Civilization 5: City Guide Part 3 - City Output
Food, City Growth, and Production of Buildings and Wonders
| City Concepts | City Borders & Working Tiles | Build & Grow | Science, Gold, etc. | City Strength & Military |
The information on these next two pages is far from exhaustive; it is merely an introduction to game concepts that are not easily learned from the City Screen, a wikia, or the Civilopedia because the information is so scattered about. Civilization 5 with both Gods and Kings and the Brave New World DLC is a massive game with many gameplay options, allowing for innovation and many viable strategies. This is intended to teach a new player about the various contributions a city lends to the Civilization as a whole, how you can get it to grow, and the Social Policies you'll want to adopt to maximize gold, science, food, etc. Applying what you learn to every city in your nation will help you to succeed in the game and do better against higher difficulty AI and other people in Multiplayer. Experienced players can use the Comments form at the bottom of this page to provide their own strategies for improving Cities.
This first section on City Output will focus on those resources used directly by the city: Food and Production.
The City Screen - Information Panel
In the top left of the City Screen, you can see the amount of each stat your City is producing - from food and production to tourism and culture, all but Happiness which is a Civ-wide stat. These numbers can help you tweak your output if you are controlling things manually, and find the best setup for your city for the current situation in-game, for example needing gold to cover a deficit in the budget, while not losing too much food or production and stifling growth.
Food, Consumption, and Population Growth
Each Citizen in a City consumes 2 Food, whether working a tile, unemployed, or being used as a Specialist. Excess is stored, and when enough has been built up, a City will grow in population and have an additional Citizen. The cost goes up each time the City grows, meaning you will need to provide more and more food for your Citizens if you want to keep growth at a respectable rate. Food is one of the three types of Resources that can appear on the map. They will provide food as they stand, with tile Improvements either providing more Food or another bonus. Grassland, Plains, and Forest all provide food on their own, but you need more to really grow. In the beginning, farms accomplish this, Granaries and Water Mills boost it directly by providing +2 food each, and Granaries additionally generate 1 more food for the City for each deer, banana, or wheat tile that is worked. Aqueducts cause 40% of a City's food to stick around after it is consumed to create a new Citizen, thus speeding the growth of Cities by quite some degree.
Later in the game, technologies will begin to affect your Food output and allow you to make truly large Cities. Medical labs add 25% to the 40% an Aqueduct provides, for 65% of food stored over after growth. Technologies researched later in the game can boost the output of all farms by +1 - Civil Service for Farms on Rivers and Fertilizer for Farms everywhere else. Hospitals give +5 food directly - these things along with Farms and Food resources on the map allow your City to grow while still utilizing Specialists and giving you room to make use of lucrative Trading Post tile improvements that appear with Guilds technology. Cities that do not use Specialists will grow faster, until there are no further food tiles to work, at which point there is nothing else to do but become a Specialist or remain unemployed. A major factor to City growth is Happiness.
With a Granary in a City, you can create a Caravan or Cargo Ship that will transport food to the destination city without costing you anything. The amount transported seems to be determined by the size of the sending City, with Caravan (land) routes producing less than those from Cargo Ships, I suppose because ships can carry more.
The Hanging Gardens Wonder, which requires you to at least adopt the Tradition Social Policy, will give +6 food to a city and is built early in the game. It is wonderful for a small civilization, to allow for a large Capital and keep up Scientific and Gold output throughout the Eras, particularly if you take all the Policies in Tradition. Another means of getting extra food is Allying with Maritime City-States, who at max will give a few food to your Capital and one extra food to every City in your Civilization.
Production: Creating Wonders, Buildings, and Military Units Faster
Production comes from Hills and Forest tiles, while numerous buildings provide a flat bonus. Mines can be built on hills, and later Lumber Mills in forests with the Construction technology. Each item that a City can build has a cost and the production will gradually add up to that amount, producing your unit, building, or Wonder. If you need to switch to another project, for example stall production of a Wonder, you will not lose progress - it will retain the amount of hammers you've already put into it, as should be the case.
