Ways into production

[cabert]

This could be an industrial thread, but no, it's only a game.
After health and happiness articles, by popular demand (a whole person asked for it), I'm back with some kind of "do it yourself" article about production.

I'll put more work into this in a few weeks, but I don't want my franchise to get lost, do I ?

Production as we all know, is the key to winning the game a lot more so than happiness, health, beakers or gold (just joking, check the other articles (credits to me is already done, credits to hackapell for his economic summary).

This article identifies the sources of production, the bonuses that you can get and some nice combos to benefit the most from them.
I'm not going into specialization for now, so I'm assuming it is clear for everyone that some cities aren't going to be production powerhouses. Don't expect your cottage spammed city to produce its library in 1 turn.
However, generally speaking, you will try to have the most production possible. This is what you see as in the game.

Where do you get those you need to build troops, buildings or wonders (or gold or beakers or culture)?

5 sources :

1. hammers from worked tiles
2. hammers from specialists (settled Great engineers, great prophets, great scientists, or engineers, priests and citizens)
3. chopped forest from around your city
4. conversion from population to hammers via slavery
5. conversion from gold to hammers via universal suffrage

There is a 6th source in BtS, for religious buildings of the "world religion" (the state religion of the Apostolic Palace owner). I won't go into much details on this. I will consider those hammers as those coming from settled specialists in the rest of the article.
There is also a 7th source in BtS with corporations. same as before, I'll consider those hammers as coming from settled specialists in the rest of the article.
Still, I'll try to get some informations together in chapter 1 about those 2 sources.

There is is also an overflow feature (check vale's article about it), that can be used to "focus" production on a specific project or to abuse the bonus multipliers.

There is another way to get troops when you need some, without actually producing them : drafting is shown in good details in this article from Vale.

How does it work :
You sum up overflow + hammers from the first 3 sources (chapter 1) and this gives you your base production for the given turn in the given city.
You then apply production modifiers (chapter 2) and you get your production total for the current turn in this city.
If you're not happy with the result you can (chapter 3):
- move around your citizens, from food and commerce tiles or from being specialists to higher production duties.
- use your workers to chop more wood around your city (source 3)
- rush the production by whipping your population (source 4)
- rush by paying for the missing hammers (source 5)

 

[cabert]

Tiles output for a start :
(I don't mention commerce, which has no impact on production here)
F = food
H = hammer

* Base tiles
Plains 1F1H
Plains hill 0F2H
Grasslandhill 1F1H
deserthill 0F1H
Forested plains 1F2H
Forested grassland 2F1H
Forested grassland hill 1F2H
Forested plains hill 0F3H
Forested tundra 1F1H
forested tundra hill 0F2H
jungled plains 0F1H
jungled grassland hill 0F1H
jungled plains hill 0F2H


In this pic, you have at the bottom tundra, then plains, then grassland, then desert, then for completeness a peak, a floodplain and an oasis.

Note that when you settle on a tile, the feature layer is removed. For instance, if you settle on a forested tile, the forest is removed. This being said, you get the unimproved output of the tile in food hammers and commerce in the city center, with a minimum of 2F1H1C.
So if you settle on a plains hill, your city center gives you 2F2H1C.
Even better, if you settle on stone on a plains hill, your city center gives you 2F3H1C.



* improved tiles under basic conditions (1)
(1) you need agriculture to build farms, mining to build mines, fishing to work water tiles, metal casting to build workshops, machinery to build windmills or watermills, Replaceable Parts to build lumbermills
Farmed plains 2F1H
Windmilled Plainshill 1F2H
Windmilled Grassland hill 2F1H
Windmilled deserthill 1F1H
Mined plains hill 0F 4H
Mined grassland hill 1F3H
Mined deserthill 0F3H
workshopped plains 0F2H
workshopped grassland 1F1H
workshopped FloodPlains 2F1H
watermilled plains 1F2H
watermilled grassland 2F1H
watermilled Floodplains 3F1H
Lumbermilled forest grassland 2F2H
Lumbermilled forest plains 1F3H
Lumbermilled forest grassland hill 1F3H
Lumbermilled forest plains hill 0F4H


