Should I be working production tiles early?

[Victoria]

OK... hopefully these will make up for the mix up, I added culture and scince for the full picture... prob still got something wrong but looks better.

4 food, 0 prod (labelled 40 in graphs)
3 food, 1 prod (labelled 31 in graphs)
2 food, 2 prod (labelled 22 in graphs)
1 food, 3 prod (labelled 13 in graphs)

So production still is best overall if production tiles worked first but you loose science and culture
The orange line seems a nice compromise at least initially up until turn 20.
I will remove the original graphs as they are just my bad.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Seeing those graphs, I'd say that for the capital ( and maybe the first 2-3 cities) it's best to follow either the blue or the yellow line. For the others, the orange seems the best compromise (as the trend is that the orange line might pass the gray one).

Or maybe a combination of worked tiles past some point (for example, follow the yellow line up until turn 17, then switch to the blue one). You have the overall progress in the yellow line, but then the marginal gain following the blue becomes larger.

Though if one wants to be really pedantic, one might say that you need all 24 combinations to truly draw a conclusion, but that's way too much information for a single graph. Furthermore, if you start with the 1f3p tile, probably you won't work all 4 tiles before turn 30 anyway (which probably leads to either less accumulated production or a bad balance between science and production).

 

[Victoria]

Though if one wants to be really pedantic

Its a feel, there is way too many options and the scenario is fairly unreal getting 4 x4 tiles and nothing else to consider like purple bananas (oral tradition) or heaven forbid having a luxury nearby.

 

[Japper007]

I find investing production in housing a bit of a waste before neighbourhoods, so I usually don't bother with increasing my food yields, as the cities'll cap out pretty quick anyways. As long as the city isn't starving, or keeping ahead of the settler-production (i.e grows faster than the one pop the settler takes away) in my core, I'm satisfied.
Population isn't as valuable in 6 as it was in 5 or even 4, a few Campuses easily out-produce your pop in science. Same goes for production from tiles vs production from Industrial Zones. Without percentage based buildings, pop is fairly useless.

In short I'd say: production is king even in the early game

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Its a feel, there is way too many options and the scenario is fairly unreal getting 4 x4 tiles and nothing else to consider like purple bananas (oral tradition) or heaven forbid having a luxury nearby.

That actually was more fuel for pedantism. But I won't be the one to ask that of you.

EDIT: Actually, production form tiles is stronger than from IZs. But by the time you reach Industrialization for the +3 production from mines, you'll probably be able to work a few anyway.

 

[darkace77450]

Interesting discussion guys. And thanks to Victoria for the graphs.

 

[chazzycat]

The effort is much appreciated, but I find it hard to draw meaningful conclusions from the graphs. It's like running an experiment in a vacuum. The problem is there are too many choices about what you DO with those outputs which then in turn, affect the same outputs. So it's impossible to put all the permutations onto one graph.

Let's take culture for example. Monuments cost 60 production, so following the grey line (production focus) you can build a monument by turn 15. Following the blue line (food focus) it would take 20 turns to get there. So if you do the math, the cumulative culture over 30 turns comes out as:

• production focus = 13 from graph + 30 (monument 2 CPT X 15 turns) = 43 total
• food focus = 26 from graph + 20 (monument 2 CPT X 10 turns) = 46 total

So under that scenario, you would be paying a very heavy cost in terms of overall production (20 points or so just eyeballing the graph) just to increase your cumulative culture by a paltry 3 points.

From that example I'd like to say that production focus is better, if you have an effective outlet for that production to meet your goals. But really I'm not confident of that. There are just too many variables.

 

[Victoria]

There is very little real value from the graphs... they were only intended to drive home the point that I had seen in many threads and believed myself... that growing before production gave better production.... wrong!

Yes it barely scratches the surface. The other two graphs are just supporting to show if you grew first how much value that may give roughly.... not a lot

There are too many variables in most of the game for many conclusions but this seems to bear some weight to me working a wood on a plains hill before a rice swamp. And normally we like to settle on the tiles that have about 4 combined food prod ratio so was just trying to choose the likely popular choice .

So under that scenario, you would be paying a very heavy cost in terms of overall production (20 points or so just eyeballing the graph) just to increase your cumulative culture by a paltry 3 points

Seems like the graphs did their work

The main thing was it answered the thread.... although @MyOtherName gets the credit, my original post assumed the opposite!

