city specializations? how? where? when?

[RoddyVR]

in my current game, i noticed yesterday that all my cities (well except the 2 new ones) have gotten to the point of where they have nothing left to build.
i've built all the buildings (well except walls and castles) in all the cities.
this is after deciding early in the game that i'm gonna specialize them.

i have my capitol which is heavy production (lots of hills) but also plenty of commerce (its on some coast and has cottages/towns on non hill tiles)
then i have a city i was planning to make a commerce/science city. its heavily coastal (14 coast tiles in radious i think) but also has a couple hills that it switched to when needing to build library, univercity and so on. also the collosus is in it.
a couple unit producing cities - just as much production as possible.
and then a couple others that were mostly built for the resourses next to them they do whatever they can.

anyway, i noticed that my whole idea of specialization went right out the window. i have a musketman/cavalry/cannon army that is reducing the english to rubble. none of the other civs are using gunpowder units yet (even though some of them have gunpowder) so i'm not worried about needing a larger army.
and i've now built every improvement in every city.
i know that a couple more techs and i'll have stuff to build, but having been on a "strait for railroad" run for over 30 turns now i havent gained too many new things to build in the cities.

anyway enough rambling.
how do you specialize cities? is it worth it?

should i make cities that are completely farm surrounded and have as much food as i can make them have, so that they can grow past the 22 pop mark and have a bunch of specialists so that i can get the Great People. how does one keep a city like this happy? or is this a waste of a city?

should i make the commerce cities i tried making? is grassland the best place for them (with a lot of cottages) or are coastal cities better for this? how much production potential does it need (for libraries/unis/wonders)?

what othere specialization cities are worthwile? and how does one achive/build them?

 

[Padmewan]

Wow... are you running the game on settler, epic speed, or are you UBER? I find even at Noble it's impossible to keep up with builds -- there always another building I could have, or else I will need more troops.

In my current game London started in the middle of a flood plain. A city set in the middle of a flood plain is perfect for Great Person generation because you create massive number of specialists to pump out the GPP's. As my capital, though, it also had a lot of culture, so it was hard getting this formula exactly right because it will also be one of my cultural centers (and was generating a lot of hammers too, because it was next to hills with gold and stone). So London ended up general, but if it hadn't been my capital I would have tried to make it my GP pump.

Think about specialization not just in terms of buildings but also in terms of specialists. In Civ3 you had the options of specializing in money, research, culture, or military. In Civ4 add to this GP.

Still, I'm pretty shocked that you were able to build EVERY building in every city.

 

[RoddyVR]

i'm a builder by nature. all my games go like this.
i think the game is on normal speed. but that seems to be all i do is build.
other then my early war with the egyptians and russians (praetorians rule all) i had no real wars. and i like improving all the tiles i can.
so i get massive amounts of production.
and in this game most of my part of the continent had a lot of hills, and all my cities except one are coastal so i could easily switch between having production cities (to build the buildings ) and food (growth) and/or commerce (science) before the cities got to be about 20 size each, and they got there quick. i think i now have most if not all of the health and happy resourses, and only a few of them are traded from others.
its a good continent piece to have.

but i think its also something like year 1700 and i just now got to railroads. which i think is late. and i'm the tech leader (though not by much).

i think the biggest reason that i have run out of buildings is that i've had something like 30% cash generation in order to convert my whole army to musketmen and cavalry (from praetors, archers and charriots) and my research has just now finished a second "run". first one for units (musketmen, cavalry, cannon and ironclad), and the second one for railroads.
not many of the required and end techs for this stuff has much in the way of buildings.
now that i have rail, i'll start (if i continue the game, its a clear win already which kills the fun for me) getting techs that give me the factories and hospitals and so on, so maybe that'll give the cities stuff to build.

plus i should note that i havent built all the wonders i could. but most of them i dont want. they're basicaly the culture generating ones, which i have litle use for in my "back" cities, and cant build in my border cities (cause that's the two that still have other stuff to build)