* production specials(base/improved without commerce)
first part : I will assume for the following specials that they are on a grassland hill
Aluminum 1F2H / 1F5H (revealed by Industrialism, requires a mine)
Coal 1F2H / 1F5H (revealed by steam power, requires a mine)
Gold 1F1H / 1F2H (requires a mine)
Silver 1F1H / 1F2H (requires a mine)
Gems 1F1H / 1F2H (requires a mine)
Copper 1F2H / 1F5H (revealed by bronze working, requires a mine)
Iron 1F2H / 1F5H (revealed by iron working, requires a mine)
Marble 1F2H / 1F3H (requires a quarry)
Stone 1F2H / 1F4H (requires a quarry)

Please note that :
- precious metals reduce the hammers output.
- marble with a quarry isn't better than a mine, from the hammers point of view


second part (these specials don't show up on hills) : I will assume that they are on grassland
Ivory 2F1H /2F2H
Cow 3F / 4F2H
Horse 2F1H / 2F3H
Oil 2F1H / 2F3H

whales with whaling boat get 1H.


Techs improving hammers output :
guilds and chemistry improve workshops (+1H each)
Replaceable Parts improves windmills (+1H)
biology improves farms (+1F), making it possible to work less farms for the same food = you can work more hammer rich, food poor tiles like mines.
Railroad allows the railorad improvement over mines, lumbermills and quarries, giving +1h to those improvements

Civics improving output
Universal Suffrage gives 1H to towns.
State Property gives +1F to workshops and watermills. Although it's not a direct hammer output improvement, it allows you to replace farms with watermills or workshops, making for the given city a huge hammer improvement.
In BtS, caste system gives +1H to workshops.

Buildings (+wonders) improving tiles output, BtS only
for buildings giving bonus on base hammers, see the next chapter
Levees (require steampower and a city on a river!) give all riverside tiles +1H
Moai statues give all water tiles +1H


fully improved tiles output
(you must have the following techs : guilds, chemistry, replaceable parts, biology (for farms), railroad, you also need iron and coal)
Plains farm : 3F1P
Plains lumbermill with railroad : 1F4H
Plains hill mine with railroad : 0F5H
Plains lumbermill hill : 0F5H
Plains watermill : 1F3H (2F3H if running state property)
Plains workshop : 0F4H (1F4H if running state property, 0F5H if playing BtS and running caste system, 1F5H if running state property and caste system in BtS)
Plains town (who cares about cottages ) : 1F1H (1F2H if running universal suffrage)
Grassland farms produce no hammers but 4F !
Grassland lumbermill with railroad : 2F3H
Grassland hill mine with railroad : 1F4H
grassland lumbermill hill with railroad : 1F4H
grassland watermill : 2F2H (3F2H if running state property)
grassland workshop : 1F3H (2F3H if running state property, 1F4H if playing BtS and running caste system, 2F4H if running state property and caste system in BtS)
Grassland town : 2F0H (2F1H if running universal suffrage)



I won't go into more situations (it's getting a bit long already!), but with aluminium or coal or copper or iron, you add +2 hammers to a mine, bringing a fully developped plains hill mine with railroad and iron underneath to 0F7H.

Note that workshopping/watermilling ivory gives a better hammer output than sticking with the obsolete ivory camp.

Special notice : there are events in BtS that modify a tile's output. Since you can't expect this to happen really often, I don't go into this and leave you the surprise.


specialists' output :
Engineer : 2 h, 3GPP
Priest : 1H 1gold, 3GPP
citizen : 1H
When to use specialists instead of tiles, with such a low output?
1° when you want a great person!
2° when you don't have tiles giving you what you want or when you have no more tile to work
3° when you have free specialists (SoL, mercantilism, industrial park in BtS)!

settled great people output
Great engineer : 3H, 3 beakers
great scientist : 1H, 6 beakers
Great prophet : 2H, 5 gold coins
The good part on those settle guys is this : you don't need to feed them and they are never unhappy + they benefit from representation's specialist bonus and fromp sistin chapel's bonus.
The other good part is you can earn the great people in 1 city and use him in another where he has more impact (like settling a great engineer in your ironworks city).
In a similar fashion, you can get 2H per religious building of the Apostolic's Palace religion if you run it as state religion.

