Good balance between Food and Production (and Gold)

Delta_301

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 25, 2014
Messages
7
Good day. This is my first post on here and I had a wee search for this beforehand.

I'm new to Civ, in that I started with 5, which I only got about a month ago. I wouldn't say I'm nooby, because I can play a good game on normal difficulty. I'm just looking for a bit of advice on the area mentioned in the title.

I can never seem to get a good balance between food and production output in my cities. I usually play as Portugal or Korea, and tank Great Library straight away, so I put my city onto production focus. I'll usually try and get either Stonehenge or Oracle after that, followed by Great Lighthouse etc etc. I just like to get these early wonders straight away, but most importantly Great Library, as I more often than not go for a science victory.

But by the time I'm satisfied with the amount of Wonders I have, my city is only population 6 or something, whereas other civs have cities of above 10. Yet, if I switch to food focus, my production goes downhill. I've tried manually controlling which tiles are worked, but it's a hassle to change them around if I need a bit more production, or a bit more food.

I'm aware that starting position helps. I've recently done a singleplayer game where my starting position was excellent, and by 1900s I had a city that's size 30+. Production was also good in that city. That was when I was playing BNW. I had a game of G&K the other day because one of my mates didn't have BNW, and I found it hard to get my cities a good balance.

I think the question I have is; can anyone give me any tips on getting a good balance between food and production, so that my cities can grow at a reasonable rate, but still have enough production to get, say military units in just a few turns. I would also be grateful of any tips regarding gold per turn, as I cannot seem to get nearly enough gold as I need to (G&K, whereas one of my mates is getting 150/turn non Golden-age)

Thanks for any help
-Lewis
 
Generally, more food is good unless you're needing something that you'll need soon. For example, when building wonders production focus is usually the best option, but when you've got some down time, when you're not at war or building anything important, you should set your city to food/default focus
 
Yeah, be especially careful about leaving your city on production focus and forgetting about it. Nerfing your city growth in the beginning is the easiest way to fall behind on science, production and everything else later. The higher levels I've found I have to usually emphasize growth or I get outpaced by the AI and their rapid growth.

1. Obviously, get workers and work everything as quickly as possible if you want the best options for growth AND production. Typically, you want to alternate building one growth improvement (farm) and one production improvement (mine,quarry,lumber mill). This keeps the city balanced.

2. Some cities, especially your capital end up in a pretty balanced area with equal numbers of high-food yield and production tiles. These aren't just resources...a lot of riverfront guarantees really high food output upon development AND high production later with the hydro plant. I actually would recommend taking manual control of your city during wonders especially. Just putting it on high production halts your growth entirely sometimes which will kill you for the long turns required. If you're desperate to get something, try hacking some forest but don't stop your growth more than a few turns early game. Manually click it around until you can settle in the middle--still growing at an acceptable rate but only losing 1 turn or so off your max production rate.

You described that if you don't have it on production focus your city grows but has terrible production. I'm guessing the Wonders go from like 12 turns to 25 or something. This occurs often when you have low population and your guys are switching from production-less river farms to a mine or something. Note: the only good solution is to grow your city. 6 population is not suitable for building any but the earliest wonders. If you have 10+ population you can take a switch to 2-3 mines and not be starving. For this reason I actually will put my capital on growth focus early and limit the number of wonders I attempt to only the ones I want. I also manually control tiles constantly. It's the only way to balance growth/production immediately in the scenario you described. Lumber Mills/hill sheep/deer are nice intermediate resources too as they have decent production but still at least 1-2 food to go with them so it doesn't nerf your growth as much.

for cities in biased locations:

3. Cities in vast grassland/desert tend to have great growth potential initially and abysmal production. If you get lucky enough to get a few forests nearby DO NOT cut them down. Build lumber mills. work any Horses, Cows, cows, sheep immediately to get a few points of production. Rush the Workshop and Windmill as quick as you can. I sometimes even turn my other cities on gold and buy them because the city takes so long to do anything for you if you can't get it over 10 production. Again, settling on a river is a great idea as the hydro plant will add a lot of riverfront production later and make these cities have pretty decent production after the factory. In the short-term you have great growth potential

4. Cities in jungle/forest/hills/mountainous areas. Are awful at growth and often stop themselves at 3 population. If in permanent terrain like mostly hills/mountains I rarely build these unless I can also get some coast as water tiles with the lighthouse will at least let it grow at a moderate rate. I usually buy this as it's cheap and hope for a few fish or water resources to give them a boost. City placement is key...be thinking about what your borders will eventually include and if near an AI buy up all the river tiles and grassland as these will help your growth in the future. For the jungle/forest well you know the answer. Get 3-4 workers over there ASAP and clear some of it out. You'll get the double bonus of boosting production in the city and trigger growth.

