Useless to build things away from cities?

[axisworks]

I've set my workers to do automatic improvements to my territory a couple times, and they seem to build something on every single tile of land, whether it's within the radius of a city's useable land or not. I had two questions:

1. Does building (for instance) a mine outside of a city give you any benefit at all, or is it better to leave the land virgin and pristine? (roads/railroads, aside)

2. Is the worker "automatic" option for building improvements any good?

[proviisori]

1. it benefits you if the mine is on a resouce.

2. if you don't want to micromanage them. I personally use automatic option only in late game.

[Quillan]

I see three possible benefits to it:

1) As stated, if the improvement is on a resource, then the improvement (plus a transport link) gains you access to the resource.

2) If you plop a new city down over there, you've got already-improved territory that can be worked from the start.

3) If an enemy happens to invade you through that terrain, they'll stop to pillage these (currently worthless) improvements, which buys you a little time.

[Velociryx]

I do not automate workers, but I often build tile improvements outside my city radius, *especially* along any border with another civ.

Reason?

Because if I am attacked, the enemy army will stop to pillage my unused "improvements." Sure, he pockets a few coins by doing so, but I buy myself several turns worth of time to properly respond to the invasion (and, when I return the favor and start capturing his cities en masse, I get that money anyways, so basically, he's paying ME for capturing his cities!)

Pillage Zone. Good stuff.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Pillage zone. If you have that sort of cultural buffer, it's nice to have some improvements there to distract the AI.

Of course, improvements on land you can actually use go up first.

-Arrian

[gus_smedstad]

Besides the above reasons, occasionally I'll build a farm in order to provide irrigation.

- Gus

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by gus_smedstad
Besides the above reasons, occasionally I'll build a farm in order to provide irrigation.

- Gus

If the geography supports it, it's fun to run a line of farms to the border so the AI can start piping the water around his empire, getting rid of all sorts of stuff to do it, sometimes villages and the like. Then destory the feeder farm. Top fun, but very rarely possible.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I've noticed a tendency.

Forests and Jungles tend to spawn before I start building roads all over the place. It seems like improving the tiles keeps the spawn rate down.

[Jaybe]

Jungle & Forests have no problem with spawning onto roads, you need some further improvement to stop it. Of course, I have no qualms with forests which will permit a re-chop

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by johnmcd
If the geography supports it, it's fun to run a line of farms to the border so the AI can start piping the water around his empire, getting rid of all sorts of stuff to do it, sometimes villages and the like. Then destory the feeder farm. Top fun, but very rarely possible.

Are you sure you could do that?

Once I tried leeching off a computer player by building farms next to its. Didn't work.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Are you sure you could do that?

Once I tried leeching off a computer player by building farms next to its. Didn't work.

I've leached off AI farms in the past, and it's leached off mine. Maybe you need open borders? Maybe you didn't have Civil Service and he did? Dunno. Might even be a patch thing.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I do not automate workers, but I often build tile improvements outside my city radius, *especially* along any border with another civ.

Reason?

Because if I am attacked, the enemy army will stop to pillage my unused "improvements." Sure, he pockets a few coins by doing so, but I buy myself several turns worth of time to properly respond to the invasion (and, when I return the favor and start capturing his cities en masse, I get that money anyways, so basically, he's paying ME for capturing his cities!)

Pillage Zone. Good stuff.

-=Vel=-

I can just picture that team of 4 workers (more on slower game speeds) working tireless building cottages in the line of a 10-stack invasion force.

"Keep building, we're not ready yet!!"

I wonder if it would be possible to build a line of cottages that diverts their army into the middle of the desert and away from your cities

[Mr Justice]

Are you sure you could do that?

Once I tried leeching off a computer player by building farms next to its. Didn't work.

not sure on this but i recall a simialar situation in my own lands.
it happened after i broke the chain of farms.
so i think CIV4 requires that the farm is currently connected to water (dont think it matters how many tiles the chain stretches over before touching water)before you can make a new farm off it.

it may have been that the other civ had a chain of farms and then reworked a tile in the chain to something else.

Pillage buffer zones. good idea.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by couerdelion



I wonder if it would be possible to build a line of cottages that diverts their army into the middle of the desert and away from your cities

Or march them off a cliff like lemmings.

[joncnunn]

It rechecks presence of a chain each turn; if you lose a chain for any reason, the farms cut off lose the +1 from irrigation benfit.

I've had a city lose two pop points in a war from the AI breaking it's food chain via pillaging.

Originally posted by Mr Justice

not sure on this but i recall a simialar situation in my own lands.
it happened after i broke the chain of farms.
so i think CIV4 requires that the farm is currently connected to water (dont think it matters how many tiles the chain stretches over before touching water)before you can make a new farm off it.

it may have been that the other civ had a chain of farms and then reworked a tile in the chain to something else.

Pillage buffer zones. good idea.