Trouble with Production Early Game

[CivLuvah]

I'm aiming for a domination victory but I seem to have trouble with trying to produce as many military units early in the game, around turn 50. It's so I could conquer the first civilization capital I see. But then I always play with huge maps. That's an obvious problem with regards to distance. When I do have several military units I always get preoccupied by barbarians.

Got any advice on increasing production capacity, especially in the early game?

By the way, I'm in mid game as Sumeria right now and the production capacity of my capital is high (with a little help from production cost reduction policies). The rest of my cities however still take around 20+ turns to build some units, no matter how many mines and lumbermills I had built within the vicinity of the cities.

 

[Victoria]

Got any advice on increasing production capacity, especially in the early game?

This game currently revolves around

1. Getting commercial zones As soon as you can, If you are building something else, start to build them and in the same turn swap back to what you were building. This locks in the price. When the commercial zone is produced you get its trader and sent it to an internal city with high production (City Centre, Commercial, industrial, Harbor all produce production for trade routes.) So hopefully you are using internal trade routes for production.

2. Beeline for industrial zones and get the places ASAP and then get those factories in place either before or after machinery.
Lumber mills on rivers are well worth getting machinery for. When you have factories they provide production for all cities within 6 tiles.... and then later the power plant does.

Not every strategy needs this and done in this way but its a general good idea. There are adjacency bonuses and CS/GP bonuses but you get the idea.... You want factories, and city overlap.

+20 just sounds like you have a few mines in place and not much else?... maybe even some good amenity bonus missing.

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Early game is a balance between good production and growth... growth is of quite some value but as you get near housing limits it is of less and less value.
Getting some good hills to start with is one thing but getting elephants on a hill is even better. There are some good yields to be had with some lucky starts.
The best early production is chopping down trees, you will find it is in all the strategies because speed is of the essence. Chopping is great and even chopping resources, say stone on a plain is worth chopping but stone on a hill you may want to keep.
Chop all wood apart form beside rivers, these make awesome lumber mills starting with Machinery.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I've found it's better to manage yourself the tiles worked in the very early game (first 2 pop). I usually try to work 3-4 food tiles before anything else to grow faster and be able to work more tiles earlier. It also gives you more science and culture earlier. After my capital reaches 2-3 pop, I usually shift to production, dependin on the terrain.

Also, depending on the difficulty, you might need as few as 3 Archers and 1 Warrior to take out an enemy unwalled city. You can start aggression using only them and keep producing units during the war.

 

[Victoria]

I've found it's better to manage yourself the tiles worked in the very early game (first 2 pop). I usually try to work 3-4 food tiles before anything else to grow faster and be able to work more tiles earlier. It also gives you more science and culture earlier. .

Good point @ShinigamiKenji ... The AI is rubbish, so why do you let it manage your population placements. More times that not I find it not doing the best for me.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Chopping/Harvesting could be the key to early hammer/cog production, bug there is a caveat:

Victoria already mentioning tree chopping and stone harvesting.

Tree Chopping is available with Mining. A Tree Chop is a base of 20 hammers/cogs

Jungle Chopping is available with Bronze Working. A Jungle Chop is a base of 10 food and 10 hammers/cogs.

Stone Harvesting has a base value of 25 hammers/cogs.

These harvest yields are scaled from 1x to 10x, depending on how much of the technology tree has been completed. At the beginning (turn 1-10), a forest chop = 20 hammers. A the end of the technology tree, a forest chop = 200 hammers.

Caveat: Chopping/Harvesting is not scaled properly for game speed though, so one will get the same yields for all speeds. This makes chopping optimal on Online speed and very good on Quick speed, whereas you might as well forget chopping on Marathon speed (its just not worthwhile).

The biggest problem with chopping/harvesting is the limited use Builders. It can literally cost more hammers to build Builders than the hammers they can generate via chopping/harvesting. Getting the +30% hammers for Builders policy really helps to reduce this cost though.

What actually may work better than chopping/harvesting for hammers is doing the same for food. Each food harvest will likely increase the city population by one. This can really increase the city hammer yield if the new population is working mines.

