Close to understanding...

[MadDjinn]

SO close... but need someone to qualify the following:

specializing cities is supposed to be a great thing in CIV4.. but I have to question how it eventually does good.. especially for commercial cities, when you are running at 100% science + culture total

food is specific to a city and only affects growth rates/pop size. (need buildings which reduce polution as necc. to keep citizens healthy, same with + )

production is only for building things (and eventually 1/2 to research/cult/wealth when not making anything)

base commerce is all trade routes, palace, and other buildings which dirctly make coins, as well as tile coins. (not specialists or +% buildings)

the base commerce is used for then global %'s of science, culture and wealth.

on top of those numbers, specialists and buildings (except commerce), etc which add a specific + are added.

then on top of that is the buildings that provide a % increase, as well as civics/etc that provide %.

so if you are running 100% science, your bank+market+grocery is giving you 100% of nothing. unless you have a mass of merchants/GM/priests in the city. even then, it's not a great number unless you have a great number of these specialists.

so.. running at lower than 100% science is better for commerce buildings, but you should never run at 0% science. What's a good stable number to try to run at once you start getting markets+banks+grocery?

so.. having a library+university+conservatory in every city (even without specialists) is more important overall than the commerce buildings, since the base commerce rate of the city will always give a % towards science, as long as you have the global % above 0% (otherwise, how do you get techs?)

and cultural buildings are only useful to build if you want to make that city a culture pump (unless the building also has other useful properties, which I think most, if not all have)

as an aside:

does anyone build castles for their cultural value? +1 is equal to a temple, but I haven't really read anywhere about anyone specifically using them like that...

[Quillan]

Bank, market, grocery, and Wall Street modify gold, not commerce. You're correct, in that if you run 100% science, then a city that generates 98 commerce a turn will generate 0 gold from that commerce, regardless of its financial improvements. However, those improvements work on gold that is directly generated. There is another important source you missed: holy shrines. If you found a religion, build a shrine to that religion, and spread it to 30 cities, then the holy city of that religion will generate 30 gold a turn from the shrine. Build all 4 of those improvements, and the 30 gold a turn becomes 90 gold a turn. Add 3 great prophets as super specialists, and that 90 gold a turn is now 135 gold a turn.

[MadDjinn]

ok yeah, shrines are direct gold as well.. forgot about those.

which brings back the idea of just going religious...

so include the various wonders that generate gold for religious buildings, etc.

and it sound like you really really need merchants in alot of cities to generate gold, while having a high % in science/culture.

[Blake]

It's worth noting that Markets, banks etc DO provide benefit when you lower your science% for cash for upgrades, or to rush something big. As such I tend to build banks and stuff everywhere even when I'm running 100% science thanks to shrine income, but ofcourse they will be low-priority builds. (my hammer rich, low-commerce cities typically get banks fairly early simply to hurry along wall street)

[joncnunn]

If your lucky enough to get the same city to found 2 religions as well, that city practically begs for all gold improving items.

Also note that there's a wonder that makes all your state religion buildings generate 1 gold each and it gets multipled. This can also help you run 100% science.

[Dominae]

Great observation and analysis, MadDjinn! I happen to agree with your conclusions.

As you mention, city specialization does not really make sense along the Gold/Beakers dimension because these rates are effected by the Taxes/Science sliders which are empire-wide (there is the special case of Shrine income).

Because research is so important, I try to run as close to 100% Science as possible in most of my games. Some of my cities are Science cities, some are not. The cities that get Marketplaces, Grocers and Banks are simply the ones that generate a lot of Commerce, since they will make the most out of those improvements (assuming, of course, that I do not need the associated Happiness and Health benefits). As you can see this has nothing to do with city specialization.

City specialization does make sense along other dimensions, however:

1. Military cities. Here you are maximizing Hammer output at the expense of everything else. This means a lot of Mines, obviously, but also Farms to support the Mines and perhaps offset some unhealthiness. If you put these along your border they also benefit from Walls and a Castle. All cities need Hammers to support their specializations, but military cities need them integrally (mass upgrade is not really a strong strategy compared to Civ3).

2. Cottage cities. Cottages and Specialists do not really mix, because Specialists need Farms to support them. Specializing along this dimension means putting as many Cottages and multiplier buildings in the city as possible. In my games these tend to get Libraries, Universities and Academies ASAP, so maybe I should label them "research cities" instead.

3. Specialist cities. As mentioned above, these cities need Farms. Within this set of cities, you can further specialize according different GP types, in order to guarantee you get the one you want (helping you plan your GAs, for instance). The GPPs provided by Wonders are an important consideration here.

4. Culture cities. I use this one rarely, but sometimes there's a border town that has immense tactical value. I'll build Theatres and Temples there (sometimes even a spare Academy if I dislike the tech it would otherwise give me).

