I made a mistake of building a city in a pretty bad spot – it's on an island, and other than coastal ocean tiles, it only has access to one jungle tile, one gem tile, and one fish tile. With very low access to production and food, its future is pretty bleak. Is there anything useful I can still do with the city?
I thought about
- Just leaving it be. It takes ages to build anything there, but other than some unhappiness it doesn't really hurt, I guess.
- Trading it to an AI for something. The problem is that this city is right next to my capital, and I'm not thrilled about giving the AI a base there. I also thought about selling the buildings there before trading it away, to make it even more pathetic.
- Destroying it somehow. I'm not sure how, since it's a city I built myself so I can't raze it.
Any other ideas?
Best Answer
Trading it sounds like a bad idea given the placement and you cannot destroy cities you have founded (although an enemy could, getting that to happen is unreliable and dangerous), so the most viable option is to leave it be.
Given that it is surrounded by water and every water tile provides +1 gold, I would attempt to make it a gold-generating city.
Make sure you improve and work any sea-based resources within range (ie, that one fish tile) and build a Lighthouse (for +1 food per water tile) urgently. I would also improve and work both the jungle and gem to maximum production output - the city won't be getting any from elsewhere, so maximise what it can get. Then concentrate on buildings that aid population growth (Granary, Aqueduct, etc) and boost money output (Market, Bank, etc). If the city beings to grow too large then convert some of the population to merchant specialists to pause population growth and generate more gold.
Progress will be slow, but I can forsee the city being useful in the long run.