Request for Strategy Advice and Wondor Combos

[bjsiders]

It seems clear to me that the strategy of specializing a city is a winner. It works in the game and people rave about it here, so here's a few questions.

(1) What specializations do you set up for your cities? I've been doing 2-3 military cities (massive production, barracks) and trying to put Ironworks + National Epic (or whichever one doubles unit production) in one city. I've only actually been able to build West Point once, what do you couple with it?

(2) Great Leader factory - I usually have 1 city that produces 75% of my great leaders, and 2-3 more than spit one out here and there. Do you specialize a city for this? If so, how? Farm everything and get tons of food so you can pull tiles off to build specialists in the city? Which wonders do you try to get in those cities? Do you try to build the Parthenon?

(3) Science/Commerce - Cottages and lots of them?

Another question I have in general is how you determine where to build which improvements. I've been farming grasslands (the green tiles) for the +3 food and putting cottages on the plains (brown tiles, I dunno if the words I use for them are the correct jargon), and usually mine hills, build appropriate improvement for resources. Is this a sound strategy? Or should it vary some depending on the city?

Do you start building up cottages immediately when you get pottery?

How many workers do you like to have? I usually go worker-settler-warrior-worker-settler-warrior, and have the second city build two warriors and then I start Pyramids and Oracle, sometimes Stonehenge if there's stone available, and Parthenon if I finish Pyr/Ora with time to spare. After that I usually try to push out 3 more settles and get 6 cities up and running, by then the AI is usually irate with me for some reason and I have to start a mad dash to get military put together before they attack. I find I'm often short of workers.

Any general tips about good usage of tiles and not so much build order as guidelines for how much military to have, how many workers to have, etc, to ensure good growth. I'm usually #1-#3 in every category except military and when I go 100% full military build-up, I rarely get above #4 or #5.

[Quillan]

In my last game, I had 4 specialized cities. One was the great profit factory. I had it on a lake/river with 4-5 flood plains and some nearby hills (one with pigs). I farmed all the flatland, windmills on the hills, established three different religions in the city, and built temples to each with cathedrals later, so I had a ton of priest specialists there. My capitol was originally intended as the money/production city, but the terrain wasn't that good for it, so I turned it into the mega science city. It had cottages all over, with Oxford in it. My third was on a river with 3 hills and some forest near it. It was the Taoist holy city, so that got the shrine, and also Wall Street/Iron Works. I settled all my great prophets there (see Common Sensei's thread on Great Profits). My fourth was in an area with a lot of other hills, so became the military producer. It got the Heroic Epic and Red Cross.

[MasterDave]

Re: Request for Strategy Advice and Wondor Combos

Originally posted by bjsiders
It seems clear to me that the strategy of specializing a city is a winner. It works in the game and people rave about it here, so here's a few questions.

(1) What specializations do you set up for your cities? I've been doing 2-3 military cities (massive production, barracks) and trying to put Ironworks + National Epic (or whichever one doubles unit production) in one city. I've only actually been able to build West Point once, what do you couple with it?

(2) Great Leader factory - I usually have 1 city that produces 75% of my great leaders, and 2-3 more than spit one out here and there. Do you specialize a city for this? If so, how? Farm everything and get tons of food so you can pull tiles off to build specialists in the city? Which wonders do you try to get in those cities? Do you try to build the Parthenon?

(3) Science/Commerce - Cottages and lots of them?

Another question I have in general is how you determine where to build which improvements. I've been farming grasslands (the green tiles) for the +3 food and putting cottages on the plains (brown tiles, I dunno if the words I use for them are the correct jargon), and usually mine hills, build appropriate improvement for resources. Is this a sound strategy? Or should it vary some depending on the city?

Do you start building up cottages immediately when you get pottery?

How many workers do you like to have? I usually go worker-settler-warrior-worker-settler-warrior, and have the second city build two warriors and then I start Pyramids and Oracle, sometimes Stonehenge if there's stone available, and Parthenon if I finish Pyr/Ora with time to spare. After that I usually try to push out 3 more settles and get 6 cities up and running, by then the AI is usually irate with me for some reason and I have to start a mad dash to get military put together before they attack. I find I'm often short of workers.

Any general tips about good usage of tiles and not so much build order as guidelines for how much military to have, how many workers to have, etc, to ensure good growth. I'm usually #1-#3 in every category except military and when I go 100% full military build-up, I rarely get above #4 or #5.

The degree of specialization I use depends on my victory aims. For those games where the goal is a cultural victory, I usually try to spread the world wonders around between the three targeted legendary cities to evenly spread their culture.

