a review of the most underappreciated building of CIV: the harbor

[DeepO]

I very rarely will build a lighthouse before a granary. You can catch up in pop relatively easily, and the first few tiles should come from land tiles (except seafood, of course) anyway.

Workboats: well, I admit there are more then a few situations where it is not practical to build a workboat in an older city, and sail him over. In most cases, you will get the benefit faster though: you can build a workboat whenever you like, so also 10 turns before your settler completes. Having a workboat ready when the city is settled is the equivalent of a worker roading, and jungle clearing before the settler arrives. Very powerful indeed, but sadly not always possible because of other things to build.

DeepO

[QuestGAV]

Good stuff, I'll have to bump harbors further up my build list. Sometimes I take a too focused view on developing cities and ask the question: "what would be best for this city?" rather than the more pertinent one: "what would be best for my civilization?"

[Arrian]

DeepO,

The cities were I built workboats first were towns that needed 10 turns for a border expansion (and the border expansion was needed to get the seafood resource workable). Thus, since it was about 10 turns to build a workboat... it just seemed right.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by QuestGAV
Good stuff, I'll have to bump harbors further up my build list. Sometimes I take a too focused view on developing cities and ask the question: "what would be best for this city?" rather than the more pertinent one: "what would be best for my civilization?"

Exactly. The classical Civ 3 mistake...

DeepO

[Arrian]

What's best for a city is often also good for the civilization... but yeah, I can get too caught up in perfecting a particular city and pay too little attention to overal strategic needs because of it.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
DeepO,

The cities were I built workboats first were towns that needed 10 turns for a border expansion (and the border expansion was needed to get the seafood resource workable). Thus, since it was about 10 turns to build a workboat... it just seemed right.

-Arrian

Yeah... those are cases where boats seem better. However, I'm pretty sure that if you run the numbers, in many situations will you find that building your boats elsewhere will be more efficient. The faster those new cities get their basic buildings in place, the better.

One thing not mentioned here before, and I'm not really sure either, is that harbors seem to suck in the good trade routes. Not only do they add 50% to your base trade income, but that base trade income seems to be higher as well (It might be rounding I'm seeing and I don't know the formula to trade routes, so this is a guess). It looks like foreign cities will trade more eagerly to a city which has a harbor. If you've got harbors, and a larger city has not, there is a good chance you will get the AI's capital, generating a lot more trade than a border town...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
What's best for a city is often also good for the civilization... but yeah, I can get too caught up in perfecting a particular city and pay too little attention to overal strategic needs because of it.

-Arrian

In CIV, I wholeheartly disagree. Forget about the city, it's the empire that counts. Specialisation has the effect that cities do not get what's best for them: you don't build courthouses, or even forges in science cities for instance, you only build growth and commerce things. Why spend hammers on a forge, when all you will build with it is a grocer, aqua, lib and uni? It will only add unhealthy...

Similar to GP factories: They need happy and food. They also need either gold or science buildings (not both! you either run scientists or merchants, typically not both of them at the same time). Production? What's that? Who cares my library takes 40 turns to complete, I'm generating 3 GPs in the mean time!

Going for commerce is directly opposed to having a nice, well balanced city... it is very rare that what's best for your city is also best for your empire.

DeepO

[Arrian]

In CIV, I wholeheartly disagree. Forget about the city, it's the empire that counts. Specialisation has the effect that cities do not get what's best for them: you don't build courthouses, or even forges in science cities for instance, you only build growth and commerce things. Why spend hammers on a forge, when all you will build with it is a grocer, aqua, lib and uni? It will only add unhealthy...

Hmm. I'm STILL not doing that properly. I'm still building most things in most places. MUST SPECIALIZE MORE!! Although the forge I must say is still probably a good build: +25% production for those other buildings (you forgot observatory, lighthouse/harbor if coastal, market?). Plus forges can sometimes add happiness (if you have gold, silver?) and also because you can use an engineer specialist if you have a forge. I've been playing industrious civs a lot, so my forges are cheap... if I had to pay full price maybe I wouldn't build 'em everywhere.

-Arrian

[Jcg316]

Growing quickly is not going to benefit you unless you have significantly pushed back the soft cap. I find the growth benefit of granaries almost useless for the vast majority of the game. Without +health foods and having room before the happiness soft cap it doesn't help.

Specialization doesn't work like that at all because there are no maintenance costs for buildings. Its not what you build in a city it is what you build first. Either that or the specialization is about GPP and it isn't stopping building/unit production, though it certainly could slow it.

