Putting Production on Hold (or NOT)

[Stephan Hoyer]

I found out the hard way that not even constantly putting all citizens on Taxman will put a palace prebuild that's nearly done on hold. After starving, the computer automatically puts them back to work and sometimes they get the shields, too. I ran through this about three times to be sure.

Since I found it quite annoyed me to be wasting 800 shields and the game was simply not behaving like it was supposed to, I decided to resort to loading earlier saves to see if there was ANY way to make it so I could get my Women's Sufferage.

Well... 1 hour and a dozen tries later...

The only reliable way to shut down my city was to put it in Civil Disorder and pillage every usable tile so the AI wouldn't accidently give it the production to finish.

I had to sell my cathedral, pillage all around to disconnect my 6 luxuries, and draft non-stop.

My former size 12 powerhouse is now down to size 6 in a wasteland . At least I got my damn sufferage, though!

Can't they simply have a "Hold Production" button? That would have saved me a HUGE amount of grief.

 

[Gelion]

Good idea for Civ 4. When I wanted to hold I think I did the same as you, but I don't remember pillaging every square.
One hint: When you want to change production from unit to building or vise versa just do so. You'll get a message about loosing shields. Say "no". And when you change for the second time you'll get no message and the shields will be saved!

 

[Tatran]

Why a pre-build for the Universal Suffrage?
The AIs never build the US in a city with a factory + coal plant.
So by building a factory + (if you have coal) coal plant in your
most productive city it should be no problem to get the US.

 

[Theoden]

There is no way to hold production but you can make the finish date later. If you have a wonder costing 600 shields simply change production to that wonder exit the city go in again and change production back to Womens Suffrage. You'll now only have 600 shields so it won't finish as fast. Yes, you lose 200 shields but nothing compared to the loss of self pillaging.

 

[warpstorm]

Actually, I think they should solve this by having shields all be lost when switching builds. Okay, a better way would be to keep track of progress and if you switch back give them back. I think pre-build is just an exploit.

 

[Stephan Hoyer]

Unfortunately, no other wonders were available. And I didn't really need the prebuild, but since I had had this city building some earlier wonders that I missed I didn't want to miss the shields.

I've gotten far enough ahead in this game that it doesn't really matter if I got on mad self-pillaging .

Yeah, prebuilds probably are an exploit. But it's difficult to have wonders without switching possible because of how often so many shields would be lost.