Little help for newbie required.

I play et prince level and I have problems with production city. Funny but I don't know how to make one. Nowadays I get purely by accident. So the question follows..

What you would have to consider when choosing location, should you try to settle for it early game, what to build and where to focus. Also how would you run specialists? And I mean how to build a killer production city..

In all times, one of the main point for choosing where to place a production city is food: almost all high production tiles give less than 2 food, so you need extra food to use them. Exception below. So pay attention to this: either you have food ressources (the best), or you have a way to get 3+ food tiles with irrigation. Or both.

In the ancient times, production cities mostly require hills and mines, because you can't do much better than this to maximize production. Ressources helps also a lot (iron, copper, cows, horses...).

In the more modern times, this is not necessary. You can keep your ancient cities obv, but you can also have very decent production cities with flat lands, given that you now have access to good workshops, lumbermills, and watermills. Food is still necessary.

If you have access to state property, you can have killer production cities with workshops (+mills optionnaly), because you don't have food deficit anymore. I remember one time I built a city on a almost-all-grassland-river with one irrigated rice and three sugar, with watermills and workshops. Some times later the city reaches it's happiness cap: I say wtf? I was size 17 already :D Ultimately, It was size 25 or 26, ran lots of specialists thanks to ironworks and produced at full-high speed.

What to build? You will build around the city non-commerce improvements, so you don't need buildings such as library or markets asap (markets can become good if happiness problems), you'll need production buildings (forge, factory...), military buildings if it's a military units producer (barracks, stables, drydocks, HE, WP), and usually health buildings because all this production buildings produce lots of unhealthiness before recycling centers.

As for specialists, I usually run them if I don't have any more good options, or if I need them for engineers/stop growth. Not in any other cases.

Early on, as many mines as possible, and a bit of food. It's good to think about tile usage in terms of food deficits: that is, grassland hills are -1 food, grassland is 0 food, grassland farm is +1 food. You begin with +2 food, so you can have (2 +food) grassland hill mines or 1 plain hill.

Production cities should build granaries and barracks. Then just pump units. In a lull, you can add a stable. Also, it helps to build units one turn to completion (like an axemen), then queue a swordsman before the axemen completes, then a catapult. Then build it when you switch civics.

For late game, killer production, you want almost all grassland tiles, forests help. Rivers are excellent. Get a combination of workshops, watermills, mines, and lumber yards, with communism. If you're running a food deficit, put down as many watermills as you can fit. If you still lack food, you might need to farm a grassland (with biology).

So I have been making a huge fundamental error by choosing location mainly hills. I do it for a reason.. sometimes I get city with lots of food tiles in it but I don't seem to get any productions to them. Also I may fear little too much about -1 food penalty with workshops. Should I start to think more like "if I get 1 supreme food tile, I can build one workshop" or something?

EDIT: I also avoid whipping. What size should these cities be? Yousually my IronWorks city stops to 17. Rearly I get them above 20. Don't get me wrong.. Sometimes I get a city which have huge production but it's allways "luck". I just notice that some city has good production and add IronWorks there and follow that with factory later.

Also I may fear little too much about -1 food penalty with workshops. Should I start to think more like "if I get 1 supreme food tile, I can build one workshop" or something?

If I'm correct ultimately:
- grassland workshops is 1F (2F grass - 1F work) and 4H (1 base, 1 bonus guilds, 1 bonus chemistry, 1 bonus railroad)
- grassland hill + mine is 1F (1F grass) and 4H (1 hill, 2 mine, 1 railroad)
Basically the same. So laying a workshops is the same as "building a hill".

with State property, Workshops are obviously better.

Also I may fear little too much about -1 food So I have been making a huge fundamental error by choosing location mainly hills. I do it for a reason.. sometimes I get city with lots of food tiles in it but I don't seem to get any productions to them.
This is a problem of general city placement it seems, not production city :)

What size should these cities be?
Basically I think a city should always be as big as possible :lol: :crazyeye:
There is no general answer to this question; the goal is to maximize the production giver a certain land, and the land says anything. Having peaks and deserts will always reduce the maximum population of the city, but sometimes for a good city placement you have to make some sacrifices :)

This is a problem of general city placement it seems, not production city :)

Certainly you are right. I only brought it up cause I have been quite stupidly been thinkin that hills = hammers (don't answer with sarcasm to that one :D ). So I have been trying to build a production city in places there are much hills nearby. So I may try tonight to build something I've never done.. production city with thought.

