specialised commerce / research ?

[johncross21]

specialisation obviously important

I always have one or production cities which churn out armies and in downtime focus on ironworks, west point etc

I also have commerce/research city

is there any point specialising in commerce or research rather than mixing commerce and research. they both come from coins so is a library plus a market (ie a mix) as good as a library + university (ie two research)

leaving aside the detailed calculations - am I right that this level of specialisaton is not needed - or am I wrong ( I usually am)

 

[LuckyAC]

Your Wall Street city will have shrines and corporation headquarters, otherwise your commerce cities will be the same.

 

[DaveMcW]

Your title should be: specialized gold / research.

If you have two cities with cottages (coins/commerce), you get no benefit from running a library (research) in one and a market (gold) in the other.

But running specialists changes things.

Small empire, high science rate
City 1: Merchant specialists + Market
City 2: Cottages + Library

Large empire, low science rate
City 1: Scientist specialists + Library
City 2: Cottages + Market

In both of these empires you get a benefit from specializing gold and research.

 

[Silence101]

I usually lump research cities under the commerce city catagory - I'll probably prioritize research related infrastructure in these cities before things like markets (with some exceptions), but I'll probably end up building all commerce and research related buildings in commerce cities at some point.

There's only two real exception that comes to mind:
I try to single out my capital as more of a research city in aspect that it's still a commerce city, but because of the espionage points provided by the palace, I'll likely end up building the Scottland Yard here. So, any spy specialists I run in the future will probably be in my capital - these specialists also provide research. To capitalize on that, I'll try to put the GL in my capital as well as a my first acedemy. So there's an obvious research slant in my capital. Any science specialists I run will be here to further capitalize on that advantage. I'll also build the Oxford University here.

Any city that founds a religion is a good canidate for prioritizing commerce related buildings, especially national wonders like Wallstreet. If you build the holy city's religious wonder and found a corporation or two here, it will become a huge financial powerhouse. I don't forget about research in this city, but it ends up with a definate slant in commerce. I'll probably run merchant specialists here to capitalize on the income.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Without going into too much detail, it really depends on where your cities are getting their / from (either from or directly via specialists) and how much they are actually making.

Eliminating as much math as possible to the simplest determinate ... look at your city's /// output to guide your path.

If the city is making more , then build +% buildings.

If the city is making more , then build +% buildings.​

The exception to this 'rule' is if you know your city is going to grow out of its current state and into a different one (such as during wartime when Gold and Culture is emphasized, just prior to Currency/CoL/Democracy/Biology or in the case of a soon-to-be specialist city that just needs to grow before you can assign the specialists).


-- my 2