Help with specialising cities

[eris]

It sounds like you don't have a wonder building problem. It sounds like you build a lot of them!

I do similar things sometimes, and have found that reserving a city for a certain type of wonders to generate a certain type of Great Person is very useful. The interesting part is that this is self-reinforcing. The wonder will allow a corresponding specialist type, which helps accumulate even more GP points of the right type. It is a process that starts with the very first wonder you choose to build.

[couerdelion]

Here's a very early draft guide to specialising. Still needs a little work (or a lot)

Specialising cities is one of the key secrets of success in this game. Specialising gives you a significant “turn advantage” for the simple reason that you do not spend turns building things that you don’t need in every city. The vast majority of your cities should have one specialisation which should be their primary focus. Some might have secondary or tertiary roles but you should always keep in mind what you want each city to do at any given time. The multiple role cities are there to give you flexibility to switch roles according to the current needs of your empire.

It is conventional wisdom, and I have no evidence to doubt that this is wrong, that your main focus on specialisation should be with science cities. For example you could have 50% of you cities which are dedicated to science. Probably your second most common specialisation will be military specialisation although, for domination type games I could well imagine that this might comprise the majority of cities. Other obvious (and necessary) specialisation types will be gold, wonder and GP cities.

In order to understand this concept, we need to take a look at the following factors to see how specialisation should be applied

a) What sort of terrain do I have available and what type of specialisation will be best suited to the terrain. Your city site does not necessarily force a particular type of specialisation and often you may have options as to how it is specialised. Particularly in the later game, low production sites can be quite easily converted to high production sites while commerce can be generated almost anyway with enough effort. However there will usually be an “easiest” option available to you and I am a strong believer in taking the path of least resistance.
b) What do I build in the city? Once again, follow the general rule and only build what you need.
c) What sort of improvements will the city want?


So let’s go through the types of specialisation starting with the most important.

Military

a) Typical terrain

This will be a city that can comfortable produce a lot of production but may be limited in growth potential. The area might be predominately hills/plains and any resources are likely to be the strategic resources (those that generate neither happiness or health) plus ivory and cow. Sometimes, these cities may have almost no growth potential and could be very small but, if dedicated solely to the production of units can still turn out a steady supply of units.

b) What to build

If there is any growth potential, build a granary. Otherwise, your food surplus will be missing out on a multiplier of nearly +100%.
The forge will also increase future production so will help in any military city.
Next the first key military build, the barracks and this should come before any units.
If your city is a long way from the capital then a courthouse will usually be necessary. After this, the basic progression is likely to be a stream of units with diversions to other builds as necessary (eg market for happiness, grocers for health, theatres, universities, banks if needed to get the necessary requirements for a national wonder).

Between these cities you will certainly want to build the Heroic Epic and West Point (and possibly also Red Cross). These would tend to be in the larger “military” cities where the benefit will be greatest

c) Improvements

Your obvious requirements for a production city will be mines, workshops and the mills with farms perhaps needed to produce some growth. Obviously the resources should get whatever their required improvement is. Do NOT build cottages here.!!

Science

a) Terrain

By contrast, your typical terrain here will be one that has a reasonable to good food with some source of production although the latter may be limited. Probably a flat featureless grassland site. Resources are likely to be those generating food and/or commerce (precious metals, dyes, silk, wine, spices, incense, sheep, corn….). Science cities are also likely to be close to water either for those zero production coastal tiles or for the river commerce bonus. A large number of floodplains and/or oasis could indicate a strong contender for a science city.

b) What to build

First build the basics: your forge and granary. These will are least set up the infrastructure for both growth and production modifiers. After that you’ll want to work your way through the science multipliers (library, monasteries etc.)

As usual you’ll need to make a few diversions to keep yourself within happiness/health limits but no need to rush into these before you need them. You’ve got buildings that allow you to appoint scientists so can probably slow growth down if you really need to. Lighthouses and harbours will be important early builds for a coastal city (say after a library), while courthouses are a likely build requirement too, and particularly so if the city is some distance from the capital. As a very crude rule, if your courthouse build saves you more than 80% of the amount that the science build will create (adjust as necessary for the hammers required to build) then the CH should be built first.

In your primary science city (some people just call this the Science City), you will want to build Oxford University as soon as it becomes available and this will also be the place where your Great Scientists settle – should they choose to.

You’ll also want to use on Great Scientist – usually the first – to create an academy in your top science city. Creating academies in other science cities is then a question of the comparative value gained from GPs and their different uses.

c) Improvements

Without a doubt, your main improvement in a science city will be your cottages. Get these working early and your science city will be increasing its own contribution without you doing a thing. Apart from those improvements needed to set a basic level of production, you will tend to avoid building mines (preferring windmills) while workshops and watermills are going to be relatively wasteful use of space.