So many informations, and you still don't know how to get a productive city?
check Voice of Unreason's articles about production.
evaluating production
commerce and production

 

[cabert]

In the previous chapter you saw what base output you could get from working tiles or specialists (don't forget to feed your miners or engineers!)
In this chapter, I'll summarize all the available bonus you can get.
bonus from buildings

• a forge gives +25% production
• a factory +25%, +50% with power (you only get 1 bonus from power even if you have a nuclear plant, a coal plant and a hydroplant)
• ironworks (+50% if you have iron, + 50% if you have coal)
• heroic epic for military units,
• labs +50% for space parts

bonus from civics

• bureaucracy, +50% hammers in your capital
• police state, +25% for units
• organized religion, +25% for buildings (includes wonders, but not space parts)

bonus from resources

[*]stone +100% H to walls and castles, to christian cathedrals, synagogues and a large number of wonders including the famous pyramids,
[*]marble +100% to hindu mandirs, mosques and to a large number of wonders including the great library, the heroic epic and the national epic
[*]copper +100% to Buddhist Stupas, Confucian Academies, Taoist Pagodas, to space parts (Cockpit, Life Support, Stasis Chamber) and a few wonders including the Internet
[*]iron +100% for some wonder, +50% in your ironworks city,
[*]coal +50% in your ironworks city,
[*]gold +100% to some wonder in BtS (the unwritable one which allows all religious civics),
[*]ivory +100% to some wonder in BtS (statue of zeus?),
[*]aluminium +100% on some spaceship parts


- bonus from traits :

• most traits give bonuses on some specific buildings, like +100% on hammers towards barracks if you're agressive. This bonus can be the best think of a given trait, like double speed of theatres and libraries for creative!
• industrialism also gives a 50% bonus on all wonders,
• expansive gives a bonus on workers(+50% hammers in warlords, +25% in BtS, zilch in vanilla)
• imperialistic gives a bonus on building settlers (+50%? need to check)

What all this for?
Let's assume you are running bureaucracy and organized religion, and you are industrious.
When you start building the pyramids in your capital (with your state religion), with 10 base hammers (not a lot but it's early), you get
10 * (1+0,25 from orgrel + 0,5 from capital + 0,5 from industrious) = 22,5 hammers/turn.

Also note that those bonuses apply to hammers from chopping forests and from whipping.

 

[cabert]

In this chapter, I'll try to show what you can do to help things going a bit faster.

Mostly, this is done by chopping, whipping away population or $rushing.
It can also be done by starving your population (or slowing growth), which is the slow way to whip (you need mines for this obviously).



What can you expect from those rushing options?

Chopping
To cut wood you need to know Bronzeworking, and you need a worker in the woods.

Chopping a forest down is worth 20 hammers on normal speed before maths, 30 hammers after (you need the tech to count the trees, probably). This is the maximum output. The further the trees are from your city, the less you hammers you get from it.

Chopping a forest costs 3 worker turns on normal speed. So either you send 3 workers on a tile and chop it down in 1 turn (+1 turn to move into the forest if you're not playing India with its fast workers) or send 1 worker and let it chop for 3 turns.
Note that both the output of chopping and the number of worker turns needed scale with game speed.
Also note that all the bonuses you have in the target city apply to the hammers from chopping.
What is prechopping you've heard about? It's about applying worker turns to a forest then leaving before the forest really is chopped. This is useful for a wonder you really want : you prechop all the forests around your city, then as soon as you have the tech you need, you send a worker in and apply the final worker turn to chop. This way you can get all your forests cut down in a single turn with 1 worker/forest. Note that if you don't build a road into the forest you still lose 12 turn to move in.
Prechopping can also be used to keep your workers busy while researching a worker tech in the beginning.
Another thing about chopping is to chose where the hammers from a chop are going.
This is rather simple. They go into the city that has the tile amongst its active tiles. This means that even you don't work the tile in your target, you should not let a different city use it if you want the hammers.
If no city has the tile in its active tile, they go into the closest city. If 2 cities are equidistant, it's the oldest that gets the hammers.
Beware : you can chop inside foreign cultural borders, but you won't earn the hammers.

