conflicting advice on buildings vs military units?

[acidsatyr]

Just because you'r playing with CE and financial Civ doesn't mean you should cottage spam everything and pass up the early opportunity to get as many great people as you can for early lightbulbing as it is still the best way for earliest research when great people are most powerfull.
With so much food the capital looks like really good place to run GP farm and that sugar will give you 4f3c on river with plantage and i'd still prefer this over making cotages over it. After biology sugar gets farmed for 5f. All hills would get mines, and production would come combined from whipping and mines. This is how i would play it. I'd save cottage spam for some other city without that much food since it seems you are sorounded with jungles and will have much flat grassland to work with anyway.

 

[dragomaster]

Zombie69, you mised the gems, grasland hill in the southeast corner.

Shold i ceep the forest title in the south until lumbermills coms for extra hammer, or is the hammers from the gems enough? should i mine the hill 1 square east of western gem? again for hammer

 

[Elandal]

One of the problems in finding examples is indeed that someone will want to found the city just a bit north or something, to emphasize a different aspect. And I'm trying to rather get an example of some game, wheter played by me or someone else, than a worldbuildered one. The WB'd example has never been in a game, we could then as well create the optimal supercity that bears no relations to what you can actually get. Then again, this particular city is one of the greatest capitols I've seen for a while, so maybe it's still too much to be used as an example?

Early on, knowledge about map and resources is usually limited. When you're plonking down your first city, it's most often "found'n'pray" - you don't know all the tiles within the BFC, you don't know about copper, iron, horses, or other strategic resources (to be revealed later as the techs are researched).

Later in the game, you can place cities more optimally as you know the map and early strategic resources. Your hand may be forced by AI founding cities or the need to race for specific spots, or you may have to twiddle a bit due to the "best" city site forcing less optimal city placement in the surroundings - maybe you take the second best choice instead to get better overall placement?

Very rarely do I find it possible to go for best possible city sites. There's always some compromise.

So, if I played at Noble, I would agree with Zombie in that gold city is the one with a shrine or few, and the science city is the one with almost only cottages. However, even at Prince I don't think you always have those options. A shrine or two? Depends on if I can capture one (or start with Mysticism, or get Philo first, or make for CoL slingshot - all of course assuming I get prophet(s) for shrine(s) as well). More than a dozen cottages? If I manage to race for the jungle spot and have the worker turns to spend for it. In general, I have to settle for something next best.

Improvements over resources: Yes, it makes sense of course to get the resource by appropriate improvement (farm, plantation, etc). But I still find myself cotting over sugars for example. How many trading partners am I going to need to provide for anyway? I do of course want one resource for myself, but screw the rest of the world - maybe I want to provide one for my best buddy and cot the rest. Still, if I can get the resources from outside the fat cross of one city, or another city needs to improve the resource anyway, I'm set on that and don't need to care about the resource elsewhere.

Gold from resource trading may be good at times, but rarely is it more than a full town with multipliers would give you. Where vassals pay the premium for resources, others don't. And I don't want too many diplo penalties for trading with the wrong guys anyway. Nor do I actually want to supply them with something that makes them more efficient.
Given those conditions, I may well decide to not trade sugar for dye (for example) even if the dye would increase my happy cap. It's unreliable happiness - the trade may be cancelled for some reason leaving me with unhappy people. If I'm still at Slavery, then just crack the whip and the problem is solved (in a way).


Regarding VoU's notes:

Yes, worker turns are free. Trying to go all the way in the analysis leads to specific one-game situation that will not be replicated in another game.

And indeed, the city could be made into lots of different things. I do find trying to make an early science city into a late production city hard, as there's the whole lifespan of the city to be considered: when will I be ready to farm/watermill/workshop full grown towns in a city that has Oxford University? I just can't get myself to do something like that, so for me city role is essentially defined by early / midgame potential that I can extend to the late game.

It can't be said for sure that the city I picked as an example will be Oxford city. The game is still in progress, and other sites could be found for that role (incidentally, I've found Carthage to be my Oxford city often enough when NOT playing Hannibal).

