Civilization 5: City Guide Part 4 - City Output continued

Science, Gold, Faith, Tourism, and Culture

While Food and Production are city-centered, the following City-generated resources are accumulated for the Empire as a whole, being added to the totals of other Cities and ultimately determining what's available to you as a Leader. They will determine your total Science Research output, your Gold reserve and budget, the Civilization's popularity as a tourism destination, and Culture it generate to purchase Social Policies and later in the game, Ideologies.

Science: Maximizing Output to Research Technologies
Science's role in your Civ is simple. All the Cities' Science is added up to determine your output, and each Research Project in Civ 5's massive Tech Tree has a cost. Every turn, your Science is paid into that cost and brings you closer to a new Scientific achievement. If you switch Science projects, you will keep any progress until you return, so if some tech becomes immediately necessary, you can jump on it without losing any progress. Science comes primarily from having a large population. First, because each unit of population you have in a city gives you +1 Science passively. Additionally, the Library (writing tech) and Public School (Scientific Theory Tech) both give +1 science for every 2 Citizens in a City. These buildings contribute a flat rate of Science, as do others. Once all these flat numbers are added up, the percentage bonuses from other Buildings are applied. If you have a University (+33%, Education Tech), National College (+50%, Philosophy Tech), and a Research Lab (+50%, Plastics Tech) your flat Science output would be increased by 133%, over double.

Cities founded near Jungle tiles should try to preserve them until later in the game. When you are able to build Universities (Education), you will get +2 Science from Jungle tiles, which can also have Trading Posts without removing the jungle. With Rationalsim, you'll get +1 Science per Trading Post, making Jungles worth 3. This provides more to your flat rate before the percent boosts. Another big boost comes from founding a City next to a Mountain. It has to be right next to it. This allows you to build the Observatory, which raises Science output another 50%. My dream city would have loads of food tiles, Jungle and a lone mountain.

Science Specialists can be placed into Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs, raising the rate at which your Civilization will make Great Scientists, who can make an Academy on a map tile that your city can work to produce lots of Science. Late in the game, use Great Scientists to get instant Research Points toward your current project that may spill over to the next; none is wasted. Late-game it is impossible to get as many Science out of an Academy tile improvement because there is less time in the game, while early on it's the best option for Great Scientists don't produce as much instant Research and the Academy can far surpass that amount over time.

Gold: Raising Civilization Income to Buy Units/Buildings and Fund Research Agreements
Luxury Resources tend to provide Gold when worked. Gold has been removed from a lot of tiles with the DLC and is instead now primarily gained through Trade Routes. That doesn't mean your city can't produce much gold on its own; rather, you can build Trading posts with Guilds Technology, which will produce +1 Gold each and can later (with Economics Research) do +2. Players who want a lot of Gold should maximize the Commerce Social Policies (available in the Medieval Era) to get +3 from Trading Posts and utilize Gold Specialist Buildings to create Great Merchants and build Customs Houses to get +5 gold from a tile with Economics Tech. However, it's usually better to build Farms around your main Cities and only use Trading Posts around Puppets and Cities with a lot of Jungle Tiles. You will get more of everything from higher Population Cities, and Farms are necessary to have that.

If you are doing well and have a nice income, have connected all cities that would be profitable, find yourself trading gold per turn for strategic resources you don't need, covering those luxury resources with improvements, fill all trade routes, and your Civ is utilizing trading posts, you should have a surplus that will let you save into the hundreds of gold fairly easily, you can start saving up. It is possible to, say, buy a Research Lab the moment that Plastics is researched and boost Science output immediately. You can also keep some gold back for buying emergency units, as you can buy one per turn per city if you can afford it. I myself like to buy food and production-producing buildings in new cities or those freshly conquered. These will help the city grow and produce, so are the wiser choices in the long run.

