Food vs. Production

[fmlizard2]

When building out your first couple cities in the early game, which do you prioritize developing / working: tiles or tiles?

I have found that at the upper levels like Immortal I can't afford to give up a single , which helps me rush out the stuff I need like Great Library, National College, etc. but really leaves me in a hole. I almost always lag the rest of the world in population, sometimes very severely. My current game, a 5 city bid on Immortal with Babylon, has no cities above 15 population, even in the late 1600s.

Should I be going early, then moving to more ?

 

[grandad1982]

I find that getting the first 4/5 pop fast is pretty good. After all you need pop to work those production tiles.

I rarely have more that 2/3 cities with massive population. It's about using what you got better than the ai.

 

[vexing]

it's a balancing act, food and population are a means of achieving production. you want to have enough population to work all the good tiles in range and possibly fill specialist spots.
i'm a big fan of riverside plains areas, where growth is a clear win - each population nets you at least another riverside plains for +1 extra food/production/gold.

i also like the instances where you can do clear simple math to figure out whether it's optimal to be working production tiles or food tiles: eg imagine you start building hanging gardens, and you can either be working two riverside farms for +4 food or two mines for +6 production; with the two mines it'll take you 15 turns to finish, with two farms 25 turns. over the 15 turns you'd have gained +60 food, but by going for production and finishing 10 turns early you gain +40 food over those next ten turns, in addition to the culture and ability to work on something else. it's clearly better to force production in this case.

 

[LostInTime]

Food until you need something built fast. (wonder/NC etc.) Then back on food after said construction is done.

My current game, a 5 city bid on Immortal with Babylon, has no cities above 15 population, even in the late 1600s

Just means you were slow on aqueducts, not buying maritime CS etc. It's not that bad anyway, RA spam and GS pop all the way to victory, you don't need a size 30+ city for that

 

[Martin Alvito]

The math isn't quite that clean, vexing. You do have to account for growth during the relevant turns in the first case and what you'd be getting during those turns. You're not likely to make up a 20 deficit and a ten turn deficit by growing during Classical/Medieval, though.

A solid rule of thumb is that you want to go with unless:

- You are building a building (Granary, Water Mill, Hanging Gardens). I tend to force production when building Aqueducts if the city has 8+ to get the box to refill a growth step sooner. At smaller populations you should just grow.
- You are building a Wonder and experience tells you the AI is a legitimate threat to get it while you're building it (ie: your tech progress gives an insufficient tech lead given the difficulty).
- You are amassing units for a war and you will not otherwise exhaust your strategics before the war begins.

Other conditions exist (especially as a win condition approaches), but those three are very easy to keep track of.

 

[vexing]

The math isn't quite that clean, vexing. You do have to account for growth during the relevant turns in the first case and what you'd be getting during those turns.

it can be. there was the implicit assumption that the food box required to grow was > 60. including growth and the potential of switching the extra citizen to production does complicate things but the math is still doable.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Gotcha. I would have called that assumption too heroic to make.

One other thing that complicates matters is that you don't have to go full-on , and the solution to the problem as you get close to a growth step usually is a hybrid / approach.

The simplest example that you're probably already familiar with is that working two Cows tiles will cause you to grow in six turns, but working a Cow and a 2/1 tile will cause you to grow in seven and net an additional each turn. Two Cows or other base 3 tiles in the capital are awesome, but they don't mean all that much until they enable you to start working two Mines in forced production at size 4.

 

[Tabarnak]

When i go for a domination game i usually focus more on production and gold(low pop). With so many puppets it's sometimes hard to keep happiness afloat. For peaceful times/victories i focus more on food and happiness(high pop).

 

[RD-BH]

2 extra food = +citizen, +research
1 hammer = ~5 gold

So 10 food can get you 5 gold or 5 hammers +/- depending on terrain.

For myself, food wins out.

 

[Nightshades]

It's very situational

 

[Artingel78]

I prefer tiles. when your city size is 4-5 take tiles.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

When i go for a domination game i usually focus more on production and gold(low pop). With so many puppets it's sometimes hard to keep happiness afloat. For peaceful times/victories i focus more on food and happiness(high pop).

It slows overall development to cut growth if you can grow onto decent tiles though.

Ultimately as cities grow their outputs grow which allows you to get more infra to support larger cities again. This growth curve rate is a big part of how quickly an empire flourishes in civ.

Food usually wins the comparison though of course it depends. Often in puppets I'll spam trading posts just because it gives more empire wide flexibility and lets growth happen in more controlled cities (Like, say, a tradition capitol).

 

[peddroelm]

Ideally I would like to staff all 2+ production tiles. All +3 gold tiles. AND STILL HAVE REASONABLE GROWTH ...

Achieving that goal however is very difficult. (food buildings aren't free, tradition competes with the excellent bonuses from liberty, AI's compete for maritime CS , city loves the king .. )..

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I'm usually guilty of focusing too much on growth ... I'm curious what the percentages are for the "default" citizen allocation governor settings because I suspect it to be very close to the optimum on most situations ...