Whipping population aka pop rushing:
You need to be running the slavery civic, which requires bronze working. You can only whip away half the population in a given city.
Although you can whip more than once in a given city in a given turn, you can only finish one item at the end of the turn.
One population point is worth 30 base hammers on normal speed.
This scales with game speed, and all the bonuses you have in the city apply to the whip.
There is a penalty for whipping before having invested hammers.
There is also a penalty for whipping a wonder.
There is a unhappiness penalty of 1 for 10 turns. This penalty stacks in a very painful way :
If you whip twice, you get 2 unhappies for 10 turns, then you get down to 1 unhappy for 10 more turns.
What can you do and what do you get? You can finish a building/unit/wonder (not a project) at the end of the turn by pushing the pop rushing button provided you run slavery and have the necessary population = twice the cost of the whip.
For example, in a size 10 city, you can whip 5 population points away which is 150 base hammers worth of production, provided you spend at least 1 turn putting hammers into the build.

What would a whipper's turns look like?
Turn 1 : you assign all your citizens to max food tiles, earning a few "normal" hammers (let's say 3), and start producing an item (let's say a catapult)
Turn 2 : you whip away 2 population points, get 60 base hammers towards the catapult + 3 from turn 1 + 3 from turn 2.
Turn 3 : you have a catapult, and 26 hammers overflow + the 3 you're still producing. You can start anything, with 29 base hammers. If you did it right, you grew back 1 pop immediately to reach your happiness cap again immediately.
turn 4 to 10 : grow if possible (happiness cap!), or work max hammer tiles to prevent growth or build settlers/workers.
turn 11 : back to turn 1.

There is a very good article from VoiceofUnreason on whipping you can check, for more information.

Cash Rushing
You need to run universal suffrage (available through democracy or pyramids) and to have money in the bank.
You can buy units, buildings and wonders, but not projects.
The price is high : 3 gold/hammer.
There is a penalty for rushing without hammers invested (same as for pop rushing).
There is a penalty for rushing wonders.
Bonuses don't apply.
So you can buy walls for the same price, if you have stone or not.

What do you get? you get the item at the end of your turn, there is an overflow of exactly your base hammers.
You can manage more overflow by queue juggling.
An example?
Let's say you have 5 honest base hammers.
Turn 1 : you start a forge. 5 hammers go into it.
Turn 2 : you start a granary. 5 hammers go into it.
Turn 3 : you start a library. 5 hammers go into it.
turn 4: you start a courthouse. 5 hammers go into it.
Turn 5 : you pay (120-5)x3 = 345 gold to finish the forge.
turn 6 : you pay (60-5)x3= 165 gold to finish the granary.
turn 7 : you pay (90-5)x3 = 255 gold to finish the library.
turn 8 : you pay (120-5)x3 = 345 gold to finish the courthouse.
turn 9 : you can build what you want with (20 hammers overflow + 5 base hammers )*1,25 from the forge = 31 hammers.
My example doesn't seem very impressive? Ok, I must agree.
Now try it with your massive base hammers city, and get a 4 turns discount on the engine production .

 

[cabert]

I'll try to show here a few combos to let you get things done as fast and good as possible when it is needed.

preliminary philosophy course:
- You're not aways spiritual, but sometimes you are (or sometimes you play BtS and can switch civics for free, during a golden age or when you have christo redentor). This is good for using the best civics for a specific production.
- Everything has a price. You really must be aware that you're not getting representation's free beakers when you're $rushing.

Short list of combos:
- BW is a combo by itself, allowing to chop forests and to whip population. every early rush needs this.
- OrgRel when building up infra, then either pacifism or theocracy for using your infra. This can be coupled with slavery for the fastest results. Rushing a forge under orgreal to have even more bonus is kind of cool. Even better if you have gold, gems, silver to get over the happiness cost.
- police state + slavery + theocracy (or vassalage) for a few cheap high level units. Overkill, if you go police state + vassalage+slavery +theocracy, but with a ger you can reach level 4 out of barracks .
- bureaucracy combinations : bureau + orgrel + the right resource for a +175% hammers towards your favourite wonder. bureaucracy + police state + HE for fastest unit production ever.
- nationhood + theocracy for empire wide expansion. Cheaper and faster than slavery : drafting.
- (kremlin +) universal suffrage + state property (+ caste system if you play BtS) for "production anywhere". You keep your cottages in your ancient cities, load your new cities with workshops and watermills, buy the forges, factories and stuff you need, and build the spaceship faster that you research the techs.

