what to work, mine with extra commerce, or mine with chance to pop resource?

Okay, so you have a normal grassland hill, and a grassland hill with silk or something else that gives it +1 commerce on it (more often in mods, of course).

Assume epic speed.
Would you work the silk hill, knowing you would have no chance of popping, or the grassland hill, where you 'may' have a chance (you are not sure if it has coal, aluminum, etc... the odds may be about 20% or so that one of those would be there).

with knowing bronzeworking + iron working, your chance to pop each turn is .5%, or on average it takes 200 turns. Assuming it took the average amount of time, you would sacrifice 200 commerce, and assuming a 25% bonus applied to that commerce, 250 beakers/gold.

So would you sacrifice that average of 250 over time, 1.25 per turn, for the chance of popping gems/silver/gold/copper/iron? Assume you have copper and iron, and 2 out of 3 of the luxuries... so your odds of getting a new resource are quite low. I think it would be almost hands down worth it if you were lacking iron anywhere nearby, since that can affect the later game so much. But in this case you are mostly just going for the possible production/commerce bonus, and possible later corporation benefits.

Most common case of this is sheep plains hill for me. The extra food makes it way more atractive than the ability to pop a resource. The chance for doing it is so insanely small that any extra benefit you can get and lose that chance is eorth taking...

hm 1 food is a good deal better than 1 commerce, though. I'd agree it's almost no-existent the times when you would rather work the mine with 1 less food.

Working a weaker tile just to have the chance to pop a resouce is nonsense.

OTOH why not complain about your bad luck last night??

Levgre said:

Assume epic speed.
Would you work the silk hill, knowing you would have no chance of popping, or the grassland hill, where you 'may' have a chance (you are not sure if it has coal, aluminum, etc... the odds may be about 20% or so that one of those would be there).

with knowing bronzeworking + iron working, your chance to pop each turn is .5%, or on average it takes 200 turns. Assuming it took the average amount of time, you would sacrifice 200 commerce, and assuming a 25% bonus applied to that commerce, 250 beakers/gold.

Click to expand...

You are greatly overestimating the chance of a resource poping.
You are assuming 1 in 200. The default (unmoded) rate in 1 in 10000/resource/turn - 50 times worse than your numbers.

If it is the sole resource you are having always work it in the right way. That one is easy.

If you need more production and you have an abundance of resources already, then you could mine or cottage it. I always work the resource to be honest because there is a big chance you can trade it for either another resource or something like 9-15 gold/turn. Combine that with the resource you are already working, it will always win from a cottage or a mine. The chance to pop a resource is so freaking small that it is not worth it anyway. But since you are talking about mods, you want a resource to pop up in a tile that already has a resource???? In a normal game this is impossible.

And sheep on a plains hill, what is not to love? A tile with 3F/2H/1C is already golden in my book. If it is on a river and you are financial it will be 3F/2H/3C, that is major.