When to build trading posts

[fatmanlittleboy]

I have a tendency to build farms on every flat hex around my starting cities to boost population growth (except on resources of course). I realize it is a good idea to build trading posts around puppets to control their growth, but is there a good time to switch my farms to trading posts around my core cities? If so, what is a good rule of thumb for this? Should I wait for hospitals or for a certain population point?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[joncnunn]

Well: I guess your mostly referring to flat grassland tiles along river as the non fresh water grassland tiles are low priority and generally best to have been trade posts from the beginning.
(While plains tiles would only produce 1 food without a farm)

Basically the answer is when the city is growing too fast time to switch over the surplus flat grassland river farms to trade posts. But I take a good deal of consideration into making the decision the first time I placed something, so I usually don't need to change my own improvements and only need to change what the AI did to their cities before I liberated them.

 

[chazzycat]

I rarely build TPs in my core cities. Build farms, expand to work all the good tiles and specialist slots, then stop growing (except the capital). Usually you can stop growing just by working more mines...converting a farm to TP means one less hill to work.

depends on your overall strategy somewhat I guess. For instance if you go down commerce/autocracy, buying units is really cheap, so maxizing gold to buy units is an alternative strategy to maximizing production.

 

[bhavv]

Trading posts are good for puppet cities as they default to gold focus. I never use them for cities I've built myself.

 

[chazzycat]

oh one important caveat to my earlier statement - Jungles. TPs are the best way to handle jungles. You want to keep the extra science by not chopping it down, and might as well get extra gold.

 

[apocalypse105]

Just like in civ 4 you can make cities specific for gold Cities with a lot of grasland and a lot of food resources like dear cows are a good gold cities you use the food resources to grow to a decend size so you c an work the other grasland tiles that you are going to put trading posts on it.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

No, no, no.

You buy a couple maritime city-states. Then you don't build any farms at all, anywhere.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Simple rule of thumb for me.

River+Plains=Farm
River+Grassland=TP
River+Forest=TP
River+Flood Plains=Farm(Since it's likely to the only source of food)
River+Hills=Farm early, Mine late
River+Jungle=TP!!!

Plains=TP/GP Buildings (If there are no more Grasslands available)
Grasslands=Farm/GP Buildings
Forest=TP early, Lumbermill late
Jungle=TP!!!
Hills=Mine

 

[chazzycat]

No, no, no.

You buy a couple maritime city-states. Then you don't build any farms at all, anywhere.

except it takes 2 maritimes to equal 1 farm (post civil service)...few worker turns vs potentially thousands of gold is not that great of a deal, IMO. Also, by the time you can afford to buy that many CS, you should have a bunch of farms already or your pop/production will be suffering

 

[WiseGreen]

except it takes 2 maritimes to equal 1 farm (post civil service)...few worker turns vs potentially thousands of gold is not that great of a deal, IMO. Also, by the time you can afford to buy that many CS, you should have a bunch of farms already or your pop/production will be suffering

Also, from what I've read on other threads, maritimes will cause your puppets to grow more than they should, won't they?

 

[chazzycat]

Also, from what I've read on other threads, maritimes will cause your puppets to grow more than they should, won't they?

That can be a concern depending on how many maritimes, and your land. If it's really flat grassland or floodplain, it will be hard to slow the growth. If there are hills around though, building TPs on them will do the trick.

 

[tetley]

Why wouldn't you want your puppets to grow more quickly? Larger puppets means they can build a faster courthouse.

 

[chazzycat]

a lot of players like to hold onto puppets and never annex them, just let them produce gold/science/culture without contributing to policy costs. If you play with that strategy, it makes sense to keep them smaller because your core cities will be much more productive per each happiness point used.

 

[limitedwhole]

a lot of players like to hold onto puppets and never annex them, just let them produce gold/science/culture without contributing to policy costs. If you play with that strategy, it makes sense to keep them smaller because your core cities will be much more productive per each happiness point used.

This makes since if you don't take democracy. If you take democracy, you can just cue up 9 or 10 specialists and make sure to build happiness buildings. Democracy fixes all problems.

 

[chazzycat]

So does police state if you want to annex

 

[Tabarnak]

I always build 1 trading post in each cities of mine. It's only to ensure that i will be able to cut down food at 0 growth when i'm in unhappiness. A farm would be useless in that case and worth no extra gold.


I modified my thoughts from S.K.'s post in bold :

Simple rule of thumb for me.

River+Plains=Farm
River+Grassland=TP(farm)
River+Forest=TP(chop forest asap replaced by farm)
River+Flood Plains=Farm(Since it's likely to the only source of food)
River+Hills=Farm early, Mine late(mine early, farm right before civil service, mine late unless i have a lot of riversided hills)
River+Jungle=TP!!!

Plains=TP/GP Buildings (If there are no more Grasslands available)
Grasslands=Farm/GP Buildings(+1 trading post)
Forest=TP early, Lumbermill late(chop asap)
Jungle=TP!!!
Hills=Mine

For me : forest = chop unless i'm stuck with no hills or any other hammer tiles...but most of the time i just don't settle there

 

[clinton]

I generally go the following:

Farm all river tiles (as these get 2 food come civil service).
Mine all hills (chop forest if needed).
Lumbermill forests on flatlands.
Trading post non river flatlands.

Once the bonuses for mines and trading posts come in, I'll mine/trading post the farms (unless there is no food surplus). It's later in the game at this point, so growth is less important (and more expensive) and happiness is more of an issue. I'd rather have more production and money at this point over food.

 

[Tiber4321]

In culture games, where you are lucky enough to have say 4 widely spaced cities, I usually try to put 1 or 2 TPs along each trade route. Also, in culture games, when your empire really grows and you have many tiles which are well outside of cities, I generally fill all these in with TPs (unless there is a resource). I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it, but it seems to work in my culture games. It allows me to run a gold surplus of at least 50 in non golden age turns by the mid to late game, at Emperor.

 

[tetley]

In culture games, where you are lucky enough to have say 4 widely spaced cities, I usually try to put 1 or 2 TPs along each trade route.

This is sounding more like Galactic Civilizations than Civ V.

 

[strijder20]

Is this me or do automated workers love to spam TPs in puppet cities? I was bored of managing them, set them all to automate, and litteraly the only improvement they built (aside from resource-hookup) was trading posts.