My comprehensive terrain improvement strategy:

[Bill3000]

This is because the lumbermill is the only one of those improvements that does not remove the forest.

A camp also does not remove a forest.

[Enigma_Nova]

Nor does a road!

[gilfan]

Mines and lumbermills give the exact same bonus, 2 shields, 3 if you have railroads. The only difference being if you happen to border a river, as was pointed out. It just boils down to short-term vs long-term. Are you willing to give up 1 shield per turn until replaceable parts comes around, and are you willing to give up the 30 hammer bonus from chopping, in exchange for a small health bonus.

IMO, it might be worth it if you're on an island by yourself, and grabbing territory quickly isn't an issue. If you're sharing your land mass, though, that +30 hammers is priceless for rushing settlers/workers.

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Cabbagemeister


I don't believe you are correct. Lumbermills do not give food like windmills do, but they are better than mines because they keep the forest, and they don't take away food. For a forested plains tile on a hill:

base: 1f 2s
mine: 0f 3s
windmill: 2f 1s 1c
lumbermill: 1f 3s

This is because the lumbermill is the only one of those improvements that does not remove the forest. So yes, it's only +1s, but it's +1s to a 1f/2s tile, rather than -1f/+2s to a 1f/1s tile.

As for lumbermill vs windmill, they have the same number of total "points" (f/s/c). It's just a question of whether you want food/commerce or shields.

You're mistaken, a forest/plains/hill has no food on it without a windmill. Grassland hills have 1 food, plains hills have none. You're mixing up grassland/hills and plains/hills in your examples.

Forest/plains/hill
Base: 0f 3s
Mine: 0f 4s
Windmill: 1f 3s 2c (if you have replaceable parts and electricity)
Lumbermill: 0f 4s

[Proteus_MST]

But there´s another benefit of mines which wasn´t mentioned in this thread.
Every worked mine has a certain chance per turn to discover resources.

Maybe the chances are not really high, but if a resource is discovered it gives much more production benefit than windmills for this tile and either gives its special benefit to your civ (if the resource wasn´t present in your civ before) or can be used to trade it with other civs.

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by gilfan
Farms suck. For most of the game, they only give one food, even with biology they only give two. they are the worst tile improvement in the game. Only build the absolute minimum number of farms you have to in order to keep your city growing.

Put windmills on all hills, unless you need to mine for a resource. windmills and mines are equally good, but every windmill you build is one fewer farm you have to build.

Put towns everywhere you can (short of the minimum food requirements) and use universal sufferage to get shield and hurry production with your vast amounts of gold.


Watermills and workshops are ok, but ONLY if you have state property. Otherwise stick to towns/windmills and the minimum required farms.

I think I agree with you for the most part and will try it your way in my next game. However, nothing beats a city on a floodplain river, with farms all around, for GP's.

[Crossfire]

Sorry, but I want mostly towns on those floodplains. I won't need the extra food with them already providing 3 each but I need all the commerce I can get. Only if I need more food will I farm one.

[Russian_King]

I disagree with ppl who just build cottages, theyre useless in the begining of the game, and later on u can get free speech and grow towns as quickly as they would have grown by that point naturally..

i usually build a few farms, near the rivers.. around 6 or so depending on how food intensive the terrain is, then i convert 2 or so to cottages when my city reaches a good pop and i have lots of food resources.

mines are crucial! every hill build a mine!! u need them for the improvements and wonders, improvements = culture, gold and production and everything u can think of and wonders = great ppl! if u dont build enough mines in ur territory ull fall behind on wonders!
technology can be acquired by discovering something noone else has and trading it with everyone at the sae time

vast amounts of gold can also be achieved through city improvements. and foundation of religions!

i try to get my cities averagely 3-4 hills, about half plains and half grass, doesnt always work out so some cities r less productive.
in general:

-ignoring the effects of forest for now!

a city radius should have about 24-25 food wothout improvements.
20 or so production
and 20+ gold ( sea helps)
this is without any resources!

every hill will have a mine: +8 prod
6 grasslands have farms: +6 food (12 with biology)
10 plains have cottages: +10-40(60)+10 prod with fre speech and emancipation

farms and cottages can be divided between plains and grass depending on where u have a river going etc.

