Need advice on how to specialize (see replay)

[NFIH]

I'm trying to get a handle on how to specialize cities in terms of military production, great person production, wonder production, etc. I'm just not that good at it. I'd like some advice on the attached replay. What I'm looking for is city-by-city advice on what I should do with each city in terms of its specialization. Level is Noble, speed is Epic, map size is huge. I'm the Egyptians.

I have 11 cities in this game. Three of the cities I took from the Germans in an early war because as usual we started on top of each other. So I just went military from the get go and planned on taking out the nearest AI.

Now I want to settle back into the tech race, which I always lose miserably and I think the key to that is this specialization I hear people talking about.

I'm planning on leaving the Germans with their one or two cities (they're cut off from each other) so I can keep demanding money from them and stuff like that.

Thanks for any help!

[Metaliturtle]

to get caught up in tech you need to spam out some cottages and work them, research towards currency/banking for markets and banks or go CoL and courthouse spam, all viable.

As far as specialization goes, I'll open up the save and give it a look see but I'm not a very detail oriented Civver

[Metaliturtle]

First thing to explain is the 60% rule basically don't build/take more cities until you're in the green at 60% research or higher (or be prepared to pay for it)

You're building a lot of wealth, the cities on the border with Isabella (essen, & Winnipeg) should be doing cultural improvements (religious buildings and theatres) As a general rule: None of these cities should build wealth until you have worked maximum tiles and there are no improvements left. If you want to specialize this is doubly important.

3 basic kinds of City to specialize

High Commerce (wealth/research/culture)
High Production (Hammers and anvils/ cities surrounded by hills)
High Food (to use as a Great Person Pump or Slaves for whipping)

Pick a City (or several) with a snaky river with lots of floodplains and grasslands, best one on this map is probably Toronto at the moment. Build Cottages on Floodplains and Grasslands, farm regular plains, mine hills, fast initial growth onto (hopefully) ready-made cottages will make this a good Science City, Commerce City, or even a Culture City later on in the game if you want a Cultural Victory.

Production Cities (Halifax, Calgary, and Edmonton are good for this) build barracks, forges, anything to increase production, the goal here? 2 turn military units 5 turn wonders etc. Build it big and build it fast is the name of the game. Mine the heck outta the hills, farm anything that can get 3+ food for growth. Ideally, these cities will churn out whatever you want as fast as possible.

Food Cities (Frankfurt & Waa Waa probably best here but Waa Waa is too close to the other city) Basically farm the world to death, you want to support specialists, anything that nets you a specialist geared towards the Great person you want is a good thing, Caste system can be used to an extreme advantage here. Build Granaries. These cities can also be used as whip fodder in a pinch, read Blake's thread for more info on that.

[NFIH]

What about building things like theatres in every city? I tend to do this for the culture boost, especially if my city is near the enemy and I want to guard against a culture flip or conversely take over an enemy city by culture creep.

If building a military unit it expensive but I can build some other building which doesn't technically fit into my specialization plans but which builds culture/wealth, why not do it?

Or am I wrong?

[Yosho]

Well, you don't have to specalize all of your cities. Most of my cities are usually rather "general purpose", all-around good cities.

You don't need theatres in the middle of your empire, unless they give you happiness (from dyes or from culture) or you're going for a culture victory, but on the borders, yeah, you absolutly want theatres and libraries everywhere for the culture boundry.

[Blake]

Here would be my advice for getting your empire into shape.

Ctrl-click on a city name, this will select all cities.
Set "Maximize Food, Maximize hammers, Maximize Commerce". This will tell your governors to stop being dumbasses.
With all cities still selected click the granary - you currently have no granaries, and you need to have granaries in every city. Since all cities are selected they'll all be building a granary now.
End turn.
Ctrl-click on a city again, now hit the whip button. This will whip a granary into every city with enough population.
While the cities are still selected, shift-click the forge to make it the next build.
In cities which aren't christian, find a nearby city and replace the forge with a christian missionary (you'll only be able to do 3)
End turn.
Whip in all the missionaries and forges in cities which are large enough.

Proceed to continue to whip in missionaries and forges, you want to get the two +25% bonuses in all cities ASAP.

Then whip in libraries and marketplaces.

All cities need to have this infrastructure in ASAP - that is, Religion, Granary, Forge, Library, Marketplace. Barracks would also be wise. Whip it all in, don't worry about the unhappiness, you have a massive surplus of happiness.

Once they have this infrastructure, let them grow in peace and work cottages. Improve every resource and cottage every single grassland and floodplain tile, this should be maximum worker priority. Plains are rubbish and best not worked for now, unless on a river, farm tte river plains.

Once cities run out of resources/grassland/floodplain to work, just whip off the excess population as it grows.

Unfortunatly you don't have any good production city candidates.
A good production city needs like +10 food surplus (ie two or three food resources) allowing it to work a great many mines.
Much later on you can take a flatland city (mostly grassland) and plaster it with lumbermills or state-property workshops.


