I almost never built windmills, viewing them simply as an option of last resort to be used in rocky maps where I don't have adequate food for the city otherwise. Recently, though, I've begun to consider whether this is wise. When should windmills be used instead of mines or cottages?

Well, whilst you might want to spam mines everywhere in your production cities, the reality is that doing this will limit your population and those cities will seldom be able to work all tiles in the BFC. Putting down a few grassland windmills in these cities allows you to work more tiles faster and gives a greater :hammers: output overall. This is especially useful I find pre-biology, when it can often be difficult to keep the populations of production cities high. Once biology comes around, you can then replace your windmill with mines, assuming you have some farms on the flatlands here.

Aside from this, you can use them in certain commerce centres -- I like to put them on grassland river hills if I'm financial for the extra :commerce: bonus. Particularly useful when +1 :food: can make a lot of difference to a city that is struggling to grow.

Leventis has summed it up nicely.

It's generally a case of trading off commerce + food versus production. Two of the bigger factors will be; (a.) the role of the city, and (b.) the food count.

Probably worth noting that Windmills improve with Replaceable Parts (+1:hammers:) and Electricity (+1:commerce:).

Also you can freely have your Workers substitute Mines and Windmills, as opposed to tearing down Towns or possibly breaking irrigation chains if replacing Farms with other improvements. You can quickly and effectively respond to the opportunities extended by new resources, new technologies, or other city requirements by substituting Mines for Windmills and vice versa.

Also you can freely have your Workers substitute Mines and Windmills, as opposed to tearing down Towns or possibly breaking irrigation chains if replacing Farms with other improvements. You can quickly and effectively respond to the opportunities extended by new resources, new technologies, or other city requirements by substituting Mines for Windmills and vice versa.

That's my approach. I seldom if ever build a new improvement over a Village or Town. But I frequently change Mines to Windmills in commerce cities post-Electricity, just for the added food and trade. By that point, I have well established production cities for military units, and I'm not needing many more improvements in the commerce cities.

Rarely will I change a Windmill back to a Mine (other than when Aluminum or some other useful mineral pops up under the 'Mill).

If you don't have railroads or state property, pretty much all late game improvements have the same food+production. But windmills and watermills get a commerce boost so they should be given preference.

So for example, if you switch 3 mines all to windmills, you can change a farm to a workshop. The production ends up being the same, but you pick up 6 extra commerce 'for free.' State property and railroads changes this, but it is still true for watermills.

I build like 90% Windmills on hills. Got into that habit playing Financial leaders. I like Windmill on hills, cottages on flat grass, workshops on flat plains (no river), and water mills on flat plains w/ river.

I use slavery for my early production needs anyway.

A couple of mines (2 or 3) per city is ok just in case you need a production boost for some reason, good to have some flexibility, but by the time Windmills get some of the tech boosts its windmills all the way.

Cheers,

Dai

They also give 2 more extra Commerce under Environmentalism, which helps to offset the loss of the extra Trade Route, in case you need to switch to tree hugging to offset your Industrial wastelands.

My opinions:
On the low hammer tiles like desert, tundra or ice a windmill is better than a mine. I usually never mine them, because cities in these regions tend to have too few food.
On riverside tiles windmills are often better than a mine.
For financial civs windmills are better in general.
Windmills are better for your science-cities, commerce/shrine-cities and great people-farm-cities.

before railroads after replaceable parts windmills are alot of the time better than mines. Of course once you get to electricity they get quite good if you are financial.

I'm new to this game and still learning the basics. But I find windmills to be a godsend for my production towns since my production towns usually are very low in food sources.

So spamming mines will have a higher :hammers: yield, but pop growth and having enough :food: to maintain the population to work all the mines will be difficult. My suggestion is to only replace the mines early on if you need the extra :food: , otherwise wait till you have the tech upgrades that benefit the windmills

I usually make the transition at some point in most of my cities, from early-game mines, to late-game windmills. If you can't work all the tiles in the city radius, you should definitely put down windmills. Even if you're working all of the available tiles, windmills are likely better -- consider the tradeoff (late game):

hill mine, railroaded: +3h+0c
->consumes 2 food for +3h
hill windmill: +1f+1h+2c
->consumes 1 food for +1h+2c
->or, consumes 2 food, outputs +1h+2c, supports 1/2 engineer, for a total of +2h+2c+1.5GPP

The worth of a GPP is debatable, but I'd argue that the +2c is worth more than an extra hammer most of the time (especially when you've got bigger multipliers on commerce than hammers, which is the case in most cities).

For a financial or philosophical civilization, it's an even easier decision in favor of windmills (+3h vs. +2h+3c+1.5GPP or +2h+2c+3GPP).

One thing mines do have in their favor is that you can randomly pop new resources from them. But again, this is probably more valuable in the early game, where one additional resource can make a huge difference to your civ.

consider the tradeoff (late game)

Surplus food is tricky. Food-neutral comparisons are much easier to understand.

(This example assumes you are running State Property but not Caste System or Environmentalism.)

2 windmills + 1 workshop:
1f 1h 1c
1f 1h 1c
0f 3h 0c

2 mines + 1 farm:
0f 3h 0c
0f 3h 0c
2f 0h 0c

So by building 2 windmills you are trading 1h for 2c.

Special cases where windmills give more:
Financial on a river
Golden age
Environmentalism (BTS)
Caste System (BTS)


And if you aren't running state property at all, windmills are pretty much useless.

I almost never built windmills ... When should windmills be used instead of mines or cottages?

