Chapter 2 - City Management

Cities are the backbone of your civilization. Effective management begins with effective placement then continues through the entire era as you attempt to balance a city’s growth with its health, happiness, and production. This section provides tips for settling your first city and managing its resources to create a flourishing epicenter geared toward your specific strategy.

City Settlement

Settling your first city in a prime location certainly impacts its short and long-term success. Don’t waste too much time seeking out a better location. Start positions are basically balanced. Don’t spend the first three or more turns of the game moving your settler around looking for a better location. While you’re moving a settler around, opposing leaders have founded their capital and are researching their first religion and training a worker to start improving the land. Basically you better have spotted a good location on the current screen if you don’t plan to settle your first city on the first turn.

With the settler selected, examine nearby tiles to see how much food and "hammers" (which symbolizes production) the tile offers before improvements. Ideally you want to settle a city surrounded by the most fertile unimproved tiles for both food and production. Then you can use a worker to further improve those tiles to increase food and production. In an ideal world you may have a special resource nearby but you shouldn’t roam your settler around the map searching for that spot while other leaders are passing you by.

Choose your capital's placement carefully but don’t waste many turns searching for the perfect spot. You’ll lose a lot of ground early on.

A balanced city could be settled near an area close to a body of water (fertile food and health) and hills (fertile production). Forests can be strong depending on your long-term strategy; plus if you don’t mind, deforestation can aid in speeding early production of workers or settlers but you lose out on health benefits or even late game resources from lumbermills. Floodplains may have fertile resources but increase unhealthiness.

You can be more selective for future cities. Seek out special resources and gather them with the appropriate structure. Stone or marble can speed certain wonder production and various resources aid health or happiness. Don’t place cities too close together but don’t place them too far apart either. You want to be close enough to provide defensive assistance in case of attack but far enough so each city can improve its own tiles.

Your capital is usually in the heart of your civilization and may not be as vulnerable to attack as your "border" cities that aren’t as developed. Consider being more defensive with their settlement. Place the city on a hill or close to more hills to aid your defenders. New cities should be placed for a reason not because you simply want to expand. Seek out valuable resources and settle a city to gather them. But place that city strategically: near food sources if you want to focus on growth or production sources if you want to focus on infrastructure.

Note that if two cities are placed along the same river, trade can occur without the need of roads or railroads.

City Improvements

Training a worker halts city growth. So train a worker once you have unlocked the improvements you wish to utilize.

Your capital’s initial development will certainly depend on the game situation but early on expect to have a warrior or scout exploring the land looking for a suitable spot for your next city (though you aren’t worrying about expansion just yet, just looking for the land to do so!). Your warrior or scout will also be seeking out the location of nearby leaders and possibly making first contact. Make a good first impression unless you want to spark an early dispute!

A worker will be one of the first units trained at your city (another warrior for town and unit defense or scout for exploration perhaps first) if you start in an area rich in resources. Realize that when you are training a worker or settler, your city devotes food to the production of that unit and not toward growth. Since your city stops growing while the worker is being trained, time production after your city has grown to a new size (perhaps even up to size three) instead of halting growth right before an increased population. Unless you have resources you’re hoping to grab, allow your city to grow before focusing on training a worker. Plus you may need to research appropriate techs to unlock the necessary worker improvements.

On higher difficulty levels, barbarians can be fierce and won’t hesitate to conquer your lightly defended towns. While your city grows through the first few stages of the game, train a few warriors to protect your town and use them later to provide escort for workers or settlers.