City Resource Question

[Drifter]

I have a very specific question about how a city uses available resources which I didn't see addressed in the FAQ or in the various links threads which I read.

With the normal settings, each worker up to city size 6 works the inner circle of regions and gets 1/6 of the amount of all resources in that circle. Once the city goes above size 6, the additional workers start working the second ring of regions and each additional worker gets 1/12 of all available resources in that ring.

That all makes sense to me, but what happens if the second ring doesn't have the full 12 regions because another city border is too close.

For example, what if a city has neighbors on 3 sides, so that when it expands above size 6 the outer ring only has 3 available regions. If the city is size 7, which does the extra worker get:

- 1/3 of the available resources from the 3 regions

OR

- 1/12 of the available resources from the 3 regions

I'm assuming it won't over utilize the overlapping regions.

The logical answer is the first one, but it really depends on how CTP2 does the math and whether it dynamically considers the number of regions available to the city in the second ring of regions.

Anyone know for certain which way CTP2 does this?

[Locutus]

I haven't actually test this but logic dictates there's really only one answer possible. The logic you refer to is actually called intuition, which is not the same */Spock mode*

Regardless of how many tiles you have available, your city radius doesn't grow again until your city hits size 18. Every worker adds something to the total amount of resources collected, so under all circumstances your citizens collect 1/12th of all available resources in the second ring, regardless of how many tiles are available.

Gameplay-wise this makes sense: you're workers *always* collect 1/12th of the resources, regardless of circumstances. Of course, it's not very intuitive as the absolute number of resources can be much lower even though the people collecting the resources are the same. Think of it this way: the same number of people has to work on much less land, so the overcrowding makes it much harder to grow anything efficiently (small vegetable gardens are far less productive than large-scale industrial farms).

Note that in such cases Specialists become a far more attractive option, as 12/12 * (multipliers) * 3 * 10 food isn't an awful lot compared to 30 * 12 (assuming specialists collect 30 food, this differs per mod)

[Drifter]

Thanks Locutus.

I found some time to play around with the scenerio editor and confirmed that you are correct. The workers above population 6 get 1/12 of the available resources from what ever land is available in the ring, no matter how many regions that is. So in my example, if there are only 3 regions in the second ring, then the 7th worker gets 1/12 of the resources from only those 3 rings.

Definitely something to think about when placing cities. If you can't get a nearly full outer ring, then you might as well pack them close together because it will be more productive to use specialists than work a half complete outer ring.