Farms, cottages, mills or mines

[piawak]

Originally posted by joncnunn
forest doesn't prevent you from building other improvements; it's just that it gets auto-choped [for shields] if you pick a building other than lumberjack builder.

Similarly, building an improvement on jungle clears the jungle.

Err, the hunter camp doesn't auto-chop a forest or jungle.

[Drachasor]

Sometimes you need to use workshops so that you can actually have production cities. Several times I have gotten no good hilly spots for a production city, or I found a place that had hills, but you couldn't irrigate it without biology. Workshops can then turn a place with just a few hills (say 4 or so) into a pretty good producer, and it gets better over time.

-Drachasor

[BigWilly1974]

I've noticed that the AI tends to use a LOT of cottages/hamlets/village/cities.

I also typically have trouble in the tech race game after game. I'm never really far behind, but I'm never in the lead either. Just far enough behind that it only really causes a problem late game when I'm trying to win, am "winning", but lose a space race.

It makes me wonder if building cottages rather than farms is the way to go. Right now, on tiles where I have choice, I typically go farms.

Advice?

[Drachasor]

You want some farms. A bit of a food surplus is a good thing as it makes your city grow faster. Aim for a few (I am not sure exactly how many at the moment) tiles where you have more than 2 food and then go for 2 food in all other tiles. That's what I try to do in my science cities. This means I usually irrigate the plains and cottage the grasslands. Cottages can be giving 7 commerce per tile once they get up to towns (and if you have enough techs--printing press, and the right civic--free speech). The earlier you get a few cities set up this way the better off you'll be, since it takes quite a while to get to towns.

-Drachasor