 

[joncnunn]

Question on the graphs: Is this assuming sufficient housing? (e.g. at all points along the graph there is at least 2+ housing capacity surplus)

 

[Victoria]

, the population never exceeds 4 amd yes, no slowdown factored

 

[megabearsfan]

Don't cities default to production focus? Maybe the game already knows the answer to this discussion

I haven't done much of the math, but I tend to agree with the individuals who say that the "right" decision is very circumstantial. It all depends on what you're doing with your yields.

For example, some resources and improvements provide culture, faith, or science. If those are yields that you need, then it might be worth working those tiles regardless of their food/production ratio.

Personally, I tend to favor a high-food yield for my first citizen, but subsequent citizens generally go for production tiles. When possible, I like to prioritize pastures (3/1), which allows for rapid growth to allow me to work another production tile, and provides an amount of production on its own. Pretty much the only tiles that I avoid are tiles that produce no food (like a mine on a desert hill). Those tend to go unworked until either late in the game (when techs buff the improvements) or I my city has reached a population threshold anyway.

Lately, I've been using trade routes to offset a lack of food or production in a given city, paired with the policy that grants +2 gold for all trade routes (so that I'm also generating money). I've noticed that trade routes haven't come up much (if at all) in this discussion.

 

[Victoria]

Don't cities default to production focus? Maybe the game already knows the answer to this discussion

Nope, I often see my first pop not on a 3 prod 1 food tile but on a 1 food, 1 cog 1 science

Trade routes have been talked about a lot already. I always argue that food from a TR can effectively be production if you switch some workers

I also think, but am not 100% that a TR is taken into account with city worker placement

 

[joncnunn]

Don't cities default to production focus?

It appears to me that when on default, it simply adds up all yields on each tile and works the tiles with the highest combined yields. I've even seen it attempting to starve cities doing this when the human was playing Russia (the bonus Russia has to Tundra tiles.)

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

It appears to me that when on default, it simply adds up all yields on each tile and works the tiles with the highest combined yields. I've even seen it attempting to starve cities doing this when the human was playing Russia (the bonus Russia has to Tundra tiles.)

But @megabearsfan does have a point there: if the combined yield between two tiles are tied, usually it goes for highest production.

 

[megabearsfan]

But @megabearsfan does have a point there: if the combined yield between two tiles are tied, usually it goes for highest production.

Right. My experience has been that a city will default work a 1f 2p forest before it works a 2f 1p forest or a 3f tile like a flood plain or a farmed grassland.

 

[Forster]

I've noticed that too.

 

[Victoria]

yup it has a prod preference but not to the degree of clicking the production focus button which what I was trying to say above but failed.

 

[joncnunn]

yup it has a prod preference but not to the degree of clicking the production focus button which what I was trying to say above but failed.

Yes, Prod focus appears to be first use highest production yields regardless of other yields not matter what and then using tie breakers when needed.
While "default focus" appears to be first combine all yields of a tile no matter what with the first tiebreaker when multiple tiles have the same combined yield being production. This might have been a change either during late development or in the first post CD patch because in pre-release videos when left on default focus the overall food yield was higher.

 

[remconius]

It looks like a good idea to do production focus from the start, but it's very short term.

After 8 turns you produced 22 cogs more by focus on production, but after that the cumulative difference is reduced to 0 by turn 32.
At 32, the food city is size 5 and the production city is still size 2. On top you missed out a cumulative of 57 population difference (the higher population per turn) and all the benefits from that.

 

[Victoria]

After 8 turns you produced 22 cogs more by focus on production, but after that the cumulative difference is reduced to 0 by turn 32.
At 32, the food city is size 5 and the production city is still size 2. On top you missed out a cumulative of 57 population difference (the higher population per turn) and all the benefits from that.

And you missed what has been built in the meantime including a granary and a monument. There is no right way and wrong way, it does seem that initially in a city if you want to burn some cogs to get some key stuff out it seems better. I accept your argument as correct, I still like to grow my cities and I now relax a bit because I can have a trade route bring in food as well. I love this games complexities and lack of a single path to enlightenment.

When i settle a new city I hopefully can buy a trade route straight away if I planned OK. I can then look and balance growth and production a bit more clearly than just considering tiles.... I think that way leads sanity...balance not extremes just my view