What actually is Production ?

[dagriggstar]

(Unsure if right forum, kind of applies to every version of civ)

So the only definition for production I can find is that it is basically "how fast a city can build things". But my question is sort of why ?
At the start of the game, if I want more production I might force citizens to work a tile with more production. So, are those citizens my slaves ? Because I literally control where they live....
Today if a government wants to build something, they tend to pay some external company to do it. You could argue that as the external company is part of their "civilization" it would count as production, but then I'd ask what "purchase with gold" represents ? And even if it does count as production - it doesn't seem like anyone is getting paid...

I don't really have a suggestion here I'm more interested in a discussion around the idea of production

 

[Aurelesk]

Production is an abstraction of a gamemechanic. It is like an Industry, or the ability for that city to gather the materials (Ore / Woods) in order to produce things. In real life, the abundance of Food do not make babies faster: it prevents people to die from starvation. All gamemechanics do not have sense in real life and shouldn't: it would be boring and unbalanced.

For example: the border expansion. It grows with your Culture, but can also be bought with Gold. Question: to whom you are buying the land? Where the Gold go? To a magical land-owner? Or the Gold is sacrificed to a Deity in order to claim more lands?
Even with Gold: why can you get those things instantly with Gold why it takes more times with Production? It doesn't make sense!

Yes: it doesn't. I doesn't mean it should make sense anyway?

All Citizens in the game will work a tile, and there is some kind of "hidden chief" in the city that tells people what to do. So they are already forced to work. But Population is itself an abstraction. Normally, a Population grow exponentially, doubling every 20 years. Here? The more Population it gets, the harder it gets to grow Population, as if Demographic Transition was a thing in the Ancient era. Population is more an abstraction of the workforce and ability to exploit the land surrounding the city.

Production is the same thing. It is the ability of your city of exploiting resources like Ore in the Mines, and Wood. Look up the Industrialization and the Mine workers. So they have the needed resources to build infrastructure faster. Japan was very Iron-starved, which make their ability to build houses or arms themselves harder. The Katana is an example of this: the blacksmith has to work the metal in such way for a long time because the Iron findable was poor. People was raiding burnt houses in order to steal all the iron nail like today people are willing to steal Copper Wire.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

The post above does a very good job of explaining Civ's abstractions, but I also feel it may be helpful to add some justifications for the abstraction of Production.

When factories emerged during the Industrial Revolution, they dramatically increased the rate at which goods were manufactured. How do you represent that in-game? You could portray it at a very micro-level, with individual named items for every single tool and textile. But, since nobody wants to keep track of thousands of individual items, you abstract it for the sake of simplicity. So, that increased manufacturing rate is shown with an increase in a general resource known as Production.

Is it a perfect way of portraying industrial development? No. Any system that equates gathering stone to building an airport as increasing the same yield is going to be a little bit questionable when you start looking for fallacies. But, for the macro-level, hundreds-of-years-per-turn, over-generalization that is Civ, it works.

When you're tasked with depicting thousands of years of human history, you don't have the time to give everything its mechanical due.

(But hey, even when you simplify things to the Civ level, you end up with dozens of systems )

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yes production is the combination of materials and resources to build things and train units just abstracted to where you don't need to separate the materials and resources to build things.

It was mentioned before by someone how it would be interesting if things like buildings were separated into materials needed, sort of like how some units need strategic resources. For example woods tiles can give you certain amounts of timber every turn you work them and can be used to build certain buildings. Lumbermills build on those tiles would enhance the amount of timber you acquire. Timber however wouldn't be used to build a monument though and you would need to find a source of stone. Though a watermill would use both timber and stone to construct.

I'm not sure how many people would be open to that idea but as you can see harvesting materials from woods, quarries, mining etc. in game is all abstracted into one category: production.

 

[Zaarin]

In real life, the abundance of Food do not make babies faster: it prevents people to die from starvation.

Not strictly true. A well-fed population will have a lower infant mortality rate and a higher birthrate, and historically populations have exploded every time the carrying capacity of the land has increased, e.g., the Neolithic Revolution, the Medieval Climate Optimum, and the introduction of synthetic fertilizers.