My Cities are Cookie-Cutter

[acuoio]

This game has been shelved for a while and I recently decided to pick it back up in preparation for the X-pac. I've had a gnawing question since before Civ4 was released. Namely, when the game was pitched, one of the things mentioned was that there was a much less need for cookie-cutter cities like Civ3. Instead, you created super-cities. One might focus on production or military or science.

But I still find myself creating carbon copy cities. Every city has needs like a granary, temple, library, etc. Am I off base here? Should I be doing super cities where I just don't build military buildings in my science city. If that's the case, what do I do when I'm not building something? Switch to research? What kind of city roles are there?

I also had another question about tiles. I just wanted to make sure I was doing the most appropriate things per the tiles. I tend to favor Elizabeth (+gold).

1. Grassland w/ 2+ food, I build a cottage.
2. 2f/1h forest, I chop it down for the grassland.
3. 1f/2h forest, I sit on it and eventually put a Woodshop on it.
4. For plains which are usually 1f/2h, I sit on it and later on choose Farm or Waterwheel.
5. For flood plains, first flood gets a farm, the rest get cottages.
6. Hills with more food get windmills.
7. Hills with more hammers get mines.

This 2nd half of my post about tiles technically ties into the 1st half. If I'm building supercities, then I should proabably tailor my tiles to what the city does.

Thanks

[Willem]

Originally posted by acuoio

2. 2f/1h forest, I chop it down for the grassland.

Cities where you don't chop these forests can make very good production cities, especially if you also have a number of Hills.

4. For plains which are usually 1f/2h, I sit on it and later on choose Farm or Waterwheel.

You could also try building Workshops on any landlocked squares of this type to use for your production cities.

[Kloreep]

Re: My Cities are Cookie-Cutter

Originally posted by acuoio
But I still find myself creating carbon copy cities. Every city has needs like a granary, temple, library, etc. Am I off base here?

Not at all. Every city needs to grow and get population, and it needs to keep that population healthy; hence pretty much every city needs a granary.

And since every city needs population, temples may prove useful for keeping them happy in pretty much every city. They're not something you should build automatically, mind you - but they are useful if you've run out of cheaper ways (resources, cheaper buildings like the Theatre) to make your people happy.

Basically, anything that relates to population - health buildings, happiness ones, and the granary - is going to end up being applied pretty cookie cutter. Make sure you aren't wasting hammers building any too far ahead of when a city's growing population will need them, but you will probably want most cities to have most of these types of buildings by game end.

A Library is really the only questionable thing you list: If you have a super-production city that isn't pulling in much commerce, it won't need a library. Any city weak in commerce may not benefit that much, particularly if it's not on your border/not a city you're going for culture victory in. Libs are probably not something that should be done cookie cutter, though they are cheap enough to make a good cultural build (or boredom build ). Same on Unis, except be even more reluctant to build (unless you're Philosophical) since they're more expensive. Markets and Grocers are a bit different since they provide Happy & Healthy, but Banks are purely for upping your gold and should only go in cities with high commerce outputs, dedicated Merchant specialists, or Holy Shrines.

[Jaybe]

Of course, universities & banks might be built even in marginal cities in preparation to enable Oxford Uni & Wall Street. I often end up delaying Wall Street because I haven't enough banks built yet.

[Blake]

Financial does very well with cookie cutter cities, especially since you want to work as many cottages and windmills as possible which are relatively high food, meaning large cities.

Even more in general, you usually only need 1 or 2 specialized cities, that is:
One city which is a unit pump and has Heroic Epic.
One city which is a wonder pump and has Ironworks * (may be the capital, in which case it'll be dual-role)

There is a definite advantage to having cities devoted to pumping units, due to many mines being worked they'll have little commerce and relatively low population, this means there's no need for any commerce multipliers, nor for much cap relief. And unit pump cities should as a rule be small, in a unit pump city I don't bother working coast tiles or grassland cottages (it defeats the purpose of the city which is getting as many units asap), really a unit pump city just needs enough food to work all it's mines. On typical land size 10-12 wont be unusual, while commerce cities will be size 15-18, that the military pump is a good 5 pop smaller means it needs hardly any cap relief from buildings.

An example city of mine from the Teach Alexman PBEM has the following infrastructure:
Barracks, Stables, Granary, Forge, Monument, Courthouse, Military Academy

This city is a secondary unit pump.
It doesn't have the following buildable infrastructure:
Library (90h), Lighthouse (60h), Harbor (80h), Drydock* (120h), Theater (50h), Colosseum (80h), Market (150h), Grocer (150h), Bank (200h), University (200h), Observatory (150h)

* Usually you'd build the drydock in a coastal unit pump, but it's pangaea (and also as Charismatic a drydock in any city will do the trick of getting lvl3 ships, no need to waste a unit pump city). Note that this particular city is coastal but has no seafood, hence no lighthouse. You would build a lighthouse if you had seafood or freshwater lake.

The hammer savings stack up, just taking the minimal buildings like Lighthouse+Library is 5 Chariots or 3 Horse Archers, which is enough to be significant in an early war, for example taking over a couple of poorly defended cities.

