Production Cities

[GenocideBringer]

Alright. What do I do for a production city if I lack any city with a significant amount of hills? Workshops drain your food, and they don't become decent until you get Guilds and/or Caste System.
Is there any other way?

 

[nullspace]

Hills really are the best for fast, continuous production early in the game. But here are some alternatives:

Certain resources like copper, stone, or elephants have good production. Lots of forests or farmed plains can add up to be decent. You can use money to upgrade old units instead of buying new ones. And there is always slavery and drafting. If you build the globe theater in a city with high food, you can whip every other turn, or draft every turn.

 

[xanadux]

Save some plains forest if you have them.

If you have enough food, use the whip. You might irrigate several grasslands to get more production this way if necessary. You can also build the pyramids and use Universal Sufferage to buy things, but often the cost here is not justified unless you need a couple universities to build oxford.

You can also just cottage up, always work as many cottages as possible, and wait for towns and Universal Sufferage. Sometimes it's best to just get the commerce you can from a city, and just wait for US.

 

[DaveMcW]

Get some food resources in the city radius to counter the workshop food drain.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Workshops are like a hill without a railroad bonus. Not as optimal as hill mines, but in the mid-phase of the game, can support the conquest of cities that *do* have hills, hehe...

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Alright. What do I do for a production city if I lack any city with a significant amount of hills? Workshops drain your food, and they don't become decent until you get Guilds and/or Caste System.
Is there any other way?

Whips, watermills, Engineer specialists, Priest specialists, Great Engineers, Great Scientists, Great Prophets, and if all else fails citizens.

 

[Dan Quale]

The more river the more production, Negating the effect of special resources, rivers are the only significant factor in production. Early on they provide food, later with the levee comes a massive boost, and even a totally flat, milled/workshopped city will have surprising amounts of hammer flow, especially running state property. Additionally rivers help deal with the unhealthiness associated with many production buildings.

 

[Skallagrimson]

My Ironworks is always on a river. Always. It can have hills or workshops or just blah with the trees (lumbermills and railroads on non-watermill tiles), but, if I don't get a river city in my first five, RESTART. That's just the way I am.

 

[carl corey]

You can conquer one and build Ironworks in it, ya know. It's not like you'll live with 5 cities until you get to build Ironworks. Also, watermills and workshops will really help your Ironworks city only late in the game (Chemistry, Communism) so that city can easily be a commerce city until then.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Alright. What do I do for a production city if I lack any city with a significant amount of hills? Workshops drain your food, and they don't become decent until you get Guilds and/or Caste System.
Is there any other way?

Don't chop a single forest in or near the BFC. Improve only the food tiles you need to work your forests (to improve the chance a forest will spread... roads slow down forest spread, and other improvements stop the spread in its tracks). Whip to speed up select production builds... Forge and engineer ASAP, then temple and priest when that comes too.

Summary: Forests for production, and food for engineer and priests. Food for whipping every 10 turns.

Once this is out of the way, build units here exclusively and conquer your neighbor's better production city!

Oh, in BTS, Maoi Statues (sp?) is great for a coastal city's production.

edit- yep, settling Great engineers, prophets, and scientists help too.

 

[Skallagrimson]

You can conquer one and build Ironworks in it, ya know. It's not like you'll live with 5 cities until you get to build Ironworks.

AI cities when taken typically have NOTHING for buildings in them, so that's a lot of hammers wasted just to get a city improved and ready to go. Screw that.

 

[carl corey]

Oh, come on, you could take lots of cities even early on. Doesn't really matter if they have buildings in them or not. There's plenty of time to 'recover' over the course of the game.

And you don't need all the buildings for the Ironworks city. And when you start building them you just go for production first, then everything comes really fast. Forge/Apostolic Palace buildings (Temple/Monastery)/Levee/Factory/Ironworks, then health and happiness buildings, you can even forget about Courthouses, culture, espionage at first.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Another thing is that the AIs seem to obsess over hills rather than riversides as build spots. In fact it's almost as if they make a point to avoid the riversides.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

AI cities when taken typically have NOTHING for buildings in them, so that's a lot of hammers wasted just to get a city improved and ready to go. Screw that.

You focus on what you need first. It's ready to go within a dozen turns. Hammers spent are only wasted if they don't bring you closer to your goals. If you're missing a really good production city, these hammers are a good investment, not a waste.

A production city doesn't need a library. A production city doesn't need a bank. A production city doesn't need much except for hammer buildings and just enough happy+health to work all the production tiles. Run 4 artist specialists for the first tile expansion and whip the buildings you need right after. Improve all food tiles that were pillaged to recover faster, and then start churning out units.

10-15 turns of production "wasted", tops! If this city didn't help you reach your game goals, why did you keep the city in the first place? Raze it.

 

[Skallagrimson]

It's more than 10-15 turns. There's the granary, the aqueduct, the colloseum, a million and two things to do before even considering the Ironworks. The good riverine production city I built in the beginning has all that already and when Steel gets discovered, and simply switch from unit-production to Ironworks.

The goal is to defeat the enemy, and if you raze a city and they rebuild one there, that isn't defeating the enemy. It's wasting your troops' time.

 

[DaveMcW]

You build a colosseums? Wouldn't it be cheaper to go out and conquer a happiness resource?

 

[carl corey]

It's more than 10-15 turns. There's the granary, the aqueduct, the colloseum, a million and two things to do before even considering the Ironworks. The good riverine production city I built in the beginning has all that already and when Steel gets discovered, and simply switch from unit-production to Ironworks.

The goal is to defeat the enemy, and if you raze a city and they rebuild one there, that isn't defeating the enemy. It's wasting your troops' time.

I think you're being a little too strict about what you can and can't do, about what you should and shouldn't do. As I said before, if you conquer a city with axemen or macemen you won't build the Ironworks in it right away. You won't have the tech. So take your time, build whatever you want in the meantime.

 

[pigswill]

Considering you need six forges before you can start on ironworks you should have plenty of cities to choose from.

 

[petey]

Alright. What do I do for a production city if I lack any city with a significant amount of hills? Workshops drain your food, and they don't become decent until you get Guilds and/or Caste System.
Is there any other way?

Go take an AI city and use that one.

 

[Solomwi]

The goal is to defeat the enemy, and if you raze a city and they rebuild one there, that isn't defeating the enemy. It's wasting your troops' time.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I think the rigidness of this incorrect statement speaks to a more fundamental misconception (or set of misconceptions). If you raze a city and they rebuild one there, you've not only destroyed any investment made in that city, but you've forced the opponent to sacrifice production and growth just to get back to having a zero-culture, undeveloped city there. And you've inflicted this potentially very significant damage at the low, low cost of just a handful of troop-turns, and maybe some production, if you lose any units.