 

[Victoria]

@Sun Tzu Wu great idea, one has been doing this for the last 2 weeks. So chopping Marsh is a lot of food, not sure what the base is though

 

[Machiavelli24]

Production is not as necessary for domination as it may first appear. First, check out the Intro to Deity domination & timing attacks guide if you haven't. It will help you get your bearings. Don't expect to beat every AI with Ancient era units, especially on large maps. You'll need to follow up with another timing attack.

Gold (for unit upgrades) and Faith (for Theocracy), are aspects of effective domination strategies. It isn't all about production. Also, Cavalry are the best mid game option for timing attacks and they are on the opposite side of the technology tree from Factories. Delaying Cavalry to get Factories first will cripple the attack timing.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

@Sun Tzu Wu great idea, one has been doing this for the last 2 weeks. So chopping Marsh is a lot of food, not sure what the base is though

Yes, harvesting Marsh often causes the city to grow one population, whereas jungle has only half the food and may not always be enough.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Yes, harvesting Marsh often causes the city to grow one population, whereas jungle has only half the food and may not always be enough.

Ideally, this is done when one is at housing cap; there is no other reasonable way to grow in such a city, since normal growth is reduced to 25%.

 

[Victoria]

One thought marsh was more than 20 base? It seems that way. One often harvest marsh for a pop bump, it seems jolly underrated.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Production is not as necessary for domination as it may first appear. First, check out the Intro to Deity domination & timing attacks guide if you haven't. It will help you get your bearings. Don't expect to beat every AI with Ancient era units, especially on large maps. You'll need to follow up with another timing attack.

Gold (for unit upgrades) and Faith (for Theocracy), are aspects of effective domination strategies. It isn't all about production. Also, Cavalry are the best mid game option for timing attacks and they are on the opposite side of the technology tree from Factories. Delaying Cavalry to get Factories first will cripple the attack timing.

First, it is important to get a technological lead, so the first district you may want is a campus in all your core cities. This will allow your military units to be an Era or more advanced than your enemies.

Next get commercial districts, commercial buildings and maybe harbors up and traders built as Victoria suggested . Use internal trade routes to help new cities become more productive. For quicker rushes, this step can be omitted. Use policies to add gold to all trade routes.

For a faith fueled rush via theocracy, you will be going to Reformed Church in civics tree, so you will need both culture and faith. Get as many inspirations as possible, since you actually receive the culture these inspirations save. Other than that monuments and maybe one theatre district can be added, if progress though the civics tree seems slow. For faith, choose faith generating beliefs and built several Holy Sites and buildings and use faith multiplying policies.

In general build only 1-3 districts in each city. This will make the population required (4 for 2 districts; 7 for 3 districts) in each city easy to grow to in a reasonable amount of time. This also allows each city to specialize in 1 or 2 districts. A few cities can have 3 districts when that makes sense.

The exception is the capital which ideally will have as many districts as possible to increase the food and hammers that internal trade routes to it will get. City Center district provides 1 food and 1 hammer to trade routes. Encampment, Commercial District, Industrial Zone and Harbor will all add 1 hammer each. The Industrial Zone should likely be ommited since it requires a lot of research in the upper part of the technology tree which delays Cavalry in the bottom part.

 

[Victoria]

One issue with getting campuses early is you really want to lock down the production cost of CZ & IZ ASAP. Then chop into them later when chopping gets better value than at lock down.
There is some disagreement over the value of campuses, especially as first districts.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

One thought marsh was more than 20 base? It seems that way. One often harvest marsh for a pop bump, it seems jolly underrated.

I'd guess that Marsh is at least 25 food base, but I'm not sure. It could be more.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

One issue with getting campuses early is you really want to lock down the production cost of CZ & IZ ASAP. Then chop into them later when chopping gets better value than at lock down.
There is some disagreement over the value of campuses, especially as first districts.

Ok, maybe one Campus in the capital would be enough to gain the technology lead early on. To lock down district costs requires fast growth in one's cities. Getting to population 4 for two districts should normally be quite fast. Getting to population 7 for three districts will be more of a challenge. I think the solution here is never put more than three districts in a city, with the exception of the capital, and place them ASAP and build them as needed via chopping.

I also like the idea of specializing cities by the districts they build; that helps reduce districts per city. Also, all cities will have at most one district in common, the one most suitable for the desired Victory Condition. For Science Victory, one may want all cities to have Industrial Zones and many cities should have early Campuses.

 

[Victoria]

It looks like marsh is 66 regardless... I thought it was a big bump