Good Cities

[morpheus11]

I am starting to do more calculations before I found a city in order to try to specialize my cities better. But, I don't know what constitutes a good city.

I am looking for base per turn, per turn, and per turn.

I understand that this would be different depending on what speed is being played, but it is all based off of the normal speed so that is what I am looking for.

For anyone that doesn't understand what I am looking for I would like to be able to look at the tiles in a BFC and figure out what improvements I could build to best specialize the city. But, without having a specific minimum , , and I don't know how to pick what to specialize a city in.

I hope this all makes sense. If not please let me know and I will try to better explain.

 

[reverend oats]

A good, 1st tier city needs at least 2 food sources or flood plains, at least 4 production sources, eg hills, horses, and land to cottage/farm for specialists. This is a excellent hybrid city. For commerce you want a long river and lots of grassland/flood plains. For GPF you need more food resouces and production you need hills.
As for the numbers, it depends on age. For late game, the best science city should have 350 beakers, others should have around 100-200. An ironworks should produce ~80 hammers a turn. This is all after modifiers by the way.

 

[Verge]

First of all, is simply a function of , so you should primarily concern yourself with when trying to determine a city's research capability.

Second, as for numbers, it's going to vary as you said, but I personally don't consider a city a decent science city unless it's producing 100 beakers (after commerce multipliers) a turn. And that's a minimum. My primary science cities invariably produce far, far more than that, after multipliers.

Production cities are more dicey. If a city can produce a raw 15 to 20 hammers at the minimum, then I'll designate it a production center.


Really what's important, however, is the terrain of the city rather than the numbers. If you get the terrain right, then the numbers will fall into place.

Commerce Cities are fairly easy to spot. They should have:
- A lot of "Cottage Grassland" tiles, ideally flatlands.
- Access to a river (although the city itself does not need to be situated on the river proper).

The idea is to pack in as many cottages as possible, obviously. A city with cottages in all 20 tiles in its cross is always a crown jewel in my empire.


Production Cities are harder to pin down, which is why I think they're dicey. They should have:
- Good production tiles and/or resources (obviously).
- Enough farmable tiles and/or resources to support a population that can work all the production sites.
- Access to fresh water (to mitigate from Forges and other production multiplier buildings.

 

[The Rook]

I am starting to do more calculations before I found a city in order to try to specialize my cities better. But, I don't know what constitutes a good city.

I am looking for base per turn, per turn, and per turn.

I understand that this would be different depending on what speed is being played, but it is all based off of the normal speed so that is what I am looking for.

For anyone that doesn't understand what I am looking for I would like to be able to look at the tiles in a BFC and figure out what improvements I could build to best specialize the city. But, without having a specific minimum , , and I don't know how to pick what to specialize a city in.

I hope this all makes sense. If not please let me know and I will try to better explain.

I think it would be very difficult to assign a useful numeric value to a city when there is a vital timing factor that needs to be considered. For example, a jungle river city with banana resources would be awesome in the long term, you could do practically anything with it. NP+NE +farms for GP farm. Cottage spam. Or even Communism+Levee+Caste System+Work Shops for a production power house. However, in the short/medium term, a jungle city would be a financial leech, and considering the importance of gaining an early initiative, it might even be worth settling an inferior long term site for short term benefits.

Whilst you might have a great site in mind for the Moai Statues, it could be some distance from the capital, and might take a long time to complete once the city has been settled. Alternatively, you could have a slightly inferior location in a city that already exists, which could build the wonder in a few turns. Which is best? YMMV.

Then of course there are factors such as location relative to rival AIs, defensive practicalities etc etc.

 

[Artichoker]

I am starting to do more calculations before I found a city in order to try to specialize my cities better. But, I don't know what constitutes a good city.

I am looking for base per turn, per turn, and per turn.

I understand that this would be different depending on what speed is being played, but it is all based off of the normal speed so that is what I am looking for.

For anyone that doesn't understand what I am looking for I would like to be able to look at the tiles in a BFC and figure out what improvements I could build to best specialize the city. But, without having a specific minimum , , and I don't know how to pick what to specialize a city in.

I hope this all makes sense. If not please let me know and I will try to better explain.

