City specialization help please!

[ironic_lettuce]

Hi everyone

I'm still trying to beat this bloody game on Noble!!

I know that the best way to do it is to specialize my cities for different jobs and so that's what I try to do! I have started using the technique found in the civ4 guide by Sisiutill in that I count the number of positive food squares and balance them against the number of negative food squares to tell me how many farms I need. I have a screen cap of my starting point in my latest game and just wondered if I'm doing this right. I've added up the positive food resources: +1 for the two flood plains, +3 for the cows (or is cows +2?), then the negatives: -3 for the 3 plains tiles, -1 for the hills tile. So, doing the maths, that gives me 5-4, to give an overall of +1. Have I done that right?

The thing I want to know is, how would you all go about improving this city? If I have an overall of +1 then this city doesnt need any farms to get to full size (if I've understood properly) But obviously, if I was to farm the tiles it would get to full size quicker. So I think my main question is, how many tiles would you farm initially before beginning the specialisation? I tend to build loads and loads of farms and ignore cottages which results in me lagging behind in the tech tree. And when you get to a certain size would you begin building improvements over the farms? I'd personally make this city a commerce one because of the low numbers of hill tiles - would everyone else do that? Or perhaps a GP farm?

Any ideas would be great - thanks

EDIT: The attachment doesnt seem to have worked! I'll try again in a second!

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Hopefully this'll work

 

[Sisiutil]

It sounds to me like you're on the right track. And yes, overall, it sounds like you're laying down too few cottages and too many farms--just like the AI does. Cottages, cottages, cottages, my friend--that's the secret to success in this game.

This spot you've posted definitely looks like a commerce city, possibly specializing further into science, especially since it's the capital to benefit from the Bureaucracy boost. The cows, marble (marble in the capital's fat cross! Woo-hoo!), forests, and single hill (once mined) will provide reasonably decent production. The main thing it's lacking is a big food resource like wheat, rice, corn, or pigs, so I'd be disinclined to make it a GP farm. Then again, I usually put the National Epic in my science city for more Great Scientists, so it usually becomes my de facto GP farm.

You can cottage like crazy, especially along the river for the +1 commerce. If you make it the science city, which as I said would be my inclination, I would recommend farming a couple of the tiles--probably two flood plains--to support whipping, and later, scientists.

Try to preserve 4 of the 6 forests for chopping the Great Library, and keep two for +1 health until you have sufficient health resources and buildings. If you keep some of the tiles free of improvements until you need them, including roads, you may get lucky and have another forest grow on one of them.

 

[Thedrin]

It depends on how you want to specialise the city. Production, commerce, great people?

Assume that you chop the forests, pasture the cows, quarry the marble, and gain access to the silk (none of which you have to do).

Production:

Irrigate 4 tiles, watermill 6 tiles. Mine the hill. Workshop the rest of the tiles. This gives 0 surplus food and 27 base production prior to railroad and watermill/workshop upgrades. Ok for a production city but not great.

Commerce:

Cottage all but one tile. Maybe put in the six available watermills or mine the hill to give the city some needed pre universal sufferage production. Farm or workshop one tile to give surplus food for one specialist or 0 surplus food and some more production. It's a good commerce city.

Great people:

You can get as much as 18 surplus food in this city (if you don't work the quarry). This is good for a great people farm but I wouldn't recommend making your capital into a great people farm.

My initial recommendation would be to make this a commerce city but without knowing what the surrounding terrain looks like I wouldn't stand by that suggestion. Specialising your cities requires examining all of your cities. Specialising one city without regard for the rest of your civ can be a futile exercise.

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Thanks for the help guys - I've actually chopped down the forests already to rush some stuff

Will keep the tip in mind for the future though!

Thanks again for the advice, any more very much welcome!

 

[Thedrin]

Nothing wrong with chopping down forest (though I do like to keep them). You should always chop forests on hills if you want production since a mined hill is better than a lumbermilled hill.

The important thing to know is that its difficult to decide on specialisation without having scouted out your land. Scout your land. Determine the best places for production cities, commerce cities and optional great people farms. Then build your second city.

 

[Sisiutil]

Nothing wrong with chopping down forest (though I do like to keep them). You should always chop forests on hills if you want production since a mined hill is better than a lumbermilled hill.

The important thing to know is that its difficult to decide on specialisation without having scouted out your land. Scout your land. Determine the best places for production cities, commerce cities and optional great people farms. Then build your second city.

Good points. I always scout before making big decisions, but I approached this as an isolated exercise.

I like to target forests that are on hills, as you say, and also those on grassland riverside tiles, as those are better locations for cottages or, if needed, farms. If I think the city will come under attack, I like to chop any forests or jungle directly adjacent to the city tile to deny the enemy its defensive bonus. Forests not adjacent to rivers, the city, or on hills are usually lower priorities for chopping, since there are likely much better tiles my citizens will be working for most of the game.

