National Park

[chisox1976]

This is one hell of a powerful wonder. A later city can become a hell of a great person farm. It also has excellent synergy with Wall street. I am thinking of hoping to get a religious city spread it. Build bank, market, grocer and then run merchant specialists. Forest preserve remaining trees and damn that is one hell of a city. Anyone else try this. Current game running pacifism with decent army size, and big empire and still at 100 % science and 50 + gold each turn. Anyone else's thoughts.

 

[madscientist]

It is also a science mecca with oxford/academy/library/university/observatory/lab and representation. 7 scientists X 6 beakers X 250% is 105 raw beakers, without commerce. Samething with espionage with scotland yard, or a culture bomb with the globe theater and sisten chapel. You can also have a mega production center with 6 engineers (no ironworks). You cna also have ahybrid, running multiple specialists.

All that providing you still have a city with forrests!

 

[whakojacko]

it also has great synergy with NE to become an absurd gp farm. If you can bear to wait it out, its very powerful

 

[LuckyAC]

Yeah, NE is its only real synergy, although it's obviously an amazing one. Its commerce will be weak with so many forests, so Oxford is a bad choice, and Wall Street depends more on shrines and corporations anyway. Ironworks doesn't work without coal, although it could be a decent HE city, I suppose.

 

[popejubal]

Yeah, NE is its only real synergy, although it's obviously an amazing one. Its commerce will be weak with so many forests, so Oxford is a bad choice, and Wall Street depends more on shrines and corporations anyway. Ironworks doesn't work without coal, although it could be a decent HE city, I suppose.

Its commerce might be weak, but with 6 scientist specialists, that's no weakling in the number of beakers produced.

I'd still probably push it toward the roll of a cash city simply because you typically run your slider as close to 100% science as possible, so any potential commerce doesn't matter so much for generating cash.

If you can manage to grab an opponent's holy city and etiher find or found the holy shrine in that city before the opponent has a chance to chop down most of the trees around it, that will be a fantastic "National Parkopolis". 7+ Merchants, religious shrine income and corporate headquarters later if you happen to found a corporation. Multiply all of that gold generated by 3 and you have yourself all of the money you could ever need if you don't keep spending it on rushed items through Universal Sufferage.

 

[JayThomas]

In my current session I'm playing the spy game (steal all techs). I founded a city in a forested region with the anticipation of it becoming the spy center.

It has two irrigated river/grasslands, one silk plantation and three fully developed cottages. The rest are forests. It has stopped growing at size 15 but I'll be interested in how it performs with max spy specialists and the NE. I've put a scotland yard there and all commerce buildings to this point.

 

[prestermatt]

I've played a few OCC games where I had heavily forested starts. It's a bit of a struggle for the first part of the game, but once you hit biology (and it's not too hard if you beeline), you're in great shape. The park eliminates health problems, the preserves eliminate unhappiness, and your specialists can pump out great people to settle. It's quite nice.

 

[frob2900]

It also has excellent synergy with Wall street. I am thinking of hoping to get a religious city spread it. Build bank, market, grocer and then run merchant specialists.

Wall Street is certainly a much, much, much weaker synergy than National Epic.

It's also weaker than Oxford, imho.

 

[popejubal]

Wall Street is certainly a much, much, much weaker synergy than National Epic.

It's also weaker than Oxford, imho.

I agree that Wall Street has a weaker synergy with National Parks than does National Epic. Oxford has a better synergy as well if assuming you'll be running Representation and Caste System. I noticed that it was sometimes difficult to get all of the specialists working as real specialists and not citizens in my National Park cities if I wasn't running Caste System. The "real" population has pretty poor tiles to work and I'm obviously not going to be chopping out buildings in that city.

Since you may have your science slider at 80-90 percent, a well cottaged capital may end up with significantly better synergy than the National Park. For one thing, your capital will actually be able to build Oxford.

