Desert and tundra without resources

[Action]

Do these lands ever become productive?

I have desert in my city radius and so far, I'm in the industrial era and can't seem to get anything out of it.

I know in the other civs you could eventually make the lands somewhat useful.

[thanakar]

The only thing I've been able to do with these lands is put a fort on them. In the four games I've played so far they have never become of any use unless a researched resource magically appears on it.

[Solver]

Desert is generally useless. Tundra sometimes has a river running through it, if you put watermills around it, you may have a small but productive city.

Desert with floodplains is great, though. Without, it can only be valuable if Oil turns out to be there.

[joncnunn]

In Civ IV, don't bother establishing a city that would be almost entirely desert [unless there's enough flood plains / oasis to counter]

Instead, have the nearest city(ies) to that region concentrate on culture so it can take in any resources that appear in those otherwise unproductive regions.

This is in sharp contrast to Civ III where deserts bloomed when rails became adviable.

[MattPilot]

Put a city on a desert tile. It will give you 2 food & a hammer like all other cities do.

[Proteus_MST]

Tundra with adjacent River lets you put farms there
(but you cannot irrigate tundra tiles which are adjacent to a tile with a farm on it, not even with bureaucracy)

Used this to provide food for a city in otherwise uninhabitable regions (mostly ice and tundra) which was just built to get some resources within its expanding city radii and to have less regions where barbarians could spawn

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Tundra with adjacent River lets you put farms there
(but you cannot irrigate tundra tiles which are adjacent to a tile with a farm on it, not even with bureaucracy)

Yes! Now I understand what I was seeing yesterday. Tundra next to fresh water produce 1 food or 2 food with farms. But tundra beyond that (next to farmed tundra, but not next to fresh water, and with Civil Service tech) cannot be farmed.

I was getting aggrivated trying to figure out how it decided if a tile could be farmed or not. It's becoming clearer now. Maybe I should read the manual