Best way to grow a colony?

[Fabio1701]

Hello all,

I find growing new cities in the late eras really really tedious. In civ 5 I could just buy everything, and voila a booming city. Ofcourse with civ6 one needs to build districts in order to buy the stuff first (with the exception of the sewer, monument and granary, but those don't help much).

I think this especially hard on islands. picture a grassland island on 6 hexes, one of them forest, surrounded by lots of crabs and fish. Very little to do production. it would take over 100 turns to make a industrial complex (and many more besides to make this a airport/harbour city so that it would be a good military base for conquering the nearby continent - which is why I wanted to build this up fast.

Besides bringing in a whole bunch of traders so that they could trade for production/food, I don't see any way of accelerating this to get big enough to build the industrial complex/harbour/aerodrome/barracks that I want, without it taking a few hundred years.

Any one else come across this problem? Or are there ways of accelerating making a district I don't know about? Or do you have other strategies for making a fast colony?

 

[Cymsdale]

No reason to expect late game cities to be powerhouses. If they provide some culture/coin/science they are already doing their job. Buy tsome buildings, get a district out and do projects to generate GP points. That's probably going to give you much more value than trying to make it into a city that does everything.

 

[Kelmort83]

In your example, you mention a city with a lot of crab and fish with very few production.

You either buy a worker or have some ready to improve those sea ressource, then you queue a commercial district / port / (sewer if you have a lot of luxury).

All that plus one mill or being under IZ influence should be enough. Have that city work the fish first and at 2 or 3 pop switch to the crabs, and that city will grow while doing her duty.

Unless there is a natural wonder on the coast, most coastal city are for embarking / generating gold.

If you don't make a sewer or granary, you can have your extra workforce work 1f / 1g ocean tile to stop grow.

 

[Fabio1701]

Thanks for the tips. I don't expect late game cities to be powerhouses, but a staging area for military conquest (buying units mostly) shouldn't be much to ask.

Especially when you consider the irl colonies that in became powerhouses like New York. That took less than 100 years but in cub it has literly taken me 800 years to get a reasonable city

 

[Kelmort83]

There is also a mods about extra city yield from sea ressources and ports, it's pretty good and buff something oversighted imo.

The Lighthouse grant +1 Food to every sea tiles,
I think the next upgrade is one extra gold for every sea tiles etc.

 

[Jarms48]

Rush buy granary, allocate citizens to highest food yield tiles, rush buy builder's; improve worked tiles first, allocate spare trade routes for more food/production, plant harbour district first. When harbour builds rush buy lighthouse and seaport, get another trader for more food/production.

That's the fastest way to grow population in a new coastal city, in my opinion. If you have a nearby mountain freshwater source an aqueduct is great for bonus housing (skip for neighborhoods if available). The second proper district to build would either be a commerce hub or industrial zone, the former for the extra trade route and gold for unit purchases, the latter only if it's outside neighboring IZ's.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Thanks for the tips. I don't expect late game cities to be powerhouses, but a staging area for military conquest (buying units mostly) shouldn't be much to ask.

Especially when you consider the irl colonies that in became powerhouses like New York. That took less than 100 years but in cub it has literly taken me 800 years to get a reasonable city

New York and many places around it as Boston had what would amount to a game-breaking amount of trade routes. I'm a bit for some amount of realism, too, but in the end, it's not real, just game mechanisms. If you want to make a New York type city in 1600ad, dump 8 trade routes on it.