Help with City Specialization (with pictures)

[thejuicygoober]

Hey everyone! I'm new to the game and am looking for help on city specialization. I understand that in Civ4, you want a smaller amount of more valuable, specialized cities. Now the question is, "How do you know which specialization you should make your cities?"

I will show an overall layout of my city placement and then will individually show each of my cities. Each of my cities are marked by a colored dot and their city radius is also marked.

Basically I am asking how should I specialize each city.


OVERALL SCHEME OF THINGS

Notice America to my right (the blue).
I am playing the Arabs (Philosophical/ Religious), on a Noble, standard size, continents map.
My playstyle is Builder/ Defensive.

GREEN CITY

This is my capital city and the founder of Hinduism and Judaism. It seems to be high in food to me?


RED CITY

This seems to have a fair amount of hammers and has immediate access to horses, and is close to the enemy so I guess this would be my military production city?


BLUE CITY

No idea.


PURPLE CITY

No idea.


YELLOW CITY

Specialist city due to an abunance of natural resources?


PINK CITY

No idea.



I appreciate any comments yhall have. To me when I played, all cities looked the same and nothing jumped out to me as specialist city, research/money city, production city, ect.

Thanks!

 

[Padmewan]

I'm taking an involuntary break from the game due to a sudden onset of crashes

I don't know how new you are to Civ, but a few of your assumptions are a little off. For example, resources. Once you've connected all your cities with trade routes (through coast, road, or river), all of your cities have access to all of the resources for which you've built the required improvement. So, for example, the Red City shouldn't be the military city just because you have horses there; all of your cities will have access to horses. Now, resources also give the tiles a nice bonus, and that happens only when you work the tile from the city that "owns" that tile, so having resources can be good for a city in that way, but not because of access.

I also don't know what kind of victory you are aiming for -- a cultural victory, for example, needs very careful early planning to hit. In any event, assuming you want maximum flexibility, some thoughts:

1. You want more than 1 military city, but it does help to have 1 that's super-specialized, and it can be helpful to have that 1 near a border. OTOH, military production gets in the way of cultural production, and culture is what helps you expand your borders. You may want to aim for balance, and rely on cities a little behind the front lines to help create your army. Since you have only 6 cities, this doesn't apply, but you should also consider putting up barracks and walls on the blue city, which is even closer to the border and more isolated than red.

[I'm gonna save before I lose this comment...]

2.

 

[Padmewan]

2. The best cities for specialists are high-food cities. This is because specialists don't work the land, they sit around on computers and generate culture or whatever all day. So a good candidate for specialists is, in this case, your capital. Put farms on all of the high-food tiles and crank up the population as high as it will go given your current health and happiness resources. Build whatever you'll need to create specialists, then start pulling people off the land into those professions. The problem is that this is also a potentially high-productivity city thanks to the hills and resources. If you're playing an easier-level game where getting Wonders is more than probable, this city can probably crank out specialists from GPP from both Wonders AND specialists -- a nice combo. What you should do is make conscious decisions about what kind of Great People you want to create and build the Wonders and create the specialists that will get you those Great People. Randomness is fun, but it's also frustrating when you "need" a Great Engineer and you pop out a Prophet instead. Mouse over your GP meter to see what your chances are, and adjust the specialists accordingly to increase/decrease your chances.

3. Coastal cities can become commerce kings once you've met enough civ's. River cities also can create good commerce, esp early game before you've met anyone. Pink can therefore easily be your financial capital with 9 coastal tiles and 5 river tiles. Pink should concentrate on cottages, but make sure there is enough food there to support the population needed to work all the tiles.

 

[Padmewan]

Finally, if you haven't actually placed these cities yet, I would actually shift red south one tile, purple southeast one tile, and build another city in the tundra and maybe another on the east coast just close enough to grab the incense. Coastal cities are great for commerce and for food, and Purple is going to really need food because of its tundra setting. The other tundra city I would leave off building for a while, but it will be good to have multiples of the fish and deer resource for later trading.

