Newbie and Terrain Improvements

[Barinthus]

In one of earlier threads someone suggested mining grassland squares and after thinking on this subject - it makes sense since it'd ensure that my workers are bringing in some shields along with grassland's food.

I'm curious as of to your preferred approaches such as do you mine grassland bonus tiles only or perhaps irrigrate grassland bonus tiles and mine regular grassland tiles?

What about plains? I often will take a look at what tiles are available to my city and figure out how much food and shield I can get out of those available tiles then make decision on whether to irrigrate or mine. If I decide I'd like to go for greater shield production from a plains tile, I forest them instead since it seems that I'd get same results anyway. Am I correct? I also assume that I'd get less pollution that way since I'm using forests not mines. But again, pollution could depend on the total shield used by that city regardless of where it came from. If anybody could help clear this one up for me, I'd appreciate it greatly.

Same with desert tiles, perhaps?

Mountains and hills - I mine them of course.

What about tundras? It seem to me that I'd get more if I forest them instead of mining those.

Floodplains - I irrigrate those. IIRC those cannot be mined, correct?

Road and railroad everything, I know

In my current epic game, I'm playing the Chinese and I prefer to use optimal city spacing for now. I will experiment with other methods of placing cities later on but anyway that's the point - I'm using that particular method in this game. I built a city right in middle of a large tundra space - all 20 squares were tundra. Seems that there's not enough food production to bring the city population higher than 2

I'm warring the English now just to seize their iron supply. However seeing that I have enough military units to go all the way to the coast (we share southern portion of the continent, I'm on the eastern side, and the Virgin Queen's on the western) I figured why not make my Chinese empire 'from shining sea to shining sea.' so I can explore the other side of the contnient and what lies beyond. Enough with my ramblings - it seems that only one possible optimal city placement for me in that area (due to destroying English one-population cities) is right in middle of 20 surrounding hill tiles. I figured that this city would be in the same situation with the one in the tundra - extremely low food production. Is there anything I could do other than abandoning the spot and seek a favorable terrority?

Again, thanks for your time!

[Jaybe]

Were you reading Why you do NOT want to mine shielded grasslands! or is this the thread you WANT to read?

[Barinthus]

Haha I haven't seen that one yet - I'm looking it up now.

[Jaybe]

I got it from the Civ3 Strategy - "Must Read" Threads .
Just happened to review it recently.

[Dominae]

Not sure that advice is all that good for a beginner...because 95% of the time you do want to Mine Bonus Grasslands. The thread deals with the other 5%.

[GePap]

I agree with mining bonus grassland-in despotism, these tiles are by far the best-2 food and 2 shields and 2 trade if it has a road. Only cattle squares beat it. BUt I don;t think its worth it to mine regular grassland.

[Guardian]

In general: In the early days when I'm working to get things up and running and the cities can't really grow all that much anyway, I tend to mine as much as possible and only irrigate where it's absolutely necessary to keep the city growing at a decent rate. Later I can go back and irrigate as needed, so large scale irrigation projects come later on.

Grasslands: In the beginning, I tend to mine them all - especially the bonus grasslands. They already produce two food, so under despotism you usually won't get any benefits from irrigation anyway. If I really need to boost my population growth, I'll irrigate some of these around the time I switch to republic.

Deserts are totally useless for food production unless you're agricultural - in which case you can irrigate them and have them produce like regular plains.(!) Everyone else can mine them for a shield or two, but that's about all they're good for unless there's a special resource present.

As for tundras, I avoid them like the plague. Never seen anything good come out of those.

Flood plains, you are quite correct, can not be mined.
-Not so cool to be down in a mine when the river decides to come inside and hang out for a while...

As for regular plains, I do tend to irrigate most of these because otherwise they'll only produce one food, which is not enough to keep the city growing if there's a lot of them.

Otherwise I agree that the best tiles to mine are the hill tiles, and that you should irrigate as needed to be able to also work the hill tile.

In the late game, say late industrial age and beyond, I tend to replace some of my old mines with irrigation as needed to acommodate a larger population. By that time, production is running smoothly in most cities and losing 2 or 3 shields here and there doesn't have too much of an impact on overall productivity. Hey, if you're industrious you might even get the shields back as the population grows!

[Barinthus]

what about using forests to improve on food/shield production of tundra and plains?

[Arrian]

I've been doing that lately with cities that have food surpluses even with every tile mined (this means the city has one or more food bonus tiles and no hills/mountains/plains/desert/whatever). Regular grasslands will get forested until the city is at breakeven food.

Plains I'll just mine, since the shield output is the same, until railroads and then mines are better than forests on plains.

Tundra... forest better until RRs, then they're even. So forest, mostly.

...

I typically mine all grassland at first, but once out of despotism I will generally irrigate bonus grasslands instead of regular grasslands (if necessary/possible) to maximize the effects of my GA.

-Arrian

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Arrian
Regular grasslands will get forested until the city is at breakeven food.

And before you get to railroads. After that it's faster to mine the grassland, since it's getting railroaded anyway.

[joncnunn]

I'm probably duplicating messages in this thread and others, but:

1. Cities stuck on size 6 / 12 should convert sufficent irrigation to mines / switch workers to mined hills / mountains to zero out the food surplus.

2. A city should have the best city improved first.

3. Under despotisim, remember the despotism penalty of 3rd shield, food, commerce lost. (It does no good to irrigate a regular grassland / shielded grassland until you leave despotism, is the major one. More minor ones are that it does no good to mine a plains + cow tile under despostism, and thre are also bonsus that unless you improve further in that direction also do no good.

3. When you actually need to irrigate some tiles, irrigate those that already produce at least one shield first. This is because of the bonsuses granted during the Golden Age and under mobilization. Plus you won't have to fight the governors as often when your workers are forceably relocated due to polution if your tiles are all mixed.

4. This results in grassland + shields being high to be mined initally, but the first (after plains and if agriculatural also desert) to be switched to irrigation later.

5. Remember when you have rails to convert serveral irrigation tiles into mines.

[Barinthus]

Whee, thanks for the food for the thought

[Jon Shafer]

Mine grass, irrigate plains and irrigate all bonus food. That's pretty much all one has to worry about until one is able to learn more complicated tile-improvement schemes as one gains more experience playing.

[Arrian]

1. Cities stuck on size 6 / 12 should convert sufficent irrigation to mines / switch workers to mined hills / mountains to zero out the food surplus.

To take this even further, if you really want to get efficient, you can develop "worker pumps" (cities capable of producing a worker every 2 turns) and handle most of your population growth (certainly above size7) via adding workers to cities.

-Arrian

[chuckdelicious]

There are no set rules for tile improvement, it really depends on the city and it's surroundings and, of course, if you are still is despotism. If you really want to have some fun, post a screen shot of a city and we'll debate on how it should be developed!