Grassland hill windmill vs mine

After seeing plenty of screenshots and saves on this forum I've come to the conclusion that I must be the only person on Earth who plays above Noble who builds significant numbers of windmills.

I'm just wondering why this is - generally when trying to decide between a windmill and a mine my thought process is "Do I have enough food to work a mine? No.. OK do I have enough food to work a windmill?" Personally I don't see the 1/1000 chance to pop a resource to be worth either stunting my city's growth or having to give up a cottage for a farm in any city other than designated production cities, and the extra production a mine gives isn't worth diddly if I can't work it.

I seem to have 1-2 resource pops on mines per game. Another good thing about mines is its nice discovering steam power and when the coal pops suddenly you already have 3 of it hooked up, etc.

I still do occasionally build windmills (i play prince/monarch), but its usually only in poorly sited cities (like ones I can't get irrigation to in a timely manner) that need every extra food just to not totally suck.

No you are not the only one. The basic principle still exist. Build windmills where you want to max. food and mines where you want to max production.

Windmills can become pretty good. It just depends on the city's specialisation and the balans of food and production in the city like you said yourself.

A windmill is never the best answer for a grassland hill, right? If you want hammers, then you should be mining it; if you want commerce, you should be cottaging it.

A windmill is basically a farm, with some extra commerce thrown in. Rah.

With a worker surplus, and production cities that need to grow, it might make sense to windmill the hills (to keep the food surplus up during the growth phase), then mine everything when you get to size. I haven't actually done that, but it makes some sense.



Alternatively, I'm not good enough that I can get by settling cities that need food that badly. Maybe if I learned to build windmills....

mines are better than windmills. Only if you need that extra food to allow you an extra pop to work another square, then a windmill would be of use.

Let's see. In late game, on a grassland hill that is not beside a river, a mine would give 1F3H +1H if there's a railroad on it. A windmill gives 2F2H2C.

Let's say you have a city with 4 grassland hills. 4 mines with rails would give a total of 4F and 16H before multipliers. Assuming your city has no more tiles to work and has no happiness/health issues, you can support 2 engineer specialists with the 4F, giving you an extra 4H. So, in this case, the total is 20H

4 windmills would give a total of 8F, 8H and 8C. With 8F, you can support 4 engineer specialists, giving you an extra 8H. So, in this case, the total is 16H and 8C.

Therefore, in terms of pure hammers, the mines win. But if 8C is worth more than 4H to you, go for the mills. If you are running Representation, you need to consider 12 extra beakers from 4 engineers in the mill case vs 6 extra beakers from 2 engineers in the mine case.

I hope there are no mistakes in my calculations

aelf said:

Therefore, in terms of pure hammers, the mines win. But if 8C is worth more than 4H to you, go for the mills.

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This is my line of reasoning exactly, only it ends up being a lot more than 8c in this case, since you're not taking into account the loss of cottages to make farms to work the mines.

The main reason I like to put windmills on grassland hills instead of mines is it makes the tile self-sufficient (2f), thereby leaving me free to cottage spam to the max elsewhere. Granted, if I have plenty of food (like a big food tile or a lot of flood plains) and I can work a mine while leaving at least a 2f surplus I'll mine it, no questions asked. But if it's one of those marginal tiles where I can either put a windmill on it and work it or build a farm somewhere instead of a cottage I'll generally take a cottage + windmill.

My process only really works on grassland hills since they can be made self-sufficient via a windmill, plains hills always get a mine, tundra hills I generally ignore unless I can support a large pop for some reason in the tundra (which does happen if you get lucky with food resources but not very often).

you answered your own question!

I build a lot of windmills after Replaceable Parts that gives windmills +1 production, since it's really easier to grow this way when I'm going for domination.
For space race, it's certainly a good guess too! Windmills are golden age happy

Rast said:

This is my line of reasoning exactly, only it ends up being a lot more than 8c in this case, since you're not taking into account the loss of cottages to make farms to work the mines.

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I did take into account specialists instead, but you're right if your city is not already working all its tiles.