What I specifically was looking for and did like seeing in your analysis was that the city evolved from one mode into another. Because this is something often disregarded in advice and guides. Cities aren't born in their final state, with buildings and mature improvements. Not even great cities. They're made into something, which involves evolving city improvements.
Why would I care about plantations when I don't have calendar? And even at calendar, plantation is 1c better than farm or 1F better than a newborn cottage - assuming I can get the resource from elsewhere of course. And there's time for mining, time for farming - and time for cottaging. Improvements may be changed as appropriate.


On acid's notes:
I find that agreeable position as well. However, early on carving cities out of jungles is a lot of work - where late in the game you can dispatch "jungle crews" to take care of it, in early game the workers just aren't there (or rather, you need workers everywhere and clearing jungle means they weren't doing something else). But is the food surplus not enough to run scientists even if you cottage the city? Library allows for two only, afterall, so eg. two sugar cottages + 4 food-neutral cottages allows for a busy library at size 8.

This may be my personal problem, but I rarely find ways to run more than two scientists per city. The only way I can do that is to lay the whip when I get CoL, to pick up Caste. Where early in cIV'ing I didn't see problems there, these days I feel almost naked without the whip.. Easily this leads to me going for cottaging in a city that has both high food surplus and high cottability, as later on when Oxford is built, I can run several scientists without caste, getting benefit of both aspects of Oxford (beaker multiplier, allows more scientists).

I'll try to play some without the whip to see what I'm losing for real (and how much of it was imaginary). Maybe I've just gone from one extreme (no whipping in my first games) to another (whip more than I should) - but not being able to whip at all is cruel.. At least I'll get to run full complement of specialists in exchange.

 

[Elandal]

@dragomaster
I'd mine the gems, mine the hills, plantate bananas and rice, cottage all flat grass. Usually would work gems, enough food to live by, and cottages in turns (up to villages). If you haven't had many GPs yet, then hire two scientists so it'll provide one GS too. Wouldn't really care about the forest there - it can be chopped towards the chosen building.

However, early on (before reaching happy cap), I'd probably work food for growth, mines (gem or not) for hammers, build courthouse, granary, forge, library, and barracks. Yes, I build barracks practically everywhere.. As you're far from the happy cap and have ample food, crack the whip often. When not at happy cap, the whip unhappiness doesn't matter in the same sense.

Whether to cottage the grass hill or keep a mine on it - that depends. Early on, mine definitelly. You have enough tiles to cottage without that grass hill. But at some point that question will have to be answered, and there is no simple generic answer to it. Looks like 8 hammers without mine, 10 with (11/14 railroaded), so it would come down to whether you feel the hammers would be handy or not when the time comes.

 

[acidsatyr]

I agree with you Elandal on several of your points.
But, how early is early? I mean, even if I were to play CE, I'd rarely find myself building cottages that early in game, say pre-CoL.
Two scientists are the only thing you can assign as soon as you get library, I agree. But not far off is market with extra two merchants, and forge with engineer, and GL with extra two scientists you can assign, even drama with artists, for example. Not to mention that there is no such thing as too much food when it comes to whipping, especially since you are charismatic in this case and will have extra two happiness to work with.
What I'm trying to get at is, obviously there is more than one way to play this position, which is good. All of us have different opinions on what would be the best way to play this situation, raging from extremely CE gameplay as suggested by Zombie, to almost extreme FE/SE play, if you were to ask me. Some will say hybrid works best for them.
If cottaging all 20 tiles around Carthage enables you to win the level you play on, go for it. Personally I know I'd have harder time wining with CE on deity than with FE/SE, and would never attempt it because it lacks the flexibily I’m used to (please I’ve no idea what level this game we’r talking about is played on, or what level Zombie plays on, I'm just making example).

 

[Elandal]

On difficulty levels:
The Carthage in question is from a Monarch game (normal speed standard size continents map), which in my understanding does not require extreme no-compromises play like Deity does.
My own level of play is somewhere between Prince and Monarch (I've done this by modifying the Monarch level - removing AI starting worker is enough to lower it for me), and I play slightly slower Epic speed with Large map.
Difficulty level, game speed, and map size all affect timing of things somewhat. I've started a couple of standard size / speed continents games just to get the feeling of the timings there - a few more starts and I might be able to get it right so I can play a game with these settings.

