City tile production with 1.21f patch

[Nero Would]

The rules that determine the production from the city centre tile have changed with the 1.21f patch. After checking various cities in a few different games, I came up with the following rules that seem to work. Please let me know if you find any cities that do not follow these rules.

• Start with the production of the tile on which the city is built (including resources and bonuses).
• In the case of Forest, use the production of the underlying terrain (Grassland, Plains or Tundra).
• Change Food production to 2 (Food production is always 2 for city centre tiles).
• Add 1 gold (city centre tile contains a Road).
• Add 1 Shield and 1 Gold for pop 7+ City.
• Add another 1 Shield and 1 Gold for pop 13+ Metropolis.
• For pop 13+ Metropolis add another Shield if Industrious and another Gold if Commercial.
• If the resulting Shields are less than 1, increase to 1.
• If the resulting Gold is less than 4, increase to 4.
• Add 1 Gold if under Republic or Democracy.
• Add 1 Gold if Colossus is in the city.
• If under Despotism or Anarchy, the 3rd Food/Shield/Gold from each tile is lost.

For example a city on Plains with Cattle next to a River. Normal production (Food/Shields/Gold) from this tile is 1/1/0 for Plains plus 2/1/0 for Cattle plus 0/0/1 for River making 3/2/1. Changing Food to 2 and adding 1 Gold for the Road gives us 2/2/2. As Gold is less than 4, we change it to 4 making a basic production rate of 2/2/4 for a city built on this tile. Under Despotism, production would be reduced to 2/2/3, under Republic or Democracy, it would be increased to 2/2/5.

Now let's take the city in the above example and grow it under Monarchy. As a Town of pop 1-6, we had 2/2/2 which became 2/2/4 when we increased Gold to the minimum of 4. When it becomes a City at pop 7, we have 2/3/3 which becomes 2/3/4 when we increase Gold to the minimum of 4. When it becomes a Metropolis at pop 13, we have 2/4/4 (plus 1 Shield if Industrious and 1 Gold if Commercial), Shields and Gold are at or above the minimum, so no further adjustment is needed.

 

[cracker]

I want to take this opportunity to register a severe complaint about the implementation in V1.21 that limits production of food in the city center to just 2 units no matter what.

This is probably not an unreasonable implementation in the general scheme of things, with one exception.

The exception is the first city.

Since the game randomly drops you into positions, it can be a severe handicap to force you to move your first settler. This can be a severe negative handicap to either waste the first turn or waste the bonus resource.

In test games, randomly generated by the V1.21 patch, I have encountered this resource conflict in about 50% of the games on Emperor or Diety level. This conflict can disrupt city placement in the first several cities just to avoid wasting the limited bonus resources and on Emperor and Diety levels, I feel that these early conflicts are fatal.

There ought to be a fix in the next patch and XP that either exempts the first settler from the move it or lose it rule or the fix should make sure that randomly generated start positions do not land on top of bonus resources that would cause the 2 food limit to be exceeded and lost.