I think it boils down to the question of specialization. If you want a pure production city, which you may need to churn out wonders or expensive spaceship parts, go for the mines. If you've placed the city well it should have enough food to work most if not all of its hills. 6 grassland hills with mines and rails beats 6 of those with mills by 12H before multipliers. That's a lot of hammers and will need 6 extra plain-tile towns running US or 6 engineers to compensate. It's not likely, in my opinion, that you can get more hammers in a food-sufficient city than with mines.

If it's not a specialized production city, I like to put windmills on plain hills too. 1 extra food goes a long way in helping growth when your city has hit size 20.

cabert said:

you answered your own question!

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Well, I know why I build the way I do, but after seeing so many saves and screens of hill=mine, I thought perhaps there was some clear advantage I wasn't seeing.

I tend not to run any specialists at all for quite a long time and then only in my largest cities, which is probably one of the reasons I keep getting owned so badly on emp , though I'm getting better.

Anyway, thanks for the inputs!

aelf said:

Let's see. In late game, on a grassland hill that is not beside a river, a mine would give 1F3H +1H if there's a railroad on it. A windmill gives 2F2H2C.

Let's say you have a city with 4 grassland hills. 4 mines with rails would give a total of 4F and 16H before multipliers. Assuming your city has no more tiles to work and has no happiness/health issues, you can support 2 engineer specialists with the 4F, giving you an extra 4H. So, in this case, the total is 20H

4 windmills would give a total of 8F, 8H and 8C. With 8F, you can support 4 engineer specialists, giving you an extra 8H. So, in this case, the total is 16H and 8C.

Therefore, in terms of pure hammers, the mines win. But if 8C is worth more than 4H to you, go for the mills. If you are running Representation, you need to consider 12 extra beakers from 4 engineers in the mill case vs 6 extra beakers from 2 engineers in the mine case.

I hope there are no mistakes in my calculations

Click to expand...

There is one mistake. You are assuming someone is running caste system. Engineers are the hardest specialists to get. You can have one from a forge but I believe that is it. After that you need caste system.

Now you have to look at when you can run caste system. Early in the game you want to run slavery. Once you are able to get caste system you will have the option of switching to it, but obviously doing so removes one of the more powerful civics from your disposal. Then you have to look at the late game. Once emancipation comes around you will only be able to run caste system for so long before the happiness penalty bites you, especially at higher levels. If you are unlucky to have not won the game by the time the UN is built and fail to win the vote then you will be displeased to know that the AI likes to vote universal civic emancipation pretty early. Byebye caste system.

And really, your premise has another major flaw. A tile with 2 food does not support a specialist. A tile with 2 food only supports itself.

Also, in a production city you want to mine them hills because production multipliers are huge, especially in your military cities. In commerce cities you want to cottage those hills because commerce multipliers are even bigger, especially in your Oxford city. The only place I'd wind mill them hills is in a great person farm or late in the game when I'm going for a diplomatic win and need the extra population.

Mango said:

There is one mistake. You are assuming someone is running caste system. Engineers are the hardest specialists to get. You can have one from a forge but I believe that is it. After that you need caste system.

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Caste system only permits unlimited scientists, merchants and artists, not engineers or priests. These still have the normal caps from improvements, so even if you are running caste system you're stuck at 1 engineer per city for most of the game. Factories allow this to be boosted to 3 engineers per city, but that's the limit. You can only support more than that in the Ironworks city, which can have up to 6.

Mango said:

There is one mistake. You are assuming someone is running caste system. Engineers are the hardest specialists to get. You can have one from a forge but I believe that is it. After that you need caste system.

Click to expand...

You can't assign Engineers based on Caste system. You can only assign Scientists, Merchants, and Artists. You get the option of more Engineers first through the Ironworks and second through Factories. Maybe you get more Engineer options after that, I don't know.

If you could get Engineers through caste system, then you (or some smart AI) would get every wonder as soon as the tech was available because of the huge number of great engineers they would be popping. As it is now, you can only get so many GPP exclusively for engineers from:

Great Wall
Hanging Gardens
Pyramids
Hagia Sophia
Heroic Epic
Forge

That's a total of 22 GPP/turn, which gets pretty slow after awhile, assuming I didn't miss a wonder, which I may have.... Anyway, I'm now way off topic, but the essence is that caste system doesn't let you do that.

