Level 1 question: food focus vs production focus

[Bhavacakra]

Watched a lot of YT videos of high level players and they always seem to put new expansions on production focus but lock food tiles for growth. Is there an advantage to doing it this way as opposed to just putting the new city on food focus? I play with a level 6 friend and he keeps his cities on food focus always except when building a wonder. I think he only locks tiles when going for additional GPT.

 

[aafritz17]

My understanding of this is that, as the code flows through a single turn for a given city, most yields (like food) are calculated before a new citizen is born, but production is calculated after the new citizen is born. So by having the focus set to "production" the new baby will be sent to the "hammeriest" available tile, and the city will benefit from those hammers immediately, on THAT turn. If the citizen were to be directed by any other focus (food, faith, science) to a tile with, say, only one hammer, you would get that one hammer, but you wouldn't get the other yields on that tile until the next turn.

I usually want my citizens working food tiles. But by using this micro-management, I get a little bit more production for every birth. But then, you DO have to remember to click every "new birth announcement" to take you to that city to put the citizen where you really want him. (After a while that becomes a reflex!)

You don't lose anything by not doing this, you just get a little more benefit when you do.

 

[Browd]

Food is the only yield item that is computed before the new citizen is born and assigned to work a tile. After that assignment, other yields are computed. On the turn the new citizen spawns, you will get "free" non-food yields from the tile to which the new citizen is assigned. What non-food yields you get will depend on the tile to which the new citizen is assigned, which is why players will choose production focus for their new citizen (to maximize the likelihood that the tile is a hammer tile). If that is a hammer tile, you get production, but the same applies to any other non-food tile yields from that tile, including gold, culture and faith. So, if the hammer tile to which the new citizen is assigned is a hill tile with an improved gold mine, you get bonus production and gold. If the city where that tile is located also has the Religious Idols pantheon, you would also get bonus culture and faith when the new citizen works that tile.

The "danger" in this strategy is that it is intended for players who want to pump the growth of their cities (hence locking citizens to max food tiles), while gaining some bonus hammers when new citizens spawn. If you are not attentive, and forget to re-lock new citizens to food tiles and away from the production tile they were assigned to upon spawning, you will find city growth slowing rapidly, which undermines your primary goal (rapid city growth).

 

[Bhavacakra]

Thanks folks for the good explanations. Makes sense now. I'm mostly in the habit now of locking new citizens to food tiles when trying to pump growth. Still occasionally forget for a turn or two but less so.

 

[poxpower]

You can make the calculation of how much production this gets you too.
So if you build a mine ( 3 production ) and every time your capital grows to it ( let's say starting from turn 3) you get 3 bonus production vs growing to a farm, in the course of a normal game your cap can easily grow to pop 30.
So 30x3 = 90 extra hammers in a game on standard. I believe that's around what a Temple costs.

However I believe this is also affected by production modifiers ( so the mine is +3 base ) then multiplied by factories, religion, workshop etc.

So yeah maybe in a full game you get more like a free workshop out of doing this.

It becomes more important on Quick speed however as your cities will grow the same number of times, but everything is cheaper, so now you're talking more about getting like a free university in every city over the course of the game.