I guess I need to specify a bit more to get your attention
As all of us probably know, city specialization and tall empires are back in its full glory since BNW. This post sums up the basics nicely:
I've found that now more than ever, specialty cities are a thing. I've found 5 tall cities is the sweet spot, whether you plan to add wide satellites or not.
#1 - a culture capital, always on a river for garden, ideally 2+ food resources. Runs 2, ideally 3 guilds and gets hermitage.
#2 - a large trade city. centrally located, river & coastal ideal, at the most luxury and strategic rich place possible. Gets a guild for luxury snagging border growth if the culture capital is less than ideal.
#3 - a science city. This is also my great person spam city, 3 or 4 scientist academies and spare great prophets, gets NC and focuses on growth and science. This is usually my capital.
#4 - a barracks type heroic epic military spammer for self-defense and taking all the things. Preferably coastal for +15% boatery.
#5 - a large production city for versatile fast production. Wonder sniping, when appropriate, archeologists, happiness, anything time sensitive.
This is my current strategy, I'm an immortal+ level BNW, was deity level in G&K.
I agree with most of this, except of course that we have to adapt this slightly for CEP, where e.g. gardens don't need fresh water. But basically, that's a good starting point.
Science, military and production cities are pretty straightforward, but I wanted to talk a bit more about money generation and money-centric cities.
First, a few basics about trade routes calculations can be found
here. It explains quite well how an ideal starting point for all your trade points should look like. Summary:
- Coastal
- Riverside
- Close to other Civs and CS's
- Should have as many ressources of any kind in it's radius, especially uncommon ones
- Large gold output
Especially the last 2 points deserve some attention. The question with #4 is whether we let our capital be the main trade hub. Since it will often have the best ressource diversity (due to "boosting" of starting locations through the map generator) it might be appealing.
But then again, few cities can ever be as big as a capital, since it gets several unique growth bonuses (tradition policies, maritime CS,...), so I tend to turn the capital into a science hub instead.
But even more important than #4 is #5! The base gold generation in our trade-route-sending city is an important factor in determining how much gold it will generate. Even more important: It also determines how profitable the trade routes coming from other civs will be. If we assume we have the East India Company there, we should be able to attract quite a few trade routes from AI civs to our main hub, boosting our overall income significantly.
So the main reason for having one dedicated trade hub is not that we have a national wonder that gives a large bonus percentage on gold in one city (AFAIK the max percentage is +75% from market, bank and stock exchange - wonders don't provide such a bonus)
Instead we try to attract as many foreign trade routes as possible, which is done by mostly by increasing the gold output of our city (and building the EIC).
Remark: I suppose the above information is right, it comes from my research and experience so far. But I'm surely not the best player around, so correct me if I'm wrong, please!
Questions resulting from the above:
A) Is the AI always simply sending their trade routes to the most profitable destination or is there a more complex algorithm in place? Does the AI care about not opening the door for unwanted religions or about not helping a rival too much?
B) Does the income from already established trade routes count for the formula calculating TR profit? Or is it only local income from terrain and buildings?
C) Since the buildings you definitively need in your trade hub are limited (caravansery, harbor, market, bank, stock exchange, EIC, possibly collossus) how do develop it further? High population doesn't seem to be of much use for itself, so additional farms would only be for merchant specialists. Or are trading posts better? Merchant specialist would eventually lead to great merchants we could settle, but generating those would interfere with great scientist and great engineer production (since creating any of those three raises the cost for all of them).
Or do you just build other stuff unrelated to money generation? Is generating wealth even worth mentioning?
D) Which wonders are useful in the main trading hub? Colossus is obvious. Then there's Big Ben, Macchu Picchu and Neuschwanstein adding gold per turn (4,5 and 6 respectively) and great merchant points (2,1,1). Plus a few others giving great merchant points (Eiffel Tower 2, Pentagon 2, Great Lighthouse 1, Notre Dame 1 and CN Tower 1).
I'd say only Collosus is important, all others don't affect the city itself much.
on tiles or buildings.
)
. You usually can ignore the rest. What i found much better was getting the +2 Happiness policy per luxury good in Trade.
