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Observations about tile improvements
I've been experimenting a bit with some saved games to see just how effective tile improvements are. What follows are some observations (and numbers) which I hope will be helpful. If there are any inaccuracies here, I apologize and hope someone will correct them.
First off, if you're not careful, you can add an improvement to a tile without reaping any benefits from it for a while. For example, if you have 7 citizens in a city, the radius will be two, which means that there will be 8 squares adjacent to the city and 12 more that are at r=2 from the city. If you place an improvement at r=2, you will get no benefits from this until your population reaches 9. Apparently, the reason for this is that all of the workers must first work the squares that are at r=1, which means the first 8 citizens. When pop=9, you finally have workers to work the tiles that are at r=2. I've not seen an exception to this, so if anyone knows of one, I'd like to hear about it. Also, once the population does reach 9, it seems that the innermost 8 tiles are still the ones that benefit you most.
So the lesson is don't place tile improvements outside of the currently worked radius. Furthermore, put all improvements only within the inner squares first and work your way out. I believe this to be correct for larger cities as well, but haven't verified it yet.
Next, mines that cost 300 add +5 to production per turn. Simple math shows that it will take 60 turns for that investment to pay for itself. The small increment added also makes little difference in terms of when something will be completed. By contrast, it seems that having your population grow by one adds approximately 10 to your production (this varies and I don't know what happens with cities larger than 12 since I'm still early in my first game.) So it's more important for production purposes to increase city size than to add mines. (Or am I missing something here?)
I guess I should add one more thing. If you were to build 4 mines you would gain 20 production per turn at the cost of 1200 production. But this cost comes from public works, which all cities contribute to. This means that it may still be useful to build a bunch of mines, I suppose, if you want your other cities to help a small, up and coming city.
The chart and the Great Library say that a farm adds 10 food, but this is not quite true. But it doesn't really matter since it's hard to tell how much the food increase is affecting the population increase. For example, in a city with population of 10, adding 2 farms increased its food by only 7 (that's 3.5/farm) and added +37 to its growth. This apparently is because the 2 farms were added to the r=2 tiles which aren't exploited as much by a city of pop=10. However, when I added 2 farms to the same city, but on tiles that were at r=1, they increased food by 22 and growth by 110.
Now let's take a brief look at the effect adding two farms to the innermost tiles had on a city of size 10. The population growth increased from 489 to 599. The population at the time the growth was 489 was 100703. The population had grown to 101681 by the time the farms were added (2 turns) and now the growth is at 599. If the pop growth had stayed at 489 the whole time, it would have taken 20 turns to reach 110000, which would increase the number of citizens by 1, to 11. After adding the two farms however, the number of turns needed to reach 110000 is 14 plus the two turns needed to add the farms which yields 16 turns. So adding the two farms reduced the number of turns needed to go from pop=10 to pop=11 by 4, from 20 to 16. The difference would have been less significant if the tile improvements had been added later, when the pop was around 105000, for example.
By contrast, adding two farms to a small city of 2 citizens added only 7 food but increased growth from 525 to 712 (that's 187 more). This means that while less food is added to smaller cities, the growth rate is benefited more.
Apparently, the reason less food is added to smaller cities is because they haven't yet used up the 8 tiles at r=1. Once this happens, more food appears to come from additions to these inner squares.
I just loaded someone else's game and found a city of pop = 26. I destroyed 16 of its innermost farms and replaced them with mines. It reduced the food total from 1804 to 1342. But, the effect on growth was zero! Growth was +1201 before and after I did this. So it seems that adding farms to large cities may be pointless. Correct me if I'm wrong.
A few other observations are:
Increasing happiness causes a very slight increase in pop growth (seems to be <= 75) and as the pop increases, the growth rate decreases significantly. For example, a city that had pop = 79804 and a growth rate of +613, had a pop of 80417 and a growth rate of +499 one turn later. The drop is even more significant for the smallest cities. A drop from +1500 to +825 is not unusual.
I haven't yet investigated the effects of adding specialists to farming yet. All I know is that they seem to add much more to growth than do farms. But of course, they also hurt production and commerce a little bit. I will also be looking into the effects of adding granaries and silos to growth. If anyone's interested I could post it too. But... If these little observations of mine seem pointless, I'll stop. Personally, I find them to be helpful. I like to know just how much some improvement is really helping me.