Civs can first access Engineer Specialists to make Great Engineers with the Metal Casting Tech's Workshop building. Any city can make them, and any that is not planned to be a small outpost should have one. When all Cities have a Workshop and Machinery has been Researched, you can build the Ironworks National Wonder in one of your cities and give it a flat +8 production. As noted on the first page, Cities that are on flat land can produce Windmills and those also have a slot for an Engineer specialist, while providing a flat bonus to production themselves and a +10% boost when creating buildings. Engineers also come from Factories (Industrialization Research) which require Coal but have 2 slots for Engineers. Using these specialists and resisting the urge to chop some of those forests and leave them for Lumber Mills later can lead to a City with great production. Cities with high production are well-suited to also get a Forge, Barracks, Armory, and eventually a Military Academy and be your primary Military production city. You can get there eventually, but first focus food to get it the necessary population to take advantage of all those hammers.
Great Engineers are particularly good in higher difficulty games where they can help to guarantee you are able to create a World Wonder before anyone else beats you to it. Early-game, it would be wise to place a Manufactory instead of hurrying a Wonder, unless you really need it. That will generate loads of production over time, and you can pump units out fast or convert that production to Gold or Science in times of need.
Types of Buildings
There are three types of Building in Civilization 5. First are your regular buildings that any city can make, but not all should. Buildings cost gold to maintain and it's not good to waste gold. Another type of building requires all other Cities to make a regular building to unlock; that is known as a National Wonder. All Civs can build one. They are all desirable buildings and give massive boosts to Gold, Research, Culture and Tourism (great works slots), Great Person Points, Faith (and Religious Pressure), and enhanced production. There are even a few more, those are just off the top of my head.
The last type of building is the Wonder. Wonders of the World can only be built once, in one City, and its benefits will go to that Civilization (or anyone who conquers it). You should not obsess over Wonders, but focus on those that are related to your strategy to win the game (victory conditions list)). Cities that work Marble get at least a 10% bonus to the production speed of at least some of the Wonders. Only working it counts. There is a Pantheon option (Religion's first step) that gives +15% production to Ancient/Classical Wonders, and of course Tradition's 15% boost. Playing as Egypt you get a +20% bonus to Wonder production. Go ahead and reload until you get marble nearby. We'll never know.
Buying with Gold and Faith
Early in the game, hammers (production) will be your main source of creating things for your Civilization, but later Gold and Faith become much more plentiful. Faith can be used to spread religion or buy buildings and units if your religion is set up for that. When you buy a Military Unit with Gold, it will automatically come promoted based on the buildings in the City - so there's no disadvantage; same goes for Faith purchasing. If you Adopt the Commerce Social Policy, it unlocks building Big Ben - that will reduce the gold cost of purchasing in all cities by 15%. You can get a further 25% discount by taking Mercantilism, a whopping 40% off the purchase price with Gold benefits, to boot! Great!
The Build Queue
Every City has a build Queue that can be viewed by clicking the box in the bottom left-hand corner near production that says Show Queue. From there, click units in the build list to set up a build order for the City to follow. Click items in the Queue to remove them. The Queue is very handy and can save you some micromanagement if you have a standard build order for new cities or those you've just snagged from an enemy - build a courthouse, windmill, workshop, then granary, for example. When it's done with the Queue, you'll be asked to choose what it should next produce.
Personally, I never use the Build Queue unless it's to repeatedly build a Unit. New technologies are always becoming available and I may want to build something that is not available to put in the queue when the current production is finished.
| City Concepts | City Borders & Working Tiles | Build & Grow | Science, Gold, etc. | City Strength & Military |
Share Tips and FAQs (2)
Our Sims Forum is the place to go for faster answers to questions and discussions about the game. Use the form below to share your own experiences and provide helpful tips to other readers.
Reply
Flag
2
In the game you saw, I probably had only 3-4 Cities at most, so it was easier to manage happiness. I wasn't aggressive, so I had plenty of trade partners to get Luxuries and didn't have a huge military so was able to afford more CS alliances. I would only turn off growth if happiness was nearing 0 and I wanted my main Science city to continue to grow. It is wise to turn off growth if you're having problems, but should quickly research a new tech for happiness, buy a religious building or trade for luxuries. The best would likely be allying with a mercantile CS that also has a Luxury or 2 that you don't have access to. Exploring the world is very important for that reason. I think that point is key - hovering over happiness and seeing what luxuries you're already benefiting from, and finding CS that have things your Citizens do not have access to yet. That will provide the largest boost at once. Later, your Ideology selection will help provide a lot of happiness so long as you aren't the one suffering Unhappiness from negative Public Opinion (see the Ideology guide) and can grow to new heights.