Water Mill Pros and Cons

Hello All,

I'd like to get your collective thoughts about water mills in riverside cities. They seem to be a very good thing to me, generally speaking, but in the scheme of things have you found them to be cost effective? I know that many of you crunch numbers and/or ponder every opportunity cost; would you please share your musings? Thanks.

The combination of 2 food and 1 hammer is great. For 120 hammers, it's tough to justify just for the 1 hammer, but if you consider the 100 hammer cost of a granary, for just 20 hammers more, you get 1 hammer/turn. So it pays back in only 20 turns vs. a granary. On the other hand, it cost 1 extra maintenance - still you get 3 combined (food+hammer) for 2 maintenance, so I think it's worth it.

Given the choice, I'd take the water mill over a granary.

Also, hammers are limited in civ 5, so anything that boosts production is worth it.

I try to rush buy it in production cities, so I can keep producing the stuff I need.

2 food always allows 1 more citizen to work a non-food tile (mined/TP'd hill), 2 more single food tiles (lumber mill, TP plains, etc) or at least 1 more specialist. With the two initial (-50% unhappiness from specialists) and Civil Society (-50% food consumption from specialists) policies in the Freedom tree, that 2 food means 2 specialists and -1 unhappiness from the specialists. Even if those specialist are just unemployed citizens, that means 2 more hammers with these policies and a granary, or 3 more hammers with the watermill since it gives one itself.

With both a granary and watermill combined with these two Freedom policies, you could run 4 specialists for just the cost of a few gpt maintenance, which means -2 unhappiness and whatever bonuses you gain from the type of specialist you run. That -2 unhappiness means you can grow 2 more population in that city. If one of those is made a specialist as well, that gets you an additional -1 unhappiness, because the -1 unhappiness from the main Freedom policy is from each odd numbered specialists, ie. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. This means you'd have a net effect of -1 unhappiness in this city. So every 5 cities with this set-up would equate to 1 additional luxury resource.

Monthar said:

With the two initial (-50% unhappiness from specialists) and Civil Society (-50% food consumption from specialists) policies in the Freedom tree, that 2 food means 2 specialists and -1 unhappiness from the specialists.

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Ah yes. It is important to remember that citizens of a free and civil society are often most useful to society when they are unemployed.

Izmir Stinger said:

Ah yes. It is important to remember that citizens of a free and civil society are often most useful to society when they are unemployed.

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Particularly with Statue of Liberty and Secularism. 1F 2H 2beakers with half unhappiness? Yes please.

Water Mills are still kind of poor, just because the alternatives are stronger for most of the game. I'm appreciative when I capture a city with it, but will not usually build or buy it in my own unless I absolutely need it.

wurstburst said:

The combination of 2 food and 1 hammer is great.

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Wait, what? My water mills claim to only add 2 food. Is the hammer hidden? Pedia typo?

Smoo said:

Wait, what? My water mills claim to only add 2 food. Is the hammer hidden? Pedia typo?

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Have you patched yet?

Oh, I see. I have Mac so we're a bit behind on patches. Well then, something to look forward to.

So, 4 years later. I read Moriarte, nearly never build it.

I have my opinion about windmill, but I not easy with watermill. It's nearly my third building after shrine/monument and granary. Even before library in many games.

Do I miss something ? Is is optimal with Liberty, because you don't have land elite in capital. Or is it a must have. There's so many thing to build in first T100. I wonder if it's a must have (so river tile is a priority to settle), or is it just an average advantage ?

Thanks for your help.

While I suppose this thread is a bit of a necro, The effects early of it is essentially another Citizen who happens to be working a NonRiver Plains with a Farm

That is a pretty nice effect for a mere 2 gold pt

Since when is extra early game food not good?

Food and hammers are always good. I mean, on a lot of maps in BNW, you will have a good gold income and have good production so it becomes irrelevant the 'cost' or 'cost/benefit'. Obviously if you are having to chose whether to build Mills vs. something critical (like a science building), then yeah. But after that, you can pretty much build everything on the list dealing with food, happiness, science and gold (plus the critical wonders). No reason to ask whether you should build one of those things, I don't think.

water mill is a very overrated building, 2f 1h is NOT a good yield in a big city.

a grainary is a much better investment, when you add in the food tiles it adds 1 food to.

klaskeren said:

water mill is a very overrated building, 2f 1h is NOT a good yield in a big city.

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However, it is a decent yield in a rather new and developing city. Thus I usually try to get them quite early. Of course, if I have more hammers than normal from a developing city and no happiness buffer, I might prefer something else, but that is rare for me and usually I find the extra hammer to be of use early on.

TLHeart said:

a grainary is a much better investment, when you add in the food tiles it adds 1 food to.

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Sure, not as good as granary, but one does not have to pick one over the other. For a developing city, the water mill is well worth it.

I think its a good building, and certainly one you should build straight away. If you dont, then its effects dimish greatly over time, to the point where its fairly pointless once you hit size 10. If you have 1 of either deer, bannanas or corn, you should build the granary first, as it gives +1 food to those tiles. The watermill effectively doubles your early growth rate. You also have the option of sacrificing the growth benefit in favour of a significant production boost. (Net position of +2 food to Net position of +4 food).

I'll build it early if there's literally nothing else to work on (I'm full on caravans, no need for another archer, library is done, etc) and I'll build it late if it just takes one or two turns and I'm bored. But that's it. I think it's definitely overrated.

Granaries > Watermills because you are often getting more than +2 food - and even when you're not, you still need a granary in the city to run food caravans. +2 food on its own, though ... meh. Not a bad thing, by any means, but at any time there's usually something more important to build.

(That said, I probably end up building them in most of my cities that offer them.)

I will definitely, definitely build them where possible in my first few cities because you want to get those early cities growing as much as you can. Is it as good as a granary? Absolutely not, but there's nothing to say you can't have both. At that early point in the game I feel it more than justifies the time and hammers. However, since BNW, it pales in comparison to food caravans let alone cargo ships, so once you get to the point where you can spare a trade route to send food to your new city instead, you can probably forget about worrying about them.

imagine a riverside town without a water mill, i'll always try to build them in my riverside cities (which if not coastal is the place to settle)