Request: The ideal-ish terrain setup for each type of city

[Sleek]

So after reading some guides on city specialization and resource usage I still cant come up with good cities when I play (Im stuck on Warlor...FOR SHAME ) so I was wondering if any of the advanced players could make a guide with pictures giving good examples of which cities (showing terrain) would excel at a specific task.

Dunno if im asking much but im kinda ashamed of seeing people going on noble or prince while im still at warlord

 

[wickedcherub]

I don't know if it's the right way to go about it, but I build my cities first, then decide what kind of city it's going to be.

I always build my cities to get at least 1 or 2 food resources, some green grassland if possible and at least one or two hills.

Then I specialise my cities like this:

If a city has 3+ food sources or 2+ plus farm-able land, it's a GP farm.
If a city has floodplains (plus a couple of hills so I can build stuff) it gets cottaged and is a commerce city.
If a city has a couple of hills, farm-able land, it's a production city and I'll farm enough land to work the hills + workshops.

Does that sort of help?

 

[Shafi]

Did you check these guides?

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/completeguide1.php

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/cityspecialization.php

Also remember all these guides talk of an ideal situation, but you may not always get the most perfect location, sometimes you can hybrid cities which are not really specialised.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So after reading some guides on city specialization and resource usage I still cant come up with good cities when I play (Im stuck on Warlor...FOR SHAME ) so I was wondering if any of the advanced players could make a guide with pictures giving good examples of which cities (showing terrain) would excel at a specific task.

Dunno if im asking much but im kinda ashamed of seeing people going on noble or prince while im still at warlord

OK - first note: if you are still challenged by the warlord level, you don't need to be worrying about city specialization yet. There are more important strategic ideas that will advance you further toward the higher levels. If you were to concentrate on "just" choosing good city locations and managing them well, you'd be good to go.

But that's not what you asked, so we go on....

With the technology advances of the late eras, things become more complicated. However, once you have the basics you will be handily beating the Warlord level by then, so let's concentrate instead on the early eras.

Priority #1 is food. Now, you can make a great commerce city out of flat green tiles and nothing else, but doing so is painfully slow. Most of the time cities are expected to be able to achieve at least a 4 surplus during growth periods. Generally, this is done by having one or more food resources worked by the city. Very briefly - until you know when it is the right place, you should avoid founding cities in locations where no surplus food is available.

Production cities are probably the easiest to recognize - they are the ones that have food and hills. One irrigated corn tile can feed four green hills. The city tile, which gives a two food surplus, can feed 2 more. 6 mines is 18 /turn (plus another for the city tile itself) which is a real beast for a city with a mere 7 population.

A GP Farm looks like lots of high yield food specials, surrounded by tiles that you don't particularly care if you work or not. Up until Biology comes in, you'll normally work the food specials, hire lots of specialists, and ignore the other tiles. When biology is discovered, you'll want more farms (a farm on a flat green tile can support a specialist), so FLAT boring tiles are what you are after here.

Production cities and GP Farms are primarily about converting into /. Commerce cities, especially cottage cities, are different - they are more about converting to . Instead of spikes of food, we tend to be interested in broadly distributed food. In fact, since the food spikes themselves don't generate commerce, we may not want to work them all the time! So we might, for instance, try to arrange our cities so that they share a single food tile, which they take turns using each time they need to grow.

Because of the distribution of resources, it's likely that your cities won't be "pure" - a copper mine is a great tile to work pretty much no matter what kind of city you have next to it. You don't win the game by being pure, you win the game by claiming good land and maximizing the value you extract from it.

 

[Malchar]

Early on, one of my problems was over-valuing non-food resources. Only food and strategic resources should determine where to build a city. Rivers and lakes that give farm-able grasslands or floodplains can count as a food resource. After you've taken care of those two aspects, then you can consider other resources as a bonus. Furthermore, after I already have some of a given resource, I frequently build cottages on top of them anyway since cottages usually end up producing more than the appropriate upgrade would have.

Also, grassland is extremely good for every type of city because it gives more food. Tundra, on the other hand, is quite bad and is nearly worthless.

 

[Conneely]

Tagging this post for later.

 

[peppe1]

I frequently build cottages on top of them anyway since cottages usually end up producing more than the appropriate upgrade would have.

Better to either trade the resource for a resource you are missing. Or just sell the resource for gold per turn. The AI will sometime pay a lot for a resource 6-12 Gold per turn.

 

[Lansky]

Furthermore, after I already have some of a given resource, I frequently build cottages on top of them anyway since cottages usually end up producing more than the appropriate upgrade would have.

This is oftentimes quite counterproductive actually. For example a Dye is capped at 5 commerce while a town is 7. Looking only at this the cottage is better. This ignores the fact that the dye can be traded for a different resource you do not have or additional gold. Now if that Dye is 5 commerce and then traded for silver it is immensely better than the matured cottage.

There are times when you can have more of a particular resource than you can trade away, however these are not the norm.

 

[Lasitus]

Do you own warlord and can't beat noble? I was there a few years ago (I play the game on and off). I'm now owning noble and about to move up to prince. The biggest thing that helped me was Sisiutil's rush guide. Building axes for a rush has an added bonus of protecting your cities versus barbs. City specialization, chopping, and whipping has helped me move from noble to prince.

Production cities are very important. I had a tendency in my earlier games to cottage everything. Production cities should be all about production and food though. Farm land, a good special food resource, and a bunch of hills are great sites for production.

Cottage cities should be boring grasslands with maybe a river and only a hill or two.

GP farms have tons of food specials and/or tons of good farming with one or two hills.

For pictures, I recommend watching some of the higher level players play a game on the forums... They generally say what sites are good for when they build cities.