GeneralMeng
Warlord
is there anyway for me to see what resource the ai have? im trying to spread my corporations, but i dont want to give ai the beneficial one (ie the one where they have alot of resources)
Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions
- Thread starter Civrules
- Start date
IAM
Emperor
vassals and teammates have always changed research when requested for me.
IAM
Emperor
That depends a lot on available food resources. If I have a city with lots of hills and plains I'll farm the plains and mine the hills. A city with 3 good food resources I may cottage all the plains.
Whatever you are most lacking in the other tiles of the city, taking into account what the cities priority is. If you have plenty of food, then you probably want to build cottages if it is a commerce city and a workshop or watermill if it is a production city. If you are short of food, you could build a farm but it does not gain you much until biology.
Sorry if this is not as helpful as you expected, but one of the great things about civ is there is no one answer to most questions.
IMHO, Workshops. Those barren brown patches of land don't amount to squat, but then, through the magic of State Property and Biology, Gun Pumps for as far as the eye can see.
s.bernbaum
Mostly lurking
In my experience, they will always do as you ask. (After all you're a team and you both get the benefit, besides you are the brains of the outfit!
)
cherrysnowdrop
Chieftain
Hello,
I would appreciate some help about city specializing. I just cottage all cities (spare a few farms) and the odd workshops so my economy turns out okay in the end, but I`m sure this isn't really a good idea. Is specializing so important, and if so, should I plan ahead and try to settle accordingly? I usually build all sorts of buildings in pretty much every city.
I would appreciate some help about city specializing. I just cottage all cities (spare a few farms) and the odd workshops so my economy turns out okay in the end, but I`m sure this isn't really a good idea. Is specializing so important, and if so, should I plan ahead and try to settle accordingly? I usually build all sorts of buildings in pretty much every city.
IAM
Emperor
I am in the minority on this but I like non-specialized civs. I don't build every building everywhere but some things like library, market, barracks go all over the place. The basic concept is to use a spiritual leader and switch civics then have all cities work towards a goal. Like switch to military civics and have all cities build units then after war switch to peaceful civics and have a research empire.
If I get a lot of plains in my game I like to beeline Biology - perhaps getting Physics first. Once the Plains generate 3 food, they make awesome Workshop cities and will generate massive amounts of hammers.
In my experience, they will always do as you ask. (After all you're a team and you both get the benefit, besides you are the brains of the outfit!
Yes, they will always switch research. Note, that if there is a free tech or a free Great Person or a religion or such bonus, only the team-member who contributed the last beaker gets the bonus (though a free tech you would get, you just wouldn't get to pick which one if your teammate gets it). Thus, it is sometimes a good strategy to tell your team-mate to research something else while you finish that bonus-producing tech alone, guaranteeing that you get the bonus rather than your teammate. Just a tip. Another tip: generally it is best if you are both research the same tech, because you can then use the tech advance sooner, but that's fairly obvious.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
As you saw from IAM's post, not every player specializes. I usually find it invaluable, as choosing a speciality for a city (commerce/science, production/military, food/specialists, etc.) tells me what tile improvements and buildings to prioritize. It also helps me "play the map", leveraging the terrain features for maximum effect.
There's an overview to city specialization in my beginners' guide (link in my sig), and there are more articles on the topic in this site's War Academy.
Roland Johansen
Deity
Your civilisation can construct a few national wonders that offer bonuses like +100%
, +100% 
, no unhappiness, +100% 
, +100% 
, etc. It's of course very beneficial to build such unique buildings in locations that have a very high natural output of said resource in order to get the most out of these national wonders. And it's also very natural to then specialise the terrain around these cities to produce the utmost of this resource. This is a basic level of specialisation which many players employ.Since Warlords, we can settle great generals in our cities so that soldiers get + 2 experience. It's of course smart to do this in a city that can quickly construct units due to a high natural
output. And once you've settled a few of them in the same city, it's very beneficial to optimise the output of this city.When you encounter a region with a high
output, it can also be pretty beneficial to create a great person city in the area. You might want to combine your first great person city with the national wonder that improves the output of great person points, but even then you might want more than a single great person city. After you've constructed a few (1-3) great person cities which focus on nothing else than food and specialists, the other cities will never create enough great person points to create a great person and your entire production of great persons will come from these cities.The so called specialist economy (science output is based on specialists like scientists and great scientists) also allows you to create cities with a high gold output or a high science output with little influence from the tech slider. The cities with a high gold output have little use for the science multipliers from libraries and such while the cities with a high science output have less use for the gold multiplying buildings (except for their happiness and health benefits). So this also leads to a logical reason for specialisation.
Specialising cities actually has more to do with specialising the output of the terrain around the city to optimise the output of a certain resource. It then becomes logical to get the best multipliers for this resource (first).
There is a limit to building specialisation in cities. Larger cities will need the buildings that create happiness and health. They also want to get the courthouse and granary as these are useful in every city. And when you need to build all of these buildings in a city, it's beneficial to have a good
output so you want to build the production multiplying buildings. At that point, there are only a few buildings which haven't been build. Some might not be very useful in this city, others you'll want to build also.The order in which you build buildings in cities is still very important and this will temporarily specialise the buildings in your city.
CivIVMonger
Emperor
I tend to have a mix of specialized and hybrid cities, myself. And hey, I might be doing it wrong. But I do usually have a GP farm and a couple of unit production cities (eventually, early game most of my cities just build units), as well as a few commerce cities (one each focused on gold & science). But the rest of my cities, unless they are really well suited to specialization, end up being hybrids capable of a few different things depending on how I set my specialists. In general, I'd say my hybrid cities tend to be pitched a little more towards science than anything else but it sort of depends on the individual game.
Roland Johansen
Deity
You'll get the level of improvement that the AI usually has which is not as good as decent human players. Decent human players will improve their cities more optimally.
I currently have 20 or so cities on 'Earth2', how the hell would I manually work those?
I usually place signs around my cities to denote what improvements I want. This takes me around 1 to 2 minutes per city and afterwards I can easily give orders to my workers to build the previously denoted improvements. That doesn't take a long time either if you've already decided what improvements should be build around the city. However, it takes some level of understanding of the game mechanics and some experience to be able to decide how the terrain around your cities will come to look like when they've reached their optimal size. It's maybe not something which you do during your first game.
I usually play on huge maps and will typically have some 50 cities around mid to late game. These games take a while to finish, but it's my preference to play such epic games.
And of course, welcome to civfanatics!
It really is too much micromanagement imo, but I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet in multiplayer atleast. Unless the same option to automate workers per default is available and forceable upon players 
Thanks by the way, I've stumbled upon this site some times, and it always was a great resource
Thanks by the way, I've stumbled upon this site some times, and it always was a great resource
That sounds like such a good way of managing your workers. Do you have any screeies so I can see how you do it?
henrebotha
proud Fender owner
I'm aware that I'm not Roland 
, but I for one use signs to remember where to place forts (for when I'm building complicated channels for my navy) and farms (when I have to chain-irrigate over a long distance and am afraid that I'll forget what I wanted that worker to do by the time he's done with the first farm...). Also obviously for city site planning. Helps me prioritise. 
, but I for one use signs to remember where to place forts (for when I'm building complicated channels for my navy) and farms (when I have to chain-irrigate over a long distance and am afraid that I'll forget what I wanted that worker to do by the time he's done with the first farm...). Also obviously for city site planning. Helps me prioritise. Similar threads
