What to do with desert tiles?

Besides the obvious Petra and Desert Folklore, what improvement is best for desert?

KASBAH SPAM, DUDE!!!!!!
Seriously, if Morocco, loads Kashbahs is the way to go

I assume you are asking about plain desert.
Otherwise, farm for floodplain and mine for hills, to state the obvius

Flat deserts that aren't flood plains with no petra and no desert folklore? Well, if you farm them you can get them up to 1 food/0 anything else tiles. Unless your city is ginormous though, there are better tiles to work, so ignoring them is best. Improve other tiles first unless you're Morocco.

Oasis tiles with flat desert surrounding it can be farmed for 2 food with Civil Service.

Farms or trading posts if going rationalism. They are sucky tiles. There just isn't much to be done with them.

If you have fertilization, you can get +2 food by farming dry desert tiles.

Just ignore them. The most u get is 2 food which supports the person working it. I simply spam forts on deserts when my workers have nothing to do.

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Trading posts + rationalism and maybe + commerce + economics tech on a dry desert tile without petra.

I either use the Petra or else look for the right combination of hills and flood plains. Other than that I usually just think of a patch of desert as a quick route to use for invasion.

Well, if you have enough food to support it, you can always plant GPs on them, but they won't be self-sustaining . . . or pray for oil.

I prefer trade posts as of late. But it's a bad tile, - no question about it.

Farmed flat desert goes to +2 food (max), so it can only sustain one regular pop. (what modifiers you get in your cities for science, will of course boost this slightly, but it's not very valuable pop all things considering)

trade post flat desert will most often yield +2 gold, and maybe+1 beaker and +1 gold depending on commerce and rationalism.

I agree with the consensus that they are almost worthless tiles.

That said, if nothing else, and unless I'm focused on production or really hard up for cash, personally I feel a farm is better than a trading post. Remember, each pop gives you 1 (not shown on the tile), plus boosts trade route income and other behind-the-scenes benefits.

It depends on what is around the city as a whole and what you have access to work....

The plain desert tile is crap... BUT.... if your city is on a river you likely have plenty of Flood plains.

Flood plains farmed with Civil Service = 4 food Which will support the citizen farming the Flood Plain and 1 more.

The question is what to do with your "bonus" citizen from the flood plain yield.

You can put a farm on the desert tile to make the citizen self sustaining (after fertilizer), Which will allow for a larger city and those "hidden" bonuses that Wodan mentioned.

Also remember that any tile improvement is going to contribute to your tile improvement maintenance cost...

To support a city that works all 36 Tiles and has ALL the BASIC specialist buildings with their specialist slots filled (4 Engineers, 4 Merchants, 4 Scientists) you need a city of 48 Citizens, which is 96 Food. From 36 tiles.

You need to average 2 2/3 food per tile to achieve this. Now almost no one places cities 6 hexes apart to achieve the 36 tile yield unless they are going REALLY tall. Plus 48 citizen cities take a long time to get going.

So here are your options:

1. Farm = 1 extra citizen = 1 beaker + a bit more gold in trade. + Unhappiness + Tile improvement cost
2. Trading Post = 1-3 Gold & 0-1 Science depending on technology / social policies.
3. GP Improvement = Varies
4. Nothing / Use citizen as a Specialist (with free slot):
   • Engineer = 2 hammers + GP Points​
   • Merchant = 2 gold + GP Points​
   • Scientist = 3 beakers + GP Points​

You have to decide how you are going to place GP tile improvements, which for the most part means Academies not Customs Houses or Manufactories.

You can place your Academies on Grasslands which will make them self sustaining but you loose 1 food for not having the grassland farmed.

If you place your Academies on a desert you loose 2 food because it takes a citizen to work the tile and no food is produced.

My conclusion on desert tiles is that if there are NO specialist slots to be filled in the city and I can't build a building to hold one and I have ALL other tiles worked then I will build a Trading Post and work it. I don't put GP tile improvements on Desert tiles anymore. I use grasslands or hills but not plains.

Finally remember that you now have a citizen working a desert tile and this citizen does contribute to your empires over all unhappiness. You probably should have checked "Avoid Growth" in this city before that citizen appeared to allow for more citizens in other cities with better tiles or free specialist slots for the the same level of unhappiness.

The best improvement for flat desert is a specialist slot.

Flat desert: If you have neither Petra nor Desert Faith; it is normally worthless. Use a specalist instead.

The only times I can think of to actually work such a tile are:
1. If the alternate to not working the flat desert is an ocean tile with no resources then trade post may be better (with Rationalism) Basically this is where you have all science and enginner slots filled but don't want to risk getting a Great Merchant. (On an above post with details; GM points are NOT a positive; but are instead like bags in Spades; you DON'T want to roll overl)

2. Sometimes you run out of both bonus tiles and other types of flat tiles to place Academies on and need to settle for it.

academy and specialist improvement tiles are not exactly speaking bad tiles, of course.

Would you say "cerro de potosi" is a bad tile, because it's only gold yield +10 gold (no food yield?)

Basically settling the GPs into tiles, makes a bad tile, into a medium tile, IMO.

With freedom enabled, desert customs house becomes basically "cerro de potosi" with +9 gold (IIRC)

For normal civs, desert customs house becomes like desert incense tile, without the religion bonuses or happiness from lux of courrse.

In an abstract way of thinking, this is, in fact, improving your economy, land is being improved and worked, wealth is greater than in the beginning of the process.

People who say "work a specialist instead" seem to be overlooking that it's not an either-or choice. The choice is really, "do I want to go max food, even if it means foregoing specialists just long enough to grow the pop, after which the food on a farmed desert will feed the citizen to work it." If you go that route, then you get a specialist AND a farmed desert.

To be honest I have almost never problems with settling deserts. Why?
In this game there are four kinds of deserts:

1) Flood plains, obvious high quality terrain (history also shows us the glory of flood plains civs )
2) Desert with no flood plains but with enough cool resources and food support (marble/gold/salt/oasis/natural wonders/sea resources)
3) Desert without much food but with enough valuable resources so it is worthwhile to settle on them and provide food via internal trade routes
4) ...finally, barren deserts without anything important... But they cannot be start bias - and I always have enough Cool Deserts to not cry over problems with settling on Lame Deserts

I don't know why, I love deserts, IRL and in strategy games. In Civ5 my favourite terrains are "Sunny" - deserts, snow and archipelagos, while I don't like plains/tundra/giant forests, they seem a bit "depressing"

ignore them

Forts will negate the defense penalty for desert for you but not anyone attacking you