City Specialization

[Hoek]

Out of curiousity, do many people try to have cities be kind of specialized? For example, I usually have a few cities with high production be dedicated to military works... in these cities I try to exclusively build miltary and productivity advancements...I'll put skunkworks and an airbase and a bioenhancement center. In other high-energy bases, I'll dedicate lots of resources to either energy credit production or labs. I'll also have some farming cities which almost exclusively produce food. The advantage to this strategy is that it gives your faction optimization of resources and keeps your civilization very competitive in the world....what are your thoughts?

[death_head]

I usually try to do that, but at the same time, you have to be a little diverse, in case something bad happens...

[Evil Twin]

I'll only specialise if i want a science city, all the rest build everything they can and do whatever i need them to do, mainly because the only bases that produce units in the long run are my beachheads during invasions and i use my massive energy reserves to rush them so i dont need production bases

on an unrelated point, i noticed in my latest game that loan repayments from my allies exceeded my maintenance costs i was raking in the energy...now all i need to do is go kill a treacherous datatech...

[Hoek]

There's always the beautiful option of making all your cities uniform using crawlers. I think that was one of the best ideas sid put into SMAC...it is extremely useful and is a big help in managing resources.

[death_head]

As most of my games are against the A.I., I usually don't use crawlers...

[death_head]

Oh yeah. I should probably explain that I do that to make it more fair and interesting, since the A.I. doesn't...

Withold your flames please!

[Avenoct]

The longer I play Smac, the more I specialize. To get ready for a pop boom and continental expansion (growth +6 from whatever sources), I'll have one city pump out crawlers, one for formers, and one for garrisons. Then, as each CP goes to it's new building site, it's joined by the crawler-garrisson-former, which rehome to the new base. I'd rather spend 5 turns making these things than working on a SP at the big bases. Science cities always happen, but to varying degrees. On huge maps, they are complex, with crawlers being shipped in from a nearby crawler factory while they work on lab-infrastructure. Teams of 6-20 formers create an energy park for the rehomed crawlers, and they are sent there with the 'goto' command (I usually make a tiny 'watchtower' city near the park for garrisons and repairs). Thirty years or so after I start this process, that is one cooking research center. On small maps, no energy park, just a focus on building the labs-sp's and decent infrastructure all in the best energy-situated city. In games where I can't, or don't want to pop-boom, I'll try to have a Colony Pod city or two for pod-boom, but more usually, just for expansion and to give cities to my allies. These are small cities serviced by crawlers for minerals, but mostly nutrients. etc.. Finally, using all-specialist cities for free market warfare is excellent. In fact, specialist cities are all around probably the strongest way to go. Still, I love a good Hybrid Forest-work the squares city just as much.

Oh, and on the military front. Yeah, I've taken to designating cities for military production, especially before Clean Reactors. Their production goes to hell with the support costs, but I like having that burden focused on one or two places rather than all across the empire.

-Smack

[Black Sunrise]

hmmmm.
War cities:
Clean Choppers, and one base with a punishment sphere, lets me run Free Market and have a nice war machine without drone problems.
Peace cities:
Try for a couple cities. One Science city. One Economy city (thats why I have 400+ energy per turn in my MP games, other players are stuck at 80. Guess how much difference that cash makes me?).
Each is specialists only, only 1 or 2 workers, lots of crawlers, and the buildings to make either money or science.
When playing as the Pirates, I generally never put down mines
because mines =2 food, 2 minerals, 4 total, solar collects=3 food, 3 energy, 1 mineral, 7 total, so I need a good mineral city.
Then I have 1 city with punishment sphere, and every square around it is mines. It produces a LOT of minerals, which can be put to a lot of uses.

I try to spread out my SP's, using spare upgraded crawlers to build them, cause that allows for less targets.
Indra