Post strategies for building workers and settlers. Building these units stops city growth and contributes excess food into "hammers" for production. Also, you cannot change city production without losing all prebuild "hammers."

I've been on the verge of city growth (1-2 turns), and debated whether to waste a couple of turns building something I don't need to get the growth up beforehand, or go ahead and produce the worker/settler. To me, this seems like a lot more thinking involved than Civ 3, but that's just my first observation. I'm sure there is a trick to this that someone will point out.:mischief:

You don't lose prodution towards something when you change off of it, so that's wrong in your initial post. As for the question of building something else if you're 1-2 turns from growing to have a 'filler'. I'd say yes, since with the extra tile worked you could potentially build the settler/worker faster plus benefit from the increased commerce and other things.

Seems to be a no brainer. :) if you were 4-5 turns away and your city was size 4+ I'd say you could start the settler/worker, but I am sure different strategies will pop up once more people have the game.

Post strategies for building workers and settlers. Building these units stops city growth and contributes excess food into "hammers" for production. Also, you cannot change city production without losing all prebuild "hammers."


You do not lose the hammers if you change production. They are kept for the item you were building before the change. If you select that item again you will see it still has the hammers. Becareful though as they will decrease over a period of time.

Edit: Ozymandous beat me to it.

I meant you can't change production and keep the hammers. If you change, then change back on the same turn, they are kept.

It seems a good strategy to get the population and production up in your city, then start building workers and settlers without the repercussion of losing population.

Post strategies for building workers and settlers.
No problem if I could just get the damn thing to run. You dont live in east TN do you Meteor?

edit: didn't mean to post that.

No problem if I could just get the damn thing to run. You dont live in east TN do you Meteor? Yep. I think you said you live in Athen, which is about 25 miles north of me.

Ah Cleveland huh. Well if I cant get this thing to run Im gonna show up on your doorstep. This is frustrating. ;)

Well I got my capital to size 6 and turned it into a 8-turn settler factory. I have pretty average terrain though, so I think 6 or 7-turn settler factories are possible.

This is without a granary. If granaries hold 50% of food and keep it for producing workers and settlers, then that would be very productive.

Well one thing is that you probably don't need much of a Settler pump, at least not for very long.

One thing that is nice about settler/worker production is, you don't have to maximize the city for hammers. You maximize it for the sum of hammers and food (right?). When you're preparing to build your settlers/workers, if it's going to take too long for your city to grow, start moving people around to see what is the best for settler/workers. Sure, your new pop distribution might emphasize hammers at the expense of excess food, but if the total hammers + excess food is better, it's good enough for ten or so turns (since you'd lose out on hammers and excess food anyway).

(Of course, I'm speaking as someone who is unfortunate enough to not expect the game until AFTER the weekend. :( )

Edit: I thought it didn't post. Sorry for the double post, slow connection at work (on my lunch break).

I don't have the game yet either, but I think you'll want to build settlers/workers in "extreme" cities, either the grassland/wheat/coast/fish cities with food but no hammers, or the hill/tundra/desert cities with hammers but no food. The first type's going to hit size 6 long before it gets an aqueduct (we do still have aqueducts, right?), so you might as well get some use out of the "wasted" food. The second type won't grow beyond size 2 anyway, so shutting off growth won't matter here. In fact, you might want to purposely stick a city in an otherwise unsuitable place (one of those iron resources in the middle of a mountain range) for the sole purpose of staying eternally size 2-3 and becoming a specialized worker factory.

I think the big effect of this new system will be to help civs that come up short in the initial starting location, since you can now build as many settlers as you need even if you don't have a food bonus. In fact, the classic 2-cow-multi-BG start is probably now the worst candidate for a settler factory and should probably just start building economy-enhancing improvements in anticipation of its rapid growth.

(we do still have aqueducts, right?)

From what I've read (Sulla's Walkthrough thread?), there are no aquaducts or hospitals any more. Instead, it's the healthiness of the city that limits it. There's a certain max level of health, and you improve on that by adding a variety of foods, buildings, and so on.