5. When all else fails, there are a variety of buildings to balance growth or production. Granary is nice, even nicer if you have wheat, deer, or bananas for growth. Lighthouse/Seaport massively boosts food and production on sea resources. Aqueduct can almost half your growth time just by having you start at a higher food stock upon growth. As mentioned Workshop and Windmill are great early production boosters. Hospitals really trigger some needed growth too and we all know how useful plants and factories are.

6. Beeline what sciences you need if you're having some trouble mid-game. Also note that the discovery of new types of resources often add a lot of needed production. Oil especially boosts desert and coast cities so you can hedge your bets and go for it if you need a boost in these areas.

7. Maritime City States export food to your capital if friends and your whole empire if allies. Incredibly useful.

8. If my empire is having initial growth or production problems I usually remedy it with religion/pantheon perks. You can get 10% growth from your pantheon and 15% growth or production max from a religion choice. This is just an extra multiplier that helps everywhere your religion is.

9. Certain wonders prompt growth (aka hanging gardens, temple of artemis). It's easy not to realize how good this early boost can be and pass them up. I make them priority often--it can make a huge difference to your empire. Some wonders help production too: (Statue of Liberty, etc.)

10. Finally: if all else fails, trade routes! Build a granary/workshop in your capital or other good cities and the routes can carry free food or production to your developing border cities. I almost always send some food to a new city to have it grow rapidly as this often yields decent production in 10 turns or so. If not the production one is an option too, but I've found the food one to be most useful as more population tends to mean more production and everything else. If you want the others you should first have growth and it can be worth skipping a wonder that you don't really need and putting your capital on growth focus.

These are the things I do. Hope it helps some.
 
May seem like a hassle, but you need to embrace the notion that prioritizing food in the short term will result in greater longer term production (and population), while not jeapordizing your wonders.

I've attached a Prince save file (England) for you to play with. The start is, at best, OK -- in ring 1 there is a 3-food tile (cows), a 2-food/1-hammer tile (riverside plains wheat), a forested riverside hill (1-food/1-hammer), a jungle tile (2 food), and a silver hill (2 hammers/3 gold). In ring 2 are a mix of 1-food/1 hammer tiles (forests and plains) and 2-food tiles (1 grassland and 2 jungle tiles), so we have a good mix for our food vs. hammers experiment. (There are also 2 pearl tiles offshore, but we can disregard 1-food/2-gold tiles for this purpose, and the jungle tiles are a poor test, since they can't be improved in any meaningful way during the course of this experiment.)

We're going to aim for the always popular GL/NC/HG trifecta, but the early play is identical until we research Writing (Pottery -> Writing -> -> Mining -> Calendar -> Animal Husbandry; build order scout, worker, GL). When the worker pops, Writing is also done (turn 20), and you're at 3 pop (4 turns to next citizen).

The temptation is to take your 3-pop city and put it on production focus to bang out the GL and the other 2 wonders. The GL is 185 hammers. You have a forest you can chop, so there's 20 hammers, leaving you 165 to go. So, how to allocate your 3 pop?

The plains wheat is easy - 1 hammer there -- but what to do with the other two? You can keep working the cows and work the silver hill, which results in 7 hammers and 1 food surplus (next pop in 12 turns), with GL projected to be done in 26 turns (turn 46). Or you can work the cows and the jungle tile, for 3 food surplus (next pop in 4 turns) and 5 hammers, with GL projected to be done in 37 turns (turn 57). Let's do the three wonders both ways and compare results. (Note, in each case, I found enough gold to buy a granary on turn 24, and did so in each case, to keep things comparable -- I also took Landed Elite on turn 43 in each case.)

1. Production focus all the way; tile improvements prioritize hammers -- GL on turn 40 (6 turns earlier than initially projected), with the wheat tile improved with a farm, the silver hill mined, and the hill forest chopped. 5 pop, with 27 turns until next pop. Take Philosophy and build NC (155 hammers) immediately, still on production focus (citizens working cows, wheat farm, silver mine, naked hill, and plains tile, for total 11 hammers and 2 food surplus). NC is done on turn 53, then 1 turn put into Oracle before switching to HG (250 hammers). HG done on turn 73, with 7 pop (9 turns from 8 pop).

2. Lock food tiles with production focus; tile improvements prioritize food, then hammers -- GL done on turn 43 (14 turns earlier than initially projected), with the wheat tile improved with a farm, the hill forest chopped and farm built, and 1 turn away from silver mine. 5 pop, with 2 turns until next pop. Take Philosophy and build NC immediately, still on production focus with locked food tiles (citizens working cows, wheat farm, riverside hill farm, jungle tile and plains tile, for total 8 hammers and 7.7 food surplus, after Landed Elite). NC is done on turn 56, then straight into HG. HG done on turn 74, with 8 pop (3 turns from 9 pop).

Of course, on Prince there was little danger of losing the wonders, but the point is that you don't have to stay on production focus and sacrifice growth to compete for wonders. You can maintain a strong food bias, growing your capital and working hammer tiles in moderation, without sacrificing the wonders. The result is wonders and a stronger capital.

And, for what it's worth, the 3 AI capitals on your continent are at 6, 6 and 5 pop on turn 74.
 

Attachments

  • AutoSave_Initial_0000 BC-4000.Civ5Save
    497.4 KB · Views: 126
Great breakdown Browd! I forgot to mention it, but yes, when hand-managing tiles, you always factor in the increase in production per citizen growth. Often, what says it'll take 30 turns only takes 19 if you let it grow because production gets added with each pop increase.
 
Thanks for your help guys.

I started a brand new game last night in Prince, as England. I used Production focus to tank GL, Oracle and HG, and a few more, but switched to Food Focus when I was not worried about getting things. Anyway, it's very near the end of that game now, and I've not had a better game! My capital is size 50, and there's no need for it to be on Food/Default Focus. My smallest original city is size 20. I'm currently blitzing some Incan AI with XCOM squads and nukes.

I'll bear these tips in mind for future games.

-Lewis
 
I've been playing civ for a while, and I initially favored food, but now I'm starting to feel as though my assumptions may have not been correct.

To everyone else, I have a question. As a first worked tile, would you rather prioritize a flat 2 food tile, or a 1 food, 2 production tile? With the production I feel like I can get my scouts and early buildings out so much faster, which is important and might be able to catch me up on growth in the long run. On the other hand, starting with a 1 food tile feels bad, and the slow initial growth might be bad later.

Thoughts?
 
Always work 2 food 1 hammer tiles whenever possible. They allow you to produce and grow at the same time. Always improve production first and foremost. Improve deer, hills, quarries before making any farms. Production is king.

Growth comes from granaries, water mills and caravans. Do not work grassland unless you have absolutely nothing useful to produce.

If you have forests on top of grass, make mills, if you have trees on top of hills chop them and make mines.

Plains with wheat, forest with deer, any tile with horses and hills with sheep should always be worked. Improve the tiles you are actually working first and make farms/mines on extra tiles later.

Growth can be delayed because your city will grow out of control once you hit civil service with an aqueduct. That's the time you may work on growing your city and will more than make up for any lost time not growing because you were working hammers.
 
I'd definately go for the 2 Production 1 food, mate. In terms of actual numbers, you'll need for hammers than apples. Try to get your cities to at least +10 food. The way I see it; if your cities grow faster, you'll get more citizens, which means the more tiles your city will be able to work at once.

If you have an internal trade route that takes your city's food to, say, +20, I'd be inclined to switch to Production/Science Focus to help bang out new buildings, units or help with tech. If you're not building anything important, switch to Food Focus. By the time you need to tank a Wonder you'll have more citizens, and be able to stay in Production Focus and not starve the city. An Aqueduct is a very good building to have as early as possible. Buy it if you can, and you're left with 40% of your stockpiled food after a new citizen is born.

So, I pretty much just summed up everything we've discussed in this thread, and this is now how I'd run my cities.
 
Top Bottom