[Guide] Resource Gathering (beta)

I've been trying to piece together state-of-the-art information on how to efficiently produce resources in CivWorld, from three sources: experimentation within the game, the wiki, and the official forums. After a lot of digging, I think I've got it. Please correct me if you see any errors in the following. I hope this will be a useful resource.

Ways to Acquire Resources

1. Harvests
2. Trickle Income
3. Bonus Resource Bubbles
4. The Market
5. Mini-Games
6. Dowries

Harvests
Harvests are one of your most powerful resource producing methods. You gain 1 harvest per hour, and the Interior Minister of your civ has a chance to randomly gift you a bonus harvest every time she uses a harvest. Every time you click the harvest button you gain resources equal to the sum of the amounts displayed on your citizen "cards" at the bottom of the view area. You can also see how many resources of a particular type will be produced by a harvest by mousing over the corresponding menu button.

• Food: Build Menu
• Science: Tech Tree
• Culture: Wonder Building
• Gold: Market
• Hammers: Armies/Battles

There are exactly two ways to increase the amount of resources built by harvesting: increase population or increase citizen productivity. The first is straightforward, but the latter has several non-obvious principles.

Citizen Productivity
A citizen's productivity is the amount of resources that she adds to a harvest, and is represented by the number that appears on her citizen "card" at the bottom of the view area (it can also be seen by clicking on the citizen's house). Citizen productivity is determined by several factors.

1. Happiness
2. Size of Benefit Building and Drop Off Point
3. Length of Route Traveled
4. Base Value of the Resource Worked*
5. Percentage Modifiers from Eras, Wonders, Civics, and Great People

*Only Workers and Farmers work a specific Resource; other citizen types work at home.

Note that after 16 population, citizens will no longer move into new Houses. Instead, starting from the bottom right hand corner of the citizen "card" list and moving left, your citizens will begin to have their productivity doubled. The new citizens simply move into the same houses (which become "townhouses"), doubling productivity. They do not require a separate resource to work, in the case of Farmers/Workers.

Citizen Happiness
Citizens have the following levels of happiness: Content Happy Very Happy Ecstatic. (There are levels below Content, but I've never seen them, as I've never used a Civic that gives a happiness penalty.) Happier citizens are more productive. You can affect the happiness of all citizens in the civilization through Wonders and Civics. You can also increase the happiness of individual citizens with careful House placement. The following each give +1 Happiness level:

• Living next door to a citizen of the same type (Farmer, Worker, Scientist, etc.)
• Living next door to a water tile.
• Living next door to a forest tile.

All three of these bonuses stack with each other. So, for example, an Artist whose House was next to a water tile, a forest tile, and another Artist's House would be Ecstatic (assuming she had no penalties to Happiness).

The forest and water bonuses also stack with themselves. So a Merchant whose House was sandwiched in between two forest tiles would be Very Happy, assuming no other modifiers.

However, the neighbor bonus does not stack with itself. A Scientist with two Scientist neighbors and no other Happiness modifiers would be merely Happy.

Note that "next door to" means that the two tiles must share a side; diagonally adjacent tiles do not count (in general, CivWorld means "share a side" by "adjacent" unless otherwise specified).

Although Ecstatic is the highest Happiness level that the game will report, citizens continue to have their productivity increased by additional Happiness modifiers even after reaching Ecstatic. For example, I just tested this with a 42 productivity Farmer who was Ecstatic because of two adjacent water tiles and the Hanging Gardens. Adding a Farmer neighbor increased productivity to 46, even though the reported Happiness level remained Ecstatic.

Benefit Buildings and Drop Off Points
Every citizen type has a corresponding Benefit Building (or, typically, more than one). Each citizen also has a building at which she "drops off" the product of her labors. A citizen's productivity is increased by both proximity to and size/type of Benefit Buildings and Drop Off locations. Proximity will be covered in the Work Route section below. As for size, bigger is always better (in CivWorld!). Workers will automatically travel to the Benefit Building and/or Drop Off location that gives them the highest productivity. Be careful when experimenting with building placement! Upgraded buildings do not return 100% of their cost when moved/recycled, and even Small Village Greens do not.

The default Drop Off point is the Palace at the center of town. However, the Palace can only be upgraded through Wonder Events and special Auctions, so it's generally better to relocate your citizens to different Drop Off locations as soon as possible (for much of the early game, you have no choice regarding Scientists, Artists, and Merchants, however). (Note: It appears that an upgraded Palace does improve productivity for citizens who Drop Off there. It's not known whether a Village Green of equivalent size would be better, worse, or the same.)

