Another thing to note is that your capital comes with a special Palace building that provides some production , gold , science , and culture . That small flat number of production is a huge percentage when starting out , so no extra settlement will be able to produce as fast from population 1 as your capital did at the start of the game . As others have said , internal trade routes are a great way to get a new city on its feet . Also consider settling on Plains Hillsthe minimum yield for a City tile is 2 food 1 production , but any yields above this are kept . So settling on a tile with 2 production not including features like forest , they will be automatically removed will give your city an extra production that will always be worked .