Improving Tiles

In the beginning of a game is it a good idea to leave tiles unimproved to save gold if you dont have the population to work them. How much does a tile improvement cost in maintenance?

Also, how does it work when settling a new city? Does it cost gold by distance from the capital, how much. And how much gold is earned from a trade route.

The only tile improvements that cost money are roads and railroads. In general, you're better not building these at the start of a game, until you have at least 1 other city (and hopefully at least 2 workers).

Both take gold but can supply gold by trade routes (and railroads give a production bonus), and offer the obvious advantage of letting your army move though your land faster.

No other improvement costs money, and any tile, no matter if you are working it right away or not, can be improved for future use safely, without hurting your early economy, though it's obviously better if you are improving tiles that will make a difference right away.

You can build improments now I am a tall player so I have tested alot of times when to build a worker it also depends on terrain too. So descibe the land but usually go monument and then worker right after unless you are playing religious go monument, shrine, and then worker.

Two tips for you:

1) Don't build roads between cities unless (1) your capital is over pop 7 or (2) The capital and the city you are connecting are both at least pop 4. I forget where I saw the breakdown, but until this point you won't make enough money to make the roads worth it. Also, delay building roads if they are going to be 6+ tiles to the other city... thats a lot of road to pay for!

2) A sneaky way to get a second (or first) worker is by Declaring war on a city state, grabbing a worker, and immediately suing for peace. Just don't do it more than once per game

Seabastian Civ said:

2) A sneaky way to get a second (or first) worker is by Declaring war on a city state, grabbing a worker, and immediately suing for peace. Just don't do it more than once per game

Click to expand...

Avoid doing this if the CS is under another civ's protection (you will see a note to that effect in the "do you really want to declare war?" pop-up). If you go ahead and take the worker, you get an immediate negative diplo hit with the protecting civ that increases the likelihood of an early DOW. Of course, if you want to provoke an early DOW....

Also, you don't want to do this more than once in a game because it will lead other civs to label you a "menace" and cause other CS's to "grow wary" of you, resetting your baseline influence to -20 (essentially negative Aestheticism). Interestingly, it does not appear to affect all CSs in the game. When I played with this, I saw it affect a CS next door to my victim CS (no surprise there) and, randomly, another CS that was about 30 tiles away, but other CSs (including my first worker-steal victim and a couple of other CSs that were in the middle) seemed unaware or unconcerned. Not sure of the mechanic here, but there is a CS "grapevine" of sorts.

As Rooftrellen said, the only improvements that cost maintenance are roads and railroad, which usually pay for themselves by creating a trade route. However, build roads only when you get a second city. Will immediately increase GPT (usually). Also, in the early game, the roads are mostly passing through neutral hexes, not yours, so that you don't have much cost on them. When your territory does cover them, its usually later in the game when your economy is a lot more stable.

I'm not quite sure how much trade routes bring, I just know that they bring money. Go to: http://www.dndjunkie.com/civilopedia/CONCEPT_WORKERS_ROADS_TRADE_ROUTES.aspx

and check it out on the online civilopedia.

As for improvements, you of course want the ones the benefit you more at first.

Or http://www.dndjunkie.com/civilopedia/ROUTE_ROAD.aspx

I'm not sure where to find how much gold exactly a trading route gives.

Trade Route gold = (city population * 1.1) * (capital population * 1.15)

If you hover over the Trade Routes amount in your economy screen, it will show the population * 1.1 though not the modifier for capital population. (You DID know you could click on Trade Routes to get an itemization for each city, didn't you?)

Each road hex within a civ's border costs 1 gold, regardless of builder. Roads built in neutral territory costs the builder 1 gold, though that cost may transfer to another if their borders overtake it.

Of course, road/rail costs may be adjusted by social policies and difficulty level handicaps, and trade route income by Machu Pichu and difficulty level handicaps.