What should every city have?

[Jintoh]

I'm pretty new to the CIV games and loving it, coming from an online MMO background. Wife loves it too, can step away from PC without being killed and no raids .
Anyway, I find myself having a hard time specializing cities for say military units because I start to think, Oh this city doesn't have a courthouse, an aqueduct, a granary...you get the point.

So what is the suggestion on the minimal amount of "stuff" a city should have?

 

[Verge]

Granaries, courthouses, and forges always wind up in my cities, regardless of specialty. There might be a few other things I add as well, but they're not coming to mind at the moment.

[Edit]
I guess I should expound on what I said. I build granaries, courthouses, and forges for the obvious bonuses: growth, maintenance reduction, and production, respectively. But the granary and forge provide and bonuses as well, so I'm addressing those concerns as well without having to build additional buildings to get those benefits.

 

[Gooblah]

Basically, you want the minimum number of buildings per city, as it allows more time for, say, unit production.
If your city is specialized optimally, it will have happiness and health issues. If these pop up, build Aqueducts, Hospitals, Granaries, Theaters, Colosseums, etc. However, to prevent the unspecialization of these cities, turn off the automated citizen assigner thing and take off any specialists you don't want.

Also, I strongly advise putting Courthouses and Granaries in all cities, as it increases population growth and cuts maintenance.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Pretty much the only true universal buildings are granaries, courthouses, and forges. Everything else is situational, depending upon the purpose of the city.

 

[oyzar]

On prince and lower i almost allways get granaries and forges. On monarch+ they often get courthouses as well. Sometimes commerce cities don't get forges though and production cities only get barracks in adition to these most of the time... In earlier stages of the game my cities often get monuments. Basically you want a granary in your city as soon as it is able to eventually work it best titles(either have good titles in inner ring or some way to get culture). Quite often granaries are whipped.

 

[futurehermit]

Every city needs a granary and something to pop borders if not creative.

That's all they need immediately.

As things move along and health buildings are important for every city.

 

[noto]

I agree with the previous posts, except that sometimes I need to build culture in my border cities. If I share a border with a civ that I know I won't be going to war with anytime soon, sometimes I need to build a library or something in a production city where I otherwise would not have.

 

[The Rook]

I'd probably add lighthouses and harbours for coastal cities.

 

[Antilogic]

For the purpose of boosting my early culture and getting those extra tiles to work, combined with the fact that it is available so early, I tend to place libraries in every city. Courthouses and granaries are a must as well.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I think courthouses and granaries are the only "must-have" buildings. Forges come close but they're not always a high priority in commerce cities.

 

[oyzar]

Libraries are often waaay too late and costly to get culture early enough in most stages of the game. IF you have nice titles in first ring it can be used though... in production cities it is better to just get a monument though...

 

[TRJS]

Playing as shaka those lovely Ik - (barrack alternatives - that I can't spell) are almost always found in all cities.

But agree with others granary, courthouse and forge are most frequent.

Late game when capturing cities I might ignore these if not already built to pump up culture first, say via a theatre or relevant temple. Also jails are now great late game builds in all games.