As for National Epic, by the time Biology has come along, I've had at least one city cranking out Great People like crazy. It seems a shame to let the National Epic sit unused for such a long time. Since Great People have greater value when you produce them earlier in the game, I'd suggest that National Epic has the most value in a city with good food early in the game even if you do have one particular site planned for a future National Parkistan.

In short, I agree with your statements, but I'll probably stick Oxford and National Epic in other cities for the reasons I mentioned. National Epic may even go into a high food city along with plans to build the Iron Works and turn the city into a super-engineer megaproduction city.

Obviously, though, if I do put Wall Street into the National Park city, that's where any Corporations will be founded as well.

 

[frob2900]

As for National Epic, by the time Biology has come along, I've had at least one city cranking out Great People like crazy. It seems a shame to let the National Epic sit unused for such a long time. Since Great People have greater value when you produce them earlier in the game, I'd suggest that National Epic has the most value in a city with good food early in the game even if you do have one particular site planned for a future National Parkistan.

Actually, as long as there 1-2 food resources and 1-2 grassland farms in National Parkistan, it's not a disaster to stick the National Epic there early on. You can get 3-4 specialists running that will help you while you are beelining biology.

Wall Street has such great synergy with a heavily cottaged city (shrine optional) that I'd hate to waste it on a city site that's bound to be full of commerceless forest tiles.

[EDIT]
I know Environmentalism gives +2 from a worked preserve, but that's still a lousy payoff for working a tile, especially since you have to run a civic that costs you huge amounts of gold in corporation costs.

 

[gettingfat]

Forested city (good for National Park) can be a money-milk cow in rare occasions. One time I early rushed my neighbour and captured a highly forested Holy city capital (ironically, by aggressive chopping as I also got a forested capital). At the end (I wish I had kept the save, so the following number may not be 100% accurate):

• I did missionary spamming. Revenue from holy shrine: 34 cities = 34 commerce.
• Set up Sid's Sushi headquarter there, spread to 6 more cities = 35 commerce.
• I kept 15 forests/jungles (15 preserves at the end) = 15 merchants = 15 x 3 = 45 commerce
• Free merchant from Statue of Liberty = 1 x 3 = 3 commerce
• 2 irrigated farms + 1 banana = 7 extra food = 3 merchants supported = 3 x 3 = 9 commerce (rough number, this part I can't remember well)
• 2 settled great merchants = 2 x 6 = 12 commerce
• The extra merchant specialists from the extra food (14 food) brought by Sid's Sushi & great merchants (2 food) = 8 merchants = 8 x 3 = 24 commerce

In short, even I ran 100% research slider I still had 34 + 35 + 45 + 3 + 9 + 12 + 24 = 162 + 200% (bank/grocery/market/Wall St) = 486 gold as the baseline income only from this city as long as I ran Caste system. I didn't even add the commerce from trade route, the gem tile, 1 grassland fullly mature cottages and the other river-sided preserves.

In addition, the 27 merchant specialists + 2 settled great merchants generate 29 x 6 beakers = 174 beakers when running representation. I actually built an academia there as well. So this is also a decent research city.

I actually believe that this type of city is not the best city you want your National Epic, as great people are more important in the first half of the game. I'd prefer a more traditional seafood/well-farmed city as the GP farm.

 

[patagonia]

I actually believe that this type of city is not the best city you want your National Epic, as great people are more important in the first half of the game. I'd prefer a more traditional seafood/well-farmed city as the GP farm.

If you're going for a space win, great people are often more useful later on.

Being able to stack golden ages in an empire with a lot of US/FS cottages (boosted by levees on rivers) gives an enormous boost to research and production.

 

[mzprox]

Check my game where i got 1700+ research in my only city using the national park:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236363

 

[popejubal]

Actually, as long as there 1-2 food resources and 1-2 grassland farms in National Parkistan, it's not a disaster to stick the National Epic there early on. You can get 3-4 specialists running that will help you while you are beelining biology.

