Farms, cottages, mills or mines

[Slartibartfast]

This might be covered in some other strategy thread, so I'd be happy if someone could just point me to it, but basically what I'm wondering at is:
What is the 'best' improvement to build on each sort of plot? Obviously this might depend on whether you are going for high production or high food, but maybe some general guidelines? Do you, for instance, specialize by building farms on grasslands and workshops on plains, or vice versa to level the yield?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Given that specialization of cities is now almost required, it depends more on what you need for a given city than on the tile being improved.

[cal_01]

Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi
Given that specialization of cities is now almost required, it depends more on what you need for a given city than on the tile being improved.

Agreed.

Cottages = money or science cities.
Mines = production
Mills = balance out production in a city (if they lack hills)
Farms = a must, any square that can produce two food should have a farm.

I -really- like workshops later on in the game. You can easily get 1 food and four production in them by mid to late game!

[Blake]

Basically, you can get by okay without using mills, especially if there is a nice balance of flat land and hills. Mills are useful on severely lopsided maps.

if you have heaps and heaps of flat land, then a good river city can become a production powerhouse by investing in watermills.

Likewise a city with an excessive number of hills can continue to grow through the use of windmills.

Both kinds of mills tend to be better for Financial civs, for financial civs neither farms nor mines give the commerce bonus, but both kinds of mills do! (with enough techs).

[Sarxis]

Good point about the financial civs. I don't like cutting down too many trees if I can avoid it, so the lumbermills do come in handy.

[Slartibartfast]

Thank you for the answers.
What about specializing plots? Let's say I've got 10 available grassland and plains plots for my city, and I want a mix of food and hammers. Is it better to max food on the grassland by building farms, and max production on plains by building workshops - or should I try to get a fair mix of food and production on every plot?

[Veritass]

My workers can't seem to make up their minds...

I'm only on my second Civ-4 game, so excuse my ignorance (I did play Civ-1 to Civ-3 and Alien Crossfire though).

It seems that my workers are never happy with what they create: there are always blue circles with farms that they want to turn into cottages and cottages that they want to turn into farms, and other circles with mines that they want to turn into windmills and windmills they want to turn into mines.

Perhaps I am just confused by the three-layer map information, but for the most part, I take their recommendations on what to build in the square. Often they let me choose whether I want a farm or a cottage, or whether I want a windmill or a mine. Any good rules of thumb that anyone uses? Thanks.

[stormwriter]

I think i'm going to be more cognizant of what the computer builds. I saw one of Isabella's cities, and it was COVERED with farms in nearly every square. So, maybe take a second and count up the number of mines/mills/farms throughout the eras that the computer is using, and use that as an example. They must be doing something right, cause they can get some pretty huge cities going. I wonder if i could see how much production the enemy cities are doing? I'd probably have to turn on show resources mode, and count the hammers around the city.

[ducki]

I wonder if i could see how much production the enemy cities are doing? I'd probably have to turn on show resources mode, and count the hammers around the city.

YOu should be able to just turn on WorldBuilder(in SP only) and just look.

[Ansaga]

Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Thank you for the answers.
What about specializing plots? Let's say I've got 10 available grassland and plains plots for my city, and I want a mix of food and hammers. Is it better to max food on the grassland by building farms, and max production on plains by building workshops - or should I try to get a fair mix of food and production on every plot?

It depends on what you are trying to do. Personally if the area has a river and you didn't get watermills yet just make the area farms, lots and lots of farms. That way you have a high population and you can use specalized citizens. Priests are a good specalized citizen with gives things all round and then we have scientist and entertainers that give good bonus. I espically like when you get Angkor Wat wonder then I specalize a city with lots of food to have tons of priests so that will lead to +2 hammer per priest + tons of GP.

[Bobby Chicken]

The guide says you can build a watermill in any flat terrain. Does this mean watermills can be built in forests or are forests not flat? I need to know if blitzing machinery is worthwhile. As for farms vs. workshops, if you have a plains and a grassland, it doesn't matter which gets which improvement. As a general rule, arrange the tile workings to have +2 or +3 food although untill you reach maximum health or happiness. Of course no one should write in rule in stone in Civ 4....

[trev]

I am tending towards the idea myself of initially chopping all forest in initial few cities for quick settlers, barracks, military units etc. When the forest has been chopped, then I will irrigate near water, build cottages on grassland away from rivers, and mines on all hills (hope for some resource discoveries)

[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.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Except you don't get anything from Jungle. That's kind of annoying...

[mgdpublic]

Is there a quick reference as to what base terrain and additional features add to prod/commer/food and what lands can be improved with what? I always find myself thinking I can put a farm or cottage somewhere and then find out I can't. I also forget what chopping down forests/jungles does to the equation. I also sometimes see commerce differences for reasons I can't figure out.