In non-culture victory games, I will typically specialize to some degree, although toward the end of the game most of the cities wind up with all of the buildings. Early on I will specialize to some degree:

Capital City/ Great Person factory: 90% of the time, this city has my best production because the game usually starts you out in a fairly good location for producing food and hammers. The Capital city is where almost all of the world wonders I build wind up (except those that get rush built by engineers), and as a result it usually becomes a Great person factory. The one National wonder that usually winds up in my capital city is National Epic (double great person production). The second national wonder varies between Oxford University (if my capital is also the science leader) or Globe Theater (if my capital has the most population and needs the happy faces).

Settler City: Early in the game you may get a city with very high food producion but little hammer production (such as a city with a lot of flood plains around). This is an ideal candidate for an early worker/settler factory. Especially if the town is going to go unhealthy if you let it grow too big before you learn how to make aqueducts and grocers and such. These cities can often become good places to assign lots of specialists later on, and often will be good centers of science (especially if you favor the representation civic like I do).

Military City: Typically a high-hammer city. Heroic Epic and West Point go into this city, along with a barracks of course. The Pentagon can be built anywhere to have its effect, so usually I will not build it in my Military city, because I would rather be pumping out half-price military units most of the time rather than building expensive world wonders there.

Science City: If your capital is not a big commerce producer (no rivers, lots of hills, etc), then sometimes another city can become your research leader. When this happens make getting the science buildings here a priority, along with the Great Library (if possible), an academy, and Oxford University.

Culture Assimilator: If you can get a reasonably high producing city close to an opponents border, then it can be a good idea to max out culture production in this city by building the Hermitage, religious and other cultural buildings there, especially the "Cathedral" level buildings. If you get a great artist, a culture bomb can greatly accelerate the assimilation process. A Cultural city is a great place to send your great engineers when you want to rush build world wonders, since most of the wonders have 6-10 culture.

Harbor City: If your capital is inland, it is often a good idea to make a strong producing city on the coast (on maps with seas, of course). This city should try to get a lighthouse and then the Great lighthouse ASAP. The Great Lighthouse is one of my favorite wonders if you have three or more coastal cities. A forge/ colossus combo is a good idea too because the colossus is cheap to build, and the AI often takes its time getting it. As soon as the tech becomes available get harbors.

I will not usually specialize much beyond this.

[snafuc4]

Re: Request for Strategy Advice and Wondor Combos

Originally posted by bjsiders
I've been farming grasslands (the green tiles) for the +3 food and putting cottages on the plains (brown tiles,

Other way around IMO - your grassland (green) tiles produce plenty of surplus food (even better with floodplains), so build cottages on them. Your plains (brown) tiles don't, so improve them with farms if possible

[Diadem]

What about a combination of both. The effects of farms and cottages on either tile are the same. The only difference between the tiles is that grassland has one more food, while plains has one more hammer.

If you have farms on both the plains and grassland, and cottages on both as well, you can optimize your food production perfectly. Often you don't want to grow your city beyond a specific size due to health or hapiness issues. Then it's nice to see how much food you must produce to break even, and be able to produce that much food exactly. 1 more food? Then it's a cottage-plains. Two more? cottage-grassland. Three more, farmed plains, etc.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Diadem
The effects of farms and cottages on either tile are the same. The only difference between the tiles is that grassland has one more food, while plains has one more hammer.

[..]Often you don't want to grow your city beyond a specific size due to health or hapiness issues. Then it's nice to see how much food you must produce to break even, and be able to produce that much food exactly. 1 more food? Then it's a cottage-plains. Two more? cottage-grassland. Three more, farmed plains, etc.

Yep, good point. Maybe I overgeneralised in the search for a quick answer

[MasterDave]

Re: Re: Request for Strategy Advice and Wondor Combos

Originally posted by snafuc4


Other way around IMO - your grassland (green) tiles produce plenty of surplus food (even better with floodplains), so build cottages on them. Your plains (brown) tiles don't, so improve them with farms if possible

I disagree with this. By putting farms on your high food producers such as flood plains and doing cottages on the plains, you give yourself the option of either working your cottages or turning your excess workers into specialists as needed. There are times when this flexibility comes in handy (such as trying to get a wonder out first with engineers, or getting a tech first with extra scientists, or getting a GP out faster when one is needed). Your model more or less forces you to keep more of your workers in the fields at all times in order to keep a city growing.

[amicus curiae]

In playing many OCC games I found that getting pottery right away and building cottages right away can be a very strong strategy. I build cottages right away in any grassland square that does not have fresh water. Early in the game when there are happiness problems you don't need that much food so why not go for cottages.

On higher levels a city can only grow to size 3 or 4 before running into happiness problems. I think the ideal city at this size has three grassland cottages and one mined hill or resource. The cottages pay big dividends very quickly.

I agree that on fresh water tiles it is better to irrigate grassland and cottage plains. You get the same results as was mentioned earlier, but you have more flexibility to grow the city quickly if you need to or pump out the gold if you need to.