Problem with food / hammers

[Vinnnch]

Hello everybody !

I've been playing CivIV for about two weeks now (not very often cause I discovered a baby often cries).
And I am still hving trouble winning on Monarch games (what a pity...)

There is something that troubles me in the game start. I usually wait until my first city reaches size 3 before creating my first settler. So at this time, since my city won't grow for a while, I try to re-place my workers on the city map, trying to work the maximum number of hammers.
But every time, I see that the settler will be built in the same time.
I mean (I speak bad english), if my workers work essentially food-heavy squares, the settler will be built in (for example) 21 turns. But if I relocate one of these food-workers to a mined hill (carefully avoiding famine of course), it will still take 21 turns to build that settler !!!

How the hell is it possible ? One more time, all my CivI-CivII knowledge is of no use now...
thak you for your advice !!

[pDOTeter]

When creating a settler is uses the excess food that's available and these are converted to hammers. Relocating your income fields won't help in this case because you still have the same amount of hammers.

[guermantes]

[deleted]

[DaveV]

The key to speed building workers/settlers is the sum of food and hammers. So working a grassland forest (2 food, 1 hammer) is the same as a plain forest (1 food, 2 hammers), a forested plains hill (3 hammers), or a flood plain (3 food). Your production will go faster if you work plots with an output of more than 3: mined plains hills, irrigated flood plains, fish/clams/crabs with fishing nets (and, better still, lighthouse), corn/rice/wheat with farm, and, best of all, cows or pigs with pasture.

[Vinnnch]

Wow !
I must have missed this point in the manual. Thank you so much !!!

[Quillan]

The manual isn't very clear on that point, I'm afraid. It tells you the city won't grow because all the excess food is being used to build the settler; nowhere does it tell you (that I can find) that those excess food count as hammers towards building the settler or worker. I had to discover that in game.

[DirtyMartini]

It says it in the tutorial, if you can stand the tedium of playing it.

[guermantes]

I - who am completely new to the Civ-series - find the manual very deficient in many respects. I still can't play the game with any command and the things I have learnt regarding how to manage cities and make my empire grow wisely I have learnt here at Apolyton.