Golden Age Settler Factories in Republic

I have found that during a golden age in republic I can often use my capital as a two turn settler factory.

On the first turn you grow in one turn, then you part rush a spearman / catapult / walls etc, then you grow un 1 with ten shields (which may as low as 7 with three or even 4 extran on expansion), obviously you need the right tiles for this.

 

Why would you need a rapid settler farm at that time? If you are in a golden age, REX phase is probably over.

 

If you triggered it through war, you might just need a boatload of spammed settlers to fill in what the AI you are attacking didn't. Though I don't think I'd do this myself. I usually have better things to build & don't care to relegate my number one producer to settler duty. I generally turn over a bunch of semi-core towns to this job if I need the settlers. Might take a few extra turns, but the land isn't going anywhere, after all.

kk

 

My thoughts exactly. If I am at war that early, especially on a higher difficulty, the AI likely has a big military advantage over my 3 or 4 warriors. The capital is likely my only city with a barracks at that point, so I would need it for military units. Also, an early GA is the prime time to build a quick wonder in the capital.

 

I think I've used the GA to pump out settlers quickly in some game, and I think I've had a town build one every 3 turns, but I agree that settlers aren't usually a priority during GA in most games.

I actually dislike building settlers and workers during GA. The more people you have in your cities the more benefit you get from your GA. You wouldn't get much extra shields and gold if most of your cities were almost empty.

In the game I'm playing now, I had an early GA, and there was still lots of land to settle. This time I only had two cities with food enough to work as settler factories, but they were flood plain cities with few shields. It was only during my GA that I could use them as 4-turn sf. I believe this also is a less typical scenario.