[BTS] faster settler production for non-imp leaders

[Tobiyogi]

have you ever noticed that settler production is sometimes a bit enhanced when you work hammers instead of food, even when you are not imperialistic?
I don't understand the mechanics behind. I was working a farmed floodplain first and when my 4H-mine was ready i was switching to that instead and the settler production was sped up by 1T (it was in the middle of the production).
any ideas?

 

[krikav]

There are two things I can think of.
First is that getting a few extra hammers can put you over a threshold gaining a bonus hammer.
If you are building with 3 hammers and a forge, you won't get any bonus 25% hammers. It will just be 3 hammers.
If you gain one hammer and reach 4 hammers in base, you will get a bonus hammer landing at 5 hammers in total.

The other thing that it could be, is that if you swap tiles from food to hammers, you can starve down your citys food bar while getting extra production.

 

[Tobiyogi]

it was in a very early stage without any prod modifiers like forges, so probably the second option. why do I get extra production when the city is starving during worker/settler production? it seemed to me that food and hammers always count equally (unless i am EXP or IMP).

ah, I see..... there is not enough food to eat, so the 4H are put into the settler while from a farmed floodplain the greedy population would steal me 2F.

I should become a more ruthless leader and starve my people more in the future, haha

 

[AcaMetis]

Another trick, IIRC, is that citizens won't consume food when you're building a Settler and I think a Worker, so their food is added to Settler/Worker production instead.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes settler production is based on hammers and surplus food. So if you removed a grassland unimproved and were -1 food a turn a 1f2h tile would increase production. Of course you need to be careful you don't shrink the city in error. So trade off between a farmed corn and running a 3h forest tile may be 1H but loss of 1F a turn. So in theory another city could take the food resource for growth.

As long as you save a turn could be worth it. This all assume you don't have 2-3 5/6f resources to run. Early on I rarely build mines.

 

[krikav]

Another trick, IIRC, is that citizens won't consume food when you're building a Settler and I think a Worker, so their food is added to Settler/Worker production instead.

Yes, if you have unhappy citizens they usually consume 2 food while not providing any useful work. Thats why we try to avoid growing into unhappines (sometimes we do anyways ofcourse).
But a trick is to start building a settler or worker while a city is unhappy, then the unhappy citizens do not consume their -2F each. (Pretty sure this is a bug, but it's usefull anyway. )
However, they still do not provide any useful work.

I'm abit confused how this works when you are in negative food territory though, it seems like if your city is already losing food, then the unhappy citizens will eat their food anyway...?

 

[elmurcis]

I think I do remember (not really sure) this kind of switch with negative food but faster settler.
Although I'm using city governor for most times (just checking decisions and keeping eye on changes), I think plain hill Copper (together with other mine) was the reason to change tiles manually as city governor runs negative food only between ~65% to 80% (around this area) of food bar if building world wonder (without Slavery - Slavery as civic makes cities "want" to grow 1 pop into unhappiness before stalling growth and going for max production) or when have "emphasize GP production" and getting very near to finishing one (did notice this when was running Caste).

 

[sampsa]

I'm abit confused how this works when you are in negative food territory though, it seems like if your city is already losing food, then the unhappy citizens will eat their food anyway...?

That is correct.

I don't think the tactic OP describes is very useful, but maybe once in a blue moon you will make use out of it, if you give the city's food resource to another city and have some food in the -bar you can sacrifice. Anyway, mostly 1 is better than 1.

Note also that governor does clear mistakes all the time, especially with EXP/IMP (especially with overflow!) so I never leave my precious cities to such incompetent hands.

 

[Tobiyogi]

thanks for your input everyone, the idea of building workers/settlers as soon as the city grows unhappy and cannot be fixed immediately sounds helpful to me

another tactics in that case would be whipping