What to do with plains squares

[Dis]

So what do you guys do with them? farm them? cottage them? workshop?

I prefer farms myself, and sometimes go to great lengths to get irrigation over to them. I wonder if it's worth all this trouble. Especially when the computer is recommending I put cottages on them. hmm.

[Atomation]

This depends entirely on your happy/health cap. If you don't have much happy or health you will probably want to pack in cities and cottage plains. If you have a very high health/happy you will probably want to irrigate them to keep your food surplus high to extend more tiles over time.

[fed1943]

Usually farm.

Best regards,

[rjmatsleepers]

It depends on the function of the city they belong to. In my SSC, I always build a cottage. In a city that specialises in production, I will build a workshop - particularly if there is a good supply of food. Otherwise, I farm them if there is a convenient route to water. I tend to ignore them on my GPP pumps, until I discover biology.

RJM

[Nacht]

As long as there are more usefull tiles avoid them.

After that, if the city has not enough surplus food and has not reached any cap, farming is your only option.

If the city has some food to spare: cottages for commercial cities or a workshop for a production city.

After biology you can often change some farms into cottages/workshops.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Nacht
As long as there are more usefull tiles avoid them.

Full list of alternatives

a) Improve the resource that is on that tile
b) Windmill any hill
c) Watermills for riverside
d) Choose a specialist instead.
e) Work them until you want the population whipped for production

[Arrian]

Plains are typically the last tiles I do anything with if I can manage it (desert hills might be the last, actually). I often do farm them, but if the city in question has lots of food I may cottage them. If running State Property and lacking in hammers, a workshop would make sense.

Plains-on-river I may farm/cottage before I do something with a grassland-off-river tile, b/c of the commerce boost. But again it depends on the terrain available.

-Arrian

[Ming]

Yeah... Plains tiles that aren't on water are usually the last thing I touch. In most games, I never get to them

If the game does last that long, it really is dependent on the city needs or game situation. And that's only if there is really nothing better for the worker to be doing

[wodan11]

Cottage plains are awesome. When your city reaches the happy or health cap, a plains cottage is a very good option to be working.

Wodan

[couerdelion]

This would depend very much on circumstances. I can see these as being, for me, only a temporary measure while I am waiting for the next whipped unit/building.

[wodan11]

If you're using Slavery or running a SE, then you are probably never going to work plains. Post-Biology maybe, that's it.

In fact, when you see your city start to work a plains tile, that could be a good shorthand for "time to click the whip button or turn on a specialist".

Wodan

[MrWhereItsAt]

Early on:

Workshops are not worth it on plains unless you have a city in a dire resource situation. Such a city should be more of a specialist or trade (i.e. cottage) city anyway, and the workshop could help if you need shields to speed build something like a Market or Library. This is really not worth it unless you have a healthy surplus of food though, since the workshopped plains takes two food to work. In general, I'd say trading two food for two shields is not worth it except in particularly special circumstances.

Irrigation is only possible for plains next to fresh water tiles until you get Civil Service, and in this case you likely have some better food tiles along the river to improve instead. If I was getting close to Civil Service and had nothing better to do with my workers, I might irrigate a plain if it could pass the irrigation on to a special resource needing water (Rice, Wheat etc) as soon as I hit CS.

Otherwise though, early on in the game I would normally Cottage the plains. I wouldn't do this with many plains either, unless I really had nothing better to do.

Later,

after the bonuses to workshop resources that come with Chemistry and whatever the other techs are, a workshop is promising - it provides 3 or 4 shields, which is as good as a mined plains hill before railroads. By this stage, however, most of your cities should have grown up a lot, so unless you have food bonuses you won't be able to work many workshopped plains at once. However, it could help to have one or two of these around, so that if you need to build something faster, you can switch from food tiles to these workshopped ones for a few turns, and run at a food loss for a bit.

Remember that it can be good to start a tile with one thing, and change to another later in the game, also. An irrigated plain needed for early growth might be better off workshopped later on, if you have the food. But I really wouldn't bulldoze a town to put a farm in place. The time gone into getting that 5+ trade tile is not worth wasting.

The only other option is a watermill, on plains next to rivers. I wouldn't bother with this at all - does anyone ever build these on plains, and if so, how is it a better option than a workshop or cottage?

[Garth Vader]

I build watermills on plains all the time. What do you get like 2-3-2 or something from them once you have the bonuses. That makes an all-round good square.

[MrWhereItsAt]

2-3-2 sounds nice, but you have to wait a long time for those bonuses, and often by then I would have thought that cities have mostly fallen into their specialised roles. If you want more trade, food or shields there is a better option in all cases. And for all around tile yield, a well-used town could get you something like 1-1-7or more depending on traits and civics. And you don't need to wait long for most of that yield.

That said, a watermill might make an easy decision improvement later in the game. On the other hand once again, if you can afford to make such easy decisions, then probably it simply doesn't matter what goes on the plains tile.

[Tattila the Hun]

Plains? Pillage, mostly.