How soon do you specialize your towns?

[peter79]

So I'm currently in the exploration age of my 1st playthrough and I've come to realize that town are the real engine of you cities growth and your empire's bank balance. Given that you can only do it once per age how soon should you specialize your towns? I realize that this is not a straight forward question just curious what peoples general thoughts are on this?

 

[Hawke9]

I mostly keep growing until I've reached (nearly) all the tiles that the town can grow to, which can take a while. It may not be the optimal strategy but I prefer claiming all the land before a neighbor gets the chance

 

[Melkus]

These are still preliminary thoughts, but:
It took me a while to realize that you can always switch back - so if growth is slow for your town at the moment, might as well support your cities for a while until better food bonuses come online. (You can still buy districts if needed.)
Complicated math, for sure, probably also depends on where you want to grow your empire? (Since towns may be future cities or even capitals, too)

How to specialize is a completely different question, though, but mostly depending on terrain, probably? (If there's not an obvious situational option like Frontier town)

What can be self-defeating: locking them in early in Modern, the factory mode - forgot how it's called - can save you a lot of money later (if going for the economic victory)

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

In modern age i had enough settlement cap to start filling in excess space with towns that I specialized. Older town were full so they became cities or factory towns.

Exploration I had a city on a one tile island that became a fishing town.

 

[Devilbound]

When the surrounding area has been developed thus it makes sense if there is no pressing need to do it before.

 

[evonannoredars]

I'm constantly debating whether to grow so it can provide more when it does specialise or specialise so I can get them sending food sooner haha.
To solve this dilemma I'm approaching them with the goal of grabbing all the resources the towns can reach, then specialising them. Wish specialisation allowed towns to keep like 25% of their food so they can still grow a little bit with time.

 

[remconius]

I started off thinking that I would grow towns until their growth starts to slow down to >10-15 turns per pop. But currently I am thinking that as soon as they hit 7 you should start supporting the city for a while, unless there is some land/resource that you want to grab. Then when the city is powerful, you can continue the town growth for a while. Or alternate towns, where most towns support the city and some towns are growing in turn.

Also a mining town is great, where the extra hammers are converted to gold and can be really beneficial for you to buy buildings in settlements.

I also feel that as long as the town is growing it's contribution is very limited.

 

[Devilbound]

When speaking about turns it would be good to mention the speed you're playing at.

 

[Deggial]

Personally, I always miss the right moment.
"Hey, this one tile looks nice, I want the town to grow into it! I promise I will switch as soon as it does".
Rinse and repeat.
And then the era ends and I realise: I never actually chose a specialisation, so I didn't benefit from the town at all. (Just a little exaggerated.)

On a more serious note:
- Obviously, all resources should be integrated.
- Secondly, the border expansion (especially towards other civs) should be finished.
- Preferably, most - if not all - tiles that fit the planned specialisation should be integrated.
- Finally, ... oh dang! The crisis has just reached its second stage. I've done it again (or actually, I haven't)!

 

[Acken]

As long as your cities can grow in a reasonable amount of turns you should send food to it. Resume growth when it is too slow or if you want to grab a specific resource in the town.

The heart of your economy are the cities so they should always be the priority. Food town growth should be viewed as an investment for future higher growth.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I agree with the "grow onto as many resources as possible" tactic. I have an Exploration Age policy card that benefits towns with a certain specialization. This game (my 2nd) I am specializing them earlier, to get the beneift from that policy card. Ask Melkus notes, it's always possible to fall back (during the same Age) to "Growing Town, if you need to.

@The_goggles_do_nothing I have conquered some 1 tile island towns from the AI. Wanted to see if they were useful. They become fishing towns pretty quickly. The choices of buildings/quarters is very limited for those towns. I can't see any reason to promote them to cities.

 

[evonannoredars]

I've changed up how I choose when to specialise towns and although I try to prioritise getting all the useful resources, I generally switch to a specialisation once the turns required to grow are significantly more than the current population, eg. I'll keep growing if its at 9 pop and needs 11 turns to grow, but stop if at 10 pop it then needs 14. It's a bit arbitrary because of how urban buildings also count towards population, but it seems to work well enough for me.

 

[CAB]

You should have as many cities as you can afford to have... the gold that town generate are not efficient use of production, cities can generally generate production into more efficient stuff like better urban tiles etc. You do need some towns to send food to cities so they can take advantage of specialists.

In general your towns should only grow to take advantage of special resources and whatever good food yield tiles that you have then you turn them into sending food. The only sort of town I usually use are trade or farm/fishing towns. The other ones I usually don't find much use for as they should become cities and not be towns.

Since cities and towns share the pool of settlement limits you are likely to not waste space with tiny farming or fishing towns unless there are some really good spots to exploit them or resources to extract that you want or need.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

The choices of buildings/quarters is very limited for those towns. I can't see any reason to promote them to cities.

I’m wondering if specializing towns should allow buildings related to the speciation.

 

[ehecatzin]

I find that I can get most of the inmediate resources at about 9, once I get a couple of towns going I might turn growth back on to maybe get it around 12 if possible to grab the rest of resources or claim some extra tiles.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I've had good results on Sovereign level leaving them at Growth until 18 or more pops then dropping the hammer once the next pop growth event is 30 or more turns out. You can lever gold per turn in late Exploration/Modern age markedly.

 

[Devilbound]

I've had good results on Sovereign level leaving them at Growth until 18 or more pops then dropping the hammer once the next pop growth event is 30 or more turns out. You can lever gold per turn in late Exploration/Modern age markedly.

Standard speed?