Settler factories - when, and how big?

undertoad

Warlord
Joined
Aug 14, 2008
Messages
164
Hi all

I'm halfway through a Regent game - first one in ages - and was browsing this forum; and I thought, it's about time I started to understand Settler Factories. Too late for my current game (Industrial Era, I've got my whole continent and am now landing on the other to bash the civs there), but it 'll be useful next game.

I tried a test new game, but couldn't get it to work. Maybe this was because I was trying too early, forgetting that Pottery for a Granary is a prerequisite: but this wasn't the only difficulty I ran into.

From the article in the War Academy - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=100256 - it looks like I can look for locations for

a) A 4-turn factory; or
b) a 6-turn factor.

The article is pretty clear about the food requirements: for a 4-turn, you need an extra 5 food per turn, and for a 6-turn, you need an extra 4 food per turn. Given that the city square produces 2 without having to support a citizen, this means:

a) A 4-turn factory needs 3 extra food outside the city square, over and above the "standard" 2 food per square needed to support the citz working it.
b) A 6-turn factory needs 2 extra food outside the city square, over and above the "standard" 2 per square.

On Shields, it seems that

a) For a 4-turn factory, you need 6 production per turn, potential for 7 after it grows once, + a spare forest (1 food 2 shields).
b) For a 6-turn factory, you need 4 production per turn, potential for 5 after it grows once, + a spare forest.

What I'm wondering is how players who use Settler Factories get this level of production. Obviously it's important to get it as soon as possible, as Settlers are much more valuable the earlier they're produced. The difficulty to me is to get this level of production in Despotism, while still producing enough extra Food, and avoiding civil disorder.

I've never been a big user of mining grassland - maybe that's where I'm failing? Without mining, and unless you've got a Game-in-Forest square (2fd+2shld), it seems that you have to have quite a big town, because it's very difficult to get >1 Shield and 2 Food from a square. So the lower population limits on Settler-factories have to be:

a) 4-turn factory: 5 citizens. (1 shield per worked square + city square = 6 shields)
b) 6-turn factory: 3 citizens (1 shield per worked square + city square = 4 shields)

Now on Regent, even a 3-citz town is going to present a civil disorder problem, as it'll grow to 4 before it produces its Settler. (This is assuming you're not lucky enough to have a Luxury hooked up already). A 5-citz town is a big civil disorder problem: 2 miserable ****tards, increasing to 3 for 2 turns each cycle.

So I want to ask players with experience of using Settler Factories: at what stage do you start thinking about them? Do you wait until you've got a Luxury hooked up? What buildings do you put in the factory town (if anything), apart from the Granary of course? (A Temple seems like overkill to me) What initial size are your factory towns, generally? My tests have been failing because I was (over-optimistically) hoping that I could set up factories pretty much from the word go. It seems I need

a) Pottery
b) Some way of keeping the factory from going into disorder. A luxury, extra Warriors for MP (which increases the overhead of the factory), or - do you guys build a Temple in the factory town?

Look forward to hearing thoughts from people who aren't total beginners at factories!
 
The answers are:

always

not that big

and

maybe you should try the Civ3 forum. This one is for CivRev. Similar principles apply, but the math is a little different.
 
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