Considering the Carthage example, I would probably start by farming two riverside sugars and the corn (+2F from farm improvement - I often priorize improvements based on how much they give, eg. pastured cow with +3FP leads to FP=6 tile, therefore cow is high priority), mine a hill or few (preferably starting with plains hill).
Charismatic has +1 happy and another +1 happy from monument, on this level it means size 7, add extra happiness from ivory/gold/gems (most likely happiness sources in tropical starts) and it'll be 7-10 depending on the favours of RNG gods. Assume working corn, two farmed sugars, and we're already at F+9. Two mines (eg. plains hill + grass hill) will bring this down to F+6 at size 5 - still easy to whip as needed, but already 8hpt (city tile + grass hill mine + plains hill mine) from worked tiles.
However, as soon as I'd get library, I'd want to grow to max happy ASAP, then get down to cottages + 2 scientists. Before this I certainly will try to crank out settlers and workers, but the library will generally for me be the point when I move towards my designated goal: working cottages. It's the first commerce multiplier of any kind, so feels natural to shift balance there.

You say you wouldn't cottage pre-CoL. For me that'd be extremely late - by CoL I should be working maybe 4 hamlets there. Assuming they're riverside, it's 16c from the four tiles - double what I get from palace, meaning I'd already get 60% of my commerce from capitol (and two scientists on top of that).
If I wait until CoL before cottaging, I feel truly commerce-starved. The scientists are earning me no more beakers than a financial riverside cottage is, so they're rather for GPP than for the beakers. For pure beakers (not counting GPP), getting the cottage matured to hamlet ASAP is better.
With the above setup (kick out some settlers / workers for early rex, then move to cottages + scientists) I should get my first GS way before bulbing on the liberalism path is possible. If I'm working for this city to be my science center, then it'd Academy time, and wait for second GS (with GL + 2 scientists that's not too far off) to get started on liberalism bulbing.

Oh yes, pyramids would of course change things with early representation (early police state is sometimes good, but that's way more situational, and I think early US is covered in GM/Pyramids thread). More free happiness, high-beaker specialists. The balance shifts towards specialists there. But, pyramids are high-hammer investment, and I won't even try that without stone.

 

[dar]

On difficulty levels:
However, as soon as I'd get library, I'd want to grow to max happy ASAP, then get down to cottages + 2 scientists. Before this I certainly will try to crank out settlers and workers, but the library will generally for me be the point when I move towards my designated goal: working cottages. It's the first commerce multiplier of any kind, so feels natural to shift balance there.

The threshold for working cottages in this situation isn't any particular tech - it's whenever your other cities can pick up the production slack, freeing your capital up to work cottages. The same holds true for specialists - if the capital is the only viable place to run your early scientists then do so, otherwise find a city somewhere with fish or corn who's only purpose is to run the early specialists. This frees up your capital to work an extra two cottages.

As regards the hills - mining them early is a no-brainer. Your capital is too important in the early game to even consider skimping on production. Later I'd leave them as hills, switching between mines and cottages as needed to build up infrastructure. Cottage them over once oxford is built.

You say you wouldn't cottage pre-CoL. For me that'd be extremely late - by CoL I should be working maybe 4 hamlets there. Assuming they're riverside, it's 16c from the four tiles - double what I get from palace, meaning I'd already get 60% of my commerce from capitol (and two scientists on top of that).

You start cottaging as soon as you can, trying to pick any tech as a threshold is silly. Some games you might not have cottages out until CoL because you need your capitals production to get your other cities and military built up, others they will be your first improvements built (ottomans with heavy floodplain start).

Oh yes, pyramids would of course change things with early representation (early police state is sometimes good, but that's way more situational, and I think early US is covered in GM/Pyramids thread). More free happiness, high-beaker specialists. The balance shifts towards specialists there.

Even with the pyramids I'd skip specialists in carthage. Use the +3 happiness from representation to run another 3 cottages. Find 2 or 3 smaller cities with food resources to run your scientists.

But, pyramids are high-hammer investment, and I won't even try that without stone.

It's all about opportunity cost. The +3 happiness from representation means the pyramids are always a good choice whether running CE or SE - as long as you don't need those hammers for something else, and as long as you have enough production/forests to have a good chance of building them first.

In closing - with that start I would definitely build one or more cities that overlap carthage and help develop it's cottages. That way each time the happiness cap increases carthage can work a new hamlet/village/town instead of a cottage.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Then again, this particular city is one of the greatest capitols I've seen for a while, so maybe it's still too much to be used as an example?