Gold

Generally, a gold city will not really look that different to a science city since the key component of a “gold” city will also be commerce. Nevertheless you will want to dedicate some of these cities to concentrate on gold - perhaps every fourth “science” city should be a “gold” city”

There is one key building/feature of a “gold” city that will immediately identify it this type of city and this is when the city is a holy city. This type of city is ALWAYS a gold city.

b) What to build

The only difference between this type of city and a science city is that we must now target the gold multipliers: markets, grocers and banks rather than the science buildings. As a side benefit we also don’t have to worry to much about small detours to keep ourselves with health and happiness limits although this will be at the expense of some of the cultural benefits of the science multipliers. This is easily solved by building one of those cheap theatre buildings but by all means build one or two science buildings too if the science benefit is going to be reasonable.

In your top gold city you’ll also want to build Wall Street and settle any Prophets or Great Merchants.

Wonders

a) Typical terrain

These cities are basically variations of your military cities except that they will probably have the capacity for a lot more production. Unlike a military city, they will need a decent food base to support the high production tiles.

b) What to build

Once again these should be building much the same as the military cities – and the barracks are likely to be important because the city is unlikely to spend all of its time building wonders so will often also contribute to the military.

GP

a) Typical terrain

Probably the easiest to spot. A GP city needs to be able to support a lot of specialists and this can really only be achieved with a food-rich site. Three or more food specials will usually be enough.

b) What to build

First a granary to speed growth then a forge to increase production. If using seafood specials, a lighthouse will also be needed. After these builds, go straight for the buildings that you need to appoint specialists which, in order of build times are Theatre, Temples, Library, Market, Grocers, Observatory, University etc

c) Improvements

Concentrate on food and don’t worry too much about production. You can always use slavery or universal suffrage to get the buildings up quickly and once you have buildings like the forge, temples and factories, you can always get what basic production you need from your specialists themselves.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I think many players make too big of a deal about specialization. I definitely do not think that the vast majority of your cities should be specialized to do one thing. I find that in my games, specializing one or two cites for massive commerce works well enough. The captial or representation makes up for the bulk of research anyway in the first half of the game. I do like to specialize my coastal cities with seafood sources into large commerce or GP centers. Flood plain cities with poor production capability should be specialized in a similar matter, however these cities do not constitute a majority.

I like to keep the majority of my cities flexibly improved with a good balance of cottages, farms, and production. I usually end up relying on my capital as the main GP generator for a large chunk of the game.
Since I am a primarily a domination player, producing units in most of my cities is of primary importance. One city should be singled out for the heroic epic as early as possible. I like to specialize this city for pure production and build mines and farms.

Most cities will have a good balance of terrain, and should be improved accordingly, with cottages or water mills going on river tiles, mines/windmills for hills and farms mixed in so that the high production tiles can be worked. It is not practical or efficient to specialize these cities. The population can be adjusted to maximize production in times of war or commerce in times of peace. I like to build barracks/granary/bank in these cities plus additional improvements when I can fit them in. Most of the time they will be producing units. Income can be generated by capturing a bunch of shrine cities or spreading your own religion like crazy and specializing the shrine city for commerce as mentioned above.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky
I think many players make too big of a deal about specialization.

It is a big deal although I should perhaps have added a few notes about multi-purpose cities. Specialisation allows you to avoid wasting precious hammers on unnecessary builds.

p.s. If you get most of your cities up and building units then you are also specialising them.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

p.s. If you get most of your cities up and building units then you are also specialising them.

True. They are somewhat specialized for production, but these cities often have high commerce output due to early cottages so they are also utilized as cash cities. They are multi-purpose, (but primarily unit producers since I favor building lots of units which is more of a playstyle issue than a specialization issue).

The problem with specialization is that many of the cities that would receive the most benefit (for commerce and GP) are the most difficult to specialize since they cannot produce things very fast due to low production. Pop-rushing too often in these cities can be detrimental and defeat the purpose of specializing them. For example in my current game, I wanted to convert a city with about 7 floodplain squares and wheat into my GP generator, but construction of the national epic was 120+ turns. A university was another 75 turns (I had an academy here, was my 2nd best science city). A golden age sped construction, but they still took forever to build. Large coastal cities have the same problem. The spiritual trait obviously helps here since you can switch to US and rush build, but early in the game it is IMO more practical to utilize your high production cities for commerce.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky


True. They are somewhat specialized for production, but these cities often have high commerce output due to early cottages so they are also utilized as cash cities. They are multi-purpose, (but primarily unit producers since I favor building lots of units which is more of a playstyle issue than a specialization issue).