Farmers have only one Benefit Building, which also serves as a Drop Off point: the Granary. A Farmer's productivity is increased by being close to a large Granary. You should build Ginormous Granaries near your Farmers' Houses and/or Resources to maximize food productivity. A Farmer can also use the Palace or Village Green as a Drop Off point, though a Farmer benefits more from a Ginormous Granary than a Ginormous Village Green.

Workers have the most diversity of Benefit Buildings and Drop Off locations. Like Farmers, Workers' Benefit Buildings all also serve as a Drop Off point. Unlike Farmers, Workers' Benefit Buildings are resource-specific. That is, a Worker who is working an Iron resource will only benefit from an Iron Forge, and not from a Lumber Mill. The one exception is the Factory, which is unlocked relatively late in the tech tree--it is a universal Benefit Building/Drop Off location for all Worker resource types. Workers can also use the Palace or Village Green as a Drop Off location. I haven't tested this, but I assume Workers are like Farmers, and gain more benefit from their specialized Benefit Buildings as Drop Off locations than from a Village Green.

Scientists must use the Palace or Village Green as a Drop Off point. They have two Benefit Buildings, the Library and the University. An individual Scientist benefits from only one Benefit Building (whichever one she actually travels to). Universities give higher productivity than Libraries of the same size.

Artists must use the Palace or Village Green as a Drop Off point. They have two Benefit Buildings, the Theatre and the Museum. An individual Artist benefits from only one Benefit Building (whichever one she actually travels to). Museums give higher productivity than Theatres of the same size.

Merchants must use the Palace or Village Green as a Drop Off point. They have two Benefit Buildings, the Market and the Bank. An individual Merchant benefits from only one Benefit Building (whichever one she actually travels to). Banks give higher productivity than Markets of the same size.

Work Routes
A citizen walks a regular route:

House Resource* Benefit Building Drop Off Point** House.
*Recall that only Farmers/Workers must travel to a Resource, other citizen types work at home and have 0 squares of travel for this leg of the journey.
**Farmers/Worker Benefit Buildings double as Drop Off Points, so Farmers and Workers have 0 squares of travel for this leg of the journey.

Decreasing the length of any leg of this journey improves productivity. Note that you cannot select which resource a citizen works; it's determined automatically by an algorithm that's supposed to maximize productivity across all citizens (but does not always do this).


Resource Values
Farmers and Workers, unlike other citizen types, require a resource to work. There are four Farmer resources: Garden, Corn Field, Orchard, and Pasture. There are three Worker resources: Forest, Stone, Iron. These work very differently.

Worker resources are simpler. Forests have a base resource value of 15, Stone 20, and Iron 25. There is only one way to increase these values: building a Road under any Worker resource increases its value by 10. (Roads must be built in such a way as to connect to the main roads in your city, but can run under buildings and resources and over water.) Obviously the most desirable Worker resource is Iron, but you may be able to get better overall productivity by working Forests or Stone, depending on resource placement. Of course, until your civilization researches the technologies required to build the corresponding Benefit Buildings for Stone and Iron, you will be better off working Forests near a Ginormous Lumber Mill.

Farmer resources are buildable, and tend to interact with each other. Of the Farmer resources, you should avoid the Garden. It's maximum value is 15, if built on Grassland. All other Farmer resources have higher values if placed well.

Corn Fields provide 10 base resource value +5 per adjacent Corn Field. (Note again that "adjacent" tiles do not include diagonals unless otherwise specified.) The maximum resource value for a Corn Field is 30, which is only possible if the Corn Field is at the center of a "cross." Although it's impossible to house your Farmer directly adjacent to a 30 corn resource, it's generally better for productivity to have a slightly longer journey to and from a more valuable resource than to be adjacent to a less valuable one.

The best Farmer resource you can build at the start and the one with the highest possible value is the Orchard. However, to build a 50 fruit Orchard, you have to get very lucky with terrain: you must have a Grassland tile surrounded on all four sides by water. Below is an example from another player's town of such an Orchard (I was not so lucky in my first game).

If you aren't so lucky, the maximum possible Farmer resource value is a 45 meat Pasture, which becomes available on researching Irrigation (a 2nd tier tech). Pastures have a base value of only 5, but they get +5 from every adjacent and diagonally adjacent Pasture or water tile. Note that this means, however, that it's not possible to have a House or Granary even diagonally adjacent to a 45 meat Pasture, for longer work routes. You can still set up a pretty large farm complex of reasonably high productivity farmers using Pastures, although you'll get the highest individual productivity from a well-placed Orchard.

It is possible to have two citizens work the same resource. However, the productivity of the 2nd citizen will be dramatically less than the productivity of the 1st. It appears to be halved, although it's hard to control for other variables to get an exact coefficient. So this is not a good strategy for maximizing productivity.
Farmer resources and Houses are recyclable for 100% of their cost in Hammers, so don't be afraid to experiment with placement--just be careful about moving upgrading Granaries.

