Settler Factory Setup

[Hawklord]

I am getting my head around this settler factory idea. I created one in my current game. The screen shot shows the city. This is a bit later when I had given up as I could not produce warriors anymore.

It was mostly successful but ran like an engine with a bent crank, up and down and often needed different adjustments.

OK I got settlers in mostly four turns. But the odd one went over and sometimes the city went to size 7. But I just built a settler anyway and started again. It seemed to work OK.

Question. Am I missing something. It was not a simple case of swapping a tile every 2 shots. And I wasted a lot of shields by overshooting the mark.

Did I develop the land wrong? How would you do it???

 

[Chieftess]

You're correct in irragating and mining bonus food tiles, but you can't irragate grassland in despotism. It has a value penalty (anything 3 or higher gets knocked down by one). You're also in jungle, which makes it kind of hard to get a settler factory going. You should also be at size 5/6.

It's hard to tell if any grassland tiles are bonus tiles, since I can't see the white (or blue -- which I use) dot. A save would be better. Also, are you making sure your laborers are using those tiles?

 

[Hawklord]

Its hard to tell by the image but a lot of the trees are forrest. Pretty much all of the trees south of city is forrest plus on rivers so commerce is there too.

Plus the tile N of city was irrigated later than the settler factory was going.
I did irrigate the cow tile. (Maybe that was an error).

At the time:
I had:
2 x mined grassland (with shield)
1 x irrigated cow
1 x roaded grassland (no shield)
1 x mined wheat
1 x open grassland (no shield)
3 x forrest on river
plus 3 virgin hills

It was possible to pump out settlers, and I did but it seemed that I had to switch a lot of tiles, in a different way every cycle.

I thought that there must be a simpler way to do it. Not that it mattered how many shields were wasted, as long as the warrior/settler came out in 4.

Mostly the city stayed between 4 & 6, with the odd stray over into 7.

Oh another thing This is on Emperor so there is only one per city.

 

[shadow2k]

Well it's hard to tell from that pic.

With a granary, irrigated cow, mined wheat, two BG's, and a forest tile, you can do a 4-5-settler factory, never hitting pop six, which helps the happiness crap on Emp/Deity.

Pop 4:
You'll show growth in 2, and settler in five, which is ok, because that will change at pop 5.

Irr Grass Cow: 4fpt/1spt
Mined Wheat: 3fpt/1spt
BG: 2fpt/2spt
BG: 2fpt/2spt
Capitol: 2fpt/1spt

Total 5 extra fpt, 7spt

When you grow, because you told the governor to max production, your new citizen gets put on the forest. You immediately move him to any 2fpt tile, hopefully with a gold bonus or whatever.

So you're at 14 + 2 = 16 shields. As long as you keep moving the fifth citizen off the forest, you'll get 7spt for four turns (28), plus two from the forest when you grow (30 = settler!). If you have the fifth citizen working a tile with shields, that's probably where your excess shields were coming from, not that it matters much.

The most important thing is telling the governor to max production, and then remembering to move your fifth citizen off the forest to any 2fpt tile, every time you grow to pop 5. You'll never get to pop 6 like this, which is good for what we want.

This actually works at 6spt for two turns, then 7spt for two turns as well. You only need the one BG, as you'll get the forest shields on both pop growths, even though you never see yourself hit size six...because you get the settler that turn from those extra shields.

 

[Gyathaar]

I dont know if this is vanilla/ptw (does mayans exist in ptw?) or C3C ..
but if C3C, you could make a 4 turn warrior/settler factory with this setup by mining both cow and wheat (this is possible since mayans is agricultural and would get 3 food from the city square since on a river).

size 4 plus 5 food in box: produce warrior
- work mined wheat, mined cow, 2x mined BG
on growth the govenor would pick up forest and complete warrior

size 5: start settler
- work mined wheat, mined cow, 2x mined BG, mined grass

size 5 plus 5 food:
- work mined wheat, mined cow, 2x mined BG, mined grass
on growth govenor picks up forest

size 6:
- work mined wheat, mined cow, 2x mined BG, 2x mined grass

settler complete and back at size 4+5 again, start warrior

if not C3C yould would need another BG I think for that, and irrigate cow
(However, if C3C I would probably have irrigated both cow and wheat, and placed another city on river so it could use the wheat.. they way you could possibly get two 4 turn settler factories if enough shields in range of the 2nd town, else the 2nd town would prolly be a 5 turn factory)

 

[Hawklord]

It's in C3C.
Now that's a thought. The extra food from the city square probably made a big difference.
Also I never used the govenor. I'd heard that it was not necessary to do that. I'll try that next time.

I'll leave running 2 factories till I get one sussed out

Thanks guys anway, your comments are helpful.

At the end of the day I got a warrior/settler every 4 Even if the factory ran irratically I ended up with 22 cities, slightly ahead of the biggest AI as it turned out. Which is no mean result at Emperor. So it does come in useful.

 

[Gyathaar]

Also I never used the govenor

You dont turn on the govenor, but you have to open the govenor screen and set it to emphasize production.. doing this will make new citizens when city grows on a high shield tile (aslong as the city still produce 2+ food)