So, any comments, corrections, further observations...?
[This message has been edited by AI_Scripter (edited November 25, 2000).]
First off, if you're not careful, you can add an improvement to a tile without reaping any benefits from it for a while. For example, if you have 7 citizens in a city, the radius will be two, which means that there will be 8 squares adjacent to the city and 12 more that are at r=2 from the city. If you place an improvement at r=2, you will get no benefits from this until your population reaches 9. Apparently, the reason for this is that all of the workers must first work the squares that are at r=1, which means the first 8 citizens. When pop=9, you finally have workers to work the tiles that are at r=2. I've not seen an exception to this, so if anyone knows of one, I'd like to hear about it. Also, once the population does reach 9, it seems that the innermost 8 tiles are still the ones that benefit you most.
So the lesson is don't place tile improvements outside of the currently worked radius. Furthermore, put all improvements only within the inner squares first and work your way out. I believe this to be correct for larger cities as well, but haven't verified it yet.
Next, mines that cost 300 add +5 to production per turn. Simple math shows that it will take 60 turns for that investment to pay for itself. The small increment added also makes little difference in terms of when something will be completed. By contrast, it seems that having your population grow by one adds approximately 10 to your production (this varies and I don't know what happens with cities larger than 12 since I'm still early in my first game.) So it's more important for production purposes to increase city size than to add mines. (Or am I missing something here?)
I guess I should add one more thing. If you were to build 4 mines you would gain 20 production per turn at the cost of 1200 production. But this cost comes from public works, which all cities contribute to. This means that it may still be useful to build a bunch of mines, I suppose, if you want your other cities to help a small, up and coming city.
The chart and the Great Library say that a farm adds 10 food, but this is not quite true. But it doesn't really matter since it's hard to tell how much the food increase is affecting the population increase. For example, in a city with population of 10, adding 2 farms increased its food by only 7 (that's 3.5/farm) and added +37 to its growth. This apparently is because the 2 farms were added to the r=2 tiles which aren't exploited as much by a city of pop=10. However, when I added 2 farms to the same city, but on tiles that were at r=1, they increased food by 22 and growth by 110.
Now let's take a brief look at the effect adding two farms to the innermost tiles had on a city of size 10. The population growth increased from 489 to 599. The population at the time the growth was 489 was 100703. The population had grown to 101681 by the time the farms were added (2 turns) and now the growth is at 599. If the pop growth had stayed at 489 the whole time, it would have taken 20 turns to reach 110000, which would increase the number of citizens by 1, to 11. After adding the two farms however, the number of turns needed to reach 110000 is 14 plus the two turns needed to add the farms which yields 16 turns. So adding the two farms reduced the number of turns needed to go from pop=10 to pop=11 by 4, from 20 to 16. The difference would have been less significant if the tile improvements had been added later, when the pop was around 105000, for example.
By contrast, adding two farms to a small city of 2 citizens added only 7 food but increased growth from 525 to 712 (that's 187 more). This means that while less food is added to smaller cities, the growth rate is benefited more.
Apparently, the reason less food is added to smaller cities is because they haven't yet used up the 8 tiles at r=1. Once this happens, more food appears to come from additions to these inner squares.
I just loaded someone else's game and found a city of pop = 26. I destroyed 16 of its innermost farms and replaced them with mines. It reduced the food total from 1804 to 1342. But, the effect on growth was zero! Growth was +1201 before and after I did this. So it seems that adding farms to large cities may be pointless. Correct me if I'm wrong.
A few other observations are:
Increasing happiness causes a very slight increase in pop growth (seems to be <= 75) and as the pop increases, the growth rate decreases significantly. For example, a city that had pop = 79804 and a growth rate of +613, had a pop of 80417 and a growth rate of +499 one turn later. The drop is even more significant for the smallest cities. A drop from +1500 to +825 is not unusual.
I haven't yet investigated the effects of adding specialists to farming yet. All I know is that they seem to add much more to growth than do farms. But of course, they also hurt production and commerce a little bit. I will also be looking into the effects of adding granaries and silos to growth. If anyone's interested I could post it too. But... If these little observations of mine seem pointless, I'll stop. Personally, I find them to be helpful. I like to know just how much some improvement is really helping me.
So, any comments, corrections, further observations...?
[This message has been edited by AI_Scripter (edited November 25, 2000).]
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