I am posting the city radi of two conquered cities. Antium and Madrid. I have numbered the city tiles, including the ones that have current improvements in place. My question mainly addresses the unimproved tiles, but if you feel replacing an improvement would be the best shot, so state. I think the best format would be like "1,2,4: farms" Instead of listing each seperatly. The forests that were there were removed racing for a wonder, so lumber mills will not come into play.

So the question at hand is: 1>How would YOU improve these two cities, AND 2>Why you would choose those paticular improvements.

The first city is Antium, the second Madrid.

Almost perfect. Just fill all of that flatland with cottages and you are set.

Why would you choose cottages over watermills or farms?

My god, Antium is a beautiful, beautiful city. It brings a tear to my eye.

You've got a positive food balance of 7. By this I mean you have a farm on a food resource (+3), a pasture (+2), and your city square (+2) providing more food than the worker who works it eats. This means you can support mines in all five of those hills without (more) farms, and still have two food left over. So, yes, mine every hill. (1, 2, 4, 9, 19)

I'm going to be very, very radical and say add two workshops just to eat up the rest of that food balance. With guilds+chemistry, the extra production is decent enough. If you hit a happiness limit, you can work these workshops to stunt your growth until the happiness is increased, then you can switch back to more fertile grasslands to start growing again. It doesn't matter where the workshops go.

The rest: Cottage.

This is based on my own private theory, which stresses food balance while trying to minimize farms. I realize workshops get denigrated alot, so maybe I'm trying too hard to find a use for them, just because I hate to think of anything as useless, but there ya go.

Madrid: With just rice, the positive food is 5. But 4 plains, 4 hills are a lot of squares to feed. What is square 18? It looks like it has to be a resource of some kind, just too much food/commerce for a plains otherwise. And 12 looks like... coal? Anyhoo, if you mine *all* the hills, that eats 7 food (w/ that coal mine). Which means you would technically need two farms (or one farm w/ biology) to cover the difference. But I'm gonna be radical again and say windmill+watermill gives the same production (post replaceable parts) as farm/mine yet added commerce. So the set-it-and-forget-it answer is two watermills, two windmills, and let your positive food support the other mines. Personally, I'd windmill 14 and 16... because they're grasslands, you can work them for the two hammers while your city is still growing without actually stunting your growth. I'm big on growth.

And finally, for everything else: Cottage. Yes, that's destroying a lot of already existing improvements, but I'm a perfectionist.

If you feel like some minor micromanagement, do the farm/mine thing until replaceable parts and then switch to mills at that time. This has the advantage that you already have one farm built.

Yes, I'm starting to learn the respect everyone else has for cottages. With not one but two (and a half, not sure whether to count emancipation) civics that improve their output, they're just the universal improvement.

Sorry bout that, I forgot to list them out.
Antium: 3,8 are dye; 5 is elephant; 13 is horse; 15 is cow; 17 is banana.
Madrid: 4 is rice; 12 is iron; 18 is spice

I am currently researching banking, so replaceable parts is still just a little off.

Some of the thoughts i had with this were.

Madrid: I am not sure if the game would allow it, but placing watermills on 5 and 9 and a farm or cottage on 10. I know you can not place a water mill on both sides of a river, but 5 and 9 are diagonal to each other yet would share the same tile for the watermill building(#10). As would tile 14 (can you build a water mill on a hill?). I do not know if the combined total would be better going that way or if a cottage/farm development would be the way to go. As you might guess, I am still learning the game and am unsure about what improvements are best in a given situation.

Antium has a similar situation with tiles 7 and 16, although 16 already has a villiage on it and I would not be inclunded to remove that for anything. But not knowing how beneficial a dual watermill set-up would be I included it in this query.

The other main consideration regarding using the cottage/farms development is that this is right in the middle of a long border. I one of my previous games, i made the mistake of getting cottages built up to towns in a border city only to have them get pilliaged away. I can replace a farm or watermill in one turn and have that tile be back up and running. Having to rebuild a cottage and have to wait so fricken long to get it maximized again is NOT appealing.

Cities heavy of cottages of course have their benefit, but they are also vulnerable to decimation and not easily fixed. Such an event could and would bring my empire to it's knees. It's one of the major flaws in relying on a single city or two to support a whole empire.

Another consideration in this evaluation is I am playing a financial civ (england). Again, sorry for the omissions in the original post. But even without that factor, proper development of these beauties should make for on hell of a debate. I have two other cities that are just as purdy. One (which I am developing into my GPP city) has a crapload of sugar, and the other has several elephant resources and a horseshoe of hills. I'll take shots of those next load up and post them in a day or so. I didn't want to show those off yet so as to not confuse development options for a river heavy city.

EDIT: lol, I got so wrapped up I forgot a couple of things. I love workshops. And being that this is a financial civ, the best choice for Antium would of course be 10,14,18; leaving the river grasslands for cottages (providing watermills were not a better choice).