One more city and you will have the optimal number for a cultural victory, but that's another story. (You could, I suppose, go for the desert since the fish will provide almost enough food to let you work the 2 incense tiles, which would give you +10 commerce in that city).

Hope this was helpful. Now if I could only get my game to get past the menu screen...

 

[Shillen]

Key components for high commerce cities are:
1) Coastal.
2) Lots of grasslands/flood plains to put cottages on. And for each bonus food tile you can put one cottage on a 1 food tile. So having food resources/flood plains is always a plus.
optional 3) Having resources that give gold. Gold hills, gems, etc.

Based on this criteria blue dot and yellow dot will be your best commerce cities(read science).

Key components for high production cities are:
1) Lots of hills and forests.
2) Enough food to allow you to work those hills and forests. For each 1 food hill you work you need to produce 3 food on another tile. So flood plains/bonus food tiles in combination with hills and forests are great.

Based on this criteria green dot and red dot will be your best production cities. Yellow dot would work alright as well but better in the next category.

Key components for great person cities are:
1) Lots and lots of food bonuses or any tile that can be made into a food bonus. This includes irrigated grasslands, etc. For every food above 2 that a tile supplies you get 1/2 of a specialist. So if a tile provides 4 food then you can hire 1 extra specialist by working that tile. If it provides 6 food you can hire 2 extra specialists, etc. The fact that the city can provide some decent production is even a bonus. It means you can build the national epic that much more quickly.

So yeah like I said yellow city would be your great person city. Meanwhile if you don't want a great person city yellow can be a great production AND a great commerce city. It all depends on what you want to do with it. High food generally gives you a lot of flexibility.

edit: And overall I would say your terrain leads to a preferable military victory. You have a lot of production available via hills, plains, forests. Terrain that lends itself to a tech victory is when you have a lot of grasslands, not many hills, a lot of coastal cities, flood plains, rivers, not many plains or forests.

 

[Padmewan]

Except for the fact that it's also his capital, I would say green will also be a major GP city -- it has flood plains, fresh water grasslands, and one bonus tile. With all the production the hills will provide, it will also be great at creating Wonders, which will, if picked carefully, boost the GP production. I would have green concentrate on, say, Engineer wonders and yellow on Merchant.

I agree w/ Shillen that this terrain might lend itself best to military victory.A lot depends on which civ juicygoober is playing, but America has a late UU so that will not get in the way.

 

[cleverhandle]

Interesting thread...

I disagree with some of the above suggestions, but mainly because I don't think you can afford to specialize quite as much with 6 cities as you can with, say, 9. If you're planning to warmonger, then you'll ultimately acquire more space and all this changes. But I think the map lends itself to building quite nicely - you have excellent land with a good variety of resources and only a single front with another civ to defend on.

Green Dot (capital) - the land here is too nice IMO to go completely for GP's. I would build as many cottages as possible while still allowing you to work the surrounding hills and maintain decent growth. This site can create an all-around super-city - if you take Bureaucracy and build Oxford here you would have an unbelievable research center.

Yellow Dot - I agree that this site has "Great Person Factory" written all over it. All those food resources will give you huge specialist potential, and you'll still have enough production land to build the regular city improvements and National Epic easily enough.

Red and Purple Dot - either one has enough food and hills to make an excellent production center. If you're planning on warmongering, then I would pick Red to be the spot for Heroic Epic + Pentagon due to its central location and push it entirely towards hammers at the expense of cottage development. But if you want to build, then I would keep a more balanced approach - your cities will have plenty of hammers to maintain a solid military if you're not planning on conquering your neighbors.

Blue and Pink Dot - nothing special here in my opinion. Each has one strong food resource and a little bit of productive land. Pink would develop further towards commerce as the game progresses and you can afford to work more coastal tiles, but early on both will have to tilt more towards hammers in order to get your infrastructure in place.

Also, make sure you drop a settler 5S of Green - there are crabs (?) and another deer down there, and the AI will settle that spot if don't cover it quickly.