Specialization of Cities

[blitzkrieg1980]

IMO, for a cottage economy, any big food resource city locations are game for a major production city (besides your 1 GP farm of course). Specifically, if there are 5 or more hills of any type, I'm making it a production city. The best are pig/cow/wheat or corn cities. The wheat/corn give 5 food, pig gives 5, cow gives 4 and 3 production. Then, on any plains tiles, farm. All grassland tiles get workshops and river tiles get watermills. Of course, we mine the hills (which get RRs). A city with a strategic resource is not necessarily a production city unless it has other characteristics (IE food resources/hills/river maybe).

NEVER build cottages in your production cities.

River cities with few or no food resources, you figure out where to put your farms so that the city can grow to size 20 (40 food needed). Put farms on the lower food tiles and cottages on the higher food tiles (this allows you to work the cottage earlier while not sacrificing growth).

City sites with food resources, but few or no hills get the food resources hooked up, and the rest of the tiles get cottages. Any hills get windmills. Only build courthouses and cash increasing buildings. These are great commerce cities.

Any luxury resources should have a heavy emphasis on farming to get the city to be able to have 20 pop. Once that is seen to, cottage all other tiles, windmills, and of course hook up the resources. Build only library/university/observatory/academy/GL(if you get)/Oxford in these cities as they will be producing mountains of research with those luxury resources and cottages.

Of course, you could mix the last 2 paragraphs up when it comes to the buildings. It's probably a good idea to have a resource city with all $ buildings and one with all science buildings since you'll have a huge boost in both areas (science/money)

 

[ViaArete]

Thanks for the advice blitz. I guess the cities I've been building have been some kind of ineffective hybrid. I'll definitely try specializing more per your advice. Another question:

...Only build courthouses and cash increasing buildings. These are great commerce cities...

Build only library/university/observatory/academy/GL(if you get)/Oxford in these cities as they will be producing mountains of research with those luxury resources and cottages.

Why wouldn't I want both science and commerce buildings in the same city? Will the science buildings subtract from the gold produced [in a commerce city]? Will commerce buildings subtract from beakers produced [in a science city]?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Neither subtracts ANYTHING from the other. But when choosing the building queues you want to stick with a specific goal (gold or research) until the city has ALL of those specialized improvements.

You will eventually have all commerce/science buildings in those cities. I simply specified because you will want to specialize very specifically in the early game in order to compound their advantages. In other words, by the time you hit the industrial age, your major commerce cities should have either all science or all money buildings. After you complete all the buildings in those cities, then you can start building the other type.

Build your Wall Street in the city with the most GOLD (not commerce) produced. By the same token, build the Oxford University in the city with the most SCIENCE produced. These are other reasons to keep the buildings in one category until they are all built. You can also choose to 'build' wealth in the cities which have already built all the money buildings. The hammers will convert directly to gold which will be amplified by all those buildings. The same goes for research. But that's up to you. Usually, I use that as a "surge" tactic. I'll switch the build queues to do this for a quick jump in research/money, then go back to buildings.

Also, don't forget to build infrastructure. You may want to forgoe hybridizing your cities until you have happiness/health buildings allowing your city to grow as big as it possibly can. The more tiles worked, the more cottages that become towns, etc etc. Sometimes, you'll even go beyond the workable BFC with respect to population, and you can start using specialists on top of the worked tiles. A Wall Street/Bank/Grocer/Market/Courthoused city with 7 towns and 3 merchant specialists will be creating a lot lot lot of gold. This is also the city you should found any corporations in. Make sure you spam your corporate executives to OTHER civs. Even though they fixed the inflation problem in 3.17, I still would rather have another civ incur ANY bad stuff while I reap the cash benefit. Of course, if you need health/happiness/or production in any cities, spread your corporation there. But SPAM the AI only.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Building wealth/beakers/culture is only affected by hammer multipliers.