So thanks for tips and I realized many things about calculating city tiles within last few days. Maybe I'll start to proceed in monarch level also? Well.. I'll be better off practising with prince first. Thanks for the answers and if you got something usefull in mind, please share. And I know we newbies may be little bit of a burden sometimes.

And I know we newbies may be little bit of a burden sometimes.

I actually play Prince too, so please call me newbie :D

WTF??? How could you possibly be able to play prince level if youre new to the game??

WTF??? How could you possibly be able to play prince level if youre new to the game??

Of course I have played the game. Never played other civs toe. But I'm "new" to the game cause low levels can be played through without a idea what is going on. Prince level you have to think little more. When I entered monarch I noticed that I know exactly nothing about the game. So I have been studying for last weeks how it's done. So in other words I've been just playing and building everything randomly. It seems to work up to prince. Only thing you can't do it like that is domination and that succeeds sometimes.

Now that I've come to realize that I have to develop my game that I can win in monarch level I don't seem to win anymore on prince level. How funny is that?

I think to try and see if you should be capable of playing above noble (ai gets no research/build bonuses over you). You should attempt to win on noble with almost every victory condition even with a bad start (even try multiple leaders with different traits). This will allow you to learn the fine details of the game.

And I agree, are you actually able to win a game on Prince if you don't know how to analyze a good city location? I don't count small maps where a conquest or domination victory is easy.

WTF??? How could you possibly be able to play prince level if youre new to the game??

Vanilla?

Warlords is tougher, IMO.

This is starting to way offtopic but I have been winning games without knowing proper city locations.

Now I have tried few times with tips I have received from here and I face one problem.. cities have good output and I can't stop building wonders _:D

But it will pass so I thank those who putted effort to explaining these things to me. More won't hurt either so if you can please post killer production cities conditions from real games.

I play et prince level and I have problems with production city. Funny but I don't know how to make one.

When I didn't know how to make a production city, I wrote this.

You are actually better off with a lot of hills and a few food souces to balance. The people who use workshops and watermillls inevitably fail to mention, that these of course need state property, and also generally miss the point that this big production only takes place very late in the game (i.e. it needs communism, and only then can the workers change whatever was there before into workshops (otherwise the city would be in starvation).

Cities with a decent amount of hills, will produce a large number of hammers all through the game, and generally when it really matters in the early, mid and early late game. If you're relatively new to the game, it's quite simple to find a decent site, just find a bunch of hills that have enough food to support them.

Edit: Also, and quite important for the late game, if one of the ais gets voted as UN leader, often Free Market or Environmentalism get voted in as Universal civics (meaning everyone has to abide by them). In this case its bye bye workshop reliance.

Edit2: Btw VoiceofUnreason, that was an excellent article you did, and my above comments weren't directed to you at all :)

That was a good article VoiceOfUnreason, but I think one thing that you seem to assume is that every city is going to attempt to use every tile in the big fat cross. As for using that for an explanation of tile usage, I have continually made the same mistake of attempting to place cities so that every tile is used effectively, but in every game, I find that the use of specialists is always more productive than attempting to use all the tiles.

Still a real powerhouse production city is always going to need 3 things (not always, but the easiest to do):
1)Food resources
2)Hills
3)Fresh water

No the food resources are almost always a priority when you are building your first 3 cities. Now the hills are nice becuase you can mine very early in the game and start production early. The fresh water isn't always needed, but if you are going to farm a single tile in the BFC or you have a food resource that is not irrigated (rice, wheat, corn, etc.) will produce an additional food when irrigated.

I'm not saying this is the only way to make a production city, but if you are looking for the easiest way to build one, they need the above three points.

The food and commerce tradeoff is a little more difficult if you can find a city with FP and hills.