One city does all

[EL_Kondor]

Hello, I am pretty new to the game but I was wondering what you think about this idea.
Would it be wise to build all your buildings and specialists in your capital and keep them working there instead of making multiple specialized cities. Build other cities only near raw resources and only use them to gather the basic resources which are shipped to the capital where everything is processed etc. This would only work if your capital has lots of food of course. In my last game I tried this and had 5 cities. 4 of them were used to gather the resources (I pretty much had access to all resouces), build political points, and generate colonists (if they had food surplus). My capital was doing all the building and educating. I didn't finish the game because I had no army at the time when Natives attacked, but I was doing reasonably well until then.

The advantage of this is that the super city does everything fast and that you only need one University to educate any specialist since they are all working in that one city. Once you fill all working positions in the city, you could start transfering the specialists to other cities. At the time of Native attack, my capital had 20 population and it was still growing fast since it was next to 3 fish tiles. I don't see why you would move any specialists to other cities since they will be most productive where the improved building are present. Let me know what you think about this.

 

[apekrul]

Well I actually started a game yesterday with this concept in mind. My capital has the main production facilities for horses, tools, guns, cloth and coats and it gets all the raw material -except for food which comes from 3 expert fishermen- imported from other cities.
I'm however planning to shift the horses to another city which has even more potential for this type of production: 5 sea-tiles of which 2 are crabs.
My main city would then just produce more colonists instead of horses with the abundance of food.

So from my inexperienced point of view, it's certainly doable but because it's a very centralized economy, your capital becomes a very interesting weak spot. Not that the computer will realize this but a human adversary might

 

[Yeekim]

1) Yes, it is the cost-efficient way to play.
2) Better to use your second city as the "manufacturing plant", as this can be placed inland and is thus more easily defendable.
3) The "manufacturing plant" does not necessarily need to be at the food-rich location. You can import the food like other raw resources.
4) Self-producing horses is imho wasting food, as these are so cheap to buy from Europe (~3 gold). That food could be put to much better use...

 

[tommynt]

think this "cap" approach isnt something special but the common way to play the game

 

[Knaken]

I'm also playing a game with this strategy.
My main town has 21 pop and produces 56 of each trade resource (factories, 3 specialists and rebel sentiment). Then there are 4 resource towns, a size 1 silver town and a lumber and guns production town inland.

All the specialists were a huge investment (though still cheaper than hurrying on the docks). The factories were built quite quickly, but i have sold so much goods that the tax rate is over 30% and im only on turn 1620 or so. The money i make with it isn't much and i can hardly fund an army to keep those annoying braves at bay who declared war without warning.

 

[Supr49er]

Congratulations on your first post.