Quick city advice

[SpankmyMetroid]

Hey, I'm playing on the latest patch, Immortal England on large Terra. Running Progress -> Fealty, and now that I'm not in a naval war I'm going to send an admiral over to scout the new world, so my mission is to get there first and spam cities. Pax Britannica!

Spoiler The situation :

Just finished vassalizing Austria, and I was wondering if I should have one or both of these two border cities annexed? I'd probably want to do one at a time to avoid an unhappiness spike. I'd definitely leaning towards at least one since Linz shares a direct border with the Celts, a potential threat.

My only puppet city (former Moroccan) on the southwest peninsula hasn't built any defensive buildings yet, so I'm wondering if that's not a priority anymore on the puppet build stack. Obviously I don't want to have to defend naked.

I kind of want to also buy some defensive tiles since Linz is in a valley. My thought was the three hills directly west of the Celtic sheep (Northwest of Linz's dye) and I'm definitely looking for feedback on that since this is the first game where I've been trying to pay attention to controlling defensive terrain. Worked wonders for Austria's war.

Graz, though, has two GPTI that seems like a shame to have their yields cut if I leave it puppeted. I do have a dye monopoly now so each city would also have +6 gold from the two tiles they can work. I definitely wouldn't call either of them trash cities. Would it be worth it to annex both, considering I'm playing semi aggressively with the full progress tree? If I did, would it be Linz, then Graz?

Spoiler Linz surviving buildings :

Spoiler Graz surviving buildings :

 

[tu_79]

Hey, I'm playing on the latest patch, Immortal England on large Terra. Running Progress -> Fealty, and now that I'm not in a naval war I'm going to send an admiral over to scout the new world, so my mission is to get there first and spam cities. Pax Britannica!

Spoiler The situation :

View attachment 514076

Just finished vassalizing Austria, and I was wondering if I should have one or both of these two border cities annexed? I'd probably want to do one at a time to avoid an unhappiness spike. I'd definitely leaning towards at least one since Linz shares a direct border with the Celts, a potential threat.

My only puppet city (former Moroccan) on the southwest peninsula hasn't built any defensive buildings yet, so I'm wondering if that's not a priority anymore on the puppet build stack. Obviously I don't want to have to defend naked.

I kind of want to also buy some defensive tiles since Linz is in a valley. My thought was the three hills directly west of the Celtic sheep (Northwest of Linz's dye) and I'm definitely looking for feedback on that since this is the first game where I've been trying to pay attention to controlling defensive terrain. Worked wonders for Austria's war.

Graz, though, has two GPTI that seems like a shame to have their yields cut if I leave it puppeted. I do have a dye monopoly now so each city would also have +6 gold from the two tiles they can work. I definitely wouldn't call either of them trash cities. Would it be worth it to annex both, considering I'm playing semi aggressively with the full progress tree? If I did, would it be Linz, then Graz?

Spoiler Linz surviving buildings :

View attachment 514077

Spoiler Graz surviving buildings :

View attachment 514078

I just developed a way to check whether your puppet city is worth for annexation.

NetEqScienceGain =
= (PuppetPenalty * CityScience - (CivScience + (1 - PuppetPenalty) * CityScience) * (1 - (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1)) / (1 + 0.07 * NumCities))) / (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1))

Repeat for culture. 7% is for standard, if you use other settings, check out the penalty for owned cities.
As long as it gets positive, annexed will be better than puppeted.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

I just developed a way to check whether your puppet city is worth for annexation.

NetEqScienceGain =
= (PuppetPenalty * CityScience - (CivScience + (1 - PuppetPenalty) * CityScience) * (1 - (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1)) / (1 + 0.07 * NumCities))) / (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1))

Repeat for culture. 7% is for standard, if you use other settings, check out the penalty for owned cities.
As long as it gets positive, annexed will be better than puppeted.

I think I need to take global happiness into account as well. A city in that state will take a long time to get good yields back. I could just avoid growth for a while and use them as military bases, but... isn't that mostly what a puppet is?

I don't know the value of any of those constants by the way.

 

[chicorbeef]

I'd annex both probably. Amphitheatre + Dyes, border cities, GPTI, Progress + Fealty, decent existing infrastructure sounds like annexing them would be a good choice.

 

[tu_79]

I think I need to take global happiness into account as well. A city in that state will take a long time to get good yields back. I could just avoid growth for a while and use them as military bases, but... isn't that mostly what a puppet is?

I don't know the value of any of those constants by the way.

Yes. You'd lose 1% to production and gold for each happiness point between 10 and - 10. It's too hard to say if happiness will raise or drop after annexing, but if net science is positive, you won't suffer from illiteracy at least.

About those constants. Puppet Penalty is 80% for everyone except for Venice, and taking Imperialism improves penalty as stated in the description.
CivScience is your current global science production (excluding the one from the puppet). CityScience is the raw science in the city. NumCities is the number of cities you are controlling.

Edit. I just realized that it is better to consider CivScience including the yields from the puppet.
NetEqScienceGain =
= (PuppetPenalty * CityScience - (CivScience) * (1 - (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1)) / (1 + 0.07 * NumCities))) / (1 + 0.07 * (NumCities + 1))