I would suggest doing so here, don't clear the forest lumbermill it instead. Blue line is a possible irrigation chain. Workshop everything else.
Build Ironworks there.

I would capture Dusseldorf from the germans, it has 2 deer and a fish (+10 food surplus total). At size 8 you could assign 5 specialists and it's not good for anything else. With representation it would actually produce decent science too.
Build National Epic in your capital though.

[Metaliturtle]

Set "Maximize Food, Maximize hammers, Maximize Commerce". This will tell your governors to stop being dumbasses.

Blake... you're the man

[couerdelion]

Well here's my thoughts.

The three levels of specialisation (production, commerce, food) are fine but don't really say what the cities are actually doing. So perhaps it's easier to define them as (brackets identify what the city is best at)

1) Military build city (production)
2) Wonder builder (production)
3) Science (commerce)
4) Gold (commerce and/or gold - ie shrine)
5) Great People (food).

Where you have a military city you really want hills and metal resources although trees and elephants work reasonable well too. High food is not really that necessary since you can place windmills on most of the hills to get the most production. Forests get lumbermilled while grass and plains probably gets farmed to enable all the windmills to be worked. In this city build granary, forge, barracks (+other production multipliers) and just start churning out units. If it's on the border then make sure it produces some culture while markets and grocers will only be needed if happiness and health caps start biting.

Wonder cities are just the same as military ones but with more production potential.

Science cities are the basic commerce cities. Sometimes you'll just want to spam the place with cottages though make sure you have enough food to grow and a little production to keep the science multipliers coming in. Buildings needed are granary, forge and then libraries, monasteries, observatory, university (and market/grocers if happiness/health limits start to bite. Don't worry about a barracks when you have one or two cities producing units because, with limited production you'll want to be sparing with your production

Gold cities are like science cities except they concentrate on the gold multipliers rather than the science ones. They might want to also build some science multipliers too much further down the list. Every holy city should have its shrine and should be considered as a gold city. Barracks are even less important here than in the science cities. I would imagine that a 3:1 ratio for science cities to gold cities will probably work well.

GP cities basically need food and hopefully lots of it to support the specialists. +10 surplus probably isn't enough because you'll probably want a little production to get the specialist buildings up (library, market, theatre etc). Anything with more than 3 food specials is almost crying out to be used as a GP pump.

Some cities will have dual roles because they are simply older and will have gone through different stages of the game. They might have started out building military units and then turned to commerce or vice versa. Don't forget that, if you have enough workers, it is not too difficult to completely change a city from one type to the next with some rapid terraforming.

Oh, and your capital is usually a law unto itself but you should at least consider it as having a primary specialisation.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Blake
Here would be my advice for getting your empire into shape.

Ctrl-click on a city name, this will select all cities.
Set "Maximize Food, Maximize hammers, Maximize Commerce". This will tell your governors to stop being dumbasses.

I thought the accepted wisdom was to not let things be automated. No?

With all cities still selected click the granary - you currently have no granaries, and you need to have granaries in every city. Since all cities are selected they'll all be building a granary now.

When I first started playing Civ IV I did this, but then saw that the cities tended to grow too fast and outstrip the cities' ability to sustain the population in terms of happiness and pollution. I thought granaries should only be for, say, great person farms.

End turn.
Ctrl-click on a city again, now hit the whip button. This will whip a granary into every city with enough population.

I know everyone talks about slavery a lot but I've always been reluctant to use it because the population loss can be devastating in terms of worked tiles. And whenever I have wanted to use it, I don't have enough pop to do it anyway (e.g. it'll say I need to burn 8 pop, but I don't have 8 pop anyway and the max burn is 2 anyway).

While the cities are still selected, shift-click the forge to make it the next build.

Shouldn't forges only be in cities with a lot of hammers? (I usually put it in cities with a minimum 10 or 12 hammers.)

In cities which aren't christian, find a nearby city and replace the forge with a christian missionary (you'll only be able to do 3)
End turn.
Whip in all the missionaries and forges in cities which are large enough.

Proceed to continue to whip in missionaries and forges, you want to get the two +25% bonuses in all cities ASAP.

Then whip in libraries and marketplaces.

Again, how on earth is it possible to do this much whipping when the whipping itself costs population? I must be missing something here.

All cities need to have this infrastructure in ASAP - that is, Religion, Granary, Forge, Library, Marketplace. Barracks would also be wise. Whip it all in, don't worry about the unhappiness, you have a massive surplus of happiness.

OK, you seem to be following a much more different strategy than the specialization posts I've read here and elsewhere. Worth a try, of course.

Once cities run out of resources/grassland/floodplain to work, just whip off the excess population as it grows.

What min/max population do you work with for your cities? The time to build units and structures is a function of population so if you're always whipping, how can you ever be working enough hammer tiles to build units in a timely fashion?

