Seeking advice on city management

[Firecrak]

So far, this game has been great. Diffrent, but great. Still trying to adjust to all the new features, especially compared to Civ 3's way of handling things.

Looking for some advice from anyone that has managed to make these things work.

1. Specialists. Now, I don't know if its just the fact that they split the actual pop display and the specialist/happiness (ala Civ 3 citizens all together) or what, but I can't seem to get any use out of them by microing. I usually end up leaving the governers to decide what specialists to deploy, as none of my cities hit the 25 or 30 pop ceiling where population exceeds squares workable. The problem I find, is say I want to direct a city to be a production bent city, I make a few engi and notice my production value actually DECREASES. Which is rather strange. If I really fiddle with it, I can usually end up with a slightly higher or equal amount of production value, which seems to be a complete waste of time and is tedious. Are specialists only really for Great People production?

2. City Specialization. I've read up some of the stuff written here about making cities into specific centeres for research, production, commerce etc...But I just can't seem to get this to work. For instance, I'll start a city off, have a look at its fat diamond and what resources it has to work with and try build the buildings corresponding to said opportunities, but seem to find myself with a growing list of projects to achieve, while also needing more and more "generic" buildings to fill gaps. Say for instance, I'll start a city, trying to make it into a research area, only to realise that it needs output, to quell the citizens, then it also needs production capabilities to make the actual buildings it needs to generate the science output. Bleh, I guess what it boils down to is, I'm a build whore I like to build everything everywhere. Does anyone have any suggested build arrangements or comments on how to stem my lust for completed structures? Or perhaps, an easier way of figuring out what to priorities the cities to do based on resources (unfortunatly founding a city and looking at it 1000 years later, seems very diffrent, the workers manage to transform cities resources alot in that time).

3. Workers. Now unlike Civ 3 where I actually enjoyed microing every piece of terrain around my cities, Civ 4 makes it tedious. Why? The terrain is too rich honestly. And by that I mean, you have too many gadgets, widgets and choices to consider way too early on. Chop the forest, don't chop the forest. Build a windmill or build a etc etc. I end up leaving my workers on auto, it saves me headaches. Is that a bad idea? I know the upcoming patch is giving some tweaks to the workers AI, I'm not sure where, but hopefully its smarter choices.

Finally, a pet peeve is civs that have Open Borders with you, landing a ****ty little size 1 city on the last bit of terrain you haven't got under your cultural borders surrounded by desert which you do NOT want to go to war over, just to destroy. Really irks me :/

Any advice, is appreciated.

PS. Most of my early games where on Noble/Epic/Huge. Seems to bog my computer down alot when theres more than 5 civs in play or when I discover the whole map, turns come down to a crawl, so I've switched to Noble/Normal/Standard, but now seem to be getting completely outblitzed by the AI in science even when I've got all the optimum civics and cranking out 100% science output. Any tips on how to play Standard vs. Epic? Big projects now seem like a waste, as mid game rushing seems to be more beneficial.

[Blake]

You know it seems to me that you need more practise mostly, and by the way you can embrace being a production whore and building everything, but not really on the auto-former terraforming. Also if you do want to embrace production, coastal cities will serve you best, as harbors give very significant trade boost, in one game my capital has no cottages yet produces the most commerce, simply due to trade routes - one at +11 and four at +8, like working 6 extra Towns for free! My capital terraforming is farms/mines/windmills/lumbermills.

City specialistisation goes hand in hand with worker micromanagment. As an example, a city on all Grassland with some rivers (such as cleared jungle) is a good place to blanket cottage - cottage ALL tiles in it's radius (it's okay to have a couple of mines or lumber/watermills or for building buildings). It wont have great production but it'll grow fast and pump some serious commerce. In such a city you only need to build a library, university etc.

For happiness control it's best to acquire as many luxuries as possible. Here expansion really rules, expand by pumping settlers and garrisons at the start, or take the AI's cities. Build the happiness buildings with the best bang for buck, the value of markets and forges for happy control depend greatly on the luxuries you have. Theatres are more valuable if you have dye and/or are creative. Temples are good for Spiritual civs, for them it's not a bad idea to spread 3 or 4 religions so each city can have 3 temples (and then even more happy under free religion!)

Try playing on different map types. Highlands or Great plains are good fun and educational for the value of expansion, they also run faster. Terra are also fun.

On cottages vs specialists. It's usually better to go with cottages unless you're after great people. Allow me to explain. Imagine a city on grassland. You have two options, farm tiles for +2 food (lets say post-biology), or cottage.

Farmed tiles produce 4 food, 2 feed the worker, the other 2 feed a specialist. So each tile gives the specialist income in net profit, this will be 3-8 commerce.

Towns produce 2 food and 5 commerce (eventually 8 or 9), the food feeds the worker, so each tile produces 5-9 commerce.

Now, here's the critical difference, for specialists you need 2 happy control for every tile worked - one for the worker, the other for the specialist. This can work out okay in some cases (especially the global theatre city), but in most cases you'll be better off with cottages.

[Firecrak]

Thanks for the tips, yeah you are right, I do need lots more practice mate. After trying out the chop/bronze start, I've managed to do better, I think i'm just not confident enough in my own ability to pick the right upgrades for terraforming squares. Been trying my hand at the Civ Tourney map, going to be hard to beat any of the scores already up there (the top Conquest score is just insane, 120~ horse archers rush haha).

Actually, 1 wierd thing I found in that game is, after researching Civil Service, I couldn't for the life of me chain farms together from my capital to go north or east towards the coasts, as there is no fresh water available. Any ideas?