Offering a capital is probably a mistake, given your goal. Better would be to offer a second site with reasonable commerce potential. You want something real... I'd suggest pulling second or third cities from other published games (ALC?), putting them back into their pre-settled state, and offering them for comment.

If you are worried that the peanut gallery will whinge about the placement, offer up a neighborhood without a specific tile in mind - just the goal that the objective in this region is commerce. "Find the best location you can out of these 9 tiles 25 tiles, and describe the development of a cottage city."

This may be my personal problem, but I rarely find ways to run more than two scientists per city. The only way I can do that is to lay the whip when I get CoL, to pick up Caste. Where early in cIV'ing I didn't see problems there, these days I feel almost naked without the whip..

Caste System seems to need (a) a couple production cities to maintain your armies and (b) the discipline to accept the delays in building infrastructure.

 

[Elandal]

Thanks for the tip, VoU. I'll see if I have time to dig around for something.
I'll have to try going caste too. Never can one have enough flexibility - whip is strong but not always the best choice. Although I think I have my hands full trying to broaden my horizons in other ways too

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Caste System seems to need (a) a couple production cities to maintain your armies and (b) the discipline to accept the delays in building infrastructure.

forgot or (c) Spiritual.

 

[Zombie69]

Zombie69, you mised the gems, grasland hill in the southeast corner.

That's what happens when you don't show the resource pop ups on your screenshots. I always play with those on, and without them there's no way for me to tell what's where. Doesn't change anything though, like i said, gems count as cottages. By the way, i didn't know the tile in the south was banana either. This means you can forget about my previous comment on irrigating it.

Shold i ceep the forest title in the south until lumbermills coms for extra hammer, or is the hammers from the gems enough? should i mine the hill 1 square east of western gem? again for hammer

The only reason you should ever keep forests is for the health bonus, and only if you don't need to use the tile anyway, and only if you don't need the hammers from chopping anyway. Never, ever keep forests for hammers. You've got plenty of food. You can easily get all the hammers you need from whipping. Think about it this way : as a general rule of thumb, 1 food = 2 hammers. You can see you've got plenty of hammers!

 

[Zombie69]

So, if I played at Noble, I would agree with Zombie in that gold city is the one with a shrine or few, and the science city is the one with almost only cottages. However, even at Prince I don't think you always have those options. A shrine or two? Depends on if I can capture one (or start with Mysticism, or get Philo first, or make for CoL slingshot - all of course assuming I get prophet(s) for shrine(s) as well). More than a dozen cottages? If I manage to race for the jungle spot and have the worker turns to spend for it. In general, I have to settle for something next best.

First of all, i never play below immortal. I rarely if ever found religions, but i almost always manage to capture at least one holy city (usually 2 or 3 of them) before getting banks and wall street. It's also very rare that i don't manage at least one spot with 12+ cottages possible. Usually i'll have at least one spot with 15 or more. Sounds to me like you just don't attack enough and conquer enough territory.

Improvements over resources: Yes, it makes sense of course to get the resource by appropriate improvement (farm, plantation, etc). But I still find myself cotting over sugars for example. How many trading partners am I going to need to provide for anyway?

You only need one. See the thread about exploiting AIs by gifting them money so that you can trade all your resources to the single AI for all their money.

I do of course want one resource for myself, but screw the rest of the world - maybe I want to provide one for my best buddy and cot the rest. Still, if I can get the resources from outside the fat cross of one city, or another city needs to improve the resource anyway, I'm set on that and don't need to care about the resource elsewhere.

Gold from resource trading may be good at times, but rarely is it more than a full town with multipliers would give you. Where vassals pay the premium for resources, others don't. And I don't want too many diplo penalties for trading with the wrong guys anyway. Nor do I actually want to supply them with something that makes them more efficient.

I can easily get 8 or 9 per resource by the time i get plantations (i tend to go for calendar pretty late). This will give me more money then a cottage/town by the same time period. Not to mention that i could get an extra happiness or health resource in exchange for the sugar, which is normally worth to me a lot more than even a fully grown town.

Given those conditions, I may well decide to not trade sugar for dye (for example) even if the dye would increase my happy cap. It's unreliable happiness - the trade may be cancelled for some reason leaving me with unhappy people. If I'm still at Slavery, then just crack the whip and the problem is solved (in a way).

