Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
One thing that tends to hamper my specialization:

I often found my religion in my 2nd or 3rd city. Sometimes, it's great city to specialize for gold - floodplains and such. Sometimes, however, it's set up to be a production monster, and thus it becomes a hybrid city - some commerce, some production (I tend to be fairly active in spreading my religion - which is ironic given my views IRL - and thus get a good amount of income out of the shrine).

-Arrian

This is true in many situations, but mostly when slingshotting to e.g. CS. You can only have 1 extra city early on, so you can't choose whether it builds a barracks or not. In many cases, I could later switch such a city to a wonder builder, which goes well with the extra commerce infrastructure.

besides, shrines only generate gold, not commerce. You don't need libs in a holy city, you need markets. And as you will be running close to 100% tech, your markets won't gain much from having cottages present either... you can still have a decent barracks city there if you like. But you'll need an extra one, and this might become your westpoint/red cross/IW/HE one.

DeepO

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Arrian
One thing that tends to hamper my specialization:

I often found my religion in my 2nd or 3rd city. Sometimes, it's great city to specialize for gold - floodplains and such. Sometimes, however, it's set up to be a production monster, and thus it becomes a hybrid city - some commerce, some production (I tend to be fairly active in spreading my religion - which is ironic given my views IRL - and thus get a good amount of income out of the shrine).

-Arrian

If I am getting a religion early on, then I make sure my second city is a good financial city. If you have two cities I have never seen a religion appear anywhere but the second. It is a bit more variable if you have more cities.

Unfortunately, I tend to not start with Mysticism, so I can't get any of the 3 early religions -- it is much wiser for me to get Bronze Working for cutting and then spend my time on expansion and infastructure.

I have had the problem though of a industrial city being a holy city. This usually isn't too bad. Late game you almost always want to have 90%-100% science. So put all your extra prophets and merchants into that industrial city. You can then put wallstreet there and it will be more effective there than anywhere else. Afterall, hardly any place is producing gold. You'll also have exceedingly good production thanks to all the prophets.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Velociryx
One more thought on specialization.....

If I said to you....make sure every city is working at least a few high food tiles (farms, specials, etc), to be able to sustain your population, everybody (whether you were a proponent of specialization or not) would nod and agree. Food is good. Every city needs it.

If I said to you....make sure every city has at least SOME production so that it can at least provide for itself the basics that it needs, everyone would nod and agree that this is right and proper. Hammers are good. Every city needs them.

We all agree that gold is important, and given the above two statements, why is it such a stretch to make the same generalized statement about gold...that every city should at least be able to pay its own way, and thus, the monies generated from your commerce city are truly and 100% PROFITS that can drive the Empire as a whole?

I contend the three statements are all really the same thing. Thus if one is true, all are true.

-=Vel=-

As others have said there is a big difference between these resources.

One way to look at it is a marginal analysis:

You have food, hammers, and commerce as three elements you can have your city collect.

For most cities, a surplus of 3-5 food is good, but more than that is often not much of an improvement (given the caps on health and happiness, especially on higher levels). So beyond this surplus hammers or commerce will be more valuable -- in part, as well, because a high pop city with no commerce or hammers costs you more money (from civic upkeep) and doesn't get you much of anything. The sole exception to this is specialization cities, but it is hard to support many of these of great size, given the population they'd need to have (the global theatre can certainly help one acheive a huge size, however).

In a Financial City, commerce is king. Yet if, beyond food, you go 100% commerce and 0% hammers, then you will never build the markets, banks, libraries, and other buildings you need to make use of that commerce. Now, if you have the commerce and build all the science/gold increasing buildings, then you come out about the same as having no buildings. Of course, you'd have a lot more hammers. Since we don't want to build these buildings everywhere (relative waste of time), we definitely want to exchange some commerce for hammers, but not half the commerce for hammers, even if things are built much faster that way. So hammers are important since we need to build infastructure.

For a Production City however, commerce doesn't do squat. Each tile you focus on commerce means fewer hammers are made. That means that your factories and forges are less effective. That means that you produce units slower. Since all these things progress in a linear manner, 10% more hammers is 10% faster production. Then you don't need those hammers elsewhere to produce the same number of units in the same amount of time. To say nothing of the fact that making wonders is always a race, so 10% less production in a city (exchanged for commerce) means you might be sacrificing several wonders. Hence it is much, much better to focus totally on hammers here, and make sure you have plenty of commerce elsewhere to support this.

It is argueable that because of wonders, a city with 60 production is over 20% more effective than a city with 50 Production. The hammers are actually more valuable, opportunity-wise, as you gain more, since if you are beaten to a wonder you can never build it. Commerce only has a linear effectiveness, and you are better off focusing commerce in other cities where you are going to have the infastructure to best support it.

Typically, I do have more commercial cities, in a large game, than I do production cities. Even doing a lot of conquest, science and gold is a more important than production, comparing commerce to hammers. -- This is in a large Civ later in the game. The earlier you are the more production is favored, but given the nature of cottages and their slow growth, it is a delicate balance.

-Drachasor

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DeepO

This is true in many situations, but mostly when slingshotting to e.g. CS. You can only have 1 extra city early on, so you can't choose whether it builds a barracks or not. In many cases, I could later switch such a city to a wonder builder, which goes well with the extra commerce infrastructure.

besides, shrines only generate gold, not commerce. You don't need libs in a holy city, you need markets. And as you will be running close to 100% tech, your markets won't gain much from having cottages present either... you can still have a decent barracks city there if you like. But you'll need an extra one, and this might become your westpoint/red cross/IW/HE one.