MrCynical said:

Caste system only permits unlimited scientists, merchants and artists, not engineers or priests. These still have the normal caps from improvements, so even if you are running caste system you're stuck at 1 engineer per city for most of the game. Factories allow this to be boosted to 3 engineers per city, but that's the limit. You can only support more than that in the Ironworks city, which can have up to 6.

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I guess we were writing simultaneously!

And also, having said all that, by the time you are calling windmills 2/2/2, then you are assuming that electricity has been discovered, which means thay (typically) assembly line will be close, meaning that factories are close and you probably can have the two engineers anyway.

And in the end, I for one typically prefer to put mines as the production advantage can be leveraged to good effect earlier with building infrastructure, and one or two squares that only produce one food won't kill your city's cottage potential, as on standard map size, most cities will have a food resource, in my experience. Additionally, I NEVER put a cottage on a hill. Never. That's for mining or windmills always, and as I said, mostly mines for me. If I want a 1/1 cottage, it'll go on plains.

MrCynical said:

Caste system only permits unlimited scientists, merchants and artists, not engineers or priests. These still have the normal caps from improvements, so even if you are running caste system you're stuck at 1 engineer per city for most of the game. Factories allow this to be boosted to 3 engineers per city, but that's the limit. You can only support more than that in the Ironworks city, which can have up to 6.

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Ah, well then that makes it even more unlikely. I've never bothered trying to assign engineers anyway, but it makes sense. GE are by far the most powerful, especially early-to-mid game.

Hmm, I find it quite common that a windmill on the hill instead of a mine will result in more commerce and production because the city can grow larger. Perhaps not in the early game when your cities are capped at size 4-8 but later in the game I'd rather have a size 16 city working 4 windmilled hills than a size 14 city working 2 mined hills. edit: And building more farms (instead of cottages) so you can mine all the hills costs a large amount of commerce. Most of your cities should be primarily commerce cities anyway. But yeah in a production city you should try to farm as much as you can and mine as much as you can of course.

Mango said:

There is one mistake. You are assuming someone is running caste system. Engineers are the hardest specialists to get. You can have one from a forge but I believe that is it. After that you need caste system.

Now you have to look at when you can run caste system. Early in the game you want to run slavery. Once you are able to get caste system you will have the option of switching to it, but obviously doing so removes one of the more powerful civics from your disposal. Then you have to look at the late game. Once emancipation comes around you will only be able to run caste system for so long before the happiness penalty bites you, especially at higher levels. If you are unlucky to have not won the game by the time the UN is built and fail to win the vote then you will be displeased to know that the AI likes to vote universal civic emancipation pretty early. Byebye caste system.

And really, your premise has another major flaw. A tile with 2 food does not support a specialist. A tile with 2 food only supports itself.

Click to expand...

My calculations were pure theory and were based on a few assumptions. First, that it is late game. Second, that your city has no more tiles to work. And third, that you have enough food to grow even though all the tiles in your city are already worked. These assumptions were stated either explicitly or implicitly. The first two imply that you already have a factory in that city, so having 3 engineers at least is possible. The fourth engineer would need Ironworks, as MrCynical has pointed out. The third assumption means there is enough food to feed the citizen working each windmill and the two food the windmill produces can go to supporting a specialist.

I really don't know where you're coming from. Maybe you should read more carefully. And I assign quite a few engineers for a space race.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

A windmill is never the best answer for a grassland hill, right? If you want hammers, then you should be mining it; if you want commerce, you should be cottaging it.

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You can't build cottages on hills.

I'm a big fan of windmills on riverside hils with a financial civ. 2F1H3C ain't bad at all. Generally, though, in a non-production city, any hills are going to be my marginal tiles; the tiles I will improve last. As such, I'm often not putting any improvements on them until I'm at or around replacable parts. At that point, I think it'd simply be stupid to go with a mine over a windmill in any city not specialized for production (and doubly so after electricity).

The real debate for me in the early-mid game is, in my commerce cities, do I cottage the plains tile, cottage the grassland hill, or windmill the grassland hill? I never seem to answer that one consistently from game to game.