One day soon, I'll move my lazy a$$ and write some details about those combos, but I'm sure you see the trick already.

 

[oyzar]

how about putting in when to whip when to use mines when to use workshops etc. What is best? When is drafting good? There should be some generals guidelines for this. IS it good to whip in production cities? what titles to whip away? mines or farms? how is whipping away cottages vs whipping farms or mines? Later how does this compare to goldrushing? What about drafting?

 

[cabert]

I think VoU's article about whipping is clear enough.
Same for Vale's article about drafting.

$ rushing is quite different and it requires a very different approach.
I guess high level cottage spammers (I'm thinking of DaveMcW) know exactly how and when to do this. I recognize when the time is right to do it, and know how to get into a situation to do it right (tech up to the military tech I need, then 100% cash + assigning merchants all over the place, while starting units, $ rush in low production cities, let high production cities finish on their own), but that's not enough to write a clear article about this.

My goal is to give a large toolbox for production, what you can expect from each tool, then link to articles getting more in depth for each tool (when available).

 

[oyzar]

I ment more like how they interact. Like when is it right to use one tool over another. You can have both rush buying whipping and drafting available at the same time for example.

 

[Hackapell]

Thanks for the mention! I have to finish that ASAP problem is I wrote most of it without BtS, so I can only use the info others give me
I'll definently get it done soon, though!

 

[Cyrus_the_Great]

cabert, I like your format. I'll be waiting to see what develops.

 

[UncleJJ]

I'm glad you're tackling this. We need a consise treatment of production methods.

One further consideration. Food to hammers directly when making settlers and workers, it has a simple 1 food = 1 hammer at all times. In the late game that is a bad exchange rate but very early in the game before granaries are built to make slavery efficient it's not too bad. It just needs mentioning for completeness and this is what your article here is about

 

[Diamondeye]

It can also be done by starving your population (or slowing growth), which is the slow way to whip (you need mines for this obviously).

...Or workshops, or plains towns (2 with US), or quarries on plains/tundra, or horsepastures on plains, or lumbermills on plains/tundra, or windmills on desert/tundra/plains hills, or watermills on tundra/plains/desert, or sea squares w/o lighthouse (dike and Moai each gives 1 ).

Sorry. Nitpicking.

 

[cv431410]

Believe or not, you can get 4 - 5 P from a cottage :

Plain: +1P
universal suffrage with 4C: +1P
Golden Age: +1P
Riverside : +1P
...

 

[cabert]

Believe or not, you can get 4 - 5 P from a cottage :

Plain: +1P
universal suffrage with 4C: +1P
Golden Age: +1P
Riverside : +1P
...

that makes 4. If you cottage a special production resource you can have 5 P indeed.

 

[cabert]

...Or workshops, or plains towns (2 with US), or quarries on plains/tundra, or horsepastures on plains, or lumbermills on plains/tundra, or windmills on desert/tundra/plains hills, or watermills on tundra/plains/desert, or sea squares w/o lighthouse (dike and Moai each gives 1 ).

Sorry. Nitpicking.

I see you got the point .
Don't be sorry.

 

[cabert]

Yes I'm shamelessly bumping my own thread.
Just wanted to say that I filled most of the chapters.

Still to do list :
- illustrate chapters 2 and 3
- write the details of chapter 4
- illustrate chapter 4
- write the "slow rush" part of chapter 2
- try to write a "what to do when" chapter

 

[JujuLautre]

I just thought about something some time ago, and I wanted to mention it to you: basically, I'm trying to get away from my SP addiction, and am wondering "how to build a production powerhouse without SP?". The answer is workshops, mines, mills... But how to know which is the best?

