Either read what I've written below or read the manual: Help > Concepts > City concepts > Production
Freight units don't lower production cost. A city's current production project is like inserting coins (= shields) into a piggy bank (= the bar in the material panel) that will transform into a unit or a building when full. There's no way in C-evo to make that piggy bank smaller, but there are several ways to add extra coins to speed up production:
1. "integrating" any existing UNIT in a city that is working on any UNIT,
2. "integrating" an existing FREIGHT in a city that is working on ANYTHING except spaceship parts,
3. "rebuilding" an existing city improvement or state improvement in a city that is working on a city improvement or state improvement,
4. "buying" exactly the amount of shields that is needed to completely fill the bar provided current production output is not changed.
The shields that you get from any of these four actions yield are added to the production bar immediately.
Options 1 and 2 work like this:
You're supposed to move the unit (no matter where or when it was built) to a city whose production you'd like to boost. When the unit has arrived in that city, you give order to "integrate" the unit (press "z"), which will cause it to die but adds two thirds of its "cost" (that is, two thirds of the shields that went into this unit's production) to the city's production bar. (The third third is lost.)
Option 3 ("Rebuilding") does not mean you build something again, but that an existing building is dismantled for the benefit of a building under construction, so it has the same effect as options 1 and 2 but does not involve units. To "rebuild", click on the building you'd like to sacrifice, which must be in the same city as the target building.
Posted 23-Mar-10 10:25 by spam.maps