In total the city hasn't built 1350h worth of infrastructure, an army of 11 Cavalry. That's the kind of force a player doesn't want rampaging through their territory.


Another factor is just figuring out what you don't need to build:

Obviously, make sure to never build cap relief buildings if the city isn't near the cap... "Because I can" and even "because it may come in useful later" is not a good reason to build something. Also make sure the culture component of a building will actually do something, it's entirely possible it wont.

Generally you should only need +50% gold multipliers in "Average" commerce cities, if the city needs the cap relief (and you have the bonuses), then markets and grocers are very good, if you don't, then a Bank is a lot cheaper. Gold multiplier basically have diminishing returns because in the end game the slider tends to be run very high (due to massive amounts of gold from the STRONG commerce cities and generally high commerce and powerful upkeep reducers). Also markets and grocers are very expensive. While it may not be a good idea to build research in place of a market/grocer in such a city, you probably would want to slow the market/grocer build rate by assigning commerce tiles or rep specialists, that, or train units instead.

The Forge is nearly always useful, but only build it in cities which produce at least 4 hammers + surplus food a turn, this is not a particularly high target, only the crappiest of fishing villages wont meet it, these cities tend to get the best gains from just building a lighthouse+granary+library then working all the commerce tiles they can (to grow), while piddling resources into a Courthouse or something.

Harbors are a weird case because they suffer diminishing returns and can pull trade away from better cities. Like lets say you have a size 15 Fishing Village with only +25% multipliers, it builds a harbor and pulls away trade routes from a size 12 Land city which has +75% multipliers (being much stronger at hammers), the harbor in the fishing village causes you to lose gold. So don't bother with harbors in low multiplier cities, unless you need the health or have plenty of trade routes to go around.

It's a good idea to build Barracks everywhere in case you need to slave or draft an army, but cities which are very weak in hammers+food shouldn't make it any priority.

Note the cost/benefit ratio of the various commerce multiplier buildings:
Creative Library (Warlords) : +25% / 45h = 0.55
Library : +25% / 90h = 0.27
Philo University: +25% / ~125h = ~0.2
Monastery: +10% / 60h = 0.17
Observatory: +25% / 150h = 0.17
University: +25% / 200h = 0.125
Laboratory: +25% / 250h = 0.1

Bank: +50% / 200h = 0.25
Market: +25% / 150h = 0.17
Grocer: +25% / 150h = 0.17

Make sure to build them in the best order! Note the relatively high ranking of monasteries, don't dismiss them on the basis of being +10%, they are very cheap.

It should also be obvious that if you wish to maximize research then the higher your gold slider, the more valuable gold multipliers are, and the higher the research slider, the more valuable science multipliers are. At 30% research or below ANY gold multiplier building will do more for your research than any of the science multiplier buildings, at below 50% research the Bank is simply the best multiplier build.

[couerdelion]

I would say that EVERY city falls into one of three groups

- Commerce (science and gold generation)
- Production (military and/or wonders)
- A GPP generator

Within the first group there would be one super science city (where Oxford will be built) and one super-gold city, typically a bank, in which Wall Street would be built.

Among the production cities, you’ll want the two that Blake mentions

Usually, you will have just one GPP generators and some other “incidental” GP generators. But if you have two very strong sources of GP, then there is no harm in having more than one. I will say nothing more of GP farms.

The terrain will drive the choice of type of city while this in turn will drive both the build requirements and the improvements. Commercial cities will prefer cottages while Production cities will go for mines (later replaced by windmills), workshops and watermills.

When it comes to city builds, there are usually a few minimum builds that you need. From the mid-game these are Granary, Forge, Theatre, Courthouse. After that the production cities (generally military) will get Barracks (and perhaps Stable and Drydock) while the commercial ones will want Libraries, Banks, etc. As long as you are able to keep in mind the purpose of the city, the subsequent build requirements should be fairly obvious with production cities only building things like markets and grocers if they need the health or happiness. I still find that my some production sites still need some of these buildings since working tiles like workshops will still result in larger cities.

[yin26]

Vel's strategy guide (pinned toward the top of this forum) has a good layman's overview of some of these ideas. It's all about maximizing efficiency. Nothing is "wrong" with building stuff you don't need in a city...except, of course, you could have built something far more useful with those same resources. Over time, this is how a player can find himself overwhelmed by the AI but not really sure why.

[acuoio]

Thanks for the wealth of info here. I'll digest it and ask more questions.

I guess one of my concerns is that I'm going along building stuff and I come to a decision. I'm not at war, but I could build an horse archer in 6 turns or I can put a library in my production city in 8 turns.

If I wasn't building the unnecessary buildings, then what is my city going to do? Just pump out armies?

Sounds like what I need to do is not balance my city tiles. Meaning, in my Science city, I try for as little hammers as possible. That way my builds take longer and nothing to do in between. Instead, I focus on cottages, farms, gems/gold, and windmills.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by acuoio
Thanks for the wealth of info here. I'll digest it and ask more questions.

I guess one of my concerns is that I'm going along building stuff and I come to a decision. I'm not at war, but I could build an horse archer in 6 turns or I can put a library in my production city in 8 turns.