I'm not sure it's the best solution (considering this as an optimization problem), but my thought led to something usefull for every civic, not only out of SP. Basically, when you want to calculate the best improvement to put on a tile:
- first place the best improvements (pasture on pig, mine on copper...)
- then place farms to compensate any food-deficit (usually necessary)
- then to know which is the best improvements (in a pure question of maximum production output) for the remaining tiles, consider that:
* if you don't have biology, a tile with 1 food deficit sees its production divided by two (you need one farm to compensate for it, so two tiles with the production of only one improvement)
* if you don't have biology, a tile with two food deficit sees its production divided by three (see above)
* if you have biology, a tile with 1 food deficit sees its production lose one third
* if you have biology, a tile with 2 food deficit sees its production divided by two

How to use that? Well, it makes a simple formula to compare improvements, lets see:
- you have no biology. What is better: mine on grassland hill? Or mine on grassland plains? Grassland hill = 3/2, grassland plain = 4/3, so grassland hill is better (seems obvious, but this explains also that)
- you have no biology, but guilds, chemistry and RP; workshop or a watermill on a plains with river? Workshop gives 4/3, watermill gives 3/2, watermill is better
- you have biology, guilds, chemistry and RP; same question? Workshops gives 4/2, watermill gives 3*2/3, same output.
- you don't have bio, but RP and not railroads; windmill or mine on this grassland hill? Windmill gives 2, mine gives 3/2, windmill is better; with biology, the output becomes the same.

It also obviously explains why, under SP and Caste system with chemistry and guilds, a workshop is the star. I just did not include 3-food WP-watermill tiles at this moment.

Well, in the end I don't know if it's that usefull for other minds than mine, but I thought I would mention it

 

[cv431410]

What I am looking for, and hopefully some day you will complete, is a pattern recognition table in production cities.

Basically, when you look at a city, you know in advance what kind of units production you will get.

There are things that's obvious, which do not require pattern recognition; but it is those cases that are less obvious that require pattern recognition rules.


It is a matrix, the columns are:

1 turn/unit

2 turn/unit

3 turns/unit

4 turns/unit

...

The rows are

Axe/spear (23P) Longbow (33P) Maze (46P) .....


Here is the table

-------------Axe/spear (23P)---- Longbow (33P) ----Maze (46P) .....


1 turn/unit

2 turn/unit

3 turns/unit ---example

4 turns/unit



Each cell will have a long list.

Example. I am listing a few less-obvious item for 3-turns/Axe cell, i.e. you will produce an axe/spear every three turns.


size 1 city: 1 x corn tile (6F)
size 2 city: 1 x flood plain (4F) 1 x cow (3F3P)
size 3 city: 2 x flood plains(4F), 1 hill (3P1F)
size 4 city: 3 x farm tiles (3F), 1 hill (3P1F)


which means:

If I have a size-1 city with 1 corn (6F), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
If I have a size-2 city with 1 x flood plain (4F) 1 x cow (3F3P), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
...
If I have a size-4 city with 3 x farm tiles (3F), 1 hill (3P1F), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
...


Here is Math (assuming granuary, city tile is 2F1P):

size 1 city: 1 x corn tile (6F)
turn____food____size _____production
0 _____ 0/14 _____ 1 _____ 0/23
1 _____ 6/14 _____ 1 _____ 1/23
2 _____ 12/14 ____ 1 _____ 2/23
3 _____ 18/14 ____ 1 _____ 3/23
3 _____ (4+7)/16 ____ 2 _____ 3/23 (slave)
3 _____ (4+7)/14 ___ 1 _____ 23/23 (axe)

4 _____ 17/14 ____ 1 _____ 1/23
4 _____ (3+7)/16 ____ 2 _____ 1/23
5 _____ (16)/16 ____ 2 _____ 2/23
5 _____ 8/18 ____ 3 _____ 2/23
6 _____ 14/18 ____ 3 _____ 3/23 (slave)
....


