Specializing in Production City

[TyranusBonehead]

I know to cottage spam in a city where I want to empasize production, but I was wondering about workshops. In the past, I'd always build a forge in that city and then place several workshops in the city's cultural boundary. But, each workshop takes away 1 food. Should I be doing this?

When going for a space ship victory I will usually try to emphasize production in nearly all my cities. After reading some articles in the War Academy, I've begun to diversify somewhat, having a GP farm and a city or two dedicated to commerce. I want to look at my civ's review screen and see higher numbers under the hammer column, so that when I go to building space ship parts I can build them quickly. Is this a good approach?

Thanks.

 

[svv]

Well, first of all, you shouldn't necessarily "cottage spam" a "production city," if by "production city" you mean a city you want building things for hammers. Cottages don't give you hammers. You'd be better off farming, which would let you pop grow so you could (1) work other tiles that provide hammers but no food, (2) use the whip to help production, and/or (3) employ engineer or priest specialists for more hammers.

If you want a city to provide BOTH commerce AND hammers, then cottages might be a good idea.

As for workshops, I hardly ever use them, except maybe in a city with tons of food but almost no source of hammers.

As for the space race victory, until the very end the first thing your emphasizing is getting the tech and other city improvements to get your cities ready for building. I'd have my cities doing science through commerce or specialists, but of course building production improvements like forge and factory (I generally always build those anyway). You can use your workers to reemphasize the cities for production later.

 

[1889]

Well by the time your building spaceship parts you have guilds and chemistry so workshops give you 3 hammers and the state property civic can give the lost food back so they can be really good. For me though, by that stage of the game all the tiles that I would put a workshop on already have towns so there is no way I'd rip that down for a workshop.

I have never found it neccessary to use every city to produce spaceship parts so I'd say there is plenty of room to keep your cities diversified.

 

[Buntaro]

Something I do for production oriented cities is farm some flood plains and/or grassland early. This lets you mine hills and grow reasonbly fast. As you get techs - biology or communism - your food situation improves, so you can afford to switch some farms to workshops or waterwheels. Remember, if you're in slavery, population growt IS production.

 

[TyranusBonehead]

I usually go with slavery until sometime in the mid-game when I switch to serfdom in order to get more production out of my workers. Learning to love the whip I suppose

Do you guys use slavery? Do you use it through the entire game or do you switch to another labor civic, and what do you switch to?

 

[Jet]

Workshops: yes, if you just want to click "emphasize food" and "emphasize production" and forget about it, adding a few workshops is good. If you want to take it to the next level of effectiveness, you should manually select (micromanage) which tiles are worked and choose improvements carefully by building some farms, growing the cities to their happy cap, and fiddling with improvements until production is maximized and food surplus is zero. Better still, plan all that out from the start by counting how much food you can get and so forth.

Most cities on production for space race: you might do better to maximize production in a few cities and not worry too much about production in the other cities. Personally I usually find that I'm more limited by research. I usually research Computers first and start labs before Rocketry. When Apollo finishes I build the cheaper parts in miscellaneous cities and they usually get built in plenty of time. What I end up being blocked on is researching the most expensive techs and then building the few expensive parts. So what I end up needing is maximum production in just a few cities, and high research overall.

 

[ArneHD]

I always save some forest untill I can get replacable parts, then put lumbermills on them. It's a good tactic if you have grassland forest, but on tundra your better of with a watermill under state property.

 

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

I usually go with slavery until sometime in the mid-game when I switch to serfdom in order to get more production out of my workers. Learning to love the whip I suppose

Do you guys use slavery? Do you use it through the entire game or do you switch to another labor civic, and what do you switch to?

I never go with serfdom; seems like a better option to just double-up the plebeians and use either slavery or caste system.

So, yeah, I enslave my people. I may or may not switch to caste system at some point, depending on the state of my GPF and whether I'm trying an SE. At some point, though, my noisy subjects just won't shut up, and I have to emancipate them.

 

[Buntaro]

I never go with serfdom; seems like a better option to just double-up the plebeians and use either slavery or caste system.

So, yeah, I enslave my people. I may or may not switch to caste system at some point, depending on the state of my GPF and whether I'm trying an SE. At some point, though, my noisy subjects just won't shut up, and I have to emancipate them.

Same here, though I probably go to Caste System more, from the sound of it. I feel guilty about oppressing my virtual subjects.

WHen I started playing, I didn't build enough workers. Serfdom was a real boon then. If anything, I build too many workers now, and take steps to capture more, so serfdom is a waste for me.

I suppose a large continent with no neighbors and a lot of jungle but not much food production would make optimal conditions for serfdom. Or, if you were technically inferior in military tech, you'd need to maintain large standing armies. Since workers count against the unit costs, you'd want fewer, more efficient workers.

 

[Shadzy19]

IMO workshops pre-communism are never worth it , you'r much better off just whipping pop for hammers .
After you get communism and switch to state property (my fav civic yay) I switch at least 5 city's to mass production with mass workshops .
2f 3h tiles on grassland and 1f 4h tiles on plains are just to good to pass up .

 

[Elandal]

post-chemistry workshops are FP=4, which is hard to beat by whipping.

 

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

Same here, though I probably go to Caste System more, from the sound of it. I feel guilty about oppressing my virtual subjects.

I used to feel guilty, until I noticed my score went up coincidental with their hardship.

In my current game [Alexander / Noble / Epic / Continents] I'm trying a second time to work a SE, and so switched to CS immediately upon its discovery -- albeit too late, as I had forgotten about its relevance to SE. At the moment, I'm considering switching back to slavery, at least for a decaturn. My capital switches between science and production, I have one cottaged city to provide my wealth, one riverside city with national epic to provide my science, and a few small cities I've recently picked up from my neighbors as a result of three great artists in a row contributing to massive gains of land at the frontier.

I've never forced myself to lay off the mines in commercial cities, but am trying to do so here. As a result, I've got a cottage town growing, but am 147 turns from creating a market to boost the gold. Surely I can't wait that long, only to be faced with another couple hundred turns to churn out a bank. There's nothing to chop, as this was almost entirely jungle before I settled.

Do I switch to slavery for a short time, whipping the vital buildings while I have the chance? There are two hills I haven't done anything with, intending ultimately to cottage or mill them; should I mine them and keep them handy? Even then, six base hammers isn't going to serve me very well...