Faith: Creating a Religion & Purchasing Religious Units and Buildings
Building a Shrine to get your first faith and found a Pantheon sets you on the path to forming a Religion. The first Civ to found a pantheon gets it at 10, second at 15, third 20 and so on. Not many tiles produce faith; only if you have established beliefs that gather faith from certain Tile Improvements, or have created a Great Prophet to make a Holy Site, which gives +6 faith to a tile. After your Pantheon, a Great Prophet will be born at 200 Faith and can be used to create your Civilization's Religion; there is always a cap on the number of religions that can be formed such that not everyone gets their own. If you do form a Religion, your City becomes a Holy City and gets access to a few special National Wonders, World Wonders, and exerts a lot of religious pressure to gradually convert citizens of nearby cities. You can deliberately spread pressure through trade routes. Doing this earlier in the game is better, for there are some great bonuses - but you could also survive without any faith at all and ignore the system, though it's best to try and use it to your advantage.

A second Great Prophet will be automatically born at 300 Faith and allow you to enhance your Religion further. The Religion of a city is not seen on its screen, you have to hover the mouse over the city name on the main map as in the screenshot above. A city will convert to a Religion when more than 50% of its citizens have taken up that faith. At that point, you'll get the bonuses, but it's best to get to pick your own. Religion is a topic all on its own, and that is enough on Faith-production by cities. To go further would be beyond the scope of this City Guide.

As for Faith, one last thing. You can build Buildings with it that are related to Religion and often have faith, happiness, culture, or great works slots. If you take the Piety Social Policy Tree, you are able to purchase military units with faith by founding with the Holy Warriors Follower Belief. This only works up to the Industrial Era. To buy units beyond that Era, you must complete the Piety Social Policy Tree and select the Religious Fervor reformation belief.

Seeing Religious Bonuses for Other Religions
If you're not the Founder of a Religion and your Cities start converting, it may be useful to know what bonuses you are getting from that Religion and if you'll want to encourage it in your lands. To do so, head to additional information in the top right of the screen and select Religion Overview from the list. Select Beliefs at the top of this menu and sort by Religion by clicking the word at the top of that column. Find the religion and see what it is offering your people. If you don't like it, you could use faith to buy a missionary from a city with another faith and spread it to your Cities. If there are several competing, it may be best to get a Great Prophet for they spread their religion and wipe out all others. Religious pressure can make a religion keep coming on to your City, and if your people were not religious early, there may be nothing to do about it - it is not necessarily a bad thing to get some free bonuses - beats none.

Tourism: The New Culture Victory
With the Civilization 5: Brave New World DLC, the Cultural Victory Condition was changed to be based on this stat and your Civ's Tourism surpassing others' cumulative Cultural output. Tourism is generated by a few buildings and Wonders, but primarily from Great Works of Art, Music, Writing, or Artifacts returned for display in a city by an Archaeologist. You can learn all about generating Tourism and how it factors into victory in the Cultural Victory Guide. The only way that Tourism really impacts your Cities is that when your Tourism is high, you gain influence over other Civs and they may be pressured by their populace to switch to your Ideology - this will improve Diplomatic relations with them and help you to be better able to trade. Even if you're not going for a cultural win this can happen, as some Civs just won't generate much culture to defend against even a moderate amount of Tourism.

Culture
Because Culture is so tied to increasing the area your Citizens can work, that aspect of it is covered in Part 2. It comes from buildings you create in small amounts (starting with the Monument at +2), otherwise, many have slots intended to be expanded with Great Works from types of Artists. Great Writers (earliest you can get), Great Artists (second), and Great Musicians (last you can unlock, normally). Assign Artsy Specialists to create these guys, then use them to generate great works. Build new buildings to accommodate more and bam, your culture is increasing. Be sure to build some of the Cultural Buildings in cities such as the Opera House, Museum, and Amphitheater, because they can house Great Works of art, music, or writing along with Great Work Artifacts. Hover over the Tourism stat at the top of the screen to see the slots you have available, then produce Great People of those types to fill those slots and make buildings to accommodate even more.

Tiles aside from some of the Natural Wonders don't generally provide it anyway, unless you have used Archaeologists on Antiquity Sites to transform them to Landmarks that are within a City's workable tiles. Getting culture from tiles is not common with the DLC. You will need to max the Exploration Social Policies if you want to find hidden Antiquity Sites for your Archaeologists to dig and get a better chance of finding them within your city's workable tiles, otherwise those Artifacts should be extracted and placed in a city to boost Culture and Tourism. Religions that can build Monasteries with Faith will get +culture from Wine and Incense. Many of those types of bonuses are situational, dependent on where your Cities are founded and what is available to you, along with your long term goals.

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