5. Coastal cities. These are the ones you specifically place so as to have access to a lot of water tiles, and little else (maybe a Mine or two). For obvious reasons, Lighthouses are a top priority. They take a long time to get going but do end up paying for themselves and then some. They're very similar to Cottage cities.

If you look at the list of National Wonders, they fit perfectly into one of the above four categories. These are your cues as to which "specializations" make sense, or are likely to be fruitful: Some Great Wonders act the same way: Parthenon, Great Library, for example.

In the early- to mid-game, all my cities fall into one of the five categories above, with the exception of the capital. While it's possible to specialize the capital, it usually has so much going for it (i.e. Bureaucracy) that it can put on a couple of hats at once: research and military production, for example. That said, my capital is almost one of my best research cities, because of the Palace's 8 "free" Commerce per turn and the fact that it's Cottages are likely the most mature. In the late-game, after a lot of time for development, most cities end up like the capital, "maturing" from specialists to generalists.

(Ironically, the power of the Great Merchant's Trade Mission ability is to boost science output: with 1500 Gold in your Treasury, you can run 90-100% Science much longer, which is ultimately more efficient because you only need to build science improvements.)

If you want a take-home message from this long post, I would say try specializing your cities according to which get Farms and which get Cottages. In my opinion, this is the fundamental "specialization" in the game.

[Enigma_Nova]

The cap on a Specialist city is its Health and Happiness, as opposed to the number of farms around it. Unless you're playing Expansive, It'd be wise to make your Specialist city on Fresh Water with as many Forests left standing as you can.

[Dominae]

Farms allow you to support more Specialists with fewer tiles. This is independent of Health and Happiness caps. What you say about Health and Happiness (H&H?) applies to all cities, regardless of their specializations; big cities are better!

[MadDjinn]

thank you for the input

I've started a new game and will actually try to run a Min. City Strat. this time.. I've been holding to the ICS from Civ 3, so far. Not bad overall, but haven't had great success at higher difficulty levels.

I've usually focused on a mostly balanced city type, with a leaning towards production. but this time I'll try to specialize a few cities...

[Aginor]

City objective is dependent on desired outcomes.

As noted, you can basically do one of three things with any given city:

Research (Cottage spam)
GPP (Farm spam)
Hammers (usually unit output design, generally Mines combined with enough Farms to work said Mines)

IMO, culture cities come out of GPP focused on Engineers (or alternately Hammer cities on your borders, which happens much less often). Coastal cities are, in my experience, considerably less useful than a good Cottage spam city...but you have to have them for military/resource reasons.

One key note - you have GOT to have enough hammers available in the cottage spam cities in order to build key improvements (Bank and University stand out as the costly ones). How you do that is up to you.

The most recent lesson I learned from nearly (but not quite) gagging on a flawless CS Slingshot -> GPP spam start (English with 8 Flood Plains and 2 Gold in the starting city radius on a 25% landmass with one adversary, that being Gandhi) is how critical industrial production is in the cottage cities, and how many cottage cities are needed to support a tech lead. (Failed in both areas...my key 2x religions founded city was slooooow at producing stuff and I decided to run a Lumbermill strat in later cities which was a terrible, terrible error. Net effect is that Mansa Muna very nearly kept up in a spacerace I intended to win culturally and was 2 key parts short of winning.)

As for H&H - expand! More resources (and Calendar) means more happy faces and more health for your cities. Trading with other civs only strenghtens the equation.

ICS is not the way to expand within your own borders early...grab what land you can, smack the nearest AI in the face and THEN ICS when your economy permits. 3-space ICS remains powerful, but you have to have the gold production to support it.

Don't over un-balance your cities, but realize that a city with 4-8 floodplains is dying for GPP or cottages, and realize that any city that can support 10 citizens with mad mines early on is dying for hammer beatings. Good luck, and lay the law down on that AI!

[MadDjinn]

I think I've found a very nasty map combo to learn on...

I did a custom Highlands map (Large Map) on Prince, playing G-man since I didn't want the AI to play him, and put in the 7 Aggressive Civs (only Genghis from Mongolia), then left the other 2 as random. (Peter and Isabella)

Set the AI to aggressive (on top of their already aggressive selves), random personality (anyone know what that actually does?), no cheats, toss the seed, and some other stuff. oh, and turned off Space Race.

found I'm stuck in the middle of the map between Alex and Peter... thankfully the north wall is not far away...

but.. they haven't bothered me.. the sheer amount of Barbarians on the other hand.. at one point, there were barbarian Axemen coming at me.. and I hadn't gotten to that tech yet. go Archers..

the barbs have slowed down pretty much everyone except for Alex... and they come in big waves...

I'm trying to see what these guys will do... almost everyone is aggressive, and nutty... and doubly aggressive.