Workshops, Windmills, and Watermills

[egavactip]

This discussion is in itself really good evidence of the depth of Civ IV; there appears to be no "only one right way" to take to get the maximum benefit.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Seedle
Even in a trade city, or one built to be multi-purpose, I don't generally use windmills. If I don't use mines, I use cottages. If you run Universal Suffrage and Free Speech, which I nearly always do, you trade one food for , 5 trade?

Depends on the # of hills. 4 mines vs. 4 windmills, the windmills will have 2 more population, which can either work more tiles or become specialists.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Seedle
Even in a trade city, or one built to be multi-purpose, I don't generally use windmills. If I don't use mines, I use cottages. If you run Universal Suffrage and Free Speech, which I nearly always do, you trade one food for , 5 trade? (I can never remember exactly how much trade towns produce.) This is civic dependent, and only works on grassland hills, but running a specialized improvement takes better advantage of building multipliers as opposed to windmills.

The main purpose of windmills is food; it's very rarely "should I build cottages or windmills?" If you want to work all the squares of your city, the real question is usually, unless you have some great bonus food resources "should I work cottages and windmills, or farms and mines?" Otherwise, how are you going to feed those hills?

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Yosho


The main purpose of windmills is food; it's very rarely "should I build cottages or windmills?" If you want to work all the squares of your city, the real question is usually, unless you have some great bonus food resources "should I work cottages and windmills, or farms and mines?" Otherwise, how are you going to feed those hills?

Alright, lets run some numbers.
Lets say you have 2 grass land hills and a farmable, irrigable grassland square. We can ignore river, it will give the same bonus no matter what improvements we use.
1 cottage, 2 windmill, no freespeech/unisuffrage:
6 food, 4 production, 9 commerce, 12 commerce with financial.
with freespeech/unisuffrage:
6 food, 5 production, 11 commerce, 14 with financial

1 farm, 2 cottages, no civics:
6 food, 2 production, 10 commerce, 12 with financial
with civics:
6 food, 4 production, 14 commerce, 16 with financial

Hmm, with financial, if you aren't going to run the town civics, windmills are clearly the way to go. Even more so if you are going to run environmentalism (I don't ever use this, so I didn't run those numbers because I don't know what they are) However, with the town civics, you get more commerce from farm/ cottage for the same food yield. You do lose a hammer, but I tend to value commerce over hammers in my commerce cities. Even without the civics, you get more commerce out of farm/cottage if you don't have financial. The decision here is a bit tougher, 2 shields for one trade is a generally a good deal, but if you are really going for maximum efficiency with your improvements and city buildings (i.e. not building production multipliers in commerce cities, not building commerce multipliers in production cities) the farm/cottage has a slight edge.

There are caveats of course. The windmill strategy only requires one square to be constantly worked for growth, and the farm strategy has one less food before biology.(But I generally won't be hitting my food limit until after biology anyway.)

And just to be clear, I do build windmills, but only in odd situations. (A city that is otherwise well fed and flat has a plains hill, or a city has no fresh water for farms and can only feed itself with windmills, for example.)

Also, I'm no god of max/min like some people on here, I just learned from them. But when I moved up from warlord to noble (yes, the noble player gives strategy advice, I know ) at the same time I downloaded blake's ai for warlords, I got smacked around a few games until I learned to properly specialize my cities and skip buildings that didn't do any good in a particular city. And I'm sure if I try prince, I'll learn more about efficiency in city improvement.

edit:

Originally posted by Theben
Depends on the # of hills. 4 mines vs. 4 windmills, the windmills will have 2 more population, which can either work more tiles or become specialists.

If I want to work more tiles, I can build a farm. Obviously some cities don't have this option, but that is rare. Some quick numbers on production:
grassland farm, 2 grassland hills mined and railed:6 food, 8 hammers, no commerce.
grassland state property workshop, 2 grassland hills windmilled: 6 food, 7 hammers, 4 commerce

Although at first this looks close, in a production city, it generally isn't. +125% or more to hammers with generally no commerce multipliers (maybe a library) mean the higher hammer yield is worth the four trade. There will be exceptions, but to me, they are that, exceptions, not the rule.
As for specialists, they might be good for a specialist economy, but I generally run a cottage economy (actually, I run a religious/cottage economy, but that's another discussion.) Furthermore, even when a city could have the same hammer yield with specialists or without, it may better to do without (once again, barring SE or a GP city) For instance, if I have a 2 riverside grassland tiles left to work, all other tiles being worked at no food surplus (meaning I'll have 2 surplus once I work one of these two tiles) and I'm under state property, I can do 2 workshops or 2 watermills and an engineer. The watermills have alot going for them. They'll grow faster, eventually give the same production yield, and give a little trade. However, the additional citizen will also increase my cities unhealthiness. It is possible that by not having the extra citizen, I can avoid building a hospital or public transportation and put those hammers toward units or a more relevant building instead.

Now, obviously I am concentrating on the end game in these examples. If someone can run some numbers on the middle ages, I'd love to see them. Also, for production cities, someone could discuss the merits of the tile improvements with corporations, I always run state property. Sid's sushi food could allow caste workshops to be the best or something...

[couerdelion]

For the vast majority of the mid-game (that’s pre-renaissance), I’ll be whipping production and running up to happiness limits so food > production.

At this point, a windmill is comfortably stronger than a mine which I will tend to use if I want to limit growth and am not too interested in running with extra specialists.

Mines, apart from improvements to specials, really only feature in the early game when they are more useful for building settlers and workers. In fact, once machinery arrives, almost all of them will be replaced by windmills.

Watermills tend to beat almost anything in the later game so I tend to replace farms with these after rep parts. Generally, those places where I cannot build them will be cottaged (if riverside) and I’ll tend to leave these alone.

Once you’re into the renaissance period, I will not build any cottages. Far better, I think, to get the instant hit of the workshop or windmill then the pitiful +1/2 commerce from a growing cottage.

For the single industrial powerhouse – two if these if you include Heroic Epic – these will be situated in a site which can support high production. I will tend to use cities with few or no commerce specials, one or two production specials, and lots of river with maybe a few hills. These tend to be captured cities and it might be the case that I am working with rather rudimentary improvements. Either way, it’s watermills, windmills and workshops for these boys. A few of the weaker specials (wine, marble, silk, ivory, fur) might even be watermilled too.

Watermill and windmill gives the same food and production as a farm and a railroaded mine while the former gives +4 commerce with electricity. So the only question is whether or not the workshops are worth it. Here, I can compare a 2/3/0 tile with a 1/4/0 tile or a 1/4/0 tile with a 0/5/0 tile. In each case, I exchange 1 hammer for 1 food and with engineer specialists I can exchange it back and get science and GP points into the bargain.