For instance, adding cows to the food supply might bump up health by one, allowing the city to grow one more pop unit.

In fact, you might want to purposely stick a city in an otherwise unsuitable place (one of those iron resources in the middle of a mountain range) for the sole purpose of staying eternally size 2-3 and becoming a specialized worker factory.

You'd have to be desperately in need of workers or those resources. Each additional city increases the upkeep cost of ALL of your cities. Buildings cost nothing (aside from hammers and taking up production time), but cities are expensive.

From what I've read (Sulla's Walkthrough thread?), there are no aquaducts or hospitals any more. Instead, it's the healthiness of the city that limits it. There's a certain max level of health, and you improve on that by adding a variety of foods, buildings, and so on.

For instance, adding cows to the food supply might bump up health by one, allowing the city to grow one more pop unit.


Which may change things, though my reasoning would still apply for a city with +6 food, +2 hammers that's going to hit it's health/happiness limit soon and won't be building any useful improvements for a long time.


You'd have to be desperately in need of workers or those resources. Each additional city increases the upkeep cost of ALL of your cities. Buildings cost nothing (aside from hammers and taking up production time), but cities are expensive.

It all depends on the numbers involved. If the alternative is stunting the growth of one of your good cities, it may be worth it, and you can always disband the worker camp when you have enough workers. Can someone who has the game comment on how much the city maintenence actually takes? And of course there's always the second-rate city you have to build anyway to claim the only iron on the map or to block a strategic isthmus. Are colonies still in the game?

there are no aquaducts
There are aqueducts, and you need to build them to enable building the Hanging Gardens. I built one in my freshwater riverside capitol. They must have something to do with increasing health.

There are aqueducts, and you need to build them to enable building the Hanging Gardens. I built one in my freshwater riverside capitol. They must have something to do with increasing health.

Let me rephrase that, then.

Aquaducts are no longer the building to build to allow a city to grow beyond size 6 (but stopping at size 12 until the building of a hospital).

As a city grows larger, it becomes less healthy. As health declines, more food is consumed. It reaches a point where unhealthiness consumes so much extra food that the city stops growing. The city will reach stasis at a certain population. To break that barrier, you must somehow grow more food... or you must improve the health. This is a very VERY good system. It works as a dynamic soft cap rather than a brutal hard cap on population. Favorable conditions like a wide variety of food and acess to clean water (lake or river) can let an ancient city grow much larger than normal...while other factors like jungles can cap a city at a rather small size until you improve the area.

As a city grows larger, it becomes less healthy. As health declines, more food is consumed. It reaches a point where unhealthiness consumes so much extra food that the city stops growing. The city will reach stasis at a certain population. To break that barrier, you must somehow grow more food... or you must improve the health. This is a very VERY good system. It works as a dynamic soft cap rather than a brutal hard cap on population. Favorable conditions like a wide variety of food and acess to clean water (lake or river) can let an ancient city grow much larger than normal...while other factors like jungles can cap a city at a rather small size until you improve the area.

These things make me feel the game is very well thought out and balanced.

Just for the record, aqueducts aren't required to grow past a level 6 city. The problem you'll have early in the game is not that your cities reach a hard cap, but that your cities will very quickly reach a level where new citizens are unhappy and don't do anything. (I think it was 6 in the games I played, may have been 7, at least before you reach improvements to combta this effect.) Early effects to fix this problem are not quick to present themselves. :/

With that in mind, my starting strategy was to let my starting city grow one size or two, to buff up production so it wouldn't take 45 turns to build a settler... (killed the time by building a warrior and a scout or two), then I'd build another unit or two I felt was useful, build up two workers (because tile improvements take a long time in Civ 4), then build military units and buildings for a while. Once it was about to grow to the level where the next citizen would be unhappy, I'd start pumping out settlers and workers like crazy. The stopping city growth penalty didn't seem so bad when I knew the next level of growth wouldn't do anything for me anyway. Of course, you'll need to build things other than settlers and workers, but if the next level of growth doesn't add another tile to your city production, why does it matter if your city isn't growing?