Hamlet/Cottage/Town question

All,

In order for a hamlet/cottage/town to produce income, it has to be worked, right?

In order to be able to be worked, it has to be inside your city radius, right?

I have the ability to build a hamlet/cottage/town outside my city radius but inside my cultural borders. Is there any reason I want to do this? Is it possible to get income from them if they are outside the city radius?

Thx
jonpfl

Nope, as long as they are not within any city's radius, you can't collect anything from them: then there is no point in building them, even in they are within your cultural borders. IMO, you only need to place improvements on the tiles within your city working radius, and everything else is just roads/railroads.

I was wondering last night why the program lets me tell workers to develop squares that are outside even the maximum radius of all existing cities. But then it occurred to me that it might be so I could prep a site for settlement, then move on. Probably not a very wise use of workers, but there could be situations in which it makes sense.

ongwin: Improvements that allow exploitation of map resources can be outside the city radius as long as they're within your cultural boundary and connected to your trade network, can't they? (Mines, wells, quarries, etc.) Seems to me this works -- otherwise there'd be no point to oceanic oil deposits more than two squares from shore. But farms, cottages, and so forth, nope.

The only exception I've found for developing tiles outside my city radii is mining hills. For every mined square, you get a small chance per turn of discovering a new mineral resource. And since my workers are usually sitting on their thumbs for significant periods of time, any chance at all is worth the effort.

Jedoc said:

The only exception I've found for developing tiles outside my city radii is mining hills. For every mined square, you get a small chance per turn of discovering a new mineral resource. And since my workers are usually sitting on their thumbs for significant periods of time, any chance at all is worth the effort.

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Not correct.

Like the Cottages maturing, you must WORK the mine with city population to have a chance to pop a new resource.


The only things worth doing outside of any city radius are:
* Collecting a resource.
* Bringing a line of irrigation in to range.
* Chopping forests for shields.
* Setting up something for AIs to pillage besides your actual city plots.
* Prepping a site for later settlement.
* Roads/rails to speed movement.
* Forts


- Sirian

Sirian said:

* Setting up something for AIs to pillage besides your actual city plots.

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Great idea. I sense an MP exploit here. Free money from pillaging each others' unworked improvements.

ongwin said:

Nope, as long as they are not within any city's radius, you can't collect anything from them: then there is no point in building them, even in they are within your cultural borders. IMO, you only need to place improvements on the tiles within your city working radius, and everything else is just roads/railroads.

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I'd say that for resources outside your city borders but inside your cultural limits it is of paramount importance to mine or farm them to get the associated benefits. Clams, corn and others will give +1 health when there is a farm (boat) on them, regardless of whether they are in the city radius or not. The same for accessing iron or stone, et cetera.

Are you sure you get the +1 health bonus from clams outside your city radius?

If so, I did not realize that

Yes, you do get this bonus. I can verify that from several games I played.

Here's a question: if roads no longer give any commerce bonuses, why does the AI still build them everywhere?

How can you see your city radius?

TracerBullet said:

Here's a question: if roads no longer give any commerce bonuses, why does the AI still build them everywhere?

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Because sometimes the workers don't have anything better to do.

Also, having many roads offers you more tactical options when you're being attacked.

bthizle1 said:

How can you see your city radius?

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You can see it in the city screen. There's currently no way to turn it on on the main map. I guess that this may come in a patch, as it would eally be helpful when placing cities.

Psyringe said:

Yes, you do get this bonus. I can verify that from several games I played.

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So, you are saying that as long as the clams are outside your city radius BUT inside your cultural borders, you get the clam bonus (+1 health I think) inside all your cities?

IOW, there is no reason to really build besides a clam aside from the fact you get early growth, right? Eventually your cultural borders will encompass the clam and give you that bonus, right?

Don't the clams have to be worked?

Does the same hold true for land based bonuses (wheat, sheep, etc)? Dont they have to be worked to gain your the bonus?

if you have this resource in your resource box then you get the bonuses... otherwise they would be extremely useless resources.

The production/health/commerce bonuses only apply to the tile if it is worked, but the resource benefits like health, happiness and meeting unit/building requirements apply to any city it's connected to. The same goes for traded resources from another civ - it always strikes me as odd that when you trade, say, cows with the ai the mouseover text displays "+1 food" as well as the +1 health which is the actual benefit you'll get.

As far as connecting them goes, you only get the benefit for the first one you connect, but subsequent ones can be traded with other civs and make it harder for an enemy to cut off your supply.

On the question of seeing your city radius, it's 2 squares in every direction from the city's (settler) location apart from the extreme NE, SE, SW, NW squares, plus the city square itself - the "fat cross" as mentioned in the manual, and the same as other Civ games have always had it - it contains the city square plus the 8 around it and 12 outside that (3 on each side) - a total of 21 tiles. It's also worth noting that tiles not within your cultural boundaries can't be worked, nor can those being worked by another city if the radii overlap.

jonpfl said:

So, you are saying that as long as the clams are outside your city radius BUT inside your cultural borders, you get the clam bonus (+1 health I think) inside all your cities?

IOW, there is no reason to really build besides a clam aside from the fact you get early growth, right? Eventually your cultural borders will encompass the clam and give you that bonus, right?

Don't the clams have to be worked?

Does the same hold true for land based bonuses (wheat, sheep, etc)? Dont they have to be worked to gain your the bonus?

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Yes, they don't need to be worked in order to get the health bonus, and this is true of wheat and sheep, too. The tiles do need to be improved though, work boat, farm etc. The point being to simulate the health advantage from a varied diet. Also, you can trade these resources with other civs and gain the health bonus too as multiple same food types don't give a cumulative health bonus.

Its the same with other resources such as oil, gems, etc. As long as you improve them and they're within you cultural border you will get the benefit even if they are not within a city radius and being worked.

There is actually an obvious growth benefit from building near clams because they give you +5 food with lighthouse and work boat (as well as health bonus) which helps a coastal city with little access to land-based resources grow and become an economically viable city.

Now showing at your local Hollywood Cineplex: the great new Hit Movie "The Clam and You: Humanity's Biggest Little Helpers." See it today and gain one happy!

Another reason for building improvements outside of city radius beside to collect resources is to pillage them. You get gold for pillaging. So whenever I have free workers and land I don't use I just build some improvements inside my empire but outside of any city area which I then pillage.