Newbie question regarding city management

[Arakano]

So, I have this beautiful city in a riverbend, with 7 flood plain fields, 3 plains, 1 desert, 1 hill with gold, and the rest wood over grassland.

My question now: would you rather build many cottages or many farms here? So, basically, make it a settler-and-GP farm, or rather a financial center?

I am playing as Augustus, Marathon, 1480 BC. It is my second of three cities. The others have many ressources, otherwise mixed terrain with mostly hills.

 

[jackdog]

It all depends what you want out of it, if you want a G.P. farm it would make a good one but obviously with very little production from it, until workshops, it could take time to build the financial buildings if you make it a cash cow. With planning you could chop the forests at a later date to help build the needed improvements for a financial center but equally chop out a wonder now to add to the G.P points.

Persoanlly this early on I tend to cottage the hell out of cities like this as the science boost this early can make the difference between a tech lead or not, and therefore winning or not, it will still grow well anyway and due to happiness and health caps you may run a specialist or two to keep in controlled. One thing to consider is its placement relative to aggresive neighbrours. Cottages, towns etc are easily trashed by invaders and take ages to regrow where as a farm is easy to re-establish. Also to make the best GP wise you will need caste system and that means abandoning slavery which early on if you are expecting trouble from aggresive neighbours can be crucial, its nota city you want to lose.

just some random thoughhts

 

[Polobo]

With a super-commerce tile, lack of bonus food resources and lack of production I would generally go with a commerce city. Maybe farm a couple of the flood plains to assist regrowth when whipping but otherwise cottage.

A settler farm is really only useful early on where there is free land to settle and a GP wants bonus food tiles (especially early when populations are low).

You can probably capture a better GP farm, and regardless with the surrounding hills in your other cities you need someone to fund your military.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

With a super-commerce tile, lack of bonus food resources and lack of production I would generally go with a commerce city. Maybe farm a couple of the flood plains to assist regrowth when whipping but otherwise cottage.

A settler farm is really only useful early on where there is free land to settle and a GP wants bonus food tiles (especially early when populations are low).

You can probably capture a better GP farm, and regardless with the surrounding hills in your other cities you need someone to fund your military.

At the same time, in order for a commerce city to be worth it for the long run, there needs to be enough hammers to build Grocer / Market / Bank / Courthouse / Wall Street (if this is the main commerce city). Those amount to a lot of hammers, especially the Bank (which gives you the largest boost of the 4 non-Wonder buildings).

BUT, you got it right with regards to GP Farms being better off with food resources than flood plains (which damage the health of your city => make specialists harder to maintain).

It sounds like this city is a perfect hybrid. Use it as an early game GP farm while you can still use GP for immediate tech pops. Then convert it to a major commerce city when GP stop giving immediate techs. The beauty of worker spam

 

[Polobo]

Courthouse is not a necessary build.

The big problem with food/commerce hybrid is you lose many turns of cottage improvements. Hybrids are best when done food/hammer.

Anyway, the excessive raw commerce this city can generate is excellent in its own right. Head for Democracy and spend a least a few turns and you can use the hammers and rush buy to get the necessary infrastructure. Markets/Guilds can readily be completed via slavery, and since you have floodplains instead of grassland cottages you don't really even have the big a problem regrowing the lost population.

I'd probably put Oxford here instead of Wall Street (which I would place in a more food heavy city that can run the extra merchants as well as mines/workshops during the build phase). It is cheaper to build (pre-reqs, cost and stone) and becomes available sooner.

 

[say1988]

At the same time, in order for a commerce city to be worth it for the long run, there needs to be enough hammers to build Grocer / Market / Bank / Courthouse / Wall Street (if this is the main commerce city). Those amount to a lot of hammers, especially the Bank (which gives you the largest boost of the 4 non-Wonder buildings).

The whip can provide lots of production in a city like that (especially for earlier buildings), though you may need to temporarily far a couple floodplains.
Later you have rush buy, and Universal Suffrage. Or even workshop/watermill a couple tiles before you cottage them.
Or if you have the AP religion, you can get yourself 4 base hammers from fairly cheap buildings. And later in the game you have levees.
Plus generally I would have as much, if not more, infrastructure in a specialist city than a commerce one.
In the end, the only way you won't have raw production problems is with plenty of workshops. But there are other ways to convert food and commerce to production.

 

[Arakano]

I am leaning towards making it a gold cow - especially since I managed to found Judaism, with this city as the founding site. And so, I guess Wall Street...
No idea how to solve the hammer problem, but buying some buildings might be the right way. And well, a few woods are there, plus one mine at least.