Some tactical, strategic and game mechanic questions

[Willem]

Originally posted by Theben
Super49er already mentioned it, which is why I didn't.

Ah, I missed that one. I was looking to see if anyone mentioned it too. So much for my powers of observation.

[couerdelion]

The question may be one of timing. If you are running 100% science, you could argue that a market, grocer, bank in a commerce city add nothing unless you then appoint merchant specialists. Likewise, a library/monastery/observatory produce built when running 0% science produces nothing in the short term towards your global output except a little extra culture.

Certainly once your well in the mid-game, cities will probably be growing towards the happiness cap so a market or grocer (if health) could extend this. But these caps should be quite high given that some of the “all city” buildings (granary, forge) double the bonus for lots of simple resources.

Given these situations more general city improvements, wonders, units are the more likely best builds since these are more likely to be useful to the overall needs of your civ.

There are, of course exceptions to all this – there always are. A city designed just for units (Granary, Forge, Barracks, Heroic Epic, West Point), may want happiness improvers during a longer war to combat war weariness. Some border cities might want some basic culture to keep control of tiles.

But the key, I think is one of timing and it often boils down to having a sound overall view of what you are doing and what you want each city to do.

To take a simple analogy, let’s consider the question of building a barracks to build chariots to rush a nearby barbarian city – to make it simple you’ve got one city. Let’s also take the view that I can capture this city with 5 improved chariots (ie barrack experience) or with 6 unimproved ones. Since the barracks itself will cost the same as 2 chariots, the cheaper (ie faster) route, is to build just chariots and rush immediately. However, I’m tempted here to say that I prefer the option of building the barracks because I’m likely, after the capture to have better units and I also have a barracks in my existing city. Others may take the view that the earlier capture of the city is more important.

You can look at a forge in a similar way although the payback time for this is slightly longer. It’s probably simple to use the basic rule that it you are at war or about to go to war, you forget forges and simply churn out units. The immediate benefit of the units here is likely to outweigh the more medium term benefit of having cheaper units.

In the general case it is true that commerce cities might completely forego the building of units and concentrate on all of the commerce multipliers. Likewise, a military city might delay the building of commerce multipliers for a very long time. The relative advantage that each city has with production or commerce means that the payoff from specialisation can be very high.

[LDiCesare]

When at war with high war weariness, I'll happily whip 5 or 6 pop. They are usually starving at that point anyway.
It's quite common for conquered unhappy cities to have lots of unhappy citizens eating food for nothing.

[Ming]

Yeah, shipping comes in handy after you take a city. You can whip the first few buildings when it comes out of revolt... and at the same time, get rid of many of the unbelievers and replace them with your own people

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Hauptman
Ok I got somethin to say about 'city specialization'.

The idea of not building a market simply because the city is set up for production almost seems retarded to me. Every single city I have will have EVERY building in it by the end of the game (unless I just captured it and didnt have time.) My Idea of city specialization is centered around national wonders, As in wich city gets what. Other than that, every city I build will be a cookie cutter copy of the next. In a nut shell, all my cities are balanced. 33% commerce tiles, 33% hammer tiles, 33% food tiles... give or take. And as many can tell from my most recent AAR, it works.

Now on the one Diety game I played, time didnt seem to exsist to build what I needed, but on emperor, it's not really an issue.

Perhaps however, it might be because 99.9% of my games are on marathon. Are most of you adament city specializers playing on a different speed?

It certainly might allow you to do well in the game, but the strategic decision is important. You have an exchange of hammers:commerce, and some cities will never give you that back. I don't know how Marathon affects this, except that Marathon is not very well balanced; I don't know the specifics of how it's not well balanced, though.

If you consider 1h worth 2c, and a market costs 150h, then you have to get 300c worth as a result of the market, or you need 1200c over the course of the game in that city to get that. (Marathon the numbers are obviously higher.) Add in the 'discount' for present-value versus later-value when calculating the over-game numbers. Say you have 5c/turn now, and expect 12c/turn by the end, say 200 turns later, linearly increasing; you would value 12c in 200 turns at maybe 8c now, so linearly average 5->8 so 6.5c/turn average times 200 turns, is 1300c in 200 turns. That would mean the marketplace is just worth it to build (100c net benefit over 200 turns).

A city that is pure hammers and has only 5-6 net commerce coming at all will not build a marketplace - it will never produce enough commerce to justify the marketplace (unless it needs the happiness, which if it does might make it worth it).

The point is that there is always a strategic decision to be made; you have to think about it. There will absolutely be a city, every game, where you do not benefit from a marketplace compared to the other things your hammers could be doing; often that will be many of your cities. Some games you will be better off specializing (having hammer-only cities); some you are better doing a cross. The thing is that if you can generate the same commerce and hammers two ways:

1. City A has 20h 5c; city B has 5h 20c. City B builds a marketplace, and now has 25c. City A builds a forge and now has 25h. Net 30h 30c from the system, cost 240h.

2. City A has 12h13c; City B has 13h12c. Both build marketplaces and forges. Net 31.25h 31.25c; cost 480h.

Your second city has an increase of 9% in hammers and commerce, at a net cost of 240h, which is (pre-forge) nearly 10 turns of hammer production. Over the remaining ~250 turns of the game, say, you will generate approximately an additional 300h and 300, which sounds good (net +30h +30c); but when you add in the other buildings (library, bank, etc.) you will end up costing significantly more to build all buildings twice, and that's not taking into consideration the present value factor. In the 5c city, you won't be able to pay for the commerce buildings over the course of time.

Of course, you notice the forge actually generates a net hammer gain, even in the 5h city; that's why usually it is recommended to build a forge in every city, because it is rare for it to be a net loss (even just 1h more every turn, so a city with 4h net, means it takes only 90 turns to pay back the forge's cots).

My favorite example of course is this: For the extra 240h you paid above, would you rather have 300h+300c over 250 turns, or five catapults immediately? Most games I can turn 5 catapults into an entire conquered city, which is much more than 300h/300c over 250 turns

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ming
Yeah, shipping comes in handy after you take a city. You can whip the first few buildings when it comes out of revolt... and at the same time, get rid of many of the unbelievers and replace them with your own people

The latter (eliminating unbelievers) is a C3 thing, it does not work in Civ4. Percentages of ethnicity come from culture on the city tile, and not from population.

[Ming]

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that.
However, I still like the ability to quickly add one or two buildings to a new town by whipping down the unhappy population. (or a few units)

However, with the new AI, if you take too long to a capture a city, they will do all the whipping first