Super Cities

[Quornix]

Not quite what Obsolete does, but does anyone else tend to mix and match the roles and national wonders in their core cities? My game of BTS right now, I have National Epic/National Park (a natural combination), but also have Oxford/Ironworks, and Wallstreet/Moai. I'm going to put West Point and Red Cross in one more city, and I've saved the Heroic Epic for an intercontinental invasion so I can crank out units without needing transport. It's been a fairly peaceful game so far, so I haven't really needed it.


Each of these cities is specialized to a point, but does at least double-duty. My Oxford/IW is my capital, which is ~10 cottaged FPs surrounded by hills, with pretty much everything on a river. It's already my production powerhouse, and I haven't put in a levee (or IW, for that matter, but that's the plan). My WS/Moai city is also the Taoist shrine (picked up with CoL), so WS makes sense, and it's my primary shipyard as well as an economic powerhouse. My NE/NP city was my original capital, with 2 fish, 2 deer, Iron/plains/hill city location, and just about everything else forest.

I understand the idea behind specializing the cities, but when doing so, do you try to get the best possible output for their specialization, or do you go for a more balanced approach? How do you distribute your national wonders?

 

[Figaro]

It depends - in some cases, wonders naturally complement one another, such as the example you gave with NP/NE. However, in the case of, for example, Wall Street, no other National Wonder gives a direct boost to cash, so you could put any other national wonder there without losing out there.

When it comes to production boosting wonders, it's pretty much optional, but game speed plays a factor: in a Quick game, any decent sized city with plenty of productive squares should be able to produce almost any military unit except ICBMs in a single turn; so to have both the Heroic Epic AND the Ironworks would be serious overkill! In a Marathon game however there's more of a benefit to be had.

Sometimes wonders are situational - I'd rather build the Moai in a lesser city with lots of water squares that will consequently gain a bigger boost from it than to augment production that will probably already be reasonably high elsewhere.

 

[Dan Quale]

Usually I specialize to an extreme, in order to maintain a good economy, while enduring constant warfare(honestly at least 3000 years of war in most games.( the main benefit, is the exp and gg points 14 gg's in my first bts game 1 from facism) Oxford/wallstreet, in a very heavy comerce, shrine, all cottaged, corporate headquarters city.
Ironworks/millitary academy/national epic /capitol(bearuacracy)gg spammed Cranks out wonders, or modern armors in 1 turn marathon usually, only military when nothing to else to build, gp farm through wonders.
Westpoint/millitary academy, national epic, enough gg's to crank out lvl 4 units each turn.
Globe theatre/red cross/millitary academy, hills+river enough said, Someone call for a medic.
National park goes in that crappy forest city with lumber mills that has been wasting space and costing me money all game, ill take those 20 free specialists.(national epic would be great here, but I would lose out on the massive boost I had already gotten all game from my capitol.)Often I put mount rushmore here as well.

Maoi statues/millitary academy, hills/foodsources, shipyard, Makes transports/ defenders all game, till I'm ready to use them.

Besides that I have 2-4 crappy production centers, and countless cottaged spammed cities all over the globe.