How many science cities?

[BarryMcCackiner]

So I've only played a few Civ IV games at this point, all on Noble. I started playing civilization in 1995 or so when I purchased Civ I for my PC. Anyways, I kind of have a hard time pulling myself out of the "old" civ strategy of making all cities very capable in all areas. I need to get better at specializing cities as it seems from reading on these forums that it is far more efficient.

So I assume when people make a city dedicated to science they do the following: Put it by a river or food resources so it can support more specialists. Build mostly towns all around it and do not worry so much about production. Build academy and other research improvements as they come.

My question is: How many of these cities do you typically have? Is just one enough? Do you do a similar thing for wealth? Is it feasible to have one Science City and one Wealth city and then just only concentrate on military and basic improvements in all the rest of the cities?

The reason I ask these things is that I do not have a ton of free time to experiment on my own, and any additional input from the more experienced players is definitely appreciated and will be put to good use. Thanks in advance!

 

[Zombie69]

There is no wealth city (except if you count holy cities as such, but those are often your science cities anyway). The number of science cities you need depends on the size of your empire.

 

[Oggums]

My "wealth" city is usually my high-production military city. Not by choice, but because that's usually my second city, which is always picked when a religion is founded. Which is fine by me, since it doesn't take long to build markets/banks etc. in a high production city. And they probably never even see a library.

As far as science cities go, I don't go farms/scientists except very early in the game, when I just can't afford having more, larger cities. Otherwise, my "science" cities get cottages, not farms (I really only label my cities either "commerce" or "military").

At best, I'll have only one Great People city with all farms, and everything else is either full-on cottages or all production focused. One is definitely not enough, but I don't have a set number I shoot for. It all depends on the land the game has dealt you. I've played games where I had a huge grasslands continent and wound up with a blanket of cottages. Which sucked until Universal Sufferage, when you can buy buildings and you get +1 hammer per town.

 

[BarryMcCackiner]

Well when I mentioned a "wealth" city I was thinking along the lines of where to build a wall street and banks and such. I guess I have a further refinement to my question.

If you have X amount of fully dedicated science cities, then do you build any science improvements in the other cities at all? Or do you just let them supply the empire with military and just not worry about it? Furthermore, do you build banks and such in those military cities? I would assume most would build things like harbors and grocers because of the health benefits, but other than tangible rewards for the city itself, do you not build any other improvements?