Need advice on how to specialize (see replay)

[Blake]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by NFIH


I thought the accepted wisdom was to not let things be automated. No?[quote]
Like it or not, your worker placement is already automated (ie everytime it grows). But the governor has no direction, you do actually need to tell him that you want to bring in a maximum amount of food, hammers and commerce. Otherwise he'll do stupid things like assigning a single specialist here and there that takes 200 turns to produce a great person while killing city growth.

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.

All. Cities. Need. Granaries.
Check your happy caps, you're nowhere near them. Many cities are like size 5 with a happy cap of 12.

And there is a cure for overpopulation, slave them to death .

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).

Slavery does result in a short term reduction in score-power but much better growth in the slightly longer run.

Also if you check your cities you'll find many of them aren't working great tiles, take a grassland forest tile. It produces 2food 1 hammer a turn, the worker eats 2 food. So you get a net profit of 1 hammer. it woudl take 30 turns to bring in 30 hammers. Or you could kill him off with slavery and get 30 hammers right now, and inside of 10 turns he'll have grown back and can be killed for another 30 hammers.
Don't slave when they're working good tiles, but be ruthless with the population working marginal stuff like forest.

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.)

You might think so, but no. Forges have additional effects:
1) they add +1 happy for each of gold, gems, silver.
2) they amplify the power of whips.

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

That would be "Growth". They grow back extremely quickly.

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.

Specialization is not something you start a game with an intention of doing; it's an oppurtunistic thing. You see a city site which is just perfect for cranking out units etc.
The reality is, most buildings will provide at least some benefit in any city, like a forge as well as providing additional production also has the happy bonus, a granary has health bonuses, a library provides culture, markets provide happy, grocers provide health. It's only when you get to Banks and the like that specialisation really matters; and still then, it's mostly a matter of not building them where they are not needed.

The main use of specialization is actually to maximize the power of your national wonders, heroic epic is so much more powerful when it has a lot of base hammers to work with.

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?

I whip units (duh?) or train them between whips.
This is why I build barracks everywhere, if I get sneak attacked, no city is spared the cruel bite of the whip in rallying a strong defense + counter attack.

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.

A 10 food surplus is 2 fish tiles + lighthouse. A 10 food surplus is 2 x grassland pigs. Or a freshwater corn plus 4 floodplains.

What you should probably do is focus more on founding cities where they work food resources, one of the major flaws in your city placement is you actually leave good food tiles outside of *any* city radius. I can understand this when you think fast growth is bad, but actually, fast growth is really, really good, in fact (real) power is nearly directely proportional to crop yield.

For example here:

I've X'd all the food tiles you've somehow left outside of city radius. The grassland pigs is particulary bad, it's a truly awesome tile and should be worked ASAP.
Same with the fish off the coast, 6 food tiles are a wonderful thing.

I've put dots where I would have placed cities.
First, just up the river is Green Dot, it's close to the capital but it works the pigs and has a free river connection to the capital.
Red Dot claims the sheep and stone quarry.
Blue Dot claims another sheep and the deer.
Yellow Dot is an excellent city site, claiming fish, clams and copper.
Pink Dot claims the Gold and Corn.

That I would found 5 cities in the screenshot where you only found 1 is also indicative of something, you can afford to found cities a lot closer together as long as each city is working a couple of nice resources. Really, city placement should mostly be driven by resources; how many quality resources will the city work? And some resources are more valuable than others.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Ijuin


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.

Bureaucracy and the age of the city makes the capital somewhat different. May even be the only city in which certain wonders can viably be built. As such it often gets the Great Library and, as a consequence, I tend to put the National Epic and Oxford University there too.

Running bureaucracy is also likely to mean that slavery is going to be of marginal value in the capital. Whipping is more effective in high food/low population cities while your city will be both larger and have a 50% bonus on both production and commerce. With bureaucracy you will almost never want to pop-rush.

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.

The problem here is more likely that you have not developed enough production/military cities which should have started churning out units exclusively after building the basic infrastructure of granary, forge, barracks + a little culture if city is on border.

If you have a powerful neighbour then perhaps you should also have hit them earlier. There's nothing like a quick early war to give you a strong and experienced military while keeping you neighbours weak.

As a rule, I would expect at least half my cities to have barracks (probably more than 75%). The important thing is to realise that a low production fishing village is not going to improve your military strength one bit so you can forget the barracks there.

I like to gear my cities towards production with some worked cottages thrown in. It is then very easy to build commerce (edit science/gold?) multipliers if needed.

This is not really a good idea for production cities despite the fact that cottages can be valuable over time. By placing cottages in a production city you are almost obliging yourself to build science and/or gold multiplier in it. But one or two cottages in a city whose strength is production is rather marginal compared to the commerce specialist city working commerce specials like gold, gems, dyes etc and with libraries, university etc. If you then build library, market etc in the production city you are using up all those hammers for a rather minimal return (with two towns you get +2 beakers/gold per turn from the two buildings while you could build 6 catapults for the same price. With those units supporting some assault troops you could start taking some rival cities which should get you a lot more than +2 commerce per turn.

Of course, you want to keep a balance with the primary focus on the science/military mix of cities. But once you see what it is that a city can be geared towards forget all the unnecessary builds.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Blake

All. Cities. Need. Granaries.
Check your happy caps, you're nowhere near them. Many cities are like size 5 with a happy cap of 12.

I've put dots where I would have placed cities.
First, just up the river is Green Dot, it's close to the capital but it works the pigs and has a free river connection to the capital.
Red Dot claims the sheep and stone quarry.
Blue Dot claims another sheep and the deer.
Yellow Dot is an excellent city site, claiming fish, clams and copper.
Pink Dot claims the Gold and Corn.