For a commerce city, I would look for the following:

1) At least a few squares with above average hammer count, to allow you to build improvements at an acceptable pace. I'd look for about a minimum of 6 Hammers per turn, for a grown city specialized in commerce.

2) At least a few squares with high Food and/or extra Commerce. The more food you have, the faster you can grow your city to access that commerce.
To get the 6 Hammers, you will need 5 extra hammers (besides your city tile).
This generally means you will need about 5 extra food from the other squares.
So, that would be, 5 Flood Plains or two food sources with food values of 5+4.

3) To get started, it is most desirable to have a few squares that start with extra Commerce, such as squares next to a river.


For a production city, I would raise the minimum number of Hammers to 12 per turn, for a city of size 8. The rationale being that you would generally need twice as much production, at a minimum, of a commerce city. Commerce takes a back seat, since you need to make sure you have enough Food to grow at an acceptable pace.

 

[morpheus11]

I guess my biggest problem with placing cities is getting a production city.

I understand that a production city needs enough food to work all the high production tiles at the end. But, if that is still only a base of 10 per turn is that really a good production city.

I will try to use the philosophy of having twice as many in my production city as the other cities and see how that works out.

I see so many games posted here that have a production city that can pump out infantry in 2-3 turns and I have never been able to duplicate that.

 

[Philo_Beddoe]

I just try to avoid worthless tiles as much as possible, tundra, desert, peaks etc.

Becareful with plains cities to with no fresh water.

 

[Artichoker]

I guess my biggest problem with placing cities is getting a production city.

I understand that a production city needs enough food to work all the high production tiles at the end. But, if that is still only a base of 10 per turn is that really a good production city.

I will try to use the philosophy of having twice as many in my production city as the other cities and see how that works out.

I see so many games posted here that have a production city that can pump out infantry in 2-3 turns and I have never been able to duplicate that.

Cities can transform to being more productive while they are growing. One thing you can try is emphasizing Food and building a Granary while using Workers to improve production tiles. Instead of working a high production tile, work a high food tile until the city reaches a size big enough to work all of the production tiles in the area.

After your city reaches that size, start working those high production tiles instead of the food tiles, but do this gradually as the city grows in size. This will be easier after you get access to Windmills and Watermills. Your city's growth will slow down after that point, but your production will improve as a result of switching to the production tiles.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I guess my biggest problem with placing cities is getting a production city.

...

I will try to use the philosophy of having twice as many in my production city as the other cities and see how that works out.

Production cities are definitely the hardest to found early in the game, because you typically need a city with both high and high tiles in its BFC. (During and after the Industrial Era, location becomes considerably less of a concern.)

In a relative sense, your production city is always the one with the most production -- which can vary from map to map.

In an absolute sense, I think a "good" production city is one which can generate 15 to 20 raw hammers per turn using 6 or fewer tiles (w/o starving the city). If you can make 20+ hammers using 6 or fewer tiles, you've got the makings of a great production city.

If you can't find something like that nearby, then you'll either have to play nice for a while, adopt Bureaucracy, use multiple production centers and/or take your neighbor's production city.

I've expounded quite a bit on this topic in this thread on City Specialization and WHERE I do it.


I hope that helps ...

 

[morpheus11]

Production cities are definitely the hardest to found early in the game, because you typically need a city with both high and high tiles in its BFC. (During and after the Industrial Era, location becomes considerably less of a concern.)

In a relative sense, your production city is always the one with the most production -- which can vary from map to map.

In an absolute sense, I think a "good" production city is one which can generate 15 to 20 raw hammers per turn using 6 or fewer tiles (w/o starving the city). If you can make 20+ hammers using 6 or fewer tiles, you've got the makings of a great production city.

If you can't find something like that nearby, then you'll either have to play nice for a while, adopt Bureaucracy, use multiple production centers and/or take your neighbor's production city.

I've expounded quite a bit on this topic in this thread on City Specialization and WHERE I do it.


I hope that helps ...

That helps a lot. Thanks for that. I think I am going to have to put together a note book with all the things to remember so that when I play I don't forget all this stuff.

Thanks to everyone for their input. It was much appreciated.