Another few questions...

[nofudgeplz]

I was wondering if it should be common practice to fill every tile up with an improvement, or just focus on only a few tiles?

Also how many farms is reasonable to build in a city - in other words, what food surplus should I be at when i have multiple cities?

My last question is which buildings are considered neccessary to build in every city?

[Um the Muse]

Hey, nofudgeplz. Improvements only do things if it's a resource and/or you have a citizen to work it. So, early in the game, you'll probably only want, say, three or four improvements per city, not counting roads. The nice thing is that that is usually enough to cover the best tiles.

How much food should you have per city? I usually consider 1 to be worth about the same as 1.5 . Some go as high as 1 = 2 or even a little higher. To give you some perspective, using my ratio, a forested grassland is just as good as a mined plains hill, but is worth less than a grassland hill. Does that help?

Buildings: To some extent, it depends. However, you can do surprisingly well by only building: a granary, a forge, and either a library or a barracks. You should probably add six universities to unlock Oxford University and the theaters for Globe Theatre. Many of the National Wonders are worth building, though you can do pretty well without them too.

[nofudgeplz]

Originally Posted by Um the Muse

Hey, nofudgeplz. Improvements only do things if it's a resource and/or you have a citizen to work it. So, early in the game, you'll probably only want, say, three or four improvements per city, not counting roads. The nice thing is that that is usually enough to cover the best tiles.

Right but I'm talking about farms, cottages, and mines. Every other tile that doesnt have a resource can be improved upon (by farms, etc.) and I was wondering if those should be all improved.

[Um the Muse]

I know. My answer was yes--eventually. If you use that ratio I gave you, you'll end up with small to medium size cities until quite late in the game, especially if you're whipping. A higher ratio will give you more population so you can build workshops everywhere under State Property. YMMV.

Just use that ratio to evaluate whether building a farm vs. building a mine etc. is worth it.

Since I didn't really cover commerce, here's a few more tips: Cottages should only go on grassland and floodplains tiles that border a river unless you're financial. If you're financial, you still prefer grassland and floodplain cottages, but you can ignore the rivers restriction. Either way, you'll only do this in cities that look best suited for commerce.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

I was wondering if it should be common practice to fill every tile up with an improvement, or just focus on only a few tiles?

Ideally, each improvement would appear on the turn when you need it.

In practice, you should normally be either a little bit ahead of that, or a little bit behind it. If you are late with your improvements, you probably need to train more workers, convert some of your population to production, or both. If you are early with your improvements... you probably need more cities.

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

Also how many farms is reasonable to build in a city - in other words, what food surplus should I be at when i have multiple cities?

Messy question. There are really two difference circumstances

1) When your population is near the current happy cap, you normally either (a) want to convert all of your food to useful stuff, and therefore close to 0 surplus; or (b) are converting extra food to hammers using the whip. In that case, you normally want to have enough surplus food to regrow your population in 10 turns. That usually means 2-3 hammers per turn (depends on total population, whether you have a granary, and so on)

2) When your city is below the happy cap, "grow as fast as you can" isn't too unreasonable, but there's a bit of a trick in the math worth considering -- the nth surplus food is more important than the n+1 th.

Example. Suppose our city is 15 food away from growing to the next size. I have two grassland mines (1F:3P), an additional 1F:3P mine and two unworked grassland farms (3F) that I'm not working, and other tiles such that my food surplus is +1.

Option #1: I grow at 1 food per turn. That means I work each mine for 15 turns - I get 30 mine turns total (90 hammers)

Option #2: I switch one pop from a mine to a farm. This takes my food surplus from +1 to +3, and I grow in 5 turns. From there, I'll work all three mines for 10 turns (no food surplus at all). Total turns worked on the mines 1x5 + 3x10 = 35 (105 total hammers)

Option #3: