Balancing growth and production

[The Doodler]

I always find it difficult to determine whether or not to focus more on growth or production in individual cities, and especially within the early game. A very common example is right after your first city is founded and you reach the difficult decision of placing your lone citizen on a 3 food tile so that the city grows quicker, or placing it instead on a 2 food, 1 hammer tile that gives a more equal distribution of growth and production. Which is better?

In an attempt to avoid this difficulty, I thought about how I could make a way of always knowing with tile to work no matter what the city. I thought about playing around with the tiles until I can find the smallest number difference between growth and production to emphasise more the balance between the two. I also tried fiddling around with the tiles every turn to ensure this balance constantly and found that usually the city would grow and whatever was being built would finish on the the same turn, which was very convenient.

This, of course, is very time-consuming and I can imagine myself being quite overwhelmed with it once I've built a large enough empire. So I decided to only balance the food and production on turns in which the city grows and when a production is completed.

So far I have not noticed any notable difference in growth and production as a whole, but I guess it feels better to know that I am not wasting anything by blindly assigning citizens to tiles and hoping that it is the optimum method.

Of course, I am certainly not a maths wizard, so I don't know if this subtraction strategy as any massive holes, but meh, I'm happy with it.

What does everyone else think?

 

[jeffreyac]

Wow - maybe this is why I can't get past noble; I tend to plunk my settler's butt down on whatever tile he happens to be on at game start (maybe moving one square if I'm feeling REALLY crazy!) then just leave the tile distribution to the computer... maybe I need to start paying more attention to what my little workers are up to in their cities...

Truthfully, though, I think I focus too much on early growth - there was just a thread that discussed food vs finance (the farms vs cottages discussion); I would think similar logic would apply to the expansion vs production argument... Personally, I feel that the faster a city grows to reasonable size (say, 5 or 6) the more tiles will be worked and the better off I am in the long run, so I tend to opt for food early, then shift as I get more cities... I'm sure the folks with more experience/bigger brains can shed more light on this for us, though!

 

[Orion071]

I haven't fully done the math, but I don't think that there's too much lost if you choose the 3 food tile vs. the grassland forest tile. However, if the tile is a 3 food, 1 commerce tile (say a grassland cow on a river or a floodplains) then I'll take that tile over a grassland forest to start.

I've had games where I started working floodplains tiles and my capital was size 3 before the first Warrior came out.

For my other cities, I tend to focus on growth more in the beginning instead of production. Get them up to the max happiness cap and then start worrying about buildings.

 

[snipafist]

As a general rule, you'll want food early and then shift to production/finance. Surrounding a city with cottages is all well and good, but if it's size 2 and growing slowly you just wasted a lot of worker time and potential profit time. It's far smarter to improve food, watch the population skyrocket, and then transition to other tasks with your surplus of tile workers.

 

[eewallace]

I always improve food tiles first when establishing a new city. Particularly on water if there are fish, clams, etc. No point in having early mines if there are no citizens to work them! (The exception being if for copper, iron, etc., that always takes priority.)

 

[Nials]

Slightly gravedigging but it's also a good idea to keep Slavery in mind which makes Food a very flexible resource

As a general rule of thumb I look at how much Food a city requires to grow and devide that by 2 if a Granary is present. That amount is how much Food is required to grow and thus how much Food you can expect from whipping a point of population.

I know the required amount of Food increases as city size does so it's inaccurate in varying degrees depending on how much pop you wish to whip but it does give you a general idea.

 

[Ruler]

No one can give you good answer. Balacing commerce, production, growth, research are all what seperates a good players from bads. (I'm not saying that I'm a good one.) Learn from your mistakes. Don't think too much, should I go for 3 food or 2 food/1hammer it only cause you headache but if you lose your game (what I really doubt) because you didn't choose 3 food instead of 2food/1hammer then you know next time do it differently.

 

[Tlalynet]

Anyone else build a worker first? It seems inadvisable but I find that it saves a very few turns on the worker build time to wait for pop 3 or 4, and having the worker earlier more than makes up the loss it cost. I can win on Prince a decent % of the time but dont try harder because wining on prince takes a lot of attention to detail and can get tedious for me, Perhaps its not the optimal statagy? (Of course warlord and below hands you workers so this strategy does not apply)

 

[JujuLautre]

I would advise you to improve the food special or the flood plain and to work it

@ Tlalynet > Lots of people build worker first. Quickly improving one's land is a key to get a good start.

 

[Tlalynet]

Thanks? I started out waiting on workers but since I changed to worker first It seems to help a lot. The only exception is where workboat first is an option, I think that gives best of both words and better if you have a finantial leader.

 

[JujuLautre]

I think that workers first should be the default options. Unless:
- you don't have or will not have enough worker techs upon his completion
- you want a workboat first
- you want a barracks/settler first for some kind of specific strategy

 

[Tlalynet]

Ive done barracks first if Im really realy close to a more builder opponent, they usualy stay with warriors longer then I get a few archers very early on and get a second capital, but I only do that in that specific case. Workboat first always depends on the details of the terrain for me, ive tried settler first but I always wind up behind, do you ever work out well with settler first?

For the main topic though, unless your planing on slaving the next thing and are at your happiness threshold I dont see why you would want your building to coincide with your pop growth, I dont see any real advantage to it. Does it seem to benifit you in any way?

 

[blakos]

Worker first for me. To work those early tiles.

 

[thomson_2001]

was playing hotseat and friend settled on hill early. wow those early hammers made a huge diff to production of early stuff. think he managed to pump out few buildings before me...though prob not best for long run as might get more of bonus for mining hte hill later. still, though was interesting.

i say - grow grow and grow...then WHIP!! mooohahahhah slavery changed my game beyond belief - food to production sounds v sexy thank you

 

[Tlalynet]

The hill hammers for settleing really are helpfull, but not enough that I would spend my first turn moving my settler to get it. What really sucks is no bonuses for settling on resources, its a major lose out.

 

[Soneji]

I go for scout warrior first, let the city pop up to 2 (while going for buddhism).. then once I have that I go for a worker while doing one of the improvement techs...

Not working that will with BtS at the moment I should add..

 

[Cer]

My early-game cities tend to grow more than fast enough. It become a challenge to avoid growing to the point of having unhappy people (who will eat your food while doing no work). So I often avoid granaries, but I do like to improve the food bonus tiles. (partly because they usually give empire-wide health bonuses or the chance to trade for a good resource from a rival civ.)

I've been playing on Monarch, where max city size is very much limited by unhappiness. So I try to get happy resources but also settle my cities in spots that give good amounts of production or trade for a relatively small population.

 

[Tennyson]

I always find it difficult to determine whether or not to focus more on growth or production in individual cities, and especially within the early game. A very common example is right after your first city is founded and you reach the difficult decision of placing your lone citizen on a 3 food tile so that the city grows quicker, or placing it instead on a 2 food, 1 hammer tile that gives a more equal distribution of growth and production. Which is better?

My theory is that you always work the tiles that give you the most total food/hammers/coin. Food=Hammers when it comes to building workers anyway.

 

[stuttrboy]

I find it is very dependent on your situation IMHO. with 1-2 good food resources 5+ food i will often let the city rely on those and work mines as long as I keep about a +4 food surplus give or take(lowering that to 1-2 at happy cap is fine too.) I don't ever stagnate my cities I figure I can whip something once a red face shows up. if I'm working crap tiles like grassland farms or plains farms I will see if I can't set up a specialist or cottage, but sometimes you just have to work those tiles to keep things going.

When at war(or more often as I'm planning on going to war) I usually fire all specialists and go for heavy hammers but keep growing, unless I see that the fight is in the bag. in peace times I focus on commerce and specialists and growth. Nearly always it's best to work resources first, though I have had some food heavy capitals that I've had to stop working the pigs or corn to slow down growth, or some the calender resources with all the bonus commerce during wartime and that sort of thing.

So to sum up:
If at or near happy cap hammers > food (more so the case if city is growing back faster than whip unhappiness decreases, remember whip is hammers too)

if below happy cap food > hammers
(whip is hammers too, so you are doubling effectiveness of the tile)

If at war/preparing for war below happy cap hammers = food
(You won't be able to whip all those units you will need)

Over all I suggest growth over stagnation very rarely will I stagnate a city for more than a few turns.

 

[Soneji]

I don't know how you lot can whip so much, it eats into my happyness with the 'we won't forget you whipping our asses'...