Where should I allocate early villagers for a new city? I've been going all-in on industry, but someone posted it's best to go all-in on food until 6 villagers?

If you compare the ratio of (FIDS output of 1 population) / (food cost of 1 population) to the ratio of (FIDS output of an era 1 building) / (industry cost of an era 1 building), I believe usually only going from 1 -> 2 pop has a better ratio, and 2 -> 3 pop onwards is a lower return on investment. I typically do industry in a new city unless putting just a few person-turns into food gets me the next pop earlier.



Though it may depend somewhat on your heroes, empire plan, and how many improvements you play to buyout with dust on the first turn. For example, if you're going to buyout all the era 1 buildings instantly, then it may make sense to do food for a while before focusing on the bigger buildings. Or if you have a high-level Cultist hero in the city adding extra FIDSI per population, then population may be more valuable than usual, etc.



Also, the simple calculation mentioned above neglects the benefits of being allowed to build more districts. But that's hard to calculate, and you probably don't want more districts early on in a new city (due to the happiness loss).

Antistone wrote:
If you compare the ratio of (FIDS output of 1 population) / (food cost of 1 population) to the ratio of (FIDS output of an era 1 building) / (industry cost of an era 1 building), I believe usually only going from 1 -> 2 pop has a better ratio, and 2 -> 3 pop onwards is a lower return on investment. I typically do industry in a new city unless putting just a few person-turns into food gets me the next pop earlier.



Though it may depend somewhat on your heroes, empire plan, and how many improvements you play to buyout with dust on the first turn. For example, if you're going to buyout all the era 1 buildings instantly, then it may make sense to do food for a while before focusing on the bigger buildings. Or if you have a high-level Cultist hero in the city adding extra FIDSI per population, then population may be more valuable than usual, etc.



Also, the simple calculation mentioned above neglects the benefits of being allowed to build more districts. But that's hard to calculate, and you probably don't want more districts early on in a new city (due to the happiness loss).

Ah, ok; thanks for the detailed explanation. So I have not been doing it the wrong way, but a confirmation was absolutely necessary.



I was really confused when someone here (or Steam?) recently mentioned that the consensus was all workers on food till 6 workers (but then I read someone else writing a rather detailed mathematical formula on why industry all-in is generally best.

The way that I handle it is to put population on food if and only if moving one population halves the time to generation of new population. Which only really occurs in the first turns of a city, and often, not even then. Placing pop on food until 6 pop might be a useful strategy in some circumstances, but it's far from an accepted consensus.

Xenophon wrote:
Ah, ok; thanks for the detailed explanation. So I have not been doing it the wrong way, but a confirmation was absolutely necessary.



I was really confused when someone here (or Steam?) recently mentioned that the consensus was all workers on food till 6 workers (but then I read someone else writing a rather detailed mathematical formula on why industry all-in is generally best.

Actually it was mentioned here:

/#/endless-legend/forum/9-tips-tricks/thread/3833-settlers-when-where-how



But it was about a very specific scenario