When to stop using settler factories?

[Octavius]

Okay, so i set up 2 settler factories. I admit these are 6-turn ones so not the best, but it's still good. I'm now getting to the stage where i have about 6 settlers on their travels at any one time, and it's taking about 20 turns for them to get anywhere away from my main empire. I just wondered what would be the best time to stop expanding and get down to some serious building.
Many thanks.

 

[Tomoyo]

When you run out of room, unless there is an unreal amount of free land.

 

[DementedAvenger]

It sounds like the cities your settlers are building are probably very corrupt. However, I'd still recommend expanding until you can't expand anymore, because of increased unit support and a better chance of getting resources. Just irrigate everything in site (they won't get any shields anyway) and hire taxmen.

Keeping some settlers around can help later on in the game. If two civs go to war, you can usually sneak a city in where a conquered city's boundaries shrank. Also, if you conquer a large city close to the enemy capital, it's can be a good idea to raze an replace, i.e. raze the city and build one of your one.

 

[punkbass2000]

IT sounds like you don't have enough workers. Settler pumps become worker pumps pretty easily. IT should not take 20 turns for your settlers to get anywhere if you have enough workers unless this map is rediculously large and has far too few opponents. If you are going 60 tiles for new cities, you may want to stop building settlers anyway and start pumping out those workers ASAP. They can also be added to core cities after their next pop milestone is broken with an aque. or hospital.

 

[viper275]

Keep building them even if you run out of room. When you fight wars, they can take land that was autorazed or lost because of AI culture. Do serious building everywhere except the settler factories.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Only cities reasonably close to your capital are productive. Remote cities are only good for score or power as how the AI percieves it by land area.

Your cettler factories are most likely close to your capital. Sacrificing there productivity to bulid totally corrupt cities is not a good thing.

So only use your settler factories until you have your empire as large as it can get without going completely corrupt. Exceptions are a few key spots like resources or strategic defence points.

After that, just build your settler from other corrupt cities (that you conquered) even if you need to spend gold on rush building them. Its better spending 100 gold on rushing a settler in a corrupt city than wasting 4 turns of a potentially very productive city.

 

[Renata]

Depends what you're going for. If you're going for a spaceship victory, for example, at a level that is challenging for you, there is usually a point of diminishing returns on expansion. As Wacken points out, far-away cities will generally be too corrupt to do you much good, at least in the short run. You'd probably be better off converting your settler factories into 'real' cities, and building military and improvements. If you need more territory later, you can always take it by force.

If you're going for domination or conquest though, basically every patch of land that you occupy is one less patch of land you have to take later. So I'd push expansion much harder in that case. However, you don't necessarily have to keep the settler factories going to claim those last three tundra cities, or whatever. You could build a few settlers out of a few of your size-4 half-corrupt cities, and let the most efficient cities start on military.

The more you play, the more you'll get a feel for how much expansion is enough.

Renata