FFh2 Economy Help.

[Ryan]

I'm pretty much a beginner at ffh2/civ type games just played them easy casually and I really want to improve my game play. Id really like some help understanding better ways to build cities economics wise. Only think I really do is spam farms , Aristogarian But i really want to understand how to be a better city builder.

[Jkaen]

Thing is with FFH the civs play sufficiently different that the ways to manage them change massively. What civ(s) do you tend to use?

[Ryan]

I just realized how vague was my first post and I realize I should have done a better job at explaining what my problems were I am sorry. Basically I am going to use the Malakim as an example right now and how my top 2 cities. The 2 mistakes your probably going to notice is how I placed 3 cities to close to each other and that resulted in them getting kinda gimped.




This is my capital city . I am depending on food basically from those 3 food resources and a farm then I focused on adding 2-3 cottages then making the rest of my forests into lumber mills. Hills into mines. My General problem is i cant balance food to Commerce to hammers :s. specialist are pretty hard as well I have to gimp the city then focus them into priests to force a great person that's how I try to get one.



This one I focused The farms in order to use Aristocracy but I had to remove it due to having to for a different Civic. Woods became lumber mills , the none woods tiles became cottages. Same gimping due to placement.
Tried to fix it on phone worked ?

[NobleHelium]

Your images aren't open to the public.

[Ryan]

Just realized what I did wring wont be able to fix it till tonight / tommorow morning .

[darrelljs]

Its all about aristofarms in base FFH.

Darrell

[DaveV]

The images show up now. If you're looking for advice, turn 50 screenshots would be much more helpful than turn 380. If you mess up your start, the rest of the game will suffer. I'd recommend starting an FfH succession game, like the greens game in this forum. When I used to play Civ II succession games, I learned a lot from the discussion of strategies and by watching other people play.

[Ichabod]

Well, just some advices, based on the screenshots:

1. Be more critical about what buildings to build in a city. For example, why do you want an aqueduct in your capital, if you are nowhere near the health cap. It could be explained by blight issues, but if that's not the case, you could have built more necessary stuff.

A dungeon is also a very situational build, the City of a Thousand Slums isn't giving you any benefit, the basilica and the carnival doesn't seem to be that useful too. A courthouse hardly goves much benefits in the capital.

2. Both the cities you posted have a good hammer output. You need hammer cities to build an army, a critical wonder and things like that. But you also need commerce cities. If your capital was a commerce city, it'd have more cottages or farms (if you are running aristocracy) than lumbermills. With more commerce in the city, you'd gain more benefits of the academy and the alchemy lab (buildings that multiply the commerce output of the city when turning it into beakers/science).

Since a commerce city has less hammers than a commerce city, you'd need to follow advice 1. If you try to build every building in a commerce city, you'll probably delay the buildings that give you the most benefits.

3. You need to have objectives in your game. Maybe you'll gun for an early aristocracy to have a very high commerce boost very early in the game. You'll use this commerce boost to get to the Empyrean religion and Chalid. After you reach the needed techs, you can get out of aristocracy and choose more military techs, building a powerful army to conquer an enemy.


If you just go pressing turns, without clear objectives, you'll never know how to (considerably) improve your gameplay. You can learn a lot of micro rules that will make you a better player, but what will improve your gameplay the most is knowing that you need objectives and you need to think about how to get to them. If you ask me: "what can I do to make the above cities better?", the first answer I can think off is: "what do you plan to do with these cities and what's your overall plan regarding the game?". If you ask: "what can I do to make the above cities better, considering that I want to attack the Calabim soon so I can get the last mana node I need to make a tower win possible?" then it'll be way easier to help you.

[Ryan]

Making a plan like that really seems Impossible . You made my life abit easier with that post if I would improve my question to getting optimal hammers in my capital ? . I've read game were people pop vampires/ centaur archers every 2 turns.I think it would include cottages going lumber mills or workshops. Bit the second city commerce wise while having enough hammers for it to build whatever it needs I'm not sure . This game is hard ;p but I'm willing to try.

[Mardoc]

Well, the question is mainly: what do you want those hammers for, and what are you willing to give up to get them?

For example:

• If you want to maximize unit production (well, the first thing is that many of the excess buildings could have been units), you make sure to get the Heroic Epic here, adopt Conquest and Sacrifice the Weak. Fire the Priests, have them work mines and farms instead. Add in some gold from the rest of your empire to cash rush anything that takes more than one turn to build.
  
  
• If you want the hammers for buildings - it's easy; don't build stuff that doesn't help you, and you'll have plenty of hammers for stuff that does. That Infirmary, for instance - what's the point in turning 8 extra health into 11 extra health? To add to that, use Slavery or cash rushing.
  

Now, you probably won't actually want to do all that, because the downsides for some of those decisions outweigh the benefits. It depends on what else you're trying to do with your empire. And that's the main thing - it doesn't matter one bit how many hammers a city produces. What does matter is whether a city can produce the stuff you need. And that depends on what you're trying to do.

But that needs to be on the level of goals for your whole empire. Declare war on So-and-so and take his land. Build the Tower of Mastery. Survive the war from XYZ. Build a bunch of settlers and claim the land. So start with a goal like that.