The purpose of windmills...

[Blake]

... is to locate coal. I swear, everytime I build a windmill, come coal or uranium or whatever, it'll pop under a windmill! I thought this was crazy-talk, but a couple games one of my workers was really insistent on building a windmill, I didn't wanna let him, but gave in, I mean, the odd windmill is nice, right?
Sure enough a couple turns later steam rolls around, and coal appears under the worker. He didn't get to complete his windmill.

[alva]

It's because of the wood they use..it turns into coal.

[Bill3000]

I've found windmills to be useful. That extra food can help when there is no source of fresh water in sight.

[Senethro]

Whats all this jibba jabba about? I use windmills nearly exclusively. Does everyone else prefer mines?

[Dis]

I use mines on hills almost exlusively.

[GeoModder]

Depends, in the early game my farms provide enough food in combination with some mines on hills but as the population grows I gladly sacrifice them for the extra food windmills give so specialists can do their thing.

[Grumbold]

I love wind and water mills once they get the extra hammer and coin boosts. Much more output per tile than you get alternating farms, mines and cottages.

[Shogun Gunner]

They are very pretty

[Kassiopeia]

Don't hill tiles with mines that a city is working have that possibility of turning up resources like aluminium or uranium? That's why I stick to mining my hill tiles.

[Unspeakable Horror]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Don't hill tiles with mines that a city is working have that possibility of turning up resources like aluminium or uranium? That's why I stick to mining my hill tiles.

Yes, in my last game I found coal, which I already had, AND gold the turn after that

What are the chances of that?

I also had games where I didn´t find anything during the entire game too.

[Datajack Franit]

please explain windmills and watermills to a civ4 newbie

[Blake]

You get to build them higher in the tech tree. They make for well-rounded tiles. For example a grass hill with a windmill (and all tech) produces 2-2-1 (IIRC), while a mine produces 1-4-0.

[Datajack Franit]

so they basically improve those cities that in civ3 were doomed to never grow because of mines all over

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
so they basically improve those cities that in civ3 were doomed to never grow because of mines all over

Yes. There are several tile improvements that let you specialize your city and manage food/production/commerce balance.

For example, on plains, grasslands and floodplains you can build farms (food bonus), cottages (commerce bonus, with an additional strategic aspect of having to be worked on for a number of turns so they can grown into hamlets, villages and then towns) or workshops (production bonus, deducts from food). If the tile is on the river, you can also build a watermill (production bonus). On hills you can either build mines (production bonus) or windmills (food bonus). Forests can be either cut down to reveal the land beneath (forest is a feature now, not a terrain type, so it can grown on plains, grasslands, hills etc.) or you can build a lumbermill on them (which adds production and extra commerce if the forest is on the river).

Then, you get additional bonuses from various techs and civics. For example, state property gives additional food bonus on workshops and watermills, biology gives more food with farms, both printing press and free speech give extra commerce on towns, universal suffrage gives extra production on towns, electricity gives extra commerca on watermills and windmills, and both guilds and engineering increase production bonus of workshops.

Now, most of these features come as the game progresses. You need metal casting to build workshops, and (I think) engineering to build watermills and windmills. Lumbermills come ever later, with replacable parts (which is a middle gunpowder age tech).

So you are basically left with a choice - do I improve my lands now, wait for a proper tech or just do something now, and then tear it down and replace with something else? Just being able to build some improvement does not make the choice any easier - workshops are the best example of this, with a "vanilla" workshop giving -1 food +1 production, whereas a workshop with guilds and engineering invented and the civic of state property (available with communism) applied giving +1 food +3 production. Likewise, do you keep forests around waiting for lumbermills or cut them down for early significant one-time production boost (forests also have an additional benefit under environmentalism civic of making people happy).

Recently, my favourite strategy when playing Expansionistic Russia has been using some early farms and cottages, and then moving to watermills and workshops and aiming for State Property. Coupled with Police State, Bureaucracy (or Vassalage for war machine), Slavery and Organized Religion (or Theocracy for war machine), I have been able to achieve 200-something production in my capital and be a virtual military juggernaut (especially as being first to communism allows me usually to build Kremlin, which halves the production rush costs, making my strategy for reducing Emancipation-induced unrest by rushing buildings with population more effective).

Alternatively, you could go a heavy cottage strategy, adopt Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation and Free Religion, and essentially rake in cash and tech, as your commerce goes sky-high.

[Datajack Franit]

Thanks a lot!