Exactly, the problem can easily be solved with slavery if they cancel the trade, but in the meantime, you can have 1 more pop in each and everyone of your cities, which is worth a lot more than a single town.

 

[Elandal]

First of all, i never play below immortal. I rarely if ever found religions, but i almost always manage to capture at least one holy city (usually 2 or 3 of them) before getting banks and wall street.

This depends heavily on having some religious nut on my continent. Yes, others can go for religions as well (Jewish Stalin being kind of ironic), but if the other continent has eg. Isabella + HC, all religions will go there. HC particularly seems to try to collect them all..

With that in mind, I have indeed had Taoism take off, become the biggest religion in the world. Because it was the only religion on the continent. It's not exactly unusual even - as I said, start on the continent where nobody cares about religions, and Confucianism or Taoism might become the biggest single religion. Then it just becomes a task of getting a prophet - and if all you have is a single temple to run a priest from, it's not all that easy.

It's also very rare that i don't manage at least one spot with 12+ cottages possible. Usually i'll have at least one spot with 15 or more.

I found those spots mainly in the jungles. 12+ is thus what I've set as my target for main cottaging, the super science city. Yes, sometimes I luck out. Haven't been praying enough to the RNG gods maybe, but 15+ cottages would be really rare for me.

Sounds to me like you just don't attack enough and conquer enough territory.

As I play large map, continents, the distances are large. This means I almost never end up going to war pre-maces - having a neighbour close by seems rare even when I started adding 2 extra civs (11 total).

However, I must add that I indeed don't go to war much. I'm a builder, not a warrior. So either I make col-sling, philo-sling (and get a prophet), or luck out with some close by neighbour that pursues religions.

Overall, I've found the shrine income to be very nice, but something I rarely get.

You only need one. See the thread about exploiting AIs by gifting them money so that you can trade all your resources to the single AI for all their money.

The word "exploit" is something I don't like. If the way to win is by exploiting some bug (yes, I think it's a bug if working by it is called exploiting), then I'll rather stay on lower difficulty level. I have no aspiration to some day win on Deity - I'm happy to play games on levels where I can try different things.

That doesn't mean I'm not trying to improve. Currently I'm working on getting the hang of SE - if I can handle SE without feeling like a bureaucrat (the micromanagement I've needed to do to date to get SE to work for me has been too much, not fun enough for me) then yes - that becomes another tool in my box.

Also I'm working on the warring aspect - how to handle early wars, how to finance an army, how to still keep research up. For that reason, I've added even more civs (13 total) to the map, so that I should get a close neighbour I can go whack early on. Maybe I find out what works, what doesn't, things I need to do to keep research going while bleeding my coffers to finance the army I need to wage war. When I get that right, I have yet another tool in my box.

I can easily get 8 or 9 per resource by the time i get plantations (i tend to go for calendar pretty late). This will give me more money then a cottage/town by the same time period. Not to mention that i could get an extra happiness or health resource in exchange for the sugar, which is normally worth to me a lot more than even a fully grown town.

Trading is a bit harder question. When trading resources (or techs, or anything else for the matter), I consider diplomatic relations, who's my buddy and who's not - and also who I like and who I don't like. Not necessarily the most optimal play, but as I seek to optimize my play only within the limits I choose to play with, it's fine for me.

However, with 11 civs on the map, I should be able to trade a lot, right? Not really. I easily end up with 2-3 civs that I try to ally with, and when the alliance is formed (in my mind that is), I actively seek to work with my allies, not with others. Also, the AI is often limited by resources. It's extremely dumb. It easily ends up having happy or health limited cities where a human would actively seek out ways to remedy this. Then again, I think I'll see this change at least to some degree when I finally get around to installing Blake's AI mod.

Half the game is played with half the civs around, as diplomacy with the other half will open only when caravels find the other continent. Even then, it takes for Astronomy to open up trading.

Exactly, the problem can easily be solved with slavery if they cancel the trade, but in the meantime, you can have 1 more pop in each and everyone of your cities, which is worth a lot more than a single town.

I'm used to cracking the whip, but for now I'm also trying to learn to live without it. And even without considering caste, emancipation will come some day. Still, the whip is indeed a solution to many problems, and this one can be handled the same as any other source of unhappiness.