size 2 city: 1 x flood plain (4F) 1 x cow (3F3P)
tototal food = 2 + 4 + 3 - 4 = 5
total production = 1 + 3 = 4
turn____food____size _____production
0 _____ 0/16 _____ 2 _____ 0/23
1 _____ 5/16 _____ 2 _____ 4/23
2 _____ 10/16 ____ 2 _____ 8/23
3 _____ 15/16 ____ 2 _____ 12/23
4 _____ 20/16 ____ 2 _____ 16/23
4 _____ (4+8)/18 ____ 3 _____ 16/23 (slave)
4 _____ 12/16 ___ 2 _____ 36/23 (axe)

5 _____ 17/16 ____ 2 _____ (4+13)/23
5 _____ (1+8)/18 ____ 3_____ 13/23 (slave)
5 _____ 9/16 ____ 2 _____ 33/23
6 _____ 14/16 ____ 2 _____ (4+10)/23 (axe)

....


size 4 city: 3 x farm tiles (3F), 1 hill (3P1F)

tototal food = 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 1 - 8 = 4
total production = 1 + 3 = 4

turn____food____size _____production
0 _____ 10/20 _____ 4 _____ 0/23
1 _____ 14/20 _____ 4 _____ 4/23
2 _____ 18/20 ____ 4 _____ 8/23
3 _____ 22/20 ____ 4 _____ 12/23
3 _____ (10+2)/22 ____ 5 _____ 12/23 (slave)
3 _____ (12)/20 ___ 4 _____ 32/23 (axe)

4 _____ 16/20 ____ 4 _____ (4+9)/23
5 _____ 20/20 ____ 4 _____ 17/23
5 _____ 10/22 ____ 5 _____ 17/23 (slave)
5 _____ 10/20 ____ 4 _____ 37/23 (axe)

6 _____ 14/20 ____ 4 _____ (4+14)/23

....


This requires a huge amount of work.

 

[cabert]

What I am looking for, and hopefully some day you will complete, is a pattern recognition table in production cities.

This requires a huge amount of work.

feel free to do it, I won't.

My keys to evaluate production are on 2 levels :
1) - immediate
2) - late game (post biology, mostly)

What are the entries :
- food available
- reasonably expectable size (happy cap? health and food?)
- number of hills you can work at this size.

Example :


In the above screenie, you can see a few hills, a cow, and wheat.
What base hammers can you expect for given sizes?
Size 1 : if you work a plains hill, you're at 6 base hammers
Size 2 : you can work 2 grassland hills or a cow and a grassland hill, for 8 base hammers (if you work the cow, you are food positive = growing)
Size 3 : you can work the cow, the plains hill and a grassland hill for 11 base hammers and be food positive.
Size 4 (which seems reachable even in the very early game): you can work the cow, a plains hill, 2 grassland hills for 14 base hammers. Little problem, you need iron working to put mines on those grassland hills (not to mention the culture you need)
Size 5: you can work the cow, and 4 grassland hills (same issue as before) for 16 base hammers.
Size 6 : you can work the cow, the wheat, plains hill, 3 grassland hills for 18 base hammers and be food positive.
Size 7 : you can work all the good hammer tiles : cow, wheat, plains hill and all 4 grassland hills, for 21 base hammers. This is what I think is the target for this city in the early game.
A catapult in 2 turns.

 

[cv431410]

>>Size 7 : you can work all the good hammer tiles : cow, wheat, plains hill and all 4 grassland hills, for 21 base hammers. This is what I think is the target for this city in the early game.
A catapult in 2 turns.
<<

You example shows exactly the point I want to address.

It take a size-7 city to produce a catapult in every 2 turns from 21 base hammers.

The same city can produce a catapult every 2 turns long before size 7; I think at size 4 (some1 need work out the math here), the city can already produce a catapult every 2 turns (That does not mean you should do that; but you have that production capability in case of a sudden war).

However, it is far from obvious that the city in this example can produce a catapult every 2 turns at size 4. The examples I have mentioned are also NOT obvious:

If I have a size-1 city with 1 corn (6F), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
If I have a size-2 city with 1 x flood plain (4F) 1 x cow (3F3P), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
If I have a size-4 city with 3 x farm tiles (3F), 1 hill (3P1F), I can get 1 axe every 3 turns.
...

This is a hard work, I know I will not work on this; but hopefully some1 will, like OTAKUjbski.