Madrid sits directly below(and slightly over from) Antium, so the question of defending these two under a cottage heavy development applies to both.

The other white meats. I wanted a peacefull relationship with Rome, but he just would not quit screwing up these two planned sites with bad placement.

I would disagree with workshops for either of these cities. We already have a ton of hammers, so with guilds, and before chemistry:

Two workshops = -2 food, +4 hammers
Town + Engineer = -2 food, +2 hammers, +* commerce, +3 GPP, other specialist bonuses.

Or whatever your favorite specialist is.


However, if you want to make Antium a production specialized city, it's a different story! No towns for Antium; you want watermills wherever possible (7, 12, 16, 20), then farm / workshop the rest -- even the dyes, if you can afford to part with them!


The same for Madrid. It has plenty of hammers, so I wouldn't bother with workshops. With replacable parts, consider using a windmill on a hill, and getting rid of the farm. And if you want additional hammers, you can put watermills at 2, 5, 6, 9, and 15. (At least I think you can at 15)


One thing you might consider is to place farms where you won't be working towns early on. If you have a lot of population points to go, and you want to produce hammers, then it's better to use farms than work your cottages in order to grow faster! (Of course, once you're nearing your limit, you should stop working all your farms)

I don't think workshops cause unhealthiness.
Using specialists is certainly an option, however I have the national epic in another city and any GPP stand a good chance at never being used. If I had not built that there, then I think either one of these would make a good GP farm.

That touches on another subject. I tried in previous games to spread out my wonders and try and keep about half my cities even-keel with GPP. The results were horrible. I wanted to have one that spit out GE, one that made GM..... I ended up not getting very many of any type. This game I do have a couple of GPP producers, but after their next one they will be useless for that. I will have to stagnate my GPP in my GPP city so that they can get one last person out. Will be even more stingy with gpp next game. I really don't like how they have that part of the game set up. It really forces you to dump all your wonders into one city. That was never a good idea in previous versions and I got used to spreading them out. I have to now change something that had become second nature. (lol, got off topic in my own thread).

I do have one other source of dyes(3 total), so I could part with that plantation. But I would think the commerce income would be better than a few more hammers given the city already has a lot going for it in that area. I have yet to reach a modern age game, so I could be wrong on that. I am sure the more advanced weaponry take a large amount of production, at a point even a single watermill could make a difference. I just don't know.

The game is currently 1680AD. I am at the top of the civ list, but behind a little bit in tech. IMO Mali should be higher. I have more points mainly due to wonders and population. he has a massive knight army. He is friednly right now, but I know how that can change. So I worry about defending tile improvements.

I admit I forgot about workshops. Couple could be thrown in. And you positively don't need farms.
Watermills come too late, though. I suggest cottage now. And when watermills come about, pillage(? or can you, still I believe worker building over cottage will destroy it) cottage, and build a watermill there if you feel like it.

I don't think workshops cause unhealthiness.
Oh bleh, I thought I removed that. I'll fix it now.

But I would think the commerce income would be better than a few more hammers given the city already has a lot going for it in that area.
I don't think I could ever bear to part with the commerce bonus for 2 or 3 extra base hammers either. :) I just felt like I should mention it for completeness.

The idea is that you need 2F for each person to break even. Any 1F above that will give growth, albeit slow. You obviously want the most population possible, so to maximize this you need 41 food from these 20 squares.

Antium: 5 hills puts you at -5. #'s 15 & 17 give you +5. You are now breaking even. My personal choice here would be to farm 10 & 14, workshop 18, and cottage the rest as they are riverside (extra commerce cottages.) If you want more production out of this city, you can swap any of these 2 cottages for 1 farm/ 1 workshop.

This will yield a +1 food surplus when all tiles are worked. That would increse a bit with . . . biology, is it? . . . that increases farm yield.

Madrid: is at -7F from the mines, +4F from 4 & 9. Needs 4 more farms to be at +1 total. I'd farm 20, 17, 8, and 3. Cottage the rest. As before, if more prduction is desired, swap out two of the cottages for 1 farm/1 workshop.

Note: I don't think i've ever used watermills except in snow or something. They may have some use here but I can't speak to that. I use windmills when necessary if I'm short on food (lots of plains, hills, etc.) but that's not ans issue here so I wouldn't use them at all.

"Plenty of hammers" is my weak point. How much is enough? I've yet to hear a good answer.

And I agree a fully bonused cottage is probably the strongest improvement in the game. But without Universal Suffrage and Free Speech to pump them up, they become a *lot* more marginal. And that 35-70 turn wait for them to powerhouse your city can be very expensive, especially for a city right on the border. And I don't like locking myself to those civics... it sounds like it could be dangerous in the long run. I'm not fond of State Property for the same reason... the food bonuses could become addictive and cripple your flexibility.

But I confess I'm just being weird.