The pros and cons of building cities on special resources

[DrFell]

It's not considered a cheat. But typically early on I want to found cities as fast as possible, and having a settler spend several turns building a mine is something I don't have time for, plus you can only do it when you first found the city. So I only rarely bother with it.

[SandMonkey]

does mining the square first do anything? I remember a big-to-do about it before, but i just tried it in cheat mode and it didn't appear to do anything. Any ideas to why?

[DrFell]

Nope, you need to have the settler mining when you build the city. If the mine is already up, it gets converted to irrigation like a normal city square.

[SandMonkey]

ahh that would do it, so then it's really not wasting time, technically. You wouldn't have to wait until the settler was done to build the city. You would just be waiting for the settler to get done.

[Thoth]

The settler that mines the hill isn't building a city somewhere else.

You're exchanging 10 turns of city production and a food per turn (2 after refrigeration) for 2 sheilds/turn (3 after railroad).

[EdwardTKing]

I will build on the following specials in SP:

Buffalo - Shields - Production
City square means: + 1 Food + 1 Trade

Fruit - Food - Growth
City square means: + 1 Shield

Spice - Trade - Cash/Science
City square means: + 1 Shield

Wheat - Food - Growth
City square means: + 1 Food + 1 Trade

Wine - Trade - Cash/Science
City square means: + 1 Food + 1 Shield

Others generally not early on.
Possibly on iron or gold or oil(desert); if surrounded by desert, mountains/sea etc in mid game.

[War4ever]

if ic three golds and an iron in a radius with mountains all around...very common in mp tiny worlds i will build four small cities and let them grow that way.....i won't waste food caravans to make one large city grow....especially when the city site would be on a mountain too...

the only time i would build that way is if a whale or high food tile was thrown into the mix....

other than the three extra diplo targets for free tech.... makin four little cites to guarrantee your gold is in your best interest