That I would found 5 cities in the screenshot where you only found 1 is also indicative of something, you can afford to found cities a lot closer together as long as each city is working a couple of nice resources. Really, city placement should mostly be driven by resources; how many quality resources will the city work? And some resources are more valuable than others.

All good food for thought (pardon the pun). Thanks!

[PaganPaulwhisky]

This is not really a good idea for production cities despite the fact that cottages can be valuable over time. By placing cottages in a production city you are almost obliging yourself to build science and/or gold multiplier in it. But one or two cottages in a city whose strength is production is rather marginal compared to the commerce specialist city working commerce specials like gold, gems, dyes etc and with libraries, university etc. If you then build library, market etc in the production city you are using up all those hammers for a rather minimal return (with two towns you get +2 beakers/gold per turn from the two buildings while you could build 6 catapults for the same price. With those units supporting some assault troops you could start taking some rival cities which should get you a lot more than +2 commerce per turn.

There is nothing wrong with working cottage tiles in a production city as you simply cannot work all high hammer tiles (unless you work mostly forests which is not a good idea). Cottages are obviously the best improvement to work after high food specials, so they should go up in your spare tiles and worked if possible. This can provide a real boost in the early game. I do not see how this obligates you to build multipliers, it just makes them productive if you do (when needed, otherwise build units). Of course, you could also just farm everything and work an extra mine or two, but this is not feasible until CS.

I tend to go for construction before currency anyway so I would definetely opt to churn out catapults and assault troops before erecting any kind of cash or science multipliers. I would only build these if I need them after counquering cities when my finances are under stress. Of course the output is marginal compared to your super specialized commerce city, but in my games this tends to be one or two cities. If I have many more production oriented cities working some cottages the benefit can be substantial. Maybe you can show me a screenshot of one of your games, as I would be very interested to see what your production cities look like (and I would be quite surprised if I see no cottages).

Also a big difference here is play style. You mentioned that you specialize most of your cities for commerce so of course you don't need the extra commerce in your production cities. I specialize most of my cities for production so I do need the extra commerce.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky


There is nothing wrong with working cottage tiles in a production city as you simply cannot work all high hammer tiles (unless you work mostly forests which is not a good idea). Cottages are obviously the best improvement to work after high food specials, so they should go up in your spare tiles and worked if possible. This can provide a real boost in the early game.
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Also a big difference here is play style. You mentioned that you specialize most of your cities for commerce so of course you don't need the extra commerce in your production cities. I specialize most of my cities for production so I do need the extra commerce.

I think my comments on cottages in production cities has to be taken in a more general context and there will be times when you will need them in any spare tiles you have.

To give an example, in a current game, I ran into a quite awkward problem of having decent food and production but low commerce. Happiness was also severely limited since the only resources nearby were a bunch of gems hidden by forest. By the time the main barbarian threat had been dealt with unit and city costs rather forced me to build cottages in all spare locations so that I could fund the research of iron working.

Even with gems, city limits are very low so I am forced to build workers to restrict growth but these will also increase costs. And slow research can also lead to limited choice of buildings.

As a result I find myself building things that I otherwise would not do (simply as a means of using production). I am also scattering cottages around more freely.

HOWEVER…….

In the long run, I will do some more extensive terra-forming that will see a much clearer specialisation. Mines in commerce cities will be switched to windmills and forests cleared for cottages. In production city, hamlets and villages will be switched to farms to allow hills to be mined and trees will be preserved for the arrival of lumbermills.

By the mid game, the observatories and universities might take a while to go up but the factories and wonders are no problem because the only 0/1 hammer tiles I work are the farms and/or food specials.

p.s. Production cities might need markets and grocers for happiness and I might also build libraries, universities and banks in them to reach the wonder requirements. But in general, pure production cities are best used to simply churn out units and/or wonders

[padillah]

WOW! Thanks for this thread (especially Blake).

I've wondered about this stuff but have no idea how to find out "why I suck".

I may start a game and then a thread to help straighten myself out.

TomP .

[PaganPaulwhisky]

In the long run, I will do some more extensive terra-forming that will see a much clearer specialisation. Mines in commerce cities will be switched to windmills and forests cleared for cottages. In production city, hamlets and villages will be switched to farms to allow hills to be mined and trees will be preserved for the arrival of lumbermills.

Yes, this is a good idea and probably optimal at this point in the game, however I find that by the time these improvements come around I have the game well in hand. It is usually not worth the effort for me to micro manage each city when I have enough cities to clobber everybody (in close games this is probably necessary and this is the reason why I quit at emperor level, since I don't have much patience for this sort of thing).

The only cities I ever consider extensively terraforming are my GP pump (will change all cottages to farms), and my heroic epic and ironworks cities get the same treatment so I can work mines. Beyond that, why bother squeezing every last drop of efficiency out of your empire when it is unnecesary. I guess I am just a lazy ruler

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Blake

All. Cities. Need. Granaries.
Check your happy caps, you're nowhere near them. Many cities are like size 5 with a happy cap of 12.

All cities need granaries if you're running slavery and plan to do whipping in those cities, or if you have a lot of happiness. If neither of those, it's not so clear cut.

[Blake]

No really, all cities need granaries.
You might be able to defer them until size 5 or 6, but in the longer run the health benefit is invaluable (it's rare to not have grains) and the growth will also be useful because the caps just keep rising.
Oh, and whipping IS the strongest production strategy. Feel free to not (ab)use it but you're playing a variant.

[Ijuin]

Remember, buildings cost no maintenance in Civ4!

With granaries in every city, your cities will reach their population caps twice as quickly, which means that you get the population all the earlier. They will reach the new cap twice as quickly whenever the cap rises as well.

[dolf]

nice comments and tips guys.