Wall Street has such great synergy with a heavily cottaged city (shrine optional) that I'd hate to waste it on a city site that's bound to be full of commerceless forest tiles.

That might be part of my problem, then. Since I want to get the most out of the city, I keep all non-Forest Preserve improvements out of the big fat cross so that forests can spread to those tiles. I just hate the idea of tying up 3-4 tiles with non-forest activity when those tiles could be 3-4 free specialists later, but I guess 3-4 tiles that produce 5, 5, 3 and 3 food each could support 5 specialists before Biology and then even more after Biology, so I would actually get a better "specialist return on tiles" with the improved food on a few tiles than on the Forest Preserve (assuming a pair of food resources).

I will say that Wall Street only has synergy with a heavily cottaged city if a significant portion of the slider is dedicated to cash. If it's set to 10% cash, then I'm only getting synergy with 10% of the cottage commerce.

That's why I like Oxford in a city with lots of cottages and/or specialists available, but Wall Street I'll only bother putting in a city that has a significant dedicated source of cash that doesn't come from commerce.

One other thought for National Parkistan is spies. Scotland Yard doesn't take a National Wonder slot since it's a "special" building like a Shrine or an Academy, so you can build Scotland Yard, Courthouse, Jail, Kremlin and whatever the other two buildings are and run an absolute ton of spy specialists with and outstanding expionage point multiplier while still having the flexibility to switch to merchants or scientists when that would have greater benefit.

 

[Welnic]

You could put farms on the non forest tiles until you put forest preserves on your forests. Then at that point you pillage the farms. It would be important not to put roads on those tiles as that reduces the chances of the forests spreading, but it is okay to road the forests. If you have food tiles you definitely want to improve and work those the whole time.

 

[Percy]

You could put farms on the non forest tiles until you put forest preserves on your forests. Then at that point you pillage the farms. It would be important not to put roads on those tiles as that reduces the chances of the forests spreading, but it is okay to road the forests. If you have food tiles you definitely want to improve and work those the whole time.

I was under the impression that it were the improvements that in fact negated the chance for the forest to spread. For roads, i'm not sure they have an impact, but they might count as "improvement" for the purpose of non-spreading.

 

[gettingfat]

If you're going for a space win, great people are often more useful later on.

Being able to stack golden ages in an empire with a lot of US/FS cottages (boosted by levees on rivers) gives an enormous boost to research and production.

I have got so many space victories without even a single gold ages before BtS. Gold age helps, but IMHO I don't think it's more useful than getting a clear tech advantage by using the GP in the first half of the games. Say if you have 3-5 academies and lightbulb 2-4 times, chance is you'll get a 4 to 5 tech lead over most AIs and you will win the space victory. Even in BtS, the most I'll go for is 3 gold ages by burning 6 GP, still I seldom do more than 2 GP-driven gold ages, particularly when you have no marble (Mausoleum will be too costly to hard build it).

 

[gettingfat]

I was under the impression that it were the improvements that in fact negated the chance for the forest to spread. For roads, i'm not sure they have an impact, but they might count as "improvement" for the purpose of non-spreading.

Road does reduce the spreading chance as somebody has pointed this out in another thread. If I don't remember wrong, normal improvements, but not roads, can be deleted by your own units. Once you build road then your tile is done. If you just farm it without building roads then you still have a decent chance (still low at standard speed) to get forest spread there later.

 

[frob2900]

If you just farm it without building roads then you still have a decent chance (still low at standard speed) to get forest spread there later.

Forests can't spread over farms.

 

[Welnic]

The forests can't spread over farms. So once you have your preserves built then you have to pillage your own farms to get rid of them. Without the preserves roads cut the chance of a forest spreading in half, I assume that it has some kind of affect on a preserve spreading forest. Since you can't pillage your own roads, you can't ever build them in those tiles.