Why is my production so low?

Question

I'm trying to build Petra in my city, but it says it will take 994 turns:

I really don't know why the production is 1 (the additional +1 is from a social policy). I've read a little on how production worked, maybe it's happiness, maybe it's population, or the production itself is lacking.

Why is my production so low, and can I fix it?

Answer 1

You can only allocate your available citizens to hexes, so you can only work four hexes at this time. Besides the fact that developed land connects resources to your empire, the rest of your land is basically lying fallow.

Now, you still have very low production, so I'd say open up the manual citizen management tab in the top-right of this city management pane, and select "production focus". Often, when you annex cities you can have it set to a manual control that you don't want or, when you have small cities, the automatic controls could be defaulting to a food focus instead of a production focus.

However, more people can lead to more production, so you'll have to find a balance between making food to grow your city (to have more production) and making production to build the wonder.

Answer 2

Most of your resources in the early game are provided by worked tiles. A city can only work one tile in its radius per population point. Orleans can work 4 tiles.

Cities will, by default, try to produce enough food to grow at a reasonable rate- sometimes at the expense of production or gold. Orleans is probably (you haven't got a screenshot of the citizen management so I can't be certain) working the oasis and the 3 food tiles on the floodplain. None of these produce production so you have only the two production from the city itself.

There are two ways to fix this. The simplest way would be to set the city to production focus on the city screen. This causes it to prioritise production when selecting which tiles to work (as long as it doesn't starve) so it would work at least one of those 3 production hills. The second way would be to lock a high production tile so it is always worked.

Note that both of these methods will slow or stop Orleans growing which may, in the long run, be slower for building Petra. Sending a food trade route from Paris could solve this.

Answer 3

In order to build Petra more quickly, you need to have citizens work tiles that yield hammers (production).

In the early part of the game, your production comes mainly from tiles (which are hexagon-shaped) worked by citizens. As the game progresses, buildings and specialists play a larger role.

You only receive the yield (food/hammers/etc.) from tiles that are worked by your citizens.

Citizens work tiles as described below.

1. The tile of the city itself is worked automatically.
2. The city tile yields at least a minimal amount of food (2) and production (1).
3. Each citizen in your city can work an additional tile. In your question, your city has 4 citizens, so your city can work 4 tiles (in addition to the city tile).

If you expand the Citizen Management section in the upper right, you can see which citizens are working which tiles. You can also change which tiles are worked.

There are restrictions on which tiles can be worked by citizens.

1. Must be within your borders
2. Must be within 3 tiles of the city where the citizen lives
3. A tile can only be worked by a citizen from 1 city.