How important is city management?

[Forever1988]

Hello community

Let's compare two players:

filthyrobot:

and Trump:

These two players are very good at strategy games and have "much" skill.

When I watch Filthy I always see him locking down tiles and managing them. When I watch Trump I see that he never locking down tiles or manage them in any way.

I wonder how big the difference is when the game starts. Is it much of an advantage locking down tiles (buying them) and manage your city? Or is it less important than in e. g. CIV 5?

Did you guys test it? How much is the difference?

thanks.

EDIT: Can't post their Youtube channel because of spam warning.

 

[Siptah]

I'm not sure if the difference is easy to quantify.
I'd say in the early game it is less difference than in CiV where you would go all production and no food while building settlers, because cities building settlers didn't grow anyway.
In VI it is less important, but the difference seems still noticeable for me. I want my cities early on to grow fast (if I have enough housing, that is). So I lock down the 3 food tiles instead of the 2 food 1 production or whatever the city governor choses himself. I feel it's less important with larger cities and in the late game, since due to districts and closer settled cities. I haven't really dug into putting citizens in districts though. Maybe in the late game some things can be optimized though this.

 

[Bigv32]

I have found the city manager does a decent job early by focusing on food and production ( you can focus on multiple things in 6). As the game goes on, I usually reset them to default, but early on it is the best mix I have found.

 

[Forever1988]

The question is: how important is early growth in CIV 6? I mean I played a game a few hours ago. I did nothing. I did not manage my citizens and had it on default. It seems like it always prefer production:

For example: it preferred 1 food and 2 hammers over 2 food and 1 hammer. i usually always lock down 2 food and 1 hammer because if my city growths faster I can work more tiles.

I really can't decide.

 

[mnf]

My experience is that the city governor isn't necessarily good even when you double focus food and production, in the early game. Sometimes he will gimp your city growth with 0 food surplus in cities by working say two 1f3p tiles and stagnate at 2 pop, instead of working one 3f and one 1f3p, even when the city is built on a river and neither housing nor amenities are a problem (had it happen to my second city once).

So now I manage all my new cities myself locking down every citizen.

 

[kampori]

I tend to use city management quite a lot. As said above, governor is obsessed with production (not a bad thing, except when working 2P1F in early game) and culture. (Example- Cliffs of Dover. A brand new city will work these tiles immediately, even though they provide no food. Even if there's a 5-food sugar on floodplains in the vicinity. Stupid.)

Growth is important in early game. Always go more food than production until at least 3 pop. Then work what you like.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I watched filthy videos a lot before the game came out, and noticed that maybe 95% of the time he could've left it as it is because the AI was choosing the same tiles. He mentions that from time to time that it's just a habit of his to lock the tiles.

So personally I just set it to both Food and Production focus. However I notice that Civ6 maps are too "green" so there's plenty of food (probably because rainforests give bonuses to districts and they don't want to screw you over too much). Just for fun I set my cities to NOT focus on food, and frankly I didn't notice that great of a difference growth-wise.

So after the first few pops (maybe until 4 or so), set it to Production and the AI will do a good job picking the tiles that gives you most production. Just my opinion.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

In the very early game I found it better to lock down on the 3-food tiles, instead of the automatic choice of 2-food-1-production. The extra citizen earlier means earlier production, science and culture.

 

[Aheadatime]

Always better to micro. Do you want to grow in 2 turns and get your granary out in 4? Or grow in 4 turns and get your granary out in 2? Not too big of a difference, but might be a meaningful choice for your next 15 moves or so.

 

[mnf]

Always better to micro.

Yeah. Not only that, in food-poor land, it can often be the difference between a building in 15 and growth in 11 versus a building in 10 and growth in 24. Micro management is very effective when the available tiles are more "specialized", and less effective in food-rich terrain. And if we consider purchasing tiles, then micro management is even more effective because city governors can't buy tiles, but we can, allowing us to switch from say a 2f1p tile to a purchased 2f3p tile or even better.

 

[Forever1988]

What about locking down food and production in the overview that the governor automatically select the tiles?

 

[RawlsRorty]

Um, Filthyrobot is MUCH better than Trump at Civilation 5&6. When in doubt, I'd go with what Filthy does over Trump.