Need some strategy help: Production

[WoundedKnight]

I've tried a couple of games with a rapid spread/expansion strategy. In my most recent game, I crushed my 2 closest neighbors long ago. I occupy about 1/3 of all the land area of the map, while the remaining 5 civs together share only 2/3. While I've been in 1st place for population & happiness for many centuries, I've never been in 1st in production. I was 2nd for a long time, and after vanquishing my second neighbor, I slipped to 3rd! Why? My cities are growing, and while my production is growing, it's apparently not growing as fast as 2 of my neighbors. It's still pre-industrial, so there aren't any factories that can enhance production. I have mined grassland around all of my cities of any significant size. And I played Egyptians! So I can't figure out for the life of me why these other civs with only 9 or 10 cities have the production edge on me when I have over 30. Sure, corruption is an issue at the fringes of the empire, but that bad? Is it that extreme that it's not even worth having over 16 cities on a standard map, in spite of courthouses? My production has grown progressively, but I just can't figure out what the AI is doing (on regent level where the playing field is supposedly level) that is gives it this edge up in production.

Thoughts?

 

[Concona]

Well i never look at places, but maybe you chould build more improvements, i don`t know, i don`t get it either.

But is it really that important to you
just rule the world and you will be first with everything

 

[Japher]

Where are your cities located? Maybe the other civs are located within mountains or hills that increase shield production. Also, build roads on every tile your towns control, they also increase production value. One of the other civs could also be an Industrial civ or something.

I generally build as close to hilly regions as I can, I built one town on a hill surrounded by mountains. I mined every square within a two square radius and built roads on every single one of them. My town now, size 3, just cranked out a spearman in 2 turns! Pretty good for early in the game.

 

[Karch]

Before the industrial age, you can increase production only by mining (and getting out of Despotism.) Roads only increase commerce - at least until the industrial age when you get railroads which double the mining production bonus (or the irrigation food bonus). When I try the expansion strat, I have to build a lot of settlers which leaves my core cities at low populations. The AI tends to get their core cities up to 12 pretty quickly. So even though I have a higher population than the AI, its more spread out, and my core cites, which are the ones where most of the production is going to come from, are smaller than theirs.

You can increase the production in high-corruption cities (size 6 & higher) by causing a WLTKD. Just keep clicking on unhappy faces and turn them into entertainers until all you have left is happy and content faces. This will lower corruption. I haven't found much use for courthouses of Police Stations, but then again, I haven't built one since a few patches ago.