Civilization 5: City Guide Part 2 - The City Screen
Working and Buying Tiles, Citizen Management & Intro to Specialists
| City Concepts | City Borders & Working Tiles | Build & Grow | Science, Gold, etc. | City Strength & Military |
Click a City's name on the map to open the City Management Screen. This is where you'll allocate your Citizens to work tiles, assign them as Specialists, decide on the City's Production, create a Production Queue, and buy units or buildings with Gold or Faith you've saved up. You can also buy tiles to claim them for your empire and store Great Works that boost your City's Culture and Tourism. This section of the Guide will teach you how to use the various features here and their functions in Civilization 5. This includes concepts from the Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs, so will not be as helpful (but not entirely useless) for players without these installed. This is necessary because of the massive changes to culture generation, addition of great works and ability to generate and purchase with Faith.
As stated on the previous page in this section, you have 1 Citizen to put on a tile or use as a Specialist for every population unit your city has, can only work tiles 3 hexes away from the city, and citizens can be unemployed and provide just +1 production to the City. High unemployment should never be a case, unless your tiles are blocked by enemy units or your city has grown to its maximum and run out of specialist slots. Early on, you can only work a few tiles and they will usually be food-heavy so that your city will grow, get new citizens to place on tiles and grow again, continually improving the City and contributing to your Civilization as a whole, be it that single city or a vast empire of a dozen cities.
Citizen Management
At the top right corner of the City Screen, you can see Citizen Management. This allows you to tell the AI Governor to select the tiles that best suit the goal you select. Default is a balanced approach, getting a mix of food with a bit of production. Some tiles have so much gold or science the AI intelligently doesn't pass them up. It will also assign specialists based on the City focus you select. Say you decide to focus on food - it will use Citizens to grab as much food as possible, and likely use few Specialists. A Science focus would work many Jungle tiles, any Academies, and use every Science Specialist slot available in your buildings while seeking high food tiles to keep the population growing, only at a slower pace. All focuses will balance out food so that your Citizens don't starve. While the AI Governor is smart, you may have goals that it can not meet on its own and you must assume manual control of specialists and determine tiles that must be worked. This box is also where you'll find the Avoid Growth option to prevent your Cities from growing if your Empire's Happiness is low.
When you have multiple Cities to manage at once, you can jump to the next City in your list by pressing the Right or Left arrow keys on the keyboard. This hotkey is very handy in large empires when you want to roll through a list of all your non-puppeted cities and set production or change focus in many in one turn.
Locking Tiles
If you choose a Focus for the City and don't like what the Governor has chosen, you can click a tile and put a lock on it. This means that no matter what focus or configuration you pick, that tile will be locked forever. It's good for things like Natural Wonders or Science tiles that the Governor might not want to work earlier in the game, but are useful to your Civilization's goals. Remember to unlock tiles like these if you really need to do fast production on some Wonder or have new tech that will let a City grow quickly with some more food - the tile will literally stay locked until the end of the game unless you unlock it yourself. You can unlock and reassign all tiles to the current focus at once by clicking the City's tile itself.
If two Cities you control can work the same tile, you can go to the City that you want to claim the land and click the tile to prevent the other City from working it. This is helpful for puppeted cities along your border or just to focus on a particular goal in a city.
Culture, City Border Growth, and Buying Tiles
City Cultural output comes primarily from Great Works, the Buildings and Wonders that house them, Social Policies you've Adopted, and Specialists. A City's cultural output is added to the rest of the Civ's to allow you to adopt new Social Policies, but on a City level it determines Border growth. You will note the display of turns until border growth in the City's Information Panel (top left corner of the City Screen). The next tile the AI Governor will choose to claim for your empire will be highlighted in pink on the City Screen. While you cannot choose what tile the City will select, it thankfully prefers to snag resources first, or tiles that lead to them. If you want to get a particular tile quickly and it's not up next, you'll have to buy it with gold. You have to buy them in a line, so you can't skip buying a grassland tile to reach the Marble beyond.
The growth rate of your City's borders can be boosted in a variety of ways - including a potential direct boost from founding a religious pantheon (15%) or constructing the World Wonder, Angkor Wat (-25% gold/culture cost for acquiring new tiles in all Cities).
From the City Screen, you can speed up the acquisition of tiles in a city by purchasing them with gold - the further they are from the Capital, the more gold they seem to cost. You may do this purposely to assure that you get the 3 workable tiles in the direction of a competing city. If you don't understand this, imagine 2 cities only 5 hexes apart. There is not enough land between them for both to have 3 hexes in that direction. If you buy yours, you can guarantee ownership of these tiles, though there may be diplomatic penalties. City-States seem to care less, but other Civilizations will covet those lands and it may later be a contributing factor for war. If your city is growing faster culturally, it is going to take them anyway and you will likely run into the same problem, only later in the game. Note that there is a limit to the distance you can purchase tiles. Despite being able to grow culturally by 5 tiles, you can only buy tiles that are workable by the city - thus 3 tiles out.
Manual Specialist Control - Meeting Civilization Goals
A number of the buildings that you unlock as you Research new Technologies will allow you to assign Specialists, which are found on the right side under Specialist Buildings. Click the circles to fill a position in each building. Typically, a Specialist will provide a few each of its primary type of output along with Great Person Points (GPP). GPP go toward a City birthing a Great Person of a particular type, each of which having their uses. When cities have plenty of population and excess food, that is when you begin really using Specialists heavily. Early in the game you may not be able to support many, nor have the Tech for the required buildings.
Any time you assign a Specialist, the Manual Specialist control box is ticked. So, it's better to assign the Specialists the way that you want them before choosing the focus for the City. Or, doing it the other way, you could assume control and remove specialists that the Governor has assigned that you don't want, so that the Governor will reassign them to the best tiles available.
Great People
Cities generate Great People with Great Person Points produced by buildings. Each GPP comes in a particular type and pushes for that type. Each time you make a new Great Person, the cost of all Great People goes up so it's best to elicit some control over this - like, if you never want to create great Merchants and produce Great Scientists faster, then keep manual control of Specialists and do not allow Merchants to work in buildings like the Bank while your Cities have instead used Citizenry to work at the Public School, University and Research Lab.
| City Concepts | City Borders & Working Tiles | Build & Grow | Science, Gold, etc. | City Strength & Military |
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11LOL, after thousands of hours playing Civ5, I was never sure what the pink highlight really meant - until now! Thanks! Ditto:
"Angkor Wat (-25% gold/culture cost for acquiring new tiles in all Cities)."
"Gold cost" makes sense. "Culture cost" doesn't. You use of it here indicates it really means "growth rate driven by culture" which makes PERFECT sense. Thanks again.
I use the pink tile hightlighted to help me decide when to buy tiles. If the one I want is the next selection, I won't buy it. If it's telling me it might expand to 4-5 different spots, it's likely that the next spot could also be one of those 4-5. That means it might be a while before I get that luxury/food resource so It's then worth spending 75-100 gold to get it quickly to help the city grow/produce or get a luxury connected to my network.
Also I believe it is better to buy all tiles you'd want in one turn, that way you only take a diplomatic hit once, and can honestly promise you won't do it again, correct?
