Deciding "city type" - A newbie problem

[themaelstorm]

Greetings, I've had a long break where I had no time to play Civ4 and now I'm back on it!

I'm still very inexperienced and reading around forums, checking guides... There is the issue of "city types" that everyone somehow talks about, but problematic for me.

By city type, I mean GP farm, production farm etc. It's explained very well in.. sorry, forgot his/her name, a guide that I found on the site in pdf format.. Anyway. I get the point of these cities but there are two main problems:

1. I can not decide what a city should do unless it's very obvious. For example, there are plains and 2 gold resource... okay, I emphasis on gold production. There are a few +hammer yield resources and several hills.. okay, I emphasis on hammers (and try to get as much food as possible from other tiles). But say.. there is a city with gems (gold), a rice (food) and a few hills (can be mined for hammers... or later windmilled for balanced production). I just can't decide what to make of that city.
An obvious way to counter this may be to build only if I'm certain.. but in many situations this is not an easy decision. Maybe I need to block some land or just get it so that AI doesn't block me. Or there are three different resources and I want to grab them, even for bonuses and trading.
Of course this is very, very situational depending on game, your objectives etc. But any insight is appreciated.

2. Buildings outside of city-emphasis scope. For example.. Temples for any city... or Markets and Grocers. More gold=more research (if im not mistaken) so I'll want these in wealth/research cities but what about a GP farm or production facility? Many cities are prone to having health and/or happiness problems. Should I wait for these problems to erupt (or come close to erupting) or just build a market to both protect myself earlier and get a little cash boost on the way?
The problem is I just get lost in this. I build Colosseums, Theatres, Markets, Grocers, Academies, Temples... I can't stop myself!

Thanks in advance for any answers (I did a few searches in forums and already come up with -some- insight but not something that directly targets these, pardon me if I missed any threads).

Edit:
I play on 3rd difficulty, usually with a financial civ, normal map size, continents, with both expansions.

 

[themaelstorm]

argh, somehow managed to post a new message instead of editing and can't delete this now >_<

 

[kossin]

1. Settle food/resources

Then look at:
-how many food surplus do I have? [or how many specials => high yield tiles are there]

If you have 2+ good food resources (5~6 food per resource), you can run some specialists here after the city has grown, or plan your Globe Theatre City.

2. Look at hills
-Can you feed your hill working citizens?

If yes, good production city.

3. Look at rivers, grassland.
-How many sustainable cottageable tiles.

DaveMcW's rule is 10 cottageable tiles for a commerce city. While not absolutely necessary to have 10 tiles, not having enough grassland stagnates the city.

4. Leave plains for last, or plain ignore them. Unless you have Biology.
Tiles that can't feed themselves are bad when you're trying to grow.

5. As you acquire techs, almost any city can become anything you want.
Keep in mind that growing cottages still takes a while to mature even in Emancipation.

 

[themaelstorm]

Thank you very much for the tips!

And I would also love to hear about my second predicament: Happiness/Health buildings.

 

[Mantic0re]

This mostly comes with practice. For a while I played the game up to turn 100 only and it certainly helped with some of my city placement and specialization.