so when u found a city try to get it close to 30 of all 3 resources (assuming you can find a spot with a few natural resources)
if one is higher than others, all u have to do is sacrifice some of it to give the other 2 a hand
so for example if u have 8 hills, u mite want to build a few mills on them!. if ur entire territory is made of plains (and has the 4 hills) you'd be well off building somewhat around 8-10 farms instead of 6 and perhaps building a few extra cottages in another place in ur empire!
just remember: gold is expendable because ur cities help each other, food or production are not because cities do not share it and have to be self sufficient! just try not to build ALL ur cities with poor gold

sea squares: give u gold most of all, but can also count as irrigated plains with no production. if u have these, make sure u have a good mixture of grass and hills (or grassed hills) or your city will fall in production and growth.

Forests:
very very useful stuff! hurry wonders and cultural improvements with these!
wonders? self explanatory
cultural improvements? because u want to build those faster than ur neighboring civ's city if they build it faster ull have to go to war

by the end of the game most forests will be gone
try to use them up at the beginning.
i also like to keep forests on hills and building lumber mills cos environmentalists r happy with em
if u dont have enough hills, leave a few forests, they serve the same purpose as a mine with lumbermills!

jungle=cut asap! useless hot n humid desease ridden stuff
desert=avoid
mountains=avoid but not as much as desert
tundra=much better than desert but still avoid
thats all i can say folks, good luck trying to figure it all out tho

[gilfan]

Mines aren't necessary to build things. With universal sufferage, you can easily substitute gold for hammers, and often it's vastly to your advantage to do so. Why wait 10-20 turns for a wonder to finish, when you can crank your tax rate way up and buy it in one turn? No need to risk another civ building it first. Another civ declares war and you're not militarily ready for them? Select all cities, control-click a military unit to place it at the top of every build queue, and gold-rush every unit. Instant army.

Using gold to buy prodution costs 2.5g per hammer. A mine with railroads produces two more hammers than a maxed out town, so you'd need 5g to break even... that fully grown town produces 7g with all civics/advances, 8 if you're a financial civ. Plus, it's far easier to get multipliers for gold than production. Banks/markets/grocers give +100% and are available much earlier than forge/factory/power, which only multiplies by 75%. Lastly, you can easily triple or better your science rate by going heavy on towns/windmills rather than farms/mines.

[Russian_King]

true but u dont get universal sufferage until the high middle of the game, which leads to u missing out on WHORDES of wonders
what if u dont build the pyramids? no stone! boned!

[gilfan]

Yes, it gets notably harder if you don't get pyramids, but it still can be done. With the vast amounts of commerce you get from a heavy-cottage strategy, you can get to democracy fairly quickly.

Also, I'm not saying ignore mines completely. I usually keep all my mines until replacable parts (windmills +1 hammers), then replace all mines with windmills 1f/1h/1c.

Basically, my argument boils down to the bonuses from town+windmill are a much larger cumulative bonus than farm+mine. Farms just add so little to a tile, and if you mine you need more farms to make up for the lack of food.

[Russian_King]

but still. in the beginning of the game it is much better to build mines! gold takes time
u can proly change it later if u want tho and rush buying is to much bother

[gilfan]

In case you didn't know, you can rush-buy in multiple cities with a single click. Either alt-click a city to select all, then click the buy button to buy for every city in your empire, or press f1 and control-click to pick the specific cities you want to rush.


Put the tax rate to 100% and build up a gold reserve of about 2000.
Put 6 or 7 buildings into each city's build queue
Every second turn, alt-click a city to select all and click the hurry-gold button. The reason you wait til every other turn is there's a premium charges for rushing a building that has 0 hammers.


You could turn on auto-build, but I dislike doing that because it might pick military units... I hate that.

[Enigma_Nova]

What's wrong with a military?

[gilfan]

Because buildings aren't redundant, but military units can be. If I've already got all the garrison and frontline troops I need, I don't want the AI building more and needlessly running up my maintenance costs. I really miss the ability from previous civ governors to block certain things from being auto-built (wonders, military, workers)