Percentage Modifiers
Productivity is also improved by percentage modifiers, which are shown overlaying the Resource list on the left of the screen. Percentage modifiers are gained from four sources: Wonders, Great People, Civics, and Eras. Most game Eras provide a modifier (usually positive, sometimes negative) to one resource type as long as the Era lasts. Eras, Wonders, and Civics provide civilization-wide modifiers that affect you as long as your civ has them. Great People provide a +5% bonus per Great Person to a particular resource type as long as you have them, and affect only you and not other members of your civilization.

• Food: Great Prophet
• Hammers: Great Builder
• Science: Great Scientist
• Gold: Great General
• Culture: Great Artist

These modifiers work in a way that many people find counter-intuitive. The modifiers affect citizen productivity, and they are not applied when you click "Harvest." If you have 1 Scientist with 15 productivity and a +50% Science bonus, for example, you will get exactly 15 Science when you Harvest resources; the 50% bonus is already factored into that productivity number.

Trickle Income
Trickle income is a more important source of resource generation than is immediately apparent, as well as one of the most powerful sources of resource generation once you and your civilization have grown and acquired some bonuses.

By trickle income, I mean the small amount of resources that your Palace adds to your stockpile every 5 minutes. How many resources you get is determined by two factors: population ("pop") and the % bonus you get for the corresponding resource type ("bonus"). The exact formula is speculated to be:

bonus resources = (2 + pop)*(1 + bonus/100)

This is not officially confirmed, but it seems to fit the limited data that people have gathered on the official forums.

So, for example, at population 10 in my recent game I had the following total bonuses:

• Food: +80%
• Hammers: +50%
• Science: +35%
• Gold: +50%
• Culture: +50%

So, every 5 minutes, I'd get the following amount of resources:

• Food: 12*1.8 = 21.6
• Hammers: 12*1.5 = 18
• Science: 12*1.35 = 16.2
• Gold: 12*1.5 = 18
• Culture: 12*1.5 = 18

Which meant that, per hour, I was getting the following amounts from trickle income:

• Food: 259.2
• Hammers: 216
• Science: 194.4
• Gold: 216
• Culture: 216

These resources accumulate whether you are online or not. This is significantly more than I would get from a Harvest (even for the resource types I was focusing on, Food and Hammers)! Since you only get 1 Harvest per hour, a large population and high percentage modifiers will quickly make your trickle income outperform your Harvest income.

An important and somewhat counterintuitive point is that citizen productivity has no effect on trickle income whatsoever. Nor does the composition of your workforce---even if all your citizens are Farmers, you will still get trickle income of all resource types, and this won't boost your Food income.

Bonus Resource Bubbles
Bonus resource bubbles will occasionally appear over your citizens' heads. Mouse over them to pop them and collect the bonus. These amounts are not multiplied by any percentage bonuses; if it says +1, you get +1. The rate at which they appear is not affected by citizen productivity or any other factor (however, it seems they can only appear when the citizen is still for a moment--some people claim that this means shorter work routes can increase bubble rate, but this is unconfirmed). While popping bonus resource bubbles is an effective way of getting a boost in the very early game, when trickle and Harvest values are small, it very quickly becomes pointless to pop bubbles, as the amount of resources generated will be much smaller than your trickle and Harvest income. At the risk of editorializing a bit: you should not spend a lot of time on this task. Regard these bubbles as a bonus, not as mandatory.

If you do want to spend some time popping bubbles, though, remember that bubble rates do not seem to be affected by productivity. So if you've got citizens scattered around the map, the best thing to do is move all your Houses near a single Drop Off point, so that the bubbles will show up all in one place. Just remember to move the Houses back before you Harvest.



Market and Mini-games
How to play the market and succeed at CivWorld's mini-games is beyond the scope of this guide. But I will make a few limited observations.

• Resources purchased or won in mini-games are not affected by percentage multipliers.
• When you complete research on a technology or reach a Great Person through culture, any excess science does not carry over to the next tech/Great Person. So especially if you're about to complete a tech maze that will put you over the research needed for the next tech (you can see how much is needed at the top of the maze screen), you should exit and sell off any excess before completing the maze.
• This does not apply to Food. Food acquired in excess of the amount needed for growth will carry over. Similarly for Culture and Great People. However, when you generate a Great Person, you do lose any remaining Puzzle Game swaps.
• I strongly recommend not producing Gold in your town. 100 Gold is always worth 100 Gold at the Market, whereas other Resource types can be worth much more (in my game, only Culture was consistently trading below 100 Gold per 100 Culture, and in later Eras even Culture has become more valuable than Gold).