Molybdeus,

It is very situational. Just for example, I am currently playing a game where I have coastal city with no fish with the following land:

3 grasslands
1 plains
3 hills (I forget if they produce food unimproved or not)
4 desert tiles.

Of the 4 desert tiles, 3 have incense. With farms on all 4 grasslands I will not be able to work all the hills and all the desert tiles without windmills, even post biology. However, if I build windmills, I can get all of them, and turn this city into a low population high commerce city, due to the commerce bonus from 3 incense, 3 windmills, and coastal access.

In the same game, I have another city that is dedicated to pumping out great scientists. Because of this I want as much +food, but I can't neglect my city's production. I can't assign engineers or prophets, because I don't want to taint the city's great person points too much. This makes windmills very attractive for when I want to have some production and still manage to have multiple specialists working towards getting great people.

I'll try to post some pictures when I get home tonight.

My post was considering Vanilla Civ, Dave. I'm not familiar with the ways in which windmills are affected by civics in BTS.

And if you aren't running state property at all, windmills are pretty much useless.

Change the workshop in your example to a US/FS town (+1h+7c). The tradeoff becomes 3h for 9c, which I view as pretty favorable (by which, I mean I would take the commerce instead of the production, and buy production when needed).

If you like commerce that much, cottage the hill. :)

Change the workshop in your example to a US/FS town (+1h+7c). The tradeoff becomes 3h for 9c, which I view as pretty favorable (by which, I mean I would take the commerce instead of the production, and buy production when needed).

You could also change the workshop to a post-biology farm supplying a representation engineer and the tradeoff becomes 2h for 3b 2c. I think either is superior to the workshop for non-production cities. Of course it's all very situational. :)

If you like commerce that much, cottage the hill. :)

Exactly my thought when I read the reply to your post :)

If you like commerce that much, cottage the hill.

Yes, that's a superior option in your 2 hills/flatland example if the hills in question are green -- the tradeoff would be 4h for 14c, or 3.5 c/h (as opposed to 3 c/h from my 2 windmill+flatland cottage proposal).

And if you aren't running state property at all, windmills are pretty much useless.

I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Windmills are comparatively better without state property, because they give the same yield as workshops but also have a commerce bonus.

This is the example I posted above:

"So for example, if you switch 3 mines all to windmills, you can change a farm to a workshop. The production ends up being the same, but you pick up 6 extra commerce 'for free.'"

You get the commerce extra, without trading any food or hammers.

Even better, if you don't have Biology you can switch 2 mines to windmills to workshop the farm, and you get 4 extra :commerce: and one extra :hammers:, while losing nothing.

How is that useless?

consider the tradeoff (late game):
If you don't have railroads... if you don't have Biology... How is that useless?

I am assuming you have Biology and railroads in the late game.

Molybdeus,

As promised.

Here's the shot of the town with 3 incense. As you can see, I can't work all 3 with the 2 mines.

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7966/civ4screenshot0004ic7.th.jpg (http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0004ic7.jpg)

I need more windmills to manage all of the incense. The Scientist is a free specialist from my Statue of Liberty.




Here's the other town. This is my Scientist GP farm.

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/561/civ4screenshot0005ee8.th.jpg (http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0005ee8.jpg)

As you can see, with 2 mines and 3 windmills, it is just barely enough to support itself. When I remove some of that unhealthiness, I'll move that seafood tile to a scientist.

Even post Biology I'm having problems with food in these two towns, and I need windmills to keep people fed.

Kesshi, if you want to run scientists in your second city, you could just assign the water tile and one of your mines or windmills as scentists right now, and let it starve down two points, and you will be stable. Letting a specialist city get this unhealthy is a bad idea, even a grassland windmill is costing you 1 food you could use for a scientist.

Kesshi, if you want to run scientists in your second city, you could just assign the water tile and one of your mines or windmills as scentists right now, and let it starve down two points, and you will be stable. Letting a specialist city get this unhealthy is a bad idea, even a grassland windmill is costing you 1 food you could use for a scientist.

Quechua,

I'm well aware of that, though I appreciate the advice! :D It wasn't the specialists that made the city go unhealthy. It was the industrial era I hit, and still haven't recovered from... You know, when you first get factories, industrial plants, airports, etc. There's currently a race to the Space Elevator and one to Fusion for the free great person. I've been avoiding Ecology, Refrigeration, and Genetics for these others so that I can be first to all of these, and win via space race.

Well if you want to use that city for production that's fine, but since you said it was your scientist city I thought you wanted more scientists. If I counted right, you can run 3 more without even improving your health if you starve the city down. Improving your health will only get you one more beyond that (well, one and a half), but you could then run a couple windmills.

Sorry this is off topic...

Well if you want to use that city for production that's fine, but since you said it was your scientist city I thought you wanted more scientists. If I counted right, you can run 3 more without even improving your health if you starve the city down. Improving your health will only get you one more beyond that (well, one and a half), but you could then run a couple windmills.

Sorry this is off topic...

Quechua,

This is a Hybrid city. A friend of mine sent me this game, saying he didn't expand nearly fast enough, and I said "send me the save." I picked it up, and quickly found a spots for 4 more cites. However he was already cottageing up one city, and building mines on other cities. I took what he already had and built on it. The city is working well as a hybrid city, an because I'm running a hybrid economy, I don't need to focus only on scientists in that city. Almost every single one of my cities is a hybrid of something. Most are production/great people, but one is cottage economy/great people. It's a fun strategy that seems to be working out very well, given that while running representation I am unable to spend all my extra gold (over 10,000 saved up) that I'm making while at 100% science.