What size production city is good for space race?

[civver_764]

I can't seem to get an early space race(as in, before 2000) not because I tech too slowly usually, but because the parts take forever to build. I just can't seem to get good sized production cities.

So what size do you guys usually have before starting to build the space ship? As in, how many hammers per turn? And advice on how to get production cities bigger?

 

[DaveMcW]

Cottages!!

With Universal Suffrage.

Ok, if that's still not enough hammers, try this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169213

 

[the reverend]

You need to have several cities that at least have decent production. Put all of the production multiplier buildings in those cities (forge, factory, some kind of power). You want to mine as many hills as possible and have railroads on your mines for +1. You should also have one super production city. Build the Ironworks here. In this city you only want to make food and production improvements. I usually mine hills, farm grassland, and workshop plains. When building your spaceship parts, you want your heavy production city to build the large parts, have your other cities work on the smaller parts. Thus, at any 1 time you should have about 6 cities building spaceship parts. Also, don't forget to build laboratories in every city that will build parts.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So what size do you guys usually have before starting to build the space ship? As in, how many hammers per turn? And advice on how to get production cities bigger?

Before BTS, a power house production center was 60 or so hammers before multipliers - usually realized via State Property. These days, with Levees and Caste System as well...

One thing to keep in mind is that you really only need big production cities for the big parts. Who wins the space race? The FIRST civilization who builds the LAST part!!!.

 

[nanomage]

i have won Space race only once so my advice isn't that useful.
i think your problem (getting bigger cities) lies with not placing your cities near food. Basically, size is not important for a hammer city.
late game the building which is main for production is levee.
nothing beats that +20 baze hammers which you can ideally get from it. well, nothing is ideal of course, but still.... rush build levee +forge+factory+power plant+lab in any city with decent amount of river tiles, and basically you will already a decent production city.
if you are building SS parts, this means you no longer need research, so replace all your cottages with watermill and workshops. adopt caste system and rise culture slider to compansate unhappiness penalty. if you have corps, max their output by bying resources from AI's for money. If you have not, adopt state property.
well, if nothing of what we've written helps, post a save.

 

[Single Malt]

The most important thing for space race is tech path. After rocketry I always beeline Fusion, as its the last tech the ai go for if pursuing this VC. Computers is along the tech path to fusion. Build the internet, as it ensures you do not fall way behind in key modern military techs (the ai loves flight, which has no relevance to space race, the ai also likes composites for the SS casing, the lowest hammer part for the SS). Superconductors is a good next tech for the labs. Then the techs for the other hammer-heavy parts, keeping an eye on what the ai is researching, so you can make the internet work for you.

The above assumes tech parity or deficit. With a tech lead I rarely go space

edit: I just realised the OP was about early space. I have no experience there, as the space race is my last resort, when all other options are exhausted.

 

[nanomage]

well, before 2000 is not what is commonly understood as "early space".

 

[civver_764]

Here's a current game of mine in the 1100s. The most production I can get out of a city is only 17 hammers per turn, and that's by starving them(-3 food). I have plenty of food, but I just can't seem to optimize production. Thanks for the links too, I'll have a look at those.

 

[Ultimocrat]

I'll re-iterate Dave and VoU's pointers to VoU's thread "evaluating production" -- it's really a great piece and helped me re-think my notions of how to get mega-production cities.

Also, production in the 1100s is way, way different than production in the space race era (btw to most of the higher-level posters here, "early space race" is probably before 1800). Without two of the workshop boosters, and without hills, it's difficult to trade surplus food for production. Special resources with 6 food+hammer yield are far and away the best tile improvements in the early game.

 

[batavier]

Here's a current game of mine in the 1100s. The most production I can get out of a city is only 17 hammers per turn, and that's by starving them(-3 food). I have plenty of food, but I just can't seem to optimize production. Thanks for the links too, I'll have a look at those.

At least some of your low production is because of you're on a water map, so everyone will likely have that problem. (except for the dutch) You can still build the moai statues somewhere to get more production.

The other reason for your low production, is that you work cottages everywhere, including in your heroic epic city. Cottages will give no hammers until you get to universal suffrage. Try to tech democracy ASAP. I'd still plow/workshop the cottages
in the heroic epic city.

You're not making good use of the hills east of TImbuktu. I'd put Tedekka 3E,
and put a city 1W2N and 1E2S of Walata. That will cover nearly all of the hills,
all the resources and everything is on the coast.
You can still put a city 4E1S of Timbuktu to grab more hills.

At this point slavery is still a good alternative for production. Make sure you keep working all hills/cottages. Whipping out more garrison in unhappy cities is good.
Switching to caste system is good as well. With caste system you get workshops that are as good as grassland hills, and they will get even better with chemistry.

You're so far ahead in tech that not going for conquest/domination and waiting for a spacerace to win would be silly.

