Waterwheels?

[Nohbody8]

What are all of the criteria for placement of a waterwheel in the game? I know that the river has to be straight and that there can be only one waterwheel per square side. Sometimes I can't place a waterwheel on a stretch of river that looks straight to me. I've also noticed that the game doesn't like waterwheels at the headwaters of a river. If someone could post some pictures of examples it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[eris]

It is my experience that when you have a "straight" segment of river, it is actually following the border between two tiles. Given that both tiles are flat, the Watermill can only be built in one or the other of the two tiles, but not both. In other words, you cannot have two Watermills on the same segment of river. That may be some of what you are seeing.

[Senethro]

What do people think of waterwheels? They're probably my favorite late-game plains/river and tundra/river improvement. As late game I'm in conquer mode and in State Property, I find the hammers and 2food/tile very welcome.

[Dis]

I never build them. So I'm curious as to how good they are. Can anyone provide numbers to how good they are?

What about windmills? Are these any good. I like to build them once I get the tech. Though many of my hills are mined by this time. But I like them in poor food production cities.

[Calvin Vu]

Watermill is the best. With State Property and Electricity, it gives an extra food, two extra hammers and three extra gold for a total of 3 foods, 2 hammers and 4 golds on a grassland square. At that point, I even replace the river squares with cottages which have grown into Towns with watermills and exchanging 3 golds for 1 food and 2 hammers.

The only trick to maximize the number of watermills is that in a place where there is a 90-degree riverbend, you should put two watermills on the two sides where there is a 270-degree angle, not on the square where there is a 96-degree angle.

In other words, it doesn't matter on which side of the river (graphically) the watermill is built, the only thing that matters is whether the square on the other side of the river already has a watermill or not.

[Dis]

yeah but who runs state property?

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by Dis
yeah but who runs state property?

You're joking, right ? Some of the best Civ players around here (Blake, IIRC) would head straight for Communism and ignore everything else, just to get State Property ASAP. It's the best. I don't ever use anything else after getting Communism even though I don't beeline for it.

[Jaybe]

Watermills are great, even without State Property civic, especially after electricity powers up the extra commerce with them.

Dis, I am shocked that you haven't tried them. They are okay when first available and get better with the right techs. A great blend of extra hammers and commerce.

I rarely run State Property because I am only playing at Noble difficulty. Getting all that extra food and not paying anything for city distance maintenance is just too good. Question: if they had named it something else and it didn't come with the communism tech, would I still shun it?

[couerdelion]

Watermills probably the strongest basic tile improvement once you get State Property. +1f and +2h can do a lot for a city where you want a lot of production. I would, though, tend to favour towns in more commerce oriented cities so there is a definite distinction in my games between commerce and production cities here.

Dis, State Property is a strong civic, particularly if you have a large empire. Here the city maintenance cost saving is reason enough to use the civic.

Calvin Yu, when you say that the question is if the square on the other side of a river has a watermill, does this relate to "any" square or "all" squares separated by a stretch of river?

For example, if you had a river that moves in a "step" pattern S-E-S-E-S-E....., would you still be forced to build watermills diagonally, or could you build them on all the tiles adjoining the river - each time the tile simply chooses the "spare" river section

[Dis]

I built some waterwheels this game. They seem to be pretty good. Not sure why I didn't build them before.

But I still didn't run state property. For one, I'm opposed to the concept. .

But my empires aren't that large. I wish there was a good way to check the effects. Spiritual civs can do this better. Compare and contrast research rates and income rates between the two. I just always figured free market gave better commerce and research.

As I said, my empires aren't super large. But they are larger than the ai's (it's how I win ). So they are good sized.

My last game I got hampered in by the russians because of my starting position. My axeman and swordsment took care of that problem. I took all their cities but 1 (they capitulated) and I went from last in score to #1.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Dis
But I still didn't run state property. For one, I'm opposed to the concept. .

I wonder then how you manage to get by in this game if you don't use Slavery, Serfdom, Hereditary Rule, Police State, Mercantilism, Theocracy, Organised Religion etc...

[Arrian]

State Property is great, especially for a large, spread out empire. But even without it, watermills are solid improvements, particularly if you're taking over new lands and the AI has farmed everything. Building cottages and waiting for them to build up to towns would take too long to really pay off, whereas watermills give you solid food/production/commerce right away.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

I don't usually run large empires, but the nearest I got to running State Property was when taking over the second continent in a domination game. The trouble was, I executed a complex and daring plan to seize the Versailles city in the middle of a high-culture continent. This meant taking about 5 cities all round it as simultaneously as possible, which took a lot of units and planning.

Having pulled it off, it seemed to be an invalidation of the whole campaign to just go and run SP and make Versailles irrelevant. Also, a severe shortage of trade routes made a complelling case for Mercantilism. Do the warmongers here find that trade routes are hard to come by once you've conquered most people and pissed off all the others?

[Cort Haus]

Actually I have run State Property in OCC, ironically - at the end of the game for the spaceship hammers.

[ColdPhoenix]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Also, a severe shortage of trade routes made a complelling case for Mercantilism. Do the warmongers here find that trade routes are hard to come by once you've conquered most people and pissed off all the others?

I quite often find that everyone hates my civ as I never give in to demands, keep my own religion until computers (uni of sansk + spiral minoret) and don't like sharing continents (read "attack until I'm the only civ left on the continent). When this happens and people won't open borders I always run mercantilism with representation.