My comprehensive terrain improvement strategy:

[Enigma_Nova]

If you have too much military, then use some of it.

[gilfan]

Not everyone is a warmonger.

Even if you are, you don't necessarily want to be at war every turn.

What if you're on a continent alone and can't cross oceans yet?

[goshhash]

(i actually signed up for an account cuz i wanted to comment on this topic)

i gotta say, farms are not my favorite improvements by far. i prefer to do coastal cities if i can, and let the light house do its thing.

hammer ftw. seriously, all my cities are nothing but production slaves. i feed my people to raide my pop to the point that all available prodution spaces are used up and then kick them to stagnant, whic btw is another reason i dont like farms. i always need an odd number of food to truely stop pop from growing, and that farm always seems to screw me up later in the game and i get rid of it.

production > all imo, always has been with the civ line, and i think always will be. buildings come up lightning quick, armies appear over nite, and later in the game, kicking it to gold/rep is nice for the few turns until you finally learn X technology. building any and all prod bonus buildings is a must too. got to allow some overhead in your sick/healthy ratio as eah one of these buildings will add a sick. late in the game, having 100+ production cities just has saved me too many times, regardless of whatever strategy im going for.

my humble examples for why hammer > all

-if im going religious, huge amount of missionaries to spread the good word, plus tons of religious buildings and wonders. good relations abound.
-if im going for tech, early and quick +tech buildings, very quick settlers to building more high prod, tech themed colonies. having huge prod tiles = less of your pop you have to work the tiles = more specialists.
-if im going space race, thats a no brainer why production owns.
-warmonger? again, no brainer, i crank out troops like they were cockroaches. when outside armies attack, you can also literally build a poorly-defended city into a military base by the time the attacking army gets there.

im done rambling, just wanted to say "rah rah production" since everyone seems so farm and money loving =D

[gilfan]

Welcome to the boards.


Clearly production is superior to commerce when it comes to projects that can't be hurried, like spaceship parts, but in every other example you cite, hurrying with gold can do just as well or better. Plus, commerce has the advantage of flexibility. If I find myself in desperate need of troops immediately, I can have every city in my empire crank out any unit I want in one turn. If I get a new tech that allows a crucial wonder, I can buy it in one turn, if I need to.

I tried going heavy production, with upgraded workshops, watermills, etc, and consistently did much worse than when I went heavy commerce.