No Production

[zill]

How do you play a game if you research BW and IW first and don't start near either bronze or iron and you can't find a place with more than three hills in reasonable distance to your capitol?

I played two games in a row where I started in flood plains and everything around me was desert and jungle. Whenever I had a spot with two or three hills I had virtually no food. I had plenty of great commerce cities, though. I had 3 cities with more than 8 flood plains and one of them had three spices in the fat cross and the other had a gold mine and incense. At first I thought I had a really good draw, but I couldn't get anything built. I started off whipping like crazy, but then I just got pawned by unhappiness. So, what would you do in a situation like this?

 

[civtrader]

your only hope is to rush religion -> prophets and let the prophets settle down as grat spezialist (brings you hammer). then check out for the forges and build them like crazy.

good luck

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Whip larger values at a time, and never whip for just 1 population point.

The higher the -pop value, the more efficient your /turn becomes.

Also, it seems counter-productive, but Workshops aren't always a bad thing either when everything in sight is a floodplain or food resource ... it's equivalent to a farmed Plain (not the best, but better than nothing).


-- my 2c

 

[oyzar]

learn to whip usefully(4 hammers invested in axeman whip 2 pop 31 overflow and 2 axemen in 3 turns getting 60 free hammers every 10 turns for example.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I agree with the workshop post. It effectively turns a food into a hammer at that stage of the game. Many people have issues with that trade-off, but it is an option, especially with the massive amount of food you say you have.

You can always convert a workshop to a farm once your production needs are met.

 

[oyzar]

workshops are actually pretty much strictly worse than whipping on BARE GRASSLAND! before guilds... You could tech towards guilds to get decent workshops though they are still worse than grassland farms so you shouldnt realy bother much with them before chemistry(i think).

 

[Stolen Rutters]

workshops are actually pretty much strictly worse than whipping on BARE GRASSLAND! before guilds... You could tech towards guilds to get decent workshops though they are still worse than grassland farms so you shouldnt realy bother much with them before chemistry(i think).

True, true, but the OP was already whipping his way into serious unhappiness way too early in the game, so more whipping isn't the answer.

In general, production problems aren't that bad. Forests are great tiles to work to solve production problems, but most players chop those early for the short term hammers. Maybe you chopped your empire clean expecting to find a production city SOMEWHERE to save you, and found that you were out of luck. If you are backed into a production corner that bad, maybe a couple workshops can help until the unhappiness gets better and the player can whip again.