To me, the greatest disappointment with Civ5 was the lack of city specialization which was so important in Civ4 - as far as I remember one would be my banking city, another my production/unit producting/wonder spam/great person city, and another my science city. This was based on a synergy of buildings and map resources.



Is there any sense in specializing cities in Endless Legend? Can I use workers or buildings to multiply resources in each city and get a greater output than I would get simply maximizing everything everywhere? If so, does this apply to building/unit production, food, dust, science and perhaps even happiness or only some of these?

If you have ever played Master of Orion 2 and 3 you know that "specialization" ruin the game. MoO 2 is great and it have same system as Endless Legend. MoO3 is bad and you have to build specialization on each planet to be able to produce what you want.



If you have never played either than pls can you explain how do you imagine specialization of cities ? Buildings? Districts ? Changing population job should cost something ?

myrec wrote:
If you have ever played Master of Orion 2 and 3 you know that "specialization" ruin the game. MoO 2 is great and it have same system as Endless Legend. MoO3 is bad and you have to build specialization on each planet to be able to produce what you want.



If you have never played either than pls can you explain how do you imagine specialization of cities ? Buildings? Districts ? Changing population job should cost something ?

I have not played MoO. Civ 4 and other games let you specialize to increase efficiency, as often happens with real cities. In Civ 4, this happens mainly through certain buildings have multiplier effects, which match terrain features. For example, a city may be surrounded by many gold tiles but low food/population, and buildings such as mint, bank, wonders etc will increase gold production by say 10-50%. Another city may have plenty of food, which will mean high population, so library, university, wonders etc will multiply the science output as well. Another city has much production and contains all the barracks and wonders etc which will produce higher quality units. Buildings all these buildings in each city is less efficient as buildings cost time to build and upkeep. This mechanism adds another level of complexity and fun, but was largely broken in Civ5 as few buildings had muplipliers, and many such as universities required a library in every city - which goes completely against specialization.



I can imagine Endless Legend making city specialization profitable by having workers multiply the amount of resource from each tile and building, so a city with many dust-tiles and buildings will have all its workers on dust, while a city with many science-tiles and buildings having all its workers on science, resulting in higher output of both than if both cities left half of each workers on each of these. However, I haven't understood these mechanisms entirely yet.



Is city specialization a good strategy in this game?

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I have not played MoO. Civ 4 and other games let you specialize to increase efficiency, as often happens with real cities. In Civ 4, this happens mainly through certain buildings have multiplier effects, which match terrain features. For example, a city may be surrounded by many gold tiles but low food/population, and buildings such as mint, bank, wonders etc will increase gold production by say 10-50%. Another city may have plenty of food, which will mean high population, so library, university, wonders etc will multiply the science output as well. Another city has much production and contains all the barracks and wonders etc which will produce higher quality units. Buildings all these buildings in each city is less efficient as buildings cost time to build and upkeep. This mechanism adds another level of complexity and fun, but was largely broken in Civ5 as few buildings had muplipliers, and many such as universities required a library in every city - which goes completely against specialization.



I can imagine Endless Legend making city specialization profitable by having workers multiply the amount of resource from each tile and building, so a city with many dust-tiles and buildings will have all its workers on dust, while a city with many science-tiles and buildings having all its workers on science, resulting in higher output of both than if both cities left half of each workers on each of these. However, I haven't understood these mechanisms entirely yet.



Is city specialization a good strategy in this game?

Well, I'm not deep into the game to fully evaluate that, but note that many buildings have a requirement that the tiles themselves already have at least some production. For example, the Geomic Labs provides two science to terrains with science. If you don't have a rich science terrain, then this improvement is close to useless...



Same goes for dust generating improvements , that depend or river / sea tiles.



So I can see, yes, specialized cities as a possible strategy:

-- For research based cities: build them where tiles have lots of science, assign to it a Vaulter's hero that have significant science bonuses, plus buildings to make things flow.



I haven't reached the stockpiles part of the game yet, but they seem a viable way to have cities generating production for other cities to use, making possible specialized industrial cities, with a Windwalker hero assigned to it...



When a worker in such a place can be more productive, say, generating food than assigned to science, why the heck would you make it work as a scientist there?

EL has city specialization in spades. You won't be disappointed.



You're wrong about civ V, though. Yes, it was arguably better done in IV but specialization was still very strong in V and you'd get pummelled against a good opponent if you just randomly built up your cities.



EL has specialization not only through the improvements you build and how you choose to arrange your workers, but also in what hero you assign to the city as a governor, what skills you built him up with and what special city-enhancing items you equip him with.

I am happy to hear this! So the combination of tiles, techs, buildings, worker assignment and governor hero skills + hero items synergize together for powerful city specialization. I'm guessing it is too early to hope for an in-depth city specialization/management guide yet.

EL is definitely conducive to specialization. In the 4 games I have played, I've specialized each time. Things to take into account:



1 - Terrain - Most provinces (or whatever the term is) have a theme. (Snowy, Forested, Desert, etc) These inherently contain differing FIDS, thus making a province inherently better / worse for some things.



2 - Governor - Try to maximize your specialization by having the right type of hero governing. If you have a city in a forested province, and are focusing on production, then get a hero in there that has production boost or efficiency. That makes a huge difference.



3 - Tech - researching the techs that make a difference for what you are trying to do. If you don't have any cities in your empire that have any coast, make sure you don't research the techs that give advantages to sea tiles



4 - Buildings - same as above - don't build buildings in your cities that don't directly benefit your strategy / terrain. Don't build the building that gives bonus to river tiles in a city without access to rivers.

Specialization as you described is in every 4X game. You are building structures to give you bonuses. Problem here is lack of choices and "build everything mentality". Yes you can build everything you researched and you will be good. But later era buildings are not that easy. They have high upkeep and not that big bonuses.



Try looking at era 4-5 buildings.