DeepO

I mis-spoke a bit. I know shrines only bring in gold, not raw commerce.

But you'll need an extra one, and this might become your westpoint/red cross/IW/HE one

The issue I was running into is that I'd want Wall Street in my gold city (it does work on gold from the shrine, yes?), but I'd set it up as my major troop city, so it had the HE/Ironworks. No Wall Street for that city. Not a huge deal, of course...

Now, go play the AU game and finish your DARs!

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Now, go play the AU game and finish your DARs!

-Arrian

Yes Sir!

Euhm.. I mean.. No Sir... I'll have to run. And when I return there is still another civ thing which takes higher priority for my free time. Maybe I can get to it this weekend, but for the moment I don't have time to play games.

Sad thing, really, when being a playtester requires you to play less games (I'm still at game #32. Many will have passed that in the last month)

DeepO

[Thoth]

teaster: don't worry too much about the lack of health. If you've got the food to keep growing you can ignore it. I had a game a week or two ago in which my capital spent virtually all of the game with the "unhealthy aura". Aside from looking repulsive, the city was just fine. Loads of farms/floodplains provide more than enough food to overcome the food penalty from unhealth.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DeepO

Yes Sir!

Euhm.. I mean.. No Sir... I'll have to run. And when I return there is still another civ thing which takes higher priority for my free time. Maybe I can get to it this weekend, but for the moment I don't have time to play games.

Sad thing, really, when being a playtester requires you to play less games (I'm still at game #32. Many will have passed that in the last month)

DeepO

Oh, you good boy you, testing over playing for just plain 'ole fun! Well, we all want a solid second patch, so go forth and test! We'll wait for the DARs. How gracious of me, eh? Have a good weekend!

-Arrian

[Son of David]

Pop-rushing is AWESOME!

I started up a standard Monarch pangaea game today and I am well in the lead by 1400AD - 400,000 soldiers while the rival average is 200,000.

I am a few turns away from nationalism, after that I will go for gunpowder and military tradition and hopefully clear up before the industrial age.

Thanks to Velociryx's suggestions I might add. Yes, go straight for bronze working because slavery is AWESOME! Pop-rush libraries, markets and courthouses and the infrastructure is all there for serious warmongering.

[Bobby Chicken]

As a rather peaceful, wonder-building person, I can't say that I advocate killing your valuable population unless it is nearing unhappiness.

[Son of David]

What? The thought of slavery, genocide, and subjugation of one's neighbours doesn't fill your heart with joy?

Well, each to their own.

(BTW those people are very easily replaceable when you have a few flood plains around your city.)

[teaster]

Originally posted by Bobby Chicken
As a rather peaceful, wonder-building person, I can't say that I advocate killing your valuable population unless it is nearing unhappiness.

Try it out, if you start to feel the pang of guilt, reload and VOILA!!! Resurection of the masses, you'll be a hero!!

[Yosh]

I'm attaching an image to this post of a settling spot; I've marked with colored dots(!) locations and types of improvements - I'd like to see if you all agree with me.

My apologies for the quality of the screen shot; I'm at work and can't generate a better one atm! javascript:smilie('')
big grin

Green = farm
Blue = mine
white = windmill
brown = lumbermill
yellow = cottage

The theory behind my positioning is that being a capital city, it is going to be somewhat more balanced than later cities; therefore balance it out!

When I have a food square I want to maximize it's food output; hence the farms on the grass. I DID miss out on one forest square that I think I ended up chopping and putting a cottage on... I can't remember though :P

[Yosh]

and yes, I missed a few tiles that were fogged out, but I figured that isn't really the point of this post - deciding how to work land is!

[Forrester]

Modified choprush + a question re specialization

Been trying to beat the game on Prince (was 3 turns short of a culture victory last time, ugh) in single-player, Temperate/Continents/Small

Been playing Ghandi, and what seems to work well early on (before I screw it up) is going with a religion/choprush. I found that I really benefit from the goodies a religion provides -- gold from the shrine, the 25% boost to buildings, happiness bonuses, etc -- and hey, I'm Ghandi.

So it's warrior/warrior while I research Polytheism, then worker/settler/settler (both settlers chopped) as I research Bronzeworking, then wheel and other worker-friendly techs.

Assuming I manage to get polytheism first, this just seems so much stronger than an initial choprush -- I get a religion plus workers to scour the landscape for huts, and will get the settler rush benefits, I just have to wait 15 turns.

What do you experts think?

----

On a separate note, can anyone help me out with this whole "specialized cities" nonsense? No doubt I'm stuck in Civ II mode, but I want every city I build to be BIG, and to have tons of production capable -- I gots buildings to build, all the way through! So while it's obvious that coastal cities should focus on science, while inner cities surrounded by hills should focus on production/military units . . . I guess I just don't understand the points at which it's obviously beneficial to make people specialists when I could be growing my city if they were farming, or why one given city should have more cottages than another, or . . . ?

Definitely lost without my precious REX . . . as I noted in another thread, I need to get a handle on the best way to use workers . . . and the best way to specialize cities.

[Forrester]

One last thing -- what is the "CS Slingshot" strategy? Not familiar with the term and the search function isn't working for me.