Micromanagement....

[Randall Turner]

There's a little "twist" for fast growing cities that's documented in the strategy article forums.

Basically, growth happens before production is calculated, so it's advantageous to have a "production" focus on the turn your city grows. It'll pop the new citizen on a high production hex and count it on the growth turn.

I agree, though, "default" is generally a good starting point.

 

[Misterboy]

OP, when playing the higher difficulty levels, playing a specific strategy is FAR more important than micromanaging things. You can switch things up, but you have to have a strong opening plan at least. If you're battle oriented, having a good grasp on combat strategy is really key. As many have said before, you should be able to take on much stronger AI armies with your keen human mind!

Regarding micro, I usually just set my cities on "default" or "food" early on. Then after my cities get up to size I tend to switch most of them over to "production" focus. The only time I micromanage things is if I *really* want production focus, but there's not enough food to support it. Under those circumstances I may temporarily set to "production" and then switch out a few population points to optimize. But that happens very rarely.

Whenever a city produces something, that's my cue to check on things quickly. If a city is producing things quickly, then I won't bother checking in for a dozen turns or more.

Also, don't be afraid of the "avoid growth" check box for some cities. On easy difficulties, happiness isn't much of a problem, but on higher settings, getting into a happiness hole is dangerous. If you're in one, it can be hard to get out, so you need to avoid it as much as possible. Though keep in mind, that in some games I'm straddling the -9 happiness barrier quite often!

It's not so much about micromanaging cities, as it is knowing how each city will be used based on the terrain. Let it do it's thing, but guide it a bit from time to time.

 

[WickedWombat]

Yeah I agree completely with this. Although I find the default focus (with perhaps a few tweaks) is generally best for 99% of cities, and I set most of my "focus" just by my choice of improvements. I find the other foci tend to prioritise instant gold/production/whatever too rigidly to the detriment of growth (or by ignoring amazingly good tiles that just don't produce much of the focused resource), and the longer-term payoff of making the city even more productive in its chosen speciality. I mostly only use them briefly when I really need something (usually a wonder) right NOW. The default focus is also quite good for de-emphasising food when you dip into a bit of unhappiness.

Also I never ever EVER automate workers and always do manual specialists (I wish there was some way to make it default to manual specialists).

Kewl, I'm definitely down with not automating workers anymore, but by locking down, isn't that where I click on the workable city map and I get like a padlock icon or something?

 

[Misterboy]

Yes, when you click an empty citizen circle you'll lock the citizen to that site. Then changing production focus won't alter that choice.

As I mentioned before, I don't find it necessary very often so I think you're safe not worrying about it, unless you really want to. Take care when doing it, however, that you remember you've done it. The same applied to manually setting the specialist slots.

Keep an eye out for non-working citizens. They will be listed under the production focus list. If you manually assign citizens and later change it, you might find you have one or more set "not to work" by accident.

 

[WickedWombat]

OP, when playing the higher difficulty levels, playing a specific strategy is FAR more important than micromanaging things. You can switch things up, but you have to have a strong opening plan at least. If you're battle oriented, having a good grasp on combat strategy is really key. As many have said before, you should be able to take on much stronger AI armies with your keen human mind!

Regarding micro, I usually just set my cities on "default" or "food" early on. Then after my cities get up to size I tend to switch most of them over to "production" focus. The only time I micromanage things is if I *really* want production focus, but there's not enough food to support it. Under those circumstances I may temporarily set to "production" and then switch out a few population points to optimize. But that happens very rarely.

Whenever a city produces something, that's my cue to check on things quickly. If a city is producing things quickly, then I won't bother checking in for a dozen turns or more.

Also, don't be afraid of the "avoid growth" check box for some cities. On easy difficulties, happiness isn't much of a problem, but on higher settings, getting into a happiness hole is dangerous. If you're in one, it can be hard to get out, so you need to avoid it as much as possible. Though keep in mind, that in some games I'm straddling the -9 happiness barrier quite often!

It's not so much about micromanaging cities, as it is knowing how each city will be used based on the terrain. Let it do it's thing, but guide it a bit from time to time.

Thanks so much for the great ideas! I have started using the "avoid growth" button at times, to avoid the very thing that you said. Unhappiness. I really never realized how much -10 and below really sucked. It does. Bad.

I worry about avoiding growth too much though. I'm afraid that my pop growth will really start to suffer as compared to the other Civs.

 

[Polycrates]

Thanks so much for the great ideas! I have started using the "avoid growth" button at times, to avoid the very thing that you said. Unhappiness. I really never realized how much -10 and below really sucked. It does. Bad.

I worry about avoiding growth too much though. I'm afraid that my pop growth will really start to suffer as compared to the other Civs.

Avoiding growth will likely become more important with the new patch, so probably not a terrible habit. The only thing I would say is that it's generally worth the effort to keep a key production city's growth ticking along. It's the only city type where the primary output is generally in direct opposition to food production (making them really hard to grow), but being able to concentrate production output in one city is really important, and this requires high population. Unless you're building something of particular importance (a potentially-contested wonder or urgently-needed unit) I find it's almost always worth keeping food output reasonably high at the expense of a bit of short-term productive output. Likewise a core science city, although science cities will be less reliant on raw population post-patch.

As opposed to eg gold cities, which generally tick along just fine with the food available from grassland trading posts etc, and which feed into a communal gold pool (so it doesn't matter so much about making them big and concentrated). These are prime targets for avoiding growth. As are great people cities, which tend to be very food-rich and are easy to operate in fits and spurts of growth. Also watch the growth of puppets, since their population is not going to be as effective for the happiness cost as your normal cities. Tear down their farms and put trading posts preferentially on low-food tiles to really stifle them.