 

[6K Man]

The key is laying the groundwork first. I'm not convinced that the bonuses from Labs and the Space Elevator are worth getting. Remember, the bonus is added to all your other bonuses... so if you already have Aluminium, Forge/Factory/Power and maybe Ironworks, you already have +300% hammers in a city. So taking time out from component production to build a hammer-intensive Lab to get to 350% isn't necessarily a good idea.

What I would recommend:

Mining Inc, and buying as many resources as you can get.

Converting surplus food tiles and commerce tiles into hammer tiles. Once you have all the space techs researched, you need neither beakers nor growth.

Saving your 2 best production cities to build the Engines, which are by far the slowest components to build (assuming you have Aluminium/Copper)

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I still always build labs everywhere for the science boost.

I always pre farm or pre workshop my towns so when the last tech is researched all the towns get turned into food or production at a rate of 1 per worker turn.

EDIT: Building 2 engines seems like a waste of time to me since only the Ironworks city will be able to build one i a timely manner (unless you can chop one out of your bureau capital). Other scenario is still building the casings elsewhere so you have time to build another.

 

[6K Man]

Good point - if you only have one really good production city, it may well be faster to launch a slower ship with one Engine, as opposed to waiting for the second Engine to be built.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

And even in the "still building casings elsewhere" scenario I find it is often better just to build the remainder in the Ironworks city anyway.

 

[civver_764]

Lol, I always thought workshops were a waste of improvement space, since they only gave +1 hammer. I never realized you could get them to +3 hammers AND maintain the food. I switched all my cottaged grassland tiles to workshops in my main production cities and I ended up winning the space race in 1935(earliest for me, could've done it way earlier if I didn't detract from the needed tech beelines). My main prod. city had over 170 hammers at one point with all of the bonuses stacked together .

 

[ParadigmShifter]

In BtS production corps are often better than running state property/caste system for the space race. It depends upon empire size really.

 

[RJM]

You're so far ahead in tech that not going for conquest/domination and waiting for a spacerace to win would be silly.

There is nothing "silly" about going for a space race win. It is a perfectly legitimate play style. The fact that it takes longer than other victories does not make it "silly".

RJM

 

[Laurwin]

Yea, I had a pretty big tech lead my last game as Ramses.(or whoever the egyptian dude is)

4 continents, I had mine completely, continents were like triangle shaped with the all of them pointing in the middle and all had their base at the maps edges (hard to explain )

I had a strong navy, but I felt that my diplomatic situation was so piss poor, that frankly I wasn't confident entirely on invading anyone.

I did eventually invade or at least declare war on sitting bull, I tried to woo stalin and darius on my side that way, but It didn't work, they just abstained in the UN vote ( I tried to win by UN initially so I built it before Manhattan, with some nasty scheming in mind...)

So, no one voted for me, UN went down to the drain, at that point the other victory conditions (score was crossed out) were conquest, domination, cultural (hard to get unless youve planned on winning by it), some one else had built Apostolic Palace so not that either...

And space race...

It dawned on me that Saladin had built Apollo Program first and was building casings and . .. .. .. . like crazy. I had gone physics->flight >radio and stuff like that. I was just about finishing manhattan project, then I went straight for rocketry naturally.

So at that point, I had military advantages, tanks, bombers, fighters, carriers, BBs DDs and generally a good navy with subs being built to carry tactical nukes also

problem was that saladin was strongest in power rating I think, and he was the one building SS parts, i would have to knock him out and somehow hold out against probably like 3 other civs who would gang up on me like they did before...

so I figured out it would be kinda hard to get them space ship parts, if all their productive lands were reduced to nuclear wasteland

that indeed worked out, first a wave of 9 tacticals hit saladin's production and cottage cities (slowing his research, he had lots of cottages I guess running a cottage economy?)

Then I nuked the most populous cities with ICBMs. I had about 3 very good prod cities, heroic epic+ moai+ academy, ironworks+national epic+academy, and lastly there was a pretty good production city with academy and all the fancy factories that I had in the aforementioned two top production cities.

So nuke production was guaranteed, and with that also enemies' nuke/space ship program's failure in getting there before me.

I also nuked stalin for revenge a couple of times for backstabbing me and not voting for me, and I just nuked the Inca's best city so they wouldn't get the Internet finished before me xD

 

[timmy827]

Here's a current game of mine in the 1100s. The most production I can get out of a city is only 17 hammers per turn, and that's by starving them(-3 food). I have plenty of food, but I just can't seem to optimize production. Thanks for the links too, I'll have a look at those.

Why worry about production when you're already 8 techs ahead of the nearest AI?
Move up to Noble.

 

[civver_764]

Noble is still pretty scary for me right now, but I've been trying to move up. There's always like twice as many barbs as in my Warlord games and they catch me off guard. I also tend to neglect military early in the game and AI declare on my 1 defender cities. I haven't been able to win a domination/conquest on Warlord yet(mainly because I suck at rushing.)