Unfortunatly you don't have any good production city candidates.
A good production city needs like +10 food surplus (ie two or three food resources) allowing it to work a great many mines.

What? I think it's quite rare to have a +10 food surplus. In fact, I don't think I've ever had such a site.

I would suggest doing so here, don't clear the forest lumbermill it instead. Blue line is a possible irrigation chain. Workshop everything else.
Build Ironworks there.

I'll have a look.

I would capture Dusseldorf from the germans, it has 2 deer and a fish (+10 food surplus total). At size 8 you could assign 5 specialists and it's not good for anything else. With representation it would actually produce decent science too.

Hmm, OK, I'll definitely have to look into this.

Thanks for the help.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by couerdelion

Where you have a military city you really want hills and metal resources although trees and elephants work reasonable well too. High food is not really that necessary since you can place windmills on most of the hills to get the most production. Forests get lumbermilled while grass and plains probably gets farmed to enable all the windmills to be worked. In this city build granary, forge, barracks (+other production multipliers) and just start churning out units. If it's on the border then make sure it produces some culture while markets and grocers will only be needed if happiness and health caps start biting.

OK, here's my problem here. By the time lumbermills have arrived I've almost certainly chopped down all the forests anyway to either hurry (wonder) production or to mine, etc., for regular production.

Some cities will have dual roles because they are simply older and will have gone through different stages of the game. They might have started out building military units and then turned to commerce or vice versa. Don't forget that, if you have enough workers, it is not too difficult to completely change a city from one type to the next with some rapid terraforming.

Ah, I usually do forget about that.

Anyway, I think part of my problem stems from site selection in that yes, I choose sites with resources/specials in mind, but within that my priority is building a defensible perimeter of cities (usually a half moon or circle around my capital city). I have to do this because otherwise the AIs will place their cities all around me in such a way that I don't have any hope of having contiguous territory and I can be easily defeated in any war. This wouldn't be a such an issue if the game didn't always start all of us practically on top of each other even on huge maps, but that's what happens so my placement strategy is affected.

[Metaliturtle]

just raze their cities... satisfyin'

[PaganPaulwhisky]

My advice is to not worry so much about extreme specialization in all but a few cities. Over specializing each city is not strategically viable and tends to lock you in to a limited style of play.

For example if you specialize 3/4 of your cities for mass commerce and then your powerful neighbor declares war on you out of the blue, you will be in big trouble if you only have a few cities that can produce military units. I like to gear my cities towards production with some worked cottages thrown in. It is then very easy to build commerce multipliers if needed.

In the majority of my games I get by with one or two universities and libraries, a few well placed banks, and one GP pump (although the GP pump is not always needed).

Certain buildings should go up in the majority of your cities as they will allow you to switch from a commerce centric game to military conquest if you desire. Granaries should go up in all your core cities. These allow you to grow much faster and work more tiles quickly. They also allow much improved pop-rushing. Forges should go up in the majority of your cities. They are probably not needed in large floodplain or food cities, since you can just pop rush here if needed. IMO, these type of cities are the only ones that should be specialized exclusively for commerce or GP. I also like to construct barracks in almost all my cities. If it has a forge it should have a barracks. A shrine city can take care of almost all money needs (more can be conquered). Once you hit state property you won't need to construct many commerce buildings at all.

Similarly, Representation combined with a strong science capital can take care of most of your research needs.

[Quillan]

Let me preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I play mostly on Noble (just starting to experiment with Prince). Tactics are necessarily situational; I can do things on Noble that you'd never be able to get away with on Monarch or Emperor.

I tend to build everything everywhere. The only difference for me is the order in which I build it. The more difficult the game, the more care you'll have to take in your building.

The point to the granary is slavery. If it grows too big, whip something out. The faster it recovers, the faster you can whip something else out. Granaries empower the entire slavery growth strategy, and it VASTLY outproduces anything else in the early going.

[Ijuin]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Oh, and your capital is usually a law unto itself but you should at least consider it as having a primary specialisation.

If you are running Bureaucracy in the mid-game, you might want to make your capital into your primary Science city--build the Great Library and Oxford University in it, and an Academy.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky
For example if you specialize 3/4 of your cities for mass commerce and then your powerful neighbor declares war on you out of the blue, you will be in big trouble if you only have a few cities that can produce military units.

This is what I'm afraid of.

I like to gear my cities towards production with some worked cottages thrown in. It is then very easy to build commerce multipliers if needed.

This is what I tend to do but I keep falling behind in the tech race and by mid-game am completely out of the wonder races.

In the majority of my games I get by with one or two universities and libraries, a few well placed banks, and one GP pump (although the GP pump is not always needed).

How do you determine when a city should get a market/bank? Do you wait for the city to be producing a certain minimum number of commerce points? For example, if the market gives +25% and you're only generating 5 commerce, is it pointless to build a market? I tend to put markets/banks only in cities with a minimum commerce of 10 (+25% adding only 3 commerce, which is what I feel is the minimum to make the build worthwhile).