2nd City Takes Forever To Build Something

[tjmccann]

Hello All,

Why does the second city (or 3rd) take forever to build something. My first city can knock out a builder in 4 turns - my 2nd city takes 37 turns. I've had the second city for at least 40 turns and it never seems to improve.

Thanks and Merry Christmas.

[Sstavix]

Take a look at where your second city is located. Is it near hills or a stone resource? Or is it in flat, featureless plains?

I sometimes find that it works better to buy a builder, rather than try to use production to generate one. Use the builder to build mines or lumber mills and that city starts getting much more productive. The only reason to hold on to gold in the beginning is to buy units... And builders are units!

[jmerry82]

Reasons for your second city to be slow to produce things:
- It's small. That city starts at 1 population (unless you're playing a later-era start) while your capital has grown a bit by then.
- Its terrain is worse than the capital. The standard map generation routine ensures starting locations have a certain level of "fertility"; the same service is not provided to additional cities.
- It doesn't have a Palace. The Palace provides free yields including 2 production; you don't get that in your other cities. Plus even more if you have envoys with city-states; every military (red) city-state that you have an envoy with is +1 to production when building units in the Palace city.
- It doesn't have a Palace. The Palace also provides 2 amenities; without that, the next city you found starts with -1 happiness and takes -10% to yields because of it. Unless you've hooked up a luxury, of course.

As you grow and develop your empire, your new cities will eventually approach your capital in production. But they're unlikely to exceed it, because the capital has a head start and will get plenty of development attention of its own.

[Greywander]

As others have said:
- You typically start in a favorable location, so your capital will have good terrain.
- Your capital will have grown before you can settle a second city, giving it more yields.
- Your capital also gets bonuses just from being the capital (more specifically from the Palace).

New cities require investment before they become profitable. You can either found them early and let them chug along at a snail's pace growing their population and building important infrastructure like a Monument, Granary, or Water Wheel, or you can build up the cash to just outright buy these buildings immediately to jumpstart the city's growth.

[grognardgary]

Salient things use your early mil units to mine barbs for gold and xP Use the gold to buy builders a explore for and grab goodie huts at levels prince and below they will sometimes give you builders and scouts. Use builder wisely. If your size two cap isn't growing to size three for ten plus turn and will immediately fall back to two because of the settler you are about to build don't spend that third charge in your capital Save it and send it along with the settlet and and escort to where you are going to build that second city and use it to improve a hex there even if it only increase food resource to three or four the more productive it will generally be.