Workshops / Lumbermills / Waterwheels - Why use?

[Bobby Chicken]

After you discover electricity, building mills is ok because cottages won't have time to grow really. Windmills suck unless your city location was poorly chosen. Only with state property are workshops exeptable. Sticking to cottages, mines, and farms is easiest and usually works best.

[Kriegsspieler]

Originally posted by Bobby Chicken
After you discover electricity, building mills is ok because cottages won't have time to grow really. Windmills suck unless your city location was poorly chosen. Only with state property are workshops exeptable. Sticking to cottages, mines, and farms is easiest and usually works best.

In settings where there are plenty of food-related resources and/or hills with grassland, obviously it doesn't make much sense to build windmills. But I have often had to put a city somewhere (not because it was poorly chosen, but because I needed to have a city there) where there are a lot of hills that are either desert or plains in vegetation. In those cases, windmills are crucial for helping the city grow at all.

[bonscott]

I build tons of lumbermills. I typically do not chop many forests though so I have tons of them around. After you rail it they are very productive.

I'll build a windmill here and there if I want to continue to grow a hill surrounded city.

I'll typically build a cottage vs. watermill or workshop.

[Golden Bear]

Lumbermills retain the health benefits of forests.

They continue to supply a food resource as well as the hammers.

They benefit from RRs.

I always set aside some wooded squares around a city for later lumbermill benefit. I like em.

Windmills and workshops fill in gaps for cities that are deficient in certain resources. Windmills are not too useful but are important for cities that miss good agriculture squares

Workshops can supply a little benefit for ag cities that do not have good hammer resources nearby. These two are useful, but not for every city.

Waterwheels are handy for the food/production combination that they provide.

I use windmills, waterwheels and workshops when I am tuning a city and figure that I need a specific sort of boost from a square.

Lumbermills are among my favorites, however and are broadly useful.

GB

[Diadem]

Basicly food and hammer are interexchangebale. They are worth the same. A plains tile (1 hammer, 1 food) is as good as a grassland tile (2 food).

So let's add hammers and food to one number (called productivity).

Then with all technologies, railroad (which indeed does not add to workshops) and the right civics:


Farm -> +2
Watermill -> +3 / 2 c
Windmill -> +2 / 2 c
Lumbermill -> +3 / 1c / health/happiness
Mine -> +3
Workshop -> +3
Town -> +1 / 7 c

Clearly, watermills are the best buildings. You need a river for them. If you don't have a river go mines or workshops or lumbermills. Though lumbermills work best with Environmentalism which you can't have with state property. If you lack food, well, I guess that means you'll need some farms after all

[Golden Bear]

Nicely put!

[BigWilly1974]

Quick question...

I typically take a Financial civ on Monarch. Are cottages relatively more important for Financial Civs (because it plays right into the hands of the civ), or relatively less important (because you're making a good deal of commerce naturally thereby allowing you to focus more tiles on food (specialists) or hammers (production)?

[Hobelhouse]

If it's grassland, I put a farm on it.
If it's plains, I put a workshop on it.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by BigWilly1974
Quick question...

I typically take a Financial civ on Monarch. Are cottages relatively more important for Financial Civs (because it plays right into the hands of the civ), or relatively less important (because you're making a good deal of commerce naturally thereby allowing you to focus more tiles on food (specialists) or hammers (production)?

Depends on your stile of play it seems.
If you build lots of cottages as a financial civ you have lots of moeny available to found more cities and/or leave your science slider at high percentages during most of the game.
But of course you could also use the Goldbonus per tile with 2 commerce to build less cottages and build more workshops/mills/watermills instead, thereby having more production than normal (and being able to build city improvements/wonders/units faster).

You see, there are several possibilities to use your civ trait

[smbakeresq]

Depends on your stile of play it seems.
If you build lots of cottages as a financial civ you have lots of moeny available to found more cities and/or leave your science slider at high percentages during most of the game.
But of course you could also use the Goldbonus per tile with 2 commerce to build less cottages and build more workshops/mills/watermills instead, thereby having more production than normal (and being able to build city improvements/wonders/units faster).

You see, there are several possibilities to use your civ trait



Exactly right Proteus.
With a Financial Trait, you are less dependent on each cottage for gold because of the goldbonus. Therefore, you can put the mills of any type up and reap the bonus right away, along with production (which makes purchases cheaper) instead of having to wait for the growth period. The health bonuses retained is gravy.

[joncnunn]

Re: Workshops / Lumbermills / Waterwheels - Why use?

Yes, in a poor shield city in my current game, I built a couple of workshops.

Any grassland forest in a tile that can be worked by a city that hasn't been cut by the beginning of the reanance era tends to get a lumbermill.

Watermills? I found one suitable location in my current game.

Now windmills got a pretty decent workout in my current game since those cities with several hills also needed the food.

Originally posted by SerapisIV
Do people use workshops, lumbermills, and waterwheels?

I only recently got CIV and I can't see any big value in workshops or waterwheels, yet the AI uses them pretty regularly.

I've used lumbermills in cities with forests but few if any hills and are a necessity in tundra/forests, but they seem to have relatively limited usage.

I haven't noticed any discussion on these, so I figured I'd throw it out and see how more experienced CIV players have been using them.

[Falconne]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
The main problem I face is Culture, not Commerce. Though this would up my tech rate, I don't see how I can plan for a Commerce city when Food and Production tend to be better.

Having heaps of commerce gives you plenty of flexibility. I also need culture mid game, when borders are competing for tiles all around. By this stage I'd have plenty of towns grown, so I can set culture to 10 or 20% while still pumping out more science than that cheating AI.

As for farms, you only need so much at the start, because you don't want to grow the city faster than you can build hapiness and health improvements, which usually means you'll have plenty of tiles for cottages left over.

[The keeper]

I dont typically cut a lot of forests for the extra production - I hold on to them. I can usually get enough production out of forests by cutting only the ones that I want to use that space for something else.

If a city has 50% of its usuable tiles covered by forests, that is still 10 - 11 squares that I can use without ever having to cut a forest. All the extra forest will provide a very nice health benefit later on when I begin to add factories, forges, coal plants, airports, etc.

Once rails come online - the lumber mills are fantastic producers - and give the posibility of adding more citizens with the health benefit.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Depends on your stile of play it seems.
If you build lots of cottages as a financial civ you have lots of moeny available to found more cities and/or leave your science slider at high percentages during most of the game.
But of course you could also use the Goldbonus per tile with 2 commerce to build less cottages and build more workshops/mills/watermills instead, thereby having more production than normal (and being able to build city improvements/wonders/units faster).

You see, there are several possibilities to use your civ trait

IMO, the best way to go about it is to make $. Then once you completed the Pyramids you can flip to Universal Sufferage and rush buy anything you want.

YMMV.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The keeper
I dont typically cut a lot of forests for the extra production - I hold on to them. I can usually get enough production out of forests by cutting only the ones that I want to use that space for something else.

I like to retain forest tiles because of the health benefits, unless I need to clear cut a tile due to the presence of a special resources or if I need to create an irrigation chain.