 

[Wodan]

One other thing people haven't mentioned is slavery. If you intend to make heavy use of slavery then I would start with 2 farms, both in flood plains (you won't work them until your fat cross expands, but it'll do that soon enough and working the unimproved cows is just as good). Then, get the 2 resources of course as soon as techs allow. Those will be the 4 tiles you work heavily while whipping. The others will be irrelevant.

If you aren't going for bronze working anytime soon, why the heck not?

Once you're pretty much done with whipping, then and only then is when you need to decide on specialization.

I agree with others, putting GP farm in your capitol isn't always so good. It's not terribly bad if you have a grand master plan that involves something besides Bureaucracy, or if you intend to have a GP farm that specializes in Merchants. Otherwise, I would cottage the heck out of your capitol (even if -- dare I say especially if -- you are running a SE). Keep those 2 farms on the flood plains until you get close to the happy/health limits, and then change them to cottages too. The cows and flood plains will provide enough food to support the plains and hill.

Wodan

 

[Sisiutil]

One other thing people haven't mentioned is slavery. If you intend to make heavy use of slavery then I would start with 2 farms, both in flood plains

I would recommend farming a couple of the tiles--probably two flood plains--to support whipping, and later, scientists.

Great minds think alike.

 

[Thedrin]

Sisiutil:
I like to target forests that are on hills, as you say, and also those on grassland riverside tiles, as those are better locations for cottages or, if needed, farms.

Watermills are also a better use of a tile than a forested river bank.

In general, when it comes to forests, I work on the assumption that I may have chopped them by the time that I begin concentrating on specialising my cities and instead try to determine what combinations of farms and workshops/watermills are required. I rarelt actually chop them at all.

Once you're pretty much done with whipping, then and only then is when you need to decide on specialization.

Agreed. I don't make a lot of use out of the slavery civic (I do see its worth, I just haven't got around to using it much) but when planning the specialisation of my empire prior to settling my second city I work on the assumption that I will be using workshops, watermills and windmills. Prior to getting to this stage I'll do whatever it takes to get my nation into a good position including cottaging tiles I eventually plan on using for other stuff.

When it comes to specialisation, do not be afraid to use watermills, windmills and workshops. to provide you with extra production, commerce and food. Specialisation becomes more powerful as the game progresses. With these improvements it becomes even more powerful with late renaissance /early industrial technologies such as chemistry. Even if you don't go onto adopt state property.

 

[Sisiutil]

When it comes to specialisation, do not be afraid to use watermills, windmills and workshops. to provide you with extra production, commerce and food. Specialisation becomes more powerful as the game progresses. With these improvements it becomes even more powerful with late renaissance /early industrial technologies such as chemistry. Even if you don't go onto adopt state property.

Interesting--I rarely use these tile improvements until I have State Property (as well as Chemistry, Electricity, Guilds, etc.). Until then, I find cottages are far more important to the economy. I will sometimes, in the late game, plow over mature cottages (i.e. towns) in favour of watermills and workshops, especially as I change from a commerce-oriented to a production-oriented economy. That change is particularly important for a space race win.

Until the late game techs that improve them, however, I find that the tile improvements you mention are too weak to be considered. I have very few citizens (probably because I use slavery much more extensively than you do) and I have to pick the tiles they work carefully--that means the best resource tiles, cottages, and mines.

I don't mean to run down your style of play, Thedrin, I'm just contrasting it with my own. I'm curious--what difficulty level are you playing? I'm playing Monarch now, and if you're there or higher, maybe I ought to give your strategy a try!

 

[Wodan]

Great minds think alike.

Oops, sorry!

 

[Thedrin]

I play Monarchy these days. I don't win all of my games. I also play with the space race (and time) victory conditions switched off. Consequently, I don't require the major shift in city focus that a space race can require - if I want a military victory the production cities I build up through the game usually suffice.

In production cities, I rarely build cottages. It only happens if I can't get an even food surplus without them. Combinations of farms and workshops usually (but not always) prevent this from happening. The reduction of commerce output in these cities is so that I can concentrate on building units without having to build stuff like libraries and markets and such. This has become even more viable in Warlords since the output due to building commerce or science is no longer affected by commerce and beaker multipliers. Only by production multipliers.

In commerce cities I build watermills if I don't think that the city is producing adequate production. I hardly ever build workshops in commerce cities since the reduction in food reduces the cities money making potential. Given the choice between a dry forest (no river) with a riverside cottage and a dry cottage with a watermill, I choose the latter. The total output of the two tiles is equal (excluding the chopping bonus and prior to industrial age improvements) but I prefer to split the commerce bonus between tiles. It also means that, should I choose state property, it won't just be my production cities that benefit. With this in mind I try to build pairs of watermills in commerce cities rather than uneven numbers.

