Where, Oh Where...

[Jon Shafer]

Do all those shields come from?

I have to admit that I'm a bit of an industrial/modern age n00b... I find that its too easy to become dominant before then, and lose interest in games that go that far.

Early in the game you're lucky to have cities which get into the 20-30 shield range. How will those numbers increase as you go through the industrial and modern ages, and how high could you get those 25-shields-in-the-Middle-Age cities?

[MoonWolf]

In my current game, my city with the hightest production gives an output of 142 (+ 3 wasted on corruption). When I get robotics, it will be more.

Not sure if one of the others are actually higher; I had a couple of nuclear meltdowns....

[Arrian]

With railroads, factories & Hoover, most core cities will produce a Tank in 2 turns. Tanks are 110 shields, IIRC. So at least 55 shields, but more likely in the 70-90 range. Monster production cities (like a 25-shielder in the medieval age) will most likely cross 100 shields/turn.

In AU207, my eventual capitol (moved 2x) was punching out a Tank per turn. That's with a hospital, factory, railroads & Hoover. The only city that could match it was my ironworks city (inferior city, but the IW is a big boost).

Add in nuc plants or mfg plants (I don't recall ever actually building mfg plants, though, since the game is surely won or lost at that point) and you could have really big numbers.

I'm pretty sure the best city I ever had, production-wise, was producing roughly 140 shields/turn (factory, IW, Hoover, rr's).

-Arrian

edit: obviously, another reason for the production boost is the pop boost once you can build hospitals.

[Arrian]

From memory, here is my capitol in my current game (nearing end of middle ages):

Carthage. Size 12. Production = 21 shields/turn.

1 city tile = 2f, 2s
1 irrigated wheat on fp = 6f, 0s
1 mined mountain = 0f, 3s
1 mined hill = 1f, 3s
3 mined plains = 3f, 6s
1 mined bonus grass = 2f, 2s
5 mined grass = 10f, 5s

With railroads, the city will gain +11 shield/turn, bringing it up to 32 shield/turn. Add a factory, and it's 48 shields/turn. Add Hoover, and it's 64. Add a hospital, and it will grow, adding more. If the growth adds 8 shields/turn, the base goes up to 40. With the factory & hoover bonus, that's 80.

So I'd expect Carthage to be producing around 80 shields/turn in the industrial age.

I think.

-Arrian

edit: or does hoover's bonus go on top of the factory's bonus? In which case, it would produce 90 shields, not 80.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I find that by the medival era, on a typical regent game, most of my size-12 cities are producing an average of 15 or so. This is entirely from memory and is a guess, of course. Obviously, certain cities during this period are producing 20+ while others are producing under 10.

[pedrojedi]

The most irritating fact in those medieval cities is that the medieval ages come to me with a big retraction fase, when I have to stop expanding for a while to build essential improvements like libraries, colosseums, cathedrals... With something like 30 turns of convulsion, normally this is the time when I get a little behind in warmongering, and the AI usually use well this timing to pressure me to bigger and bigger demands. Only when my cities are back online that I can produce all that they can and beat the AI again.