[Arrian]

Here's something I'm struggling with:

Growth vs. specialists. Ideally, I'd like to have a city grow up to roughly its max size (vis-a-vis happiness or health limitations) before turning as many citizens as possible into specialists. Is that wrong?

Say I have a city w/a bunch of floodplains - let's say 4. I farm them. That's (before the late game) 16 food - good enough to feed 8 pop. I could have 4 specialists that way, right? Ok, but in order to get there, I must grow. If I start using specialists right away, I hinder that growth and it takes forever to get to size8. In order to grow and also be happy & healthy, I probably need a granary and a temple... at least (depending on resources/difficulty level). That takes a while to set up.

Maybe I'm missing something key.

-Arrian

[QuestGAV]

I'm with you Arrian, I'm having alot of trouble converting to purely specialized cities. I've been more oriented towards building bundles of slightly specialized cities. It's worked pretty well at Prince, but I can imagine it's going to be important to eke some extra efficiency out of each city as I bump myself up. It's just not an easy conversion of thought process.

[Jcg316]

Well, disease is terrible first of all. Not going over that is important.

You need as much food on as high a percentage of your worked tiles as possible. Not that you should cripple your economy with all farms or use worse improvements as that may not be as good of a benefit to your entire empire. Stagnant you can have one specialist in a one pop city. For every population you need two food and past that is surplus. For the first surplus food you keep growing slowly. For the second and all even surplus food numbers you get half that in specialists.

So for an odd number of food surplus you get one towards growth and for every two more one specialist. For even you get half that many specialists and stagnant growth. You can always not use all the food for specialists or deliberately go into starvation when you need that extra specialist/s.

A city with just a little surplus food that can keep growing with specialists is great for you. If you want it to grow faster and then use specialists later it is up to you.

Growing and adding two food tiles won't get you any more specialists and may or may not be worth it to you. A cottage on grassland could be good adding coin and keeping the same surplus health though, of course as long as that doesn't make you sick or unhappy.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Hmm. I'm STILL not doing that properly. I'm still building most things in most places. MUST SPECIALIZE MORE!! Although the forge I must say is still probably a good build: +25% production for those other buildings (you forgot observatory, lighthouse/harbor if coastal, market?).

Forges are of course a given for industrial civs, always exploit your treats to the max!

But, don't get blinded by the results either. A science city typically has 10 hammers or less (much less sometimes!) before a forge. A forge will add only 2 hpt... a libary of 80 shields gets build in 7 turns instead of 8. OTOH, you just spent 12 turns on a forge, and limited pop in your city by 0.5 point. which means at least 1 hammer/commerce not being used.

So: forge first in a science city: 12 turns of not receiving the research bonus of a city with more cottages than mines. And an extra punishment of having a city which is a tiny bit smaller.

In that time, your libary should net you 25% of at least 30 commerce (if you got 10 hpt in a science city, you most certainly will have 30 cpt as well or you're not specializing improvements enough). That's an extra 7 beakers. Times 12 turns... 84 beakers you would gain if you build a lib before a forge. (compare the 1 turn of gain from building the forge first, being 10 hammers).

The equation reverses for production centers, of course, but forges are really not a high priority in science cities.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Here's something I'm struggling with:

Growth vs. specialists. Ideally, I'd like to have a city grow up to roughly its max size (vis-a-vis happiness or health limitations) before turning as many citizens as possible into specialists. Is that wrong?

No, it is not. I do that too... but it depends on the situation. If you've got unlimited fp, growing before GP production is better, as it also gives extra commerce faster. However, you might need to time that GP, which is especially true if you've got another GP factory doing another kind of GP.

And don't forget specialists either: their bonus is nothing to laugh about. e.g. you will be very hard pressed to have a tile giving you 6 bpt early on, while a scientist with representation does it easily.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Jcg316
Growing and adding two food tiles won't get you any more specialists and may or may not be worth it to you. A cottage on grassland could be good adding coin and keeping the same surplus health though, of course as long as that doesn't make you sick or unhappy.

In a perfect, green world I would agree. It's a lot more complicated than that, though

The thing many still keep on struggling with, is that CIV is a money game just as much as it is a production game (food is something differently, but not really an issue: you always need just enough to have max pop fast. It's more about reacting to the map situation given to you, instead of being a strategical choice). Money vs production... as so many people focus on production, they hit the money limits first. I'm certainly still doing it all the time

And this in a game so focused on giving you money! Cottages of up to 7 cpt (only 5 hpt for hills), modifiers on both research and commerce exceeding the 100% (techs especially), buildings and wonders focusing on money (harbors on the credit side, courthouses on the debit side), etc.

DeepO