[HELP] How to match tiles with improvement?

[Draetor24]

On the topic of specializing cities, I feel that pure specialization is not too good at all. If you make a city completely commerce (cottages) it will have no food or production. Food and production are needed in EVERY city. Even if you don't want to make military units there, you'll still want building improvements or that city is worthless later on.

For this reason, I like to make sure I have enough food to work all the tiles in the later game. I like building cottages on grasslands since the 2 food supports the tile by itself. I also take into fact Biology, since almost all the time, you won't be able to work all 20 tiles in a city pre-Biology. So if I farma grassland, I look at it as 4 food instead of 3 later on, which can support 2 workers from just that one tile.

In regards to windmills, I like them almost always over mines. My typical rule of thumb is if a city needs food, use windmills, especially on grassland/hill tiles since it will increase food to 2. If the city has a good supply of food, I will use mines, especially on plains/hill or desert/hill tiles since it will be a pure production tile that can be supported by a high food tile. Windmills are like a "general" tile improvement, and gives a little bit of everything for those cities that are not lacking in anything. Maps like Highlands make really good use of Windmills because of the lack of food, and the high production rates from all the hills. Windmills on this map will hinder production by a tad and make up for the weak parts of the maps tiles in food/commerce.

 

[Ailure]

Probably not. The odds are quite low, and you might have been unlucky. One thing to note is that the mine has to be actively worked to have a chance to discover new resources, just as a cottage must be worked to grow.

Once I actually discovered two resources on the same turn, at the same city. This was kind of early in the game, and no it wasn't becuse I discovered a new technology. Also happened to be the two first mines I built too.

Meh, I guess I just had a insane spree of luck.

 

[WillShakeyspear]

Really nice of you, Malganis! I have learnt a lot when reading!

So, it means every city has its own use, right? So, normally, the first city should be GP farm (as AI always place it in the most fertile tile), right?

Secondly, how can a GP farm or a commerce-oriented city to grow without much Production? It's difficult to build any building as it just consist of ten or twenty P. Any ideas?

Finally, is specializing the city comes mid or even late of the game? Every cities grow as usual and balance at first and start replacing the tiles afterwards?

Thanks~

Hi Crazymarco!

First of all, I have to say that this thread has been very informative in general; thanks to all so far.

Now to Crazymarco's points:
1) The first city may not actually be a good place to make a GP Farm, especially in trickier map types like Highlands or Ice Age. It might be worth it on occasion to have your first settler run around a bit to find a better settling point, but I find it is best to settle immediately, or at most move once before settling. Because of this, your first city may be much better suited for production or commerce or any other thing besides GP.

2) and 3) You mention that it might be hard for a city to become developed if it is too specialized on food or commerce too early. This is something that you will have to try and balance out on a per-city, per-situation basis. However, it is important to remember that--with specialization in mind--any given city may ignore building many improvements.

For example, a city focusing on production should build a barracks, but probably not a grocer, unless it really needs that extra health bonus for some reason.

I have only done a little testing on this, but I'll go out on a limb and say that it can be worth it to have somewhat slower production in a city that isn't geared for production because you aren't going to be building as much. That is, if you have a commerce focused city, its main purpose is to produce research and money--both are things that are unrelated to what a city pops out when its production bar is filled. That means that what the city produces can be considered kinda incidental to its true purpose--commerce. Yes, the improvements help this out a lot, but there are only so many improvements to help commerce along, so what will you produce once you have completed them and are waiting for the next one? Why make units when you can do it faster in a production-oriented city?

OTOH, it is useful to have those focus-specific improvements completed ASAP, so it is useful to have some production after all.

-Cheers

 

[apdavis828]

How do i destroy one of my own roads?

 

[Sadan01]

How do i destroy one of my own roads?

Never tried it but I think I've seen the pillage icon on my own troops when moving through my own territory. So maybe you can pillage your own land which would mean first, any improvement on the tile and then the road itself.

Maybe someone else has actually tried this to see if it works or not?