Why you do NOT want to mine shielded grasslands!

[Theseus]

@ theNiceOne:

Sorry, that post was a little bit specific to AU 203 ("currently" indeed!).

I'd been dealing with being outnumbered and stuck in Communism... thus population (for rushing and drafting) becomes much more important.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by DeepO
... but if you have any irrigated grassland, it should be shielded if possible, as this will give you the most benefits. In produced shields, that is, not in food.

DeepO

A little puzzled by this, DeepO. Some posters here have stated they need to irrigate SGs to keep their pop going, OK. But once you reach the max squares around you being used, there's no need for that anymore, unless you just want a ridiculous city size for showing off. Specialists (with the exception of Entertainers when you really need them and a single scientist in the case of setting your Science rate to zero) seem to be useless. And surely if you have hills around, with one or two SGs and lotsa non-SGs it's best to irrigate the non-SGs only? This way you are specialising each terrain in food or shields, with the SGs giving you 2 of each (before RRs) instead of 1 shield and 3 food. My point is you can have too much food - once you reach the pop to use your whole radius, stop. But you can never have enough shields.

[vulture]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt

And surely if you have hills around, with one or two SGs and lotsa non-SGs it's best to irrigate the non-SGs only? This way you are specialising each terrain in food or shields, with the SGs giving you 2 of each (before RRs) instead of 1 shield and 3 food. My point is you can have too much food - once you reach the pop to use your whole radius, stop. But you can never have enough shields.

The issue is that specialising doesn't gain anything, but does lose out slightly. To pick a concrete version of your example, imagine a size 4 city, which gets to work a shielded grassland, a normal grassland, and two mountains. You need to have 1 grassland irrigated to do this (assuming we have railroads).

Example A: You mine the shielded grassland (and the mountains) and irrigate the normal grassland. Result:
you get 2/1/2 from your city center, 0/4/2 from each of the mountains, 4/0/2 from the irrigated normal grassland, and 2/3/2 from the shielded grassland, giving a total of 8/12/10 (that's food/shields/gold) and a city fixed at size 4.

Example B: You mine the normal grassland and irrigate the shielded grassland. The difference from example A is that you get 4/1/2 from the shielded grassland, and 4/2/2 from the other one. Total: 8/12/10, exactly the same.

No surprise there - mining or irrigating adds the same regardless of which type of grassland (or plains) it is on. But if you mobilise, or have a golden age, only tiles producing at least 1 shield get the bonus. So we go to example A2: 2/2/3 from the city center, 0/5/3 from the mountains, 4/0/3 from the irrigated non-SG, 2/4/3 from the mined SG, giving a total of 8/16/15.

Example B2: as A2, but 4/2/3 from the irrigated SG, 2/3/3 from the mined non-SG. Total: 8/17/15, for a total of one extra shield per turn.

Since you are using all the available tiles, specialisation doesn't gain you anything. You need one irrigation and one mine to use all the available tiles, and they add up to the same overall totals which ever way around you do it. But in the irrigated SG version, all tiles are producing at least one shield, so all of the get the GA/mobilised bonus. In version A2, the irrigated non-grassland gets no bonus to shields.

So, although you usually want to irrigate the bare minimum of tiles to use all the available squares (unless you want to boost your city growth for a while), the tiles you irrigate should always be producing at least 1 shield when irrigated (plains, bonus grassland, desert) so that you get the GA bonus for it (irrigating floodplains being the obvious exception). Just remember that for plains, grassland and desert, irrigation plus RR gives you two extra food, mine plus RR gives two extra shields, so once you know how many extra food you need, you just irrigate that many (plain/desert/grass) tiles, and mine the rest, and where possible never irrigate a normal grassland.

Of course, if you aren't using all the tiles available yet, there is something to be said for specialising. I always mine SG in the early game, but there you face a different limit to the one relevant to this discussion. Early on, you are forced to work a limited number of tiles, and usually want as many shields as possible from those tiles. Once you are using all the tiles, you want to maximise production by mining as many as possible, but want to have the irrigated ones still producing 1 shield so that they can qualify for the golden age bonus.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I see....

So, in short then, it's best to mine the non-SGs and irrigate the SGs once out of Despotism until you have had your GA. Then, since there is no advantage either way, you want to max shields whilst still ensuring you have enough food to grow to ultimately use the whole radius and no further. Then you probably will be mining those shielded SGs again.

Cheers vulture, DeepO - I will try this the next game I start!

[DeepO]

Well, as always, it's depending on the situation. Most of the times, balance is preferable over specialisation. Not only will it be good in GA or mobilization, but it will also be better in normal game (very hard to explain this, using an example, but think on when you go from one size to another, at which time you also want as much shields as possible, while keeping extra irrigation if possible).

There are exceptions, though, in that if you are in the process of wasting food somewhere (as you only need 3 to grow, but you'd produce 4), non-balanced tiles are better. Note that in case you would be wasting shields instead of food, it doesn't matter which grass you irrigate. But in general, these situations are rather rare and require extreme MM, so that you're better of going for both the balance, and the ability to produce more in a GA.

But again, don't irrigate SGs if you don't need irrigation, I only wanted to tell with this thread that if you have irrigation, it is preferable if it's on a tile that already produces shields too.

DeepO

[ManicStarSeed]

Thank you DeepO,

You have made your case well.

This is one of those many little tid-bits of information that will help me decide which tile I do what with, when I need to do something for my city's growth.

I see this as a chance to realize a small edge in the areana of tile improvment.

Any little bit doesn't make a whole lot of difference. BUT... Lots of little bits can add up to a huge advantage.

Mss