toob
Chieftain
Recently, I was inspired by this post:
I took this to mean that, as cities grow (or are added), I have to move pop off of non-resource tiles (mines or farms) and onto commerce (cottages or scientists). In practice, what I do is lock down commerce tiles/scientists like I lock down resources, meaning I don't whip off of them.
So I tried something simple: For every population point in a city, I would ensure that I have one commerce-per-turn in both that city, and the capital (not counting the palace). The one in the capital is meant to come from cottages, to prepare for Bureaucracy.
This works well pre-HR (actually too well, you don't have to move very much pop onto cottages with such low happy caps). However, when HR allows the cities to grow, and techs become more expensive, this starts to underpay. (I'm lumping Calendar happiness in with HR.)
At this point, I have enough happy to grow my cities to the size I want them, but I have trouble getting enough commerce from cottages in the capital until I have access to bonuses (Bur/FS, PrintingPress, that's why I say pre-Lib-ish). In some cases, like a military city working mines instead of whipping, I can't even get the commerce I want in the city itself.
So I'm looking for something different from this admittedly simple process.
One commerce-per-pop in each city, and again in the capital, is very easy to figure out. At any point, I can look at my cities, do a simple population count, and check each city's commerce income to ensure I'm matching it. It's a static assessment that doesn't rely on knowing what happened in prior turns.
I know civ isn't stateless (setting up - and taking advantage of - snowballing is what civ mastery is). I also think that a static measure of "do I have enough commerce to expand yet?" has merit, at least as I'm trying to reach that level of mastery.
So I thought I'd ask the forum how you all determine that you're ready to expand.
How do you know you can afford to let a city grow? This is mostly about the tile you're growing onto, of course; what's your heuristic for it?
How do you know when you can afford to add another city? I'm talking about after the initial expansion, when strategic resources are already secured.
How fast do you have to tech, say, Machinery before you say to yourself, "I got that too quickly, I should have expanded more beforehand"? (Yes, "too quickly" is silly, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say here: if it's available, spending my surplus on land instead of techs is usually better, at this point in the game.)
What makes you decide that the only way you can get enough commerce is to switch to Caste and run scientists?
Of course, commerce is an input, not valuable by itself, so this isn't measuring exactly the right thing (though it's not quite wrong). That's why I'm asking what expenses you consider when growing, and how you compensate for them.
I took this to mean that, as cities grow (or are added), I have to move pop off of non-resource tiles (mines or farms) and onto commerce (cottages or scientists). In practice, what I do is lock down commerce tiles/scientists like I lock down resources, meaning I don't whip off of them.
So I tried something simple: For every population point in a city, I would ensure that I have one commerce-per-turn in both that city, and the capital (not counting the palace). The one in the capital is meant to come from cottages, to prepare for Bureaucracy.
This works well pre-HR (actually too well, you don't have to move very much pop onto cottages with such low happy caps). However, when HR allows the cities to grow, and techs become more expensive, this starts to underpay. (I'm lumping Calendar happiness in with HR.)
At this point, I have enough happy to grow my cities to the size I want them, but I have trouble getting enough commerce from cottages in the capital until I have access to bonuses (Bur/FS, PrintingPress, that's why I say pre-Lib-ish). In some cases, like a military city working mines instead of whipping, I can't even get the commerce I want in the city itself.
So I'm looking for something different from this admittedly simple process.
One commerce-per-pop in each city, and again in the capital, is very easy to figure out. At any point, I can look at my cities, do a simple population count, and check each city's commerce income to ensure I'm matching it. It's a static assessment that doesn't rely on knowing what happened in prior turns.
I know civ isn't stateless (setting up - and taking advantage of - snowballing is what civ mastery is). I also think that a static measure of "do I have enough commerce to expand yet?" has merit, at least as I'm trying to reach that level of mastery.
So I thought I'd ask the forum how you all determine that you're ready to expand.
How do you know you can afford to let a city grow? This is mostly about the tile you're growing onto, of course; what's your heuristic for it?
How do you know when you can afford to add another city? I'm talking about after the initial expansion, when strategic resources are already secured.
How fast do you have to tech, say, Machinery before you say to yourself, "I got that too quickly, I should have expanded more beforehand"? (Yes, "too quickly" is silly, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say here: if it's available, spending my surplus on land instead of techs is usually better, at this point in the game.)
What makes you decide that the only way you can get enough commerce is to switch to Caste and run scientists?
Of course, commerce is an input, not valuable by itself, so this isn't measuring exactly the right thing (though it's not quite wrong). That's why I'm asking what expenses you consider when growing, and how you compensate for them.
