I've never paid much attention to this before, but now that I am, I'm seeing some apparently anomalous results....

When a city is built, the tile production changes, and for the life of me, I can't figure out any logic behind it. Sometimes food production increases, sometimes shield production increases (even if mining isn't possible on the square), and always, gold production seems to go up, though not always by the same amount.

Does anyone actually know what logic lies behind the changes?

What really brought the matter to my attention was the fact that while playing with production numbers in my mod, I noticed a *real* oddity. Food production in a flood plains square *DROPPED* from 4 to 3 when I built a city, while gold production rose from 2 to 4 and shield production rose from 0 to 1. (The civ in question did not have the ability to mine or to irrigate, if that's relevant....)

-- Darryl

IIRC

1# if you build a town on a square that has some sort of food bonus (like a cow), you don't get the food bonus

2# if you build a town on a square that has some shield and/or commerce bonus (like iron or gold), you get the shield and/or bonus

3# if you are industrious, you get additional shield from the city square

4# if you are commercial or seafaring, you get additional commerce from the city square, these are cumulative

5# if you are agricultural, and your city is by freshwater (lake or river), you get extra food

6# if your city is built next to a river, you get one extra commerce

These are my experiences of the subject.

2# Commerce boni seem to work always on the city tile, while shield bonus may get lost under some cirsumstances (if the bonus is +1 shield, while the basic shield production is zero, you only get 1 shield, at least until city grows beyond 6/12)

OK, I've figured out the key fact I was missing before. Resources and civ strengths can affect a city's production, but the basic tile type on which it's built *DOESN'T*.

Cities automatically produce at least enough food for one population unit, and at least a single shield, no matter where you build them. And that makes sense, now that I think about it. But that's the point that was eluding me; I was banging my head against my desk for a while trying to figure out how tiles that started with very different production numbers kept ending up with the same production numbers after cities were built on them. ;)

One more question. All other factors being equal, the first city you build seems to consistently get a larger commerce bonus than other cities. Is that because it's the capital?

-- Darryl