If I wasn't building the unnecessary buildings, then what is my city going to do? Just pump out armies?

Sounds like what I need to do is not balance my city tiles. Meaning, in my Science city, I try for as little hammers as possible. That way my builds take longer and nothing to do in between. Instead, I focus on cottages, farms, gems/gold, and windmills.

If you are at a stage in the game where conquest is on the agenda, then churning out units is simply to prepare for war. The sooner you have what you need, the sooner you can start. However, there are times when there is no opportunity for expansion into other territories and you are stuck with peace – say if you are alone on an island. In this specific case you want commerce and tech - as much as you can get – to at least fire you through to Astronomy. Even here, a little military building might still get the preparations ready for when the galleons are sent out but there might be time to fit in a library and the best time to do this is before the units

a) Build a unit and you increase your costs
b) Build a library and you increase your tech advancement.

It is, of course, circumstantial even here but I am assuming that you are running with a reasonably healthy tech rate 50% or more.

As for the “science” city – and only one city should ever get this title – you still need hammers to build things like universities and markets and Oxford, although you can whip most of these.

[acuoio]

Well, let's take my last game which ended before I made this post. I played Prince level with Elizabeth. I was hemmed in pretty quickly with barbarians on one side and tundra on the other. I was able to take 1 barb city before Mansa exploded in expansion.

So I lost the space race with 6 cities. Not a lot, I know, but I was leading in tech the whole time. I had my slider on 100% tech rate the entire game. I lost the game because I didn't have enough cities to pump out the spaceship parts as fast. We never did make it past tanks. It was a very quick, straight-to-the-spaceship kinda game.

Usually I turn my capital into my science city, but it seems by the end of the game, that city has built every building it can, a couple of wonders, and a dozen or 2 units. And this seems to be what all my cities I found in the first 2 eras do. I guess I'm struggling with what my city would do once it finishes it's special buildings. For example, science. If i just build the minimal amount of buildings needed, I'd have a hundred or so turns of doing nothing with that city. So do I use my science city to pump out Research, Money, units, or more buildings? Is this not an issue for many because the science city has such low hammers that your builds are stretched longer?

Also, what role is your capital city most likely to take? Science, commerce, wonders, etc? I know this is a function of your starting area, but it seems 9/10 I land on a river or coast with mostly plains/grassland.

[dregor]

My capital is usually a GPP, sometimes commerce/research, tho really it depends on the location.

[acuoio]

Originally posted by dregor
My capital is usually a GPP, sometimes commerce/research, tho really it depends on the location.

And in this type of city, you would pump out as much food as you could so you could grow your city as high as it could go, thus allowing you more specialists?

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Blake

Harbors are a weird case because they suffer diminishing returns and can pull trade away from better cities. Like lets say you have a size 15 Fishing Village with only +25% multipliers, it builds a harbor and pulls away trade routes from a size 12 Land city which has +75% multipliers (being much stronger at hammers), the harbor in the fishing village causes you to lose gold.

Wait, WHAT? Harbors claim to add to your health if you have seafood resources available and +50% yield to existing trade routes. How do they add trade routes to that city, and more alarmingly, how on Earth do they actually REMOVE trade routes from other cities?!

[Jaybe]

Harbors add to the VALUE of trade routes to their city. This forces all your cities to reorder their trade routes, so higher-multiplier cities MAY have their trade route values reduced by changing the cities they trade with.

It seems (but I only vaguely recall reading of it) that trade route value is based on city size, modified by harbor presence.

[Blake]

The largest trade routes are assigned in preference to the "largest" cities, the size of a city is effectively doubled by having a harbor. It also has a small effect on the size of the trade route, usually about +25%, but it can range from like ~+15% to +50% (in short there are a lot of other stealth modifiers on the size of trade routes, and the +50% is applied additively). The main effect is really the redistribution - the shuffle.

A good example of this is the landlocked capital, like say you have an uber size 18 capital, because it's so big it's pulling in some decent trade even without a harbor. The capital gets +50% commerce and has an Academy and stuff, so each trade route is heavily multiplied.

You then build some harbors in size 10 coastal cities, this brings these cities up to effectively size 20 and they now get the trade routes preferentially over the capital. Although the harbor WILL make the trade routes slightly larger in these coastal cities (ie 5c in capital, 7c in coastal...), it's unlikely that the effect will be as large as the multipliers in the capital (the capital often having like +100% multipliers over a normal city at least).
(Note that a general strategy is to ensure a coastal capital is the largest city in your empire [equal largest will do, it is biased towards older cities], this ensures massive trade routes there)

Usually what you want to do, is figure out how many incoming trade routes you have (the number of foreign cities you can trade with), and have only enough harbors to service that many trade routes, any harbors beyond that will do nothing or only shuffle trade routes around.

It's fairly unusual for harbors to actually be harmful (even though it happens), but it's very easy for harbors to be an incredibly poor use of hammers.

As a rule of thumb, if a city has no foreign trade routes, there is little point in building a harbor, they'll either multiply nothing, or it'll reshuffle existing trade routes to little net effect.

Note that the benefit of needed health almost always outweighs the potential losses of reshuffling.