more expansion room, built the GL, settled academy in my cap, lightbulbed liberalism, got military tradition, and as you can tell I built up a nice stash of gold a long the way with trades. I don't have that many units to upgrade though. I founded 6 cities (just got the last one up around 500AD I think?) and am about to pump cavs to take out Louis XIV who attacked me really early on around 100BC.

Basically I thought you could kind of use my game as an example of what NOT to do maybe? haha. I don't know if my GPF is the right city because I think I would be better off with the city to the NE of it, but I'm not sure. Thank you, if you do end up looking at it.

BTW the game was random leader/fractal/blah blah

 

[cabert]

Unless I am mistaken, an example of very fast dynamic specialization would be this. You are in a space race and realize that you need another production city because your science is vastly outpacing your production. you revolt to state property, and take a bunch of workers who workshop over all of the grassland of a formerly cottaged city. This brings the base hammers way up, the forge/factory/powerplant are quickly build and the city has been respecialized.

Is that what you meant by a city suddenly serving another function?

although the way you write it is confusing, I still think this is the best possible example.
When you set yourself for a space race, it's useless to have all the production cities in 1AD.
You need to tech first!
So it's really good to be able to determine :
- how many production cities you need
- how "strongly" productive do they need to be
- when do you need them to be effective
(I'm an adept of large empires with soso production cities for thrusters and casings, but others tend to focus on a handful of really strong production cities)
Those cities can very well contribute to your science for 5000 years, then switch (with a plan!) to production / hybrid.
If you run USuffrage and don't burn all your commerce on science, the switch can be very easy :
- cottages bring in the money
- you rush the forges, factories, labs as needed (start with labs as long as you have the cottages )
- then you workshop/farm.
You need an awful lot of workers to switch completely one city, but if you concentrate workers, you can go from 15 cottages to 10 workshops 5 farms in only a few turns.
I did it, and it worked quite well : I had power and factories and labs rushed just before completing the apollo program in my biggest production city, the towns where giving 1 hammer from US which was almost enough for the casings. For the thrusters, I did some partial conversion and for the biggest parts, I used the existing production cities (with some detail adjustements) + chopping (lumbermills converted to workshops).