Tweet
Something I've been doing is creating a city specifically for pumping out a huge quantity of hammers, it's (only) national wonder being the Ironworks.
The idea is firstly to run State Property, and secondly you need to be doing some a-conquering.
The interesting thing is you don't actually plan the Ironworks city from the start - you instead conquer an AI empire during the mid game and pick a city and rebuild it to as the ideal city to house the Ironworks. Your core cities can have whatever national wonders you want and have plenty of cottages, liberating you to build national wonders more freely and terraform with more of a commerce focus.
What you're looking for is a city on a river, with very few "dead" tiles (desert/mountain), floodplains and forests are good bonuses, as for flatlands vs hills - it matters not for State Property, if you are communist the grasslands, the hills, the forests - they are all equal!
(In terms of food/hammers, State Property Workshop == Lumbermill+Rail == Mine)
Take a hypothetical city, with spots for 5 watermills (basically the river runs straight through the city). It's ALL grassland, and has 1 mountain and a rice in radius. So it was a reclaimed Jungle, not the first place you'd expect to make a good hammer powerhouse.
When you acquire the city it'll probably be half-pillaged and with a bunch of farms because AI's like them. Bring a worker gang over and build watermills right away but otherwise leave the farms so it grows quickly to the maximum size, once it gets to that size, turn on Avoid Growth and start replacing the farms with workshops until it runs out of food, add more workshops as advances in health frees up more food.
The city will ultimately be paved entirely with watermills and workshops, other than the farm for the rice.
It (the hypothetical jungle city) brings in 49 food and thus will grow to size 24.
The 5 watermills produce 2 hammers each for 10 hammers.
The 13 workshops produce 3 hammers each for 39.
Finally it has 5 engineers for another 10 hammers.
Total hammers: 60
Add a forge, factory, hydro plant and the Ironworks. It produces a grand total of 180 hammers/turn and will build the SS Engine in just 7 turns - ON EPIC!
(And that's from a jungle city site with no +hammer resources
)
The use of the Ironworks city is solely to crank out wonders and SS parts. It can have the National Epic because it'll be pumping out serious Great Engineer points (and other points from late game wonders), or Wall Street if it happens to be holy, otherwise a lonely Ironworks is okay. Since most the time it WONT be building units, it shouldn't have Heroic Epic, Red Cross or Westpoint.
I suggest building Heroic Epic and Westpoint in one city (which should also be optimized for hammers), and then build Red Cross in any old city, as long as it can build units at a respectable rate. Since a lot of units don't benefit from medic it's kind of a waste to have Red Cross in your best unit pump.
The idea is firstly to run State Property, and secondly you need to be doing some a-conquering.
The interesting thing is you don't actually plan the Ironworks city from the start - you instead conquer an AI empire during the mid game and pick a city and rebuild it to as the ideal city to house the Ironworks. Your core cities can have whatever national wonders you want and have plenty of cottages, liberating you to build national wonders more freely and terraform with more of a commerce focus.
What you're looking for is a city on a river, with very few "dead" tiles (desert/mountain), floodplains and forests are good bonuses, as for flatlands vs hills - it matters not for State Property, if you are communist the grasslands, the hills, the forests - they are all equal!
(In terms of food/hammers, State Property Workshop == Lumbermill+Rail == Mine)
Take a hypothetical city, with spots for 5 watermills (basically the river runs straight through the city). It's ALL grassland, and has 1 mountain and a rice in radius. So it was a reclaimed Jungle, not the first place you'd expect to make a good hammer powerhouse.
When you acquire the city it'll probably be half-pillaged and with a bunch of farms because AI's like them. Bring a worker gang over and build watermills right away but otherwise leave the farms so it grows quickly to the maximum size, once it gets to that size, turn on Avoid Growth and start replacing the farms with workshops until it runs out of food, add more workshops as advances in health frees up more food.
The city will ultimately be paved entirely with watermills and workshops, other than the farm for the rice.
It (the hypothetical jungle city) brings in 49 food and thus will grow to size 24.
The 5 watermills produce 2 hammers each for 10 hammers.
The 13 workshops produce 3 hammers each for 39.
Finally it has 5 engineers for another 10 hammers.
Total hammers: 60
Add a forge, factory, hydro plant and the Ironworks. It produces a grand total of 180 hammers/turn and will build the SS Engine in just 7 turns - ON EPIC!
(And that's from a jungle city site with no +hammer resources
)The use of the Ironworks city is solely to crank out wonders and SS parts. It can have the National Epic because it'll be pumping out serious Great Engineer points (and other points from late game wonders), or Wall Street if it happens to be holy, otherwise a lonely Ironworks is okay. Since most the time it WONT be building units, it shouldn't have Heroic Epic, Red Cross or Westpoint.
I suggest building Heroic Epic and Westpoint in one city (which should also be optimized for hammers), and then build Red Cross in any old city, as long as it can build units at a respectable rate. Since a lot of units don't benefit from medic it's kind of a waste to have Red Cross in your best unit pump.
Comment