National Park with no forests

[InvisibleStalke]

The last couple of games I haven't had a good national park location with enough trees that I felt it was worthwhile to save them.

However I've come up with an alternative that is nearly as good - put National Park in an area of irrigated grassland - possibly where you chopped all the trees originally.

Pair with Globe Theatre. Each grassland farm produces four food which means that if you work 20 grassland farms you can grow to size 40 and support 20 specialists - exactly the number you would get free from 20 forests on the same terrain.

You miss out a little on the production of the forest tiles themselves. But you gain high levels of trade income with a city this large to compensate. Also you got the extra hammers from forests you chopped.

With both these wonders it appears that a size 40 or so city is fairly achievable. Add in Sids Sushi for extra effect.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Sounds like a good combination to try out sometime. I've always had forests on NP city so Globe hasn't really made any sense there.

 

[futurehermit]

Awesome!! I routinely put NP in a city with no forests (mainly because I'm lazy), but I never thought about trying to max it out to size 40+!

 

[Gliese 581]

Neat solution. The only (small) drawback is greater maintenance cost vs having a small city in a tundra forest.

 

[The Rook]

The last couple of games I haven't had a good national park location with enough trees that I felt it was worthwhile to save them.

However I've come up with an alternative that is nearly as good - put National Park in an area of irrigated grassland - possibly where you chopped all the trees originally.

Pair with Globe Theatre. Each grassland farm produces four food which means that if you work 20 grassland farms you can grow to size 40 and support 20 specialists - exactly the number you would get free from 20 forests on the same terrain.

You miss out a little on the production of the forest tiles themselves. But you gain high levels of trade income with a city this large to compensate. Also you got the extra hammers from forests you chopped.

With both these wonders it appears that a size 40 or so city is fairly achievable. Add in Sids Sushi for extra effect.

I do this all the time when running a SE. I seldom have more than a couple of forests, so the NP is used to prevent polution. I combine the NP with the NE though, and bump up the culture slider whilst running Caste System to combat unhappiness.

 

[madscientist]

I thought about this for a while after you posted and here is my thinking, and the season I never tried.

NP: those forrest reserves allow a free specialist but also get's you the production AND happiness. I have rarely ever had a NP city come close to the happiness cap because of this, so it's not much of an issue.

GT: Offers unlimited happiness but polution is an issue. Answer, do not build polluting buildings until you get recycling plants. One thing I have been doing is upping ecology in teh tech order and it is absolutely amazing at controling those polluting buildings.

So to me you can have one 40 pop city knocking out specialists left and right with little or no production or 2 stronge cities that are more versatile.

I typically use the NP for a very new city in teh middle of a forrest and rcuh buy needed buildings via US. Also corps can immediately make this city a second GP farm.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I thought about this for a while after you posted and here is my thinking, and the season I never tried.

NP: those forrest reserves allow a free specialist but also get's you the production AND happiness. I have rarely ever had a NP city come close to the happiness cap because of this, so it's not much of an issue.

GT: Offers unlimited happiness but polution is an issue. Answer, do not build polluting buildings until you get recycling plants. One thing I have been doing is upping ecology in teh tech order and it is absolutely amazing at controling those polluting buildings.

So to me you can have one 40 pop city knocking out specialists left and right with little or no production or 2 stronge cities that are more versatile.

I typically use the NP for a very new city in teh middle of a forrest and rcuh buy needed buildings via US. Also corps can immediately make this city a second GP farm.

I'm not arguing that this is the only combination that is good. But I think it provides an option that I at least hadn't considered before and works out good. If you have a great location for NP due to forests left then you won't need this strategy. I've been playing a lot of isolated starts recently and if the land doesn't have a good concentration of forests, or I need to clear cut some of the good early concentrations for wonders, then there won't be any good NP locations.

In the game I discovered this I had a great location on a river with three food resources. It would have been a better location for my GP farm, except that I had already built it in a less than ideal location with two food resources and marble - so I could win the race to the Great Library. So I already had an initial GP farm up that could support around 12 specialists with Sids Sushi and Biology.

In the late game I was looking to get a few extra specialists for a stream of golden ages for the space race - which meant another city had to run a lot of specialists - didn't matter what type. Enter the GT/NP city.

Now its not a low production city. Its not a city in the hilterlands that has a lot of forest and low population. Before I turned it into my second specialist city it already had riverside towns, a levee and most of the infrastructure. With its high food surplus this was all whipped into place earlier in the game. Now the towns disappeared for farms and it still had high production from the levee and from engineer specialists (industrial park+factory+forge). With +12 food from Sids Sushi, a high base food surplus and rapid conversion of towns into farms this city was turned very quickly into a specialist monster.

And my GP farm was still as strong as I could make it. It didn't need Globe Theatre as it was only going to go to size 20 as thats all the food it had.

 

[madscientist]

Interesting. Changing a town heavy riverside city into a monster GP farm. Actually it's a good idea, something I need to remember if I evern have that situation.

OK,

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I'll have to try this, I never use this wonder effectively and I know it hurts me.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Interesting. Changing a town heavy riverside city into a monster GP farm. Actually it's a good idea, something I need to remember if I evern have that situation.

OK,

I'm having to learn to sacrifice some of my towns in a late game space race now. Too often I find myself research heavy (3-5 turns per late game tech) and production lite. Not that I have low numbers of hammers - my total hammer count is excellent - but I don't have enough full scale production cities to build all the parts and my Ironworks city can't build all of them fast enough. So I'm going for golden ages to even things out and also towns to workshops in several cities. Sids Sushi means I can run workshops without state property and still be very effective.

By this time I have enough commerce cities that converting one to an extra GP farm and others to production doesn't hurt too much.

 

[futurehermit]

By this time I have enough commerce cities that converting one to an extra GP farm and others to production doesn't hurt too much.

This is my experience as well!

 

[Dan Quale]

I've never made a np in any of my bts games, simply because i spend all my money on units towards the end and have always tried to build it in a crappy jungle/tundra area. 1885 immortal domination victory and I was a mere 369 turns away from completeing it. This nonforest idea sounds great and will match my playstyle of ravaging/plundering/raping the entire earth until I own it all. Someday my people will bask in the glory of the national wasteland.