I will then argue that you are using the cities with a

Primary purpose : Military
Secondary purpose: Science or Gold

In the earlier game there is often little choice and some cities have to carry several responsibilities. But there are always sites (your flood plain city) where specialising in military or production is going to be difficult because the tiles are simply not there. For these cities you don't want to waste time building a barracks because you wont actually build many units. Use those scarce hammers more carefully and build the granary, forge, library while those cottages are just spammed into the city cross. If you have no production, slave drive the basic infrastructure up and once you have a temple and a forge then your specialist engineers and priests are can take it from there. If the job of the GP city is just to generate GPs then I would tend to leave things like universities till later. I also find that it takes quite a while to get a GP city running properly and, rather than waste time, I build the National Epic in the city generating enough GPs from Wonders (particularly GLibrary)

To comment on the excessive us of cottages with your “military cities”, I rather think that you could designate the secondary role of these cities and this would help you to save some build times. For example, one of them could be made more exclusively as a “military” city and could then have farms rather than cottages to support the high production tiles. This one would then get Heroic Epic etc. Others could be designated as having science with a secondary role and get more cottages and build libraries and monasteries etc.

[Mr Justice]

citis which are totally specialized are useless for any other purpose, where this is a problem is for your commerce city becuase it needs lots of infrastructure to be good at commerce, but it should have no production, hence catch 22, my answer to this is to start off all cities with ge3neric stuff, some prod, some commerce, and as i get into the medivel times i will slowly rework already improved tiles to change the improvement into something more approriate.

paganpaulwhiskey: thats my answer to your issue of not being able to build in specialized cities early.

once you get US you also get +1 hammers from towns.which really improves those cities totally dedicated to commerce.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Good points.

For these cities you don't want to waste time building a barracks because you wont actually build many units. Use those scarce hammers more carefully and build the granary, forge, library while those cottages are just spammed into the city cross.

I agree and do not usually build barracks in these cities unless I have nothing else to build. I would argue that a forge is also unnecessary. The very small increase in hammer output does not seem to justify the expensive build (until US anyway). I generally do not build a whole lot of libraries unless I am running representation, but they should go up in these cities.

Primary purpose : Military Secondary purpose: Science or Gold

Sort of, but these cities actually spend more time building infrastructure than military unless I am going for a very early domination win. The heroic epic city is really the only city I specialize to produce units only. Once my empire is sufficiently large, I will dedicate a chunk of cities to building units while commerce infrastructure goes up in the others and then just rotate them. I guess I should say that most of my cities are flexibly specialized.

I also find that it takes quite a while to get a GP city running properly and, rather than waste time, I build the National Epic in the city generating enough GPs from Wonders (particularly GLibrary)

Yes, this is my usual approach, however, in this game my capital really had poor food output. I also had very few wonders constructed (pyramids only, I think, which was all I needed in this game) so the NE would have helped very little.

P.S. Can anyone tell me how to get the "originally posted by:" tagline in the quote? It is really bothering me that it doesnt appear in my posts.

[rah]

Either hit the reply with quote or add
{SIZE=1] Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky [/SIZE}
into your post switching the {s with [s

[couerdelion]

Some of these ideas are based on some findings I had in a recent game. My third city was built on an isthmus primarily to provide a sea route between the two oceans and had decent food but limited production. By dedicating that city to science I could work the sea and cottage tiles quite happily and slowly turn out the science multipliers. Never built a single unit there and, although its output was not very high, it was as good as I might have been able to expect with the level of production I had there.

City 4 (or maybe 5) was built on the coast between cities 1 and 2. Apart from filling in the gaps, it allowed me to work the iron tile but barely had time to grow before I chopped out the next catapult. Here, for some reason, I felt the need to build a cottage which I hardly ever used and which had no science or gold multipliers. If I’d put a farm there I’d probably have been able to generate at least 2 hammers/turn or an extra catapult for every second rush. Nothing too dramatic but I was effectively running the city at around 15% below a more optimal efficiency. Not only did I build a near useless tile improvement but I also wasted the time of my worker when they plenty of other things to do.

[Mr Justice]

off topic

Originally posted by rah
Either hit the reply with quote or add
{SIZE=1] Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky [/SIZE}
into your post switching the {s with [s

used it not be

{quote="by whom"}what im quoting{/quote}

or is that a different version of the bbcode or somethin. i dont like quoting without using originators name either, ta for the tip

/off topic

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhiskyI would argue that a forge is also unnecessary

i dont agree with that. i consider the happiness bonus to be just as important as the money bonus, more so in the right conditions. its same with the following buildings
grocer, harbour, coleseum, temples.
i'll build them for their happiness or health bonus in any city thats short on either of those 2. mind you they'll be built when their bonus is needed, not b4 hand.

