City tile worked upon pop. increase

[Goethe80]

From what I see, the order the game proceeds means that the prog. calculates the pop increase, which automatically adds 1 more tile worked in the city, and adds the shields/food/commerce in, then works out whether or not you've completed construction of an item.

Is there any way to control this? I'm going to assume that c3c will assign the new citizen to what it thinks is the most efficient worked tile. I suppose there's no real way to control this, but I would be appreciative if someone could post what rules the prog. follows when deciding what's the most efficient worked tile for your new citizen.

(no, I'm not a micro-management freak.. well, except maybe for the 1st 3-4 cities )

[vmxa1]

Sort of, you can often set the citizen on tiles in such a way as to force the Govenor to place the new citizen on the tile you want.

IOW if yo need more shields, have a forrest tile free and have enough food to ensure the Gov will stick the new one on the forrest. You have to be sure to have the gov control happiness at that point (IIRC).

[Arnelos]

First of all, while the AI will assign the new tile based upon what it perceives the city to need most, you only get the additional SHIELDS from the new tile (sort of stupid, I know). This means that if your city is food poor after the pop increase and before the new tile is selected, the AI will many times select an unimproved non-bonus grassland tile (2 food, 0 shields) simply because it's the best tile for food in a city that needs more food... since only additional shields are counted, you get nothing extra.

The best way to game this little quirk is to, first of all, have the AI Governor set to "Emphasize Production" in all cities. This will slightly increase (emphasis on SLIGHTLY) the chance that the AI will select a high-production over high-commerce or high-food tile. However, the slight bonus in production can make a big difference if you're micromanaging and planning ahead.

A city that is 5 spt and 3 fpt under one WF setting and 6 spt and 2 fpt under another can be tweaked to give you 2 more food earlier (getting your pop increase a full turn sooner than otherwise) and then use the pop increase (extra tile hopefully a forest or a mined bonus grassland tile, etc.) to finish a settler as the pop increases. If the pop increase would otherwise result in an unhappy pop point, all the better for the timing.

Using such a tactic repeatedly over time can be very effective. The trick is being able to anticipate what tile the AI will pick. I've found this incredibly frustrating at times... the AI will far too often pick a high-food tile with little or no shield bonus as the free tile (completely useless). The key seems to be making sure that the last turn you do the pop increase is a turn on which you've set the city to max out its food income so that it's more likely to pick a high-production tile when the AI looks to pick the next one.

[Aeson]

Cut-n-pasted from another post:

I've also noticed in C3C you don't always get the highest production tile when growing with +3 food. IIRC 2.1.2 is prefered over 1.2.1 with +3. Definitely 2.1.1 is prefered over 1.2.0 with +3, while 1.2.1 being prefered over 2.1.1 with the same food surplus. This is something to keep in mind as it changes build queues from what they could have been in Civ/PtW.

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From what I've seen in C3C, it's the Food + Shields + Commerce of the tile taken into account at +3 food per turn. Shields being the tie breakers, or maybe they are slightly weighted more, not sure.

At +4 and +5 it seems to go for the highest shield tile always.

In Civ/PtW I think it always gave you the highest shield output tile if at 3 or more food surplus, and the best food tile if at 2 or less.