Overall, I would say that there's so much luck involved that I can't really plan on eg. Holy Coin Wallstreet, or truly superior (15+ cots) science city. If I do plan on anything like that, I must be ready to reroll the game often. And so, if my experience is that these things can't be taken for granted, how can I recommend someone to play on them? "Wall Street goes to the shrine city with best spread religion" - err... to the other continent, quite inaccessible location for me? Right.

Also, even if I choose to play on lower levels, choose to limit my play in some way, I still enjoy reading about high level games. I've followed The Final Frontier (deity SG with Blake's AI) with interest, as I do follow ALCs, EMCs, and many SGs. I may learn something useful from those games, but most of all they're entertainment for me - with all respect to the players

 

[Paeanblack]

That is indeed the stupidest city placement i've ever seen. Passing up a flat grassland gem, a grassland banana and 3 other flat grassland tiles for 2 grasslands and 3 grassland hills (same as flat plains in commerce cities). Wow, i'm truly shocked.

Next time, take some time to weigh all the possibilities carefully before settling.

Apparently you aren't weighing all the possibilities. I'd immediately carve up that area into multiple cities, with each getting one food bonus tile and one gem mine. This generate more total commerce and produces it sooner. Not only do the gems go operational faster, but your total population grows faster and you get more cottage-building turns in.

It come down to a choice between:
A) Plan for having a few great cities far in the future.
B) Work all the good tiles immediately so you can win before option (A) is relevant.

 

[UncleJJ]

Apparently you aren't weighing all the possibilities. I'd immediately carve up that area into multiple cities, with each getting one food bonus tile and one gem mine. This generate more total commerce and produces it sooner. Not only do the gems go operational faster, but your total population grows faster and you get more cottage-building turns in.

It come down to a choice between:
A) Plan for having a few great cities far in the future.
B) Work all the good tiles immediately so you can win before option (A) is relevant.

I agree with this completely. Far too many people plan out a perfect city that will take thousands of years to reach its full potential. It is much more effective to share out the good resources between two or three smaller cities even with considerable overlap (perhaps bringing in a few less useful tiles like plains and desert hills that would not otherwise be worked). In the middle game your productivity and research potential is not determined by the number of cities you have but the total number of tiles you can work. It is true that having more cities increases the maintenance costs but as you can work more tiles with less problems from happiness and health that is more than compensated for. As Paenblack says this approach gives more commerce and it gives it sooner.

 

[Elandal]

There's always the balancing between now, midterm, and long term. Appropriate balance depends heavily on style of play and the goals for the particular game.

If you go for the maximum warring, then the proper balance is almost invariably "now". If OTOH you plan for builder game, aiming for the space, then the balance is heavily towards long term. In both cases you still need to consider the whole game: the warrior will need to consider the midterm and long term, as otherwise his empire will collapse at some point. And the builder can't neglect the now, nor the midterm.

Often enough, when I start the game my first 2-3 cities are settled based on now. Certainly if I can find something that satisfies both now and mid- to long term, all the better. But even in all my builderness I know that to get to the long term, I must get through now and the midterm. So I start with now. However, as soon as I find myself somewhat satisfied with my prospects regarding the immediate future, I try to dotmap something for the long term. I would like to get a superior science city settled early on, as well a city that would be churning out not only axes and maces but even tanks and battleships with excellent score.

Midterm planning is probably harder than either now or long term. In long term, you look at the fat cross possibilities and try to find out the absolutely best one when the city reaches the maximum size the food allows, working superb tiles. In planning for now, you might look at the best UNimproved tiles you can find, as well as a couple of good tiles to improve.
But for midterm, you have to look at maybe half the fat cross or a bit more, but almost never the full fat cross. You have to consider overlaps and how to benefit from them, and best ways to split resources between cities so that as many good tiles as possible get worked.

Therein lie many traps, eg. a city that is great now AND in the long term might be a mediocre one in between (eg. a city that is great at size 6-7, and again superb post-biology, but seriously food-limited somewhere in between). How good is that city? Someone might decide that it's a gorgeous one, giving you both immediate benefits and being superb in the late game. Another might say that it's junk, not scaling at all in the midgame. Both people can be as much right and wrong - maybe you need a great city now and will have time to settle better ones for the midterm, knowing that late in the game you still have great cities from your early settlements? Or maybe you already have some great early cities and should rather plan more on the midterm. There rarely is one right or wrong answer.