[MadDjinn]

for any specialized city, you need to make sure you've got the food to work the tiles.

if you're lucky and your base terrain balances out to a zero sum, then you only need a farm or food resource for speed of growth (and later game specialist support)

else you need to decide that you'll work less tiles than max, or put more food in. getting ++ scientist specialists in a city and being a big commerce city can be a hard thing to build.

and don't forget the observatory for +25% beakers and another specialist.

and monastaries give +10% beakers each. you can push +295% beaker production.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by MadDjinn
you can push +295% beaker production.

+295 beakers! Thats huge.

I really must get a chance to give this a go!

Now what to do with the wife and boys.........

[MadDjinn]

what you'd need:

remembering that it's slider value (% of commerce) then add specialist beakers.

then building % multiple.

then civic % multiple.

so...

library +25%
University + 25%
Academy +50%
Observatory +25%
Oxford University +100%
Laboratory +25%
7xMonastary (10%x7= 70%)

(I had forgotten about the Lab as I rarely get that far in Techs before the game is over)

Great Library gives +2 free scientists
Library + 2 Scientist slots
Oxford +3 Scientist slots
Observatory +1 Scientist slots
Laboratory +1 Scientist slots

at this point you'll have to note that the Laboratory comes at a cost. you must go through Scientific method to get there. so you lose +70% from monastaries and the 2 free scientists.

so pre-Scientific Method:

+295% beaker production from buildings
+2 free scientists
+6 open Scientist slots

post-Scientific Method:

+250% beaker porduction from buildings
+7 open Scientist slots

so you're actually better set to learn science *before* Scientific Methods, than after it. which seems rather weird.

so...

pre-Scientific Method city type:

with 6 open slots to fill, that's 12 extra food needed.
and obviously you'll want a major commerce site to fuel into that +295% beaker production. so at least 10+ towns.

so you'll want alot of towns. (+7 commerce at full improvement, including civics etc)

and they should be mostly on rivers. (+1 more commerce)

but then you'll need food to work them. 2/tile.

as for food issues:

flood plains are best areas as the give you an extra food/tile. so two flood plain towns support 1 Scientist specialist.

6 specialists means 12 flood plains... I haven't quite seen this ever, so it's not too likely.

you'll need 2+ food resources to feed the specialists then (on top of other food givers)

21 tiles in your fat cross, 20 workable.

this is the part that starts causing problems...

so to work all tiles and have 6 scientist specialist slots filled, you'll need to produce 52 food. alot of which must come from the tiles that have towns.

which means limited (if not nonexistant) non-resource plains or hills of any kind (except grassland hills which could get windmills. but that doesn't help food production any, so subtracts a tile for food or town status)

so food details are the real issue. in general, it's easier to work the tiles, than it is to get all 6/7 scientist slots filled which working 10+ towns.

....

the last thing to note is the major issue of getting 7 religions. then get them all into 1 city. much harder than it sounds. so the post-Scientific Method numbers are always available, but the pre-Scientific Method better numbers require some effort.


oh, and civics:

Free Religion gets you +10% beaker production as well push you to (commerce/slider + specialist) then +305%

bureaucracy is best if this is your capital (+50% commerce) but if not, free speech is good (to get to the +7 commerce from towns).

free market vs mercantilism...

trade routes = +commerce. so lots of them are best as they factor into the base before +XXX%.

so 1 trade route, at worst is 1 commerce. if you're 100% slider on beaker production, then it's equal to 1 specialist at +305%. if the trade route is worth more than 1 commerce, then use it instead.

but.. if you are running representation, and you should be if you want to max sciences, (+ 3 beaker/specialist) then the trade route from free markets needs to be 2-3 commerce to be worth it since youi usually aren't running 100% beaker production.

last, but not least, is use emancipation over caste system. it will help speed growth of commerce producers, and annoy everyone else. if you've got 4+ food resources, all grasslands or better, then think about caste system for the unlimited scientists... otherwise 6/7 slots are hard enough to fill.

[greenday_234]

Just was thinking, and let me preface with I don't really know what I'm talking about. But wouldn't it just be as advantagous to have one city as a GP farm and the rest not so much specialized but more as an even combo of production,commerce,population? In that scenario you would end up with a some decent cities that are capable of doing multiple different things. I.E. Maybe I need an Infantry and it may take 4 turns but its still gets a good amount of commerce as well. Thoughts?