Dowries
Periodically, players get a bonus "Dowry." When this happens, the "World" button (top row, right side) will have the word "Dowry" on it. To use your Dowry, visit another player's town and mouse over a citizen's house. You'll see a button that will tell you how many bonus resources you'll get if your citizen "marries" that citizen. Click the button to perform the wedding and receive the Dowry bonus. The bonus resource is always of whatever type the citizen you choose is producing.

Dowry is increased by two factors:

1. Productivity of the citizen you choose
2. Civ affiliation of the player whose citizen you choose

Productivity is straightforward: you get a bigger Dowry for marrying a more productive citizen. You also get a bonus if you select a citizen from one of the players in your own civilization. If none of your teammates has a high-productivity citizen, it can still be better to use your Dowry on a citizen outside your civilization.

The player whose citizen you select will also receive the Dowry bonus. If you follow the rest of this guide and have high-productivity citizens, the other players on your team will all want to marry you! Thus, having high productivity citizens tends to produce extra dividends in the form of extra Dowry bonuses from other players.

Advanced Topics
Above, we covered all the different factors that affect citizen productivity. But you might be wondering what their relative weights are. If you really want to maximize productivity, what trade-offs should you make? When is it better to work a lower-value resource for a shorter work route length? Should you ever place a House farther away for more Happiness? The truth is, I don't know the answers to all of these questions yet, but I'm starting to figure it out. If you have any data to contribute, please post it in this thread. I'll summarize what we can infer here.

vs.
Preliminary testing suggests that +1 Happiness gives a productivity boost equivalent to shaving 1 square of travel distance off a citizen's Work Route.


vs.
Preliminary testing suggests that +1 Happiness gives a bigger productivity boost than +5 Resource Value.

really well done. thanks, Ginger.

Sean Meade said:

really well done. thanks, Ginger.

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Hehe, are you in my game, or what?

heh. i don't know. i don't see you. i'm in 386.

I found one error. It is possible to upgrade your palace, just not like other buildings. There are three ways listed here: http://wiki.2kgames.com/civworld/index.php/Palace

Minor Annoyance said:

I found one error. It is possible to upgrade your palace, just not like other buildings. There are three ways listed here: http://wiki.2kgames.com/civworld/index.php/Palace

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Hmm. Does this have any non-aesthetic effects, though?

punctuator said:

Hmm. Does this have any non-aesthetic effects, though?

Click to expand...

No idea, and it's not something that would happen too often so it would be hard to test.

Minor Annoyance said:

No idea, and it's not something that would happen too often so it would be hard to test.

Click to expand...

Well, thanks for the catch; post has been edited.

I was able to purchase a camelot upgrade for my palace last night in an auction. I had a merchant set up nearby using the palace as a dropoff and his rate DID increase. I hope someone can determine the exact amount and if a palace > village greens or the other way around.

@Ed thanks for the info. Are you 100% sure there were no other factors that might explain the increase in Merchant Productivity?

Perhaps the words of Sid himself will sway to you believe me.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...ay-changes-June-16-2011&p=1403505#post1403505

One way to test a palace vs. village green would be to place a house equal distance from a palace and green and if the guy goes to the palace, upgrade the green and see if/when it switches.
Since the tooltip for the palace mentions the Trickle Income, it might be that upgraded palaces increase Trickle Income.

Ed_ said:

Perhaps the words of Sid himself will sway to you believe me.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...ay-changes-June-16-2011&p=1403505#post1403505

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I believed you to begin with but I'd like to stay away from basing claims on just hearsay in my guide (even though testimony is generally a reliable way of gaining justification to believe).

Also, that quote is old, and the other information in it is no longer accurate! I still believe you about the palace (you may note I already edited the guide).

Minor Annoyance said:

Since the tooltip for the palace mentions the Trickle Income, it might be that upgraded palaces increase Trickle Income.

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I think the post Ed links above suggests otherwise.

I have not noticed any change in trickle. To further the evidence of this, I created an Excel spreadsheet with the formula incorporated. With my 8 population and a 95% science modifier I should be trickling 19.5 science. My latest science trickle was 20, leading me to conclude that size doesn't matter when it comes to your trickle.

Here is a Google Docs version of the spreadsheet. Please try not to screw it up. Only modify the ranges you need to, i.e. population and bonuses. =P

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spr...qEVGsdHhZZ3dOckZEU3BreENsdXlmaUpVZFE&hl=en_US

Thank you for this guide. Outstanding work!

*Recall that only Farmers/Workers must travel to a Resource, other citizen types work at home and have 0 squares of travel for this leg of the journey.

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Well, they do have to travel to libraries or universities, which sort of counts for the same.

Also, do you know what effect specifically the length of the route and drop-off building level has on gathering rates?