City Specialization

[maxcavsm]

There is talk of Great People generators, and offensive unit generators, etc. I get the feeling that on Noble level, I'm just building whatever build strikes my fancy, but at higher levels, there is a specific build order that you MUST follow to be effective and efficient.

What are some of the buildings you must build per each type of city? Like a Wonder city, military unit city, GP city, science city, etc?

I know that there are a lot of specific issues involved, like win-type, etc, but I'm sure that some people have it broken down to a science, especially at Monarch and above.

Thanks!

[The keeper]

A science city needs to have lots of commerce. Build lots of cottages. If you can get a gold mine or some other gold producing resource, all the better.

Then, in this city, build a bank, market, wall st. Be sure to have an academy (great scientist building) and any other buildings that give bonuses to science: library, university, monestary.


For a GP city, I try to find a lot of flood plains. I farm the flood plains to generate as much food as possible. Once all the squares that can produce more than 2 food are producing food - then I make as many specialist as I can. You can manually control the type of specialist in your city to be certain to produce a certain type of specialist. Build a theatre for the artists. Library for scientists.

Some wonders raise the GP production. Try to build these wonders in this city. Hermatage and national epic come to mind.

[tetley]

I guess it depends on when you want your GP city. A Natl Epic+ Great Lib in your Wonder city cranks GP up pretty high. If you happen to have food to spare a couple of specialists (you can always go Mercantile), that's even better.

It's also nice if your GP is a holy city, then you get a free shrine & 3 priest slots. But if not, you can always bypass Cathedral and go Angkor Wat instead.

[The_Paladin]

I'm definitely not perfect at city specialization... I often fall into the old try to build everything everywhere routine... but if you are to be successful in general on Monarch and above, like you say, you do need some specialization.

Pretty much the reason for this is that AI gets great bonuses on those levels. You simply do not have time to put everything everywhere - if you do by the time you achieve that you will be realms behind the AIs in number of cities, tech, and stuff. So specialization is more or less a way to save time and catch up. At least that's how I look at it.

As for the individual types of cities:

Science city - generally everything that boost's science. You want a library, university, observatory, monasteries (maybe... they aren't that great as they only give +10 but if you have nothing else to build). The other "tricky" buildings you want is to have an academy, generated by a great scientist, and the national wonder, the oxford university in a science city (of course you can only have one science city that actually has an oxford university).

There are two types of science cities - those powered by commerce and those powered by specialists. For the commerce ones the basic idea is simply to fill the land with cottages, as many as you can, and work as many tiles as possible that yield the maximum commerce (coastal tiles, gold mines, cottage tiles).

The specialist type revolves around getting as many scientists in a city as possible. So that means getting as much food by farms, pastures, and work boats as you can into a city and assigning as many scientists there as you can support. This type of city is more powerful with representation, as it makes the scientists better.

Another trick I often do is to make my capital the primary science city of the commerce type. That means it gets oxford and has as much commerce as possible. Then run bureaucracy. That extra boost to commerce for the capital can often put that capital generating over half your empire’s science – even if you have 20+ cities – as it can generate 500 – 1000 beakers / turn at the end of the game.

Military city – obviously they should have a barracks. Also anything that boosts production (forge, factory, power from some source, etc) is a good idea. If it’s a navy military city, the drydock is an excellent building. One of your military cities should have a heroic epic ASAP since that gives a huge boost to military production.

GP city – there are two types, specialist and wonder cities. In specialist cities the idea is to get as much food into the city as possible to assign as many specialists as possible thereby getting as many GP points as possible. This city is aided a lot by running the caste system, as it allows you unlimited scientists, merchants, and artists, although it doesn’t necessary need the caste system. Again this type of city is indirectly more powerful by using representation as it makes the specialists themselves more useful (it doesn’t actually add GP points).

The wonder GP city is essentially a power production city that gets the majority of the wonders in your empire (often it is the capital). It should have any building that increases your production (forge, factory, etc) and can benefit from bureaucracy if indeed it is the capital. This type of city generally has more GP point generation but because the wonders generate different GP points you tend to get a mixed bag of great people from it. So its kind of a trade off between control and speed.

Both types of GP cities should have the national epic in them because that greatly increase your GP generation.

Production city – often these cities are used to produce wonders and / or any structure that you need just a few of in your whole empire. They should have anything that increases your production (again forges, factories, etc) and also should have the ironworks in one of them. These cities are often used to build the space ship parts at the end of the game.

Gold city – this city is geared around generating as much gold in your empire without requiring your science slider to be altered. It should have a market, bank, grocery, etc (anything that increases gold output). It often is powered by a holy shrine but also can use merchants, great merchants, and great prophets fairly effectively to increase gold generation. When available, this city will benefit immensely from wallstreet. It also will benefit, if it has a shrine, from some city generating missionaries and spreading your religion.

One note for all of the city types – it is best not to force the city to become what you want it to but instead to allow the land to dictate what type of city it will become. So that makes the choice of land important as well – don’t try to make a coastal city a production powerhouse, in other words.

[couerdelion]

Very nice

For a city to be a science city it really needs a healthy source of commerce (eg gold, dyes, cottages, gems etc) and enough food to keep the tiles worked. Early game your going to be wanting to get a library and academy there but later on it will have all of the science multipliers and Oxford University. I would disagree with the keeper and recommend that you do NOT build Wall Street here but save it for your “gold city”. You will often find that your capital becomes your science city.

An ideal gold city would be one with a religious shrine. Since these produce gold and not commerce, you’ll only improve on these by building the gold multipliers like markets, grocers, banks, Wall street.

A GP generator needs to be somewhere with plenty of food (those specialists need to be fed) and enough sources of production (including slave-driving and forest chopping) to put up the buildings necessary to appoint the specialists. If you have one GP generator city then your National Wonder should be built here but I would probably start with a typical build order of Granary, Library (Lighthouse if by sea), Forge.

[maxcavsm]

Good stuff. My first few attempt at playing the game, I tried for a cultural victory, and decided that my first three towns would be my culture cities. One of them was a coastal town, and the production suffered absymally, to the point where I could not possibly win in the time alloted (epic).

So I definately understand about letting the terrain dictate what you are building.

Thanks, and good read.