In the example at the beginning of this thread I probably wouldn't build 6 watermills but it would be something that I would keep in mind since it may turn out that the surrounding land has terrible production.

For me city specialistion is about reducing waste. Not building libraries in cities that don't need them while making sure that all of your core cities including your major commerce cities produce enough to stay modern. A commerce city without adequate production will not be able to build universities and banks very quickly without slavery (which reduces commerce) or universal sufferage which arrives around the same time as you would start introducing watermills and workshops (I'm not building the Pyramids unless I want early representation).

I don't mean to run down your style of play, Thedrin, I'm just contrasting it with my own.

I'm not taking offence at this. I just enjoy using all of the different improvements. I find that only building farms, cottages and mines is quite dull. For me the really great thing about civ is that there are many ways to do well. Maybe this way is slightly weaker but I prefer the variation.

I will sometimes, in the late game, plow over mature cottages (i.e. towns) in favour of watermills and workshops

I try to only do this if I had early cottages in my captial to aid expansion and want to switch my capitals focus to production early on. As I said I don't play space race victories. I may do as you do if I did.

Oh, and I only really use windmills to get even food surpluses. I don't particularly like them.

 

[malekithe]

A commerce city without adequate production will not be able to build universities and banks very quickly without slavery (which reduces commerce) or universal sufferage which arrives around the same time as you would start introducing watermills and workshops (I'm not building the Pyramids unless I want early representation).

All production obtained in a commerce city is obtained through a sacrifice of commercial output. You can't look at watermills as an alternative to slavery and suggest that only slavery sacrifices something in exchange for production. In working a watermill, you are not working a cottage, and are therefore sacrificing some amount of commerce. The challenge then comes in determining how much production a city truly needs and the most efficient way of meeting that need.

 

[Thedrin]

The challenge then comes in determining how much production a city truly needs and the most efficient way of meeting that need.

On the rare occasions that I do use slavery or see a decrease in city population (due to war weariness, say) I have the advantage of keeping my commerce output relatively stable since I can remove population from the production tiles. If I used slavery regularly I would see the cities commerce output fluctuate widely on a regular basis if the city was entirely comprised of commerce producing tiles. But I would build farms and windmills in place of some cottages - to regain commerce and allow large sacrifices quicker - so the maximum commerce output of the city wouldn't be much higher. Sacrificing citizens in this manner would still see a decrease in commerce output since I would need to work the food tiles ahead of commerce tiles to regain the previous population quickly.

As it happens, I like having a great people farm (or two). If I haven't managed to get a large number of potential priest specialists in a high food city, I need caste system to get much out of them preventing slavery (assuming I'm not spiritual). Use of great people farms and caste system is a personal preference - it is one of the aspects of the game that I find to be fun and I use it aware that slavery is viewed by many very good players as the best civic in the labour tree.

Commerce cities prior to universal sufferage have more buildings to construct than production cities; markets, grocers, banks, libraries, universities and castles (for the trade route, only an optional build for production cities) as well as requiring some of the essential builds of production cities; the forge and courthouses and having the same optional requirements as productions cities; religious buildings, theatres, lightouses, harbours, aquaducts. Ironically, which I decide not to specialise towards production can sometimes, as a result, require more production

 

[malekithe]

Use of slavery while cottaging all tiles would eventually lead to large drops in income and research. Use of permanent production tiles keeps my income steady. If I do see my cities population decrease (due to war weariness or the rare essential whip such as Wall St.) I can remove population from production tiles so that the commerce output of the city remains relatively steady.

I haven't experienced these large drops you speak of. What is the cause?

I have, however, noticed that if I actively devote "cottagable" tiles to other purposes, I reduce the total income of a city. It's almost the exact same way in which slavery reduces a city's population in order to produce an amount of production. By working watermills (or mines or workshops), you're sacrificing population-turns in order to obtain an increased hammer output. There's not much difference between a size 8 city working 8 cottages and occasionally whipping away a 9th or 10th population point and a size 9 city working an extra watermill.

Watermills can become excellent improvements; some of the most powerful in the game. However, I seldom recommend them for early-game commerce cities. They work well in mid-to-late game production cities and late game commerce cities after the improving technologies have been discovered. There is seldom a reason, though, to spend valuable early game worker turns building an improvement that won't be worth your while for another 100-200 turns.

As it happens, I like having a great people farm (or two). If I amn't a spiritual civ or I haven't managed to get a large number of potential priest specialists in a high food city I need caste system to get much out of them. Use of great people farms and caste system is a personal preference. The result is that my commerce cities need production tiles to get anything done.

That is the primary weakness of slavery. It makes it very hard, if not impossible, to run an optimal Great Person Farm. You find yourself having to simply accept whichever great person you get while you're running a smattering of scientists, merchants, and others. I often find that the benefits of slavery granted across your empire offset this unfortunate drawback. However, that will ultimately be a matter of personal preference; to be judged according to your in-game goals and logistical concerns. One way will not always be the best.


EDIT: Ah, you got me with the ninja edit

On the rare occasions that I do use slavery or see a decrease in city population (due to war weariness, say) I have the advantage of keeping my commerce output relatively stable since I can remove population from the production tiles. If I used slavery regularly I would see the cities commerce output fluctuate widely on a regular basis. I would also build farms and windmills in place of cottages so that I would be able to regrow the population quickly - both to regain commerce and to allow me to sacrifice citizens quicker. Sacrificing citizens would still see a decrease in commerce output since I would need to work the food tiles ahead of commerce tiles to regain the previous population quickly.

Stability is of little concern in this game. I used to frequently let my research swing widely from turn to turn (the old binary research trick); there was no down side. When you say you do not see a drop-off in commerce when you lose population, that is because those population weren't working commerce tiles to begin with. However, if those watermills were cottages instead, you'd have wider swings in commercial output when the population dropped, but your average output would be higher. You'd have less hammers, true, but I'm not really talking about a combination slavery/watermill approach; I would almost never combine the two in the early game.

I'm not going to get into the proper way of setting up a city to properly emply slavery here. Suffice to say, that it is best used in turning a natural food surplus into the hammers that commerce cities so desperately need. If you find a city in need of more hammers than its natural food surplus can provide, then you look into other ways of obtaining hammers. Usually, these cities are not good candidates for heavy slavery use and are often the cities with the least longterm potential as it is.

 

[Thedrin]

Sorry about the edit. I didn't like the layout of my original post (and thought some of the content was useless). It took a while to change it to my satisfaction.

Ultimately, in this case, it's all about preference.

I consider myself to be a micromanager. I never automate workers. I never use the city governor. I keep an eye on growing populations and always check that new populatins work the tiles I want them to. I make sure that cities are capped so they don't exceed their unhappiness level and that they produce even food surpluses taking account of health or likely future health caps. But deliberatly killing off citizens on a regular basis will introduce having to keep an eye on a cities regrowth over and over again. Not something I wish to do, especially since one of my reasons for micromanaging cities is the reward of getting a city to a point where it can be left to its own devices (excluding build orders).

I also like specialists. The two main consequences of this are that I use caste system over slavery and that the high food cities, which would recover fastest from slavery as commerce cities, are used as great people farms (admittedly these could do with production boosts as well).

An added possibly significant disadvantage of slavery (or an attempt to clutch at straws) is that trade route values are calculated primarily by whether a city is on the coast, distance to the trading city and by the population of your city. You are not just losing commerce from tiles, you may also be losing it from trade. I haven't done any checking but I wonder how much commerce is being lost from trade through slaving large cities. It would certainly be negligible for smaller cities but as your cities increase it would become less negligible; especially since trade route income is based on city population, not city size. Larger cities experience larger changes in city population than smaller cities due to similar changes in size.

 

[cabert]

Although thedrin's points are valid for late game, I don't think you should settle your first city with late game in mind.
So for me you have a cottage city.
I counted 17, but you may use the hill as a mine for a while , so it would be 16.
About growth, I'd work the cow first (for some production + food). Your culture will have expanded before you are size 2. Even you go worker first, you'll have a good deal of turns working unimproved tiles anyway.
Improvements would be cows first, then cottage both FP. You can whip a granary asap, so you don't need chopping right away.
After that, you could benefit from the marble.
Oracle anyone ?
Working the cow+the marble + both cottage FP will give you
+2 food from center, +2 from cow, +2 from FP cottages -1 from marble
= +5food; That's plenty!
After that, you can chop for the oracle or a library (great library anyone ?) then a mine, then cottage up the whole place!!!

 

[Wodan]

All production obtained in a commerce city is obtained through a sacrifice of commercial output.

Unhh..... Universal Suffrage?

I agree with everything else you said, though.

That is the primary weakness of slavery. It makes it very hard, if not impossible, to run an optimal Great Person Farm. You find yourself having to simply accept whichever great person you get while you're running a smattering of scientists, merchants, and others. I often find that the benefits of slavery granted across your empire offset this unfortunate drawback.

I'm not sure it's as bad as all that. For example, if your GP farm wants scientists, you're for sure putting Oxford there, plus Observatory. All told, 6 scientists.

Ditto for if you want Engineers, you're putting Forge, Ironworks, Factory. 6 Engineers. And so on, for Artists, Merchants, or Priests. The national wonders really help here... you only get one of them, but you only want ONE GP farm.

Wodan

 

[malekithe]

Unhh..... Universal Suffrage?

Universal Suffrage is the single most direct sacrifice of commerce for hammers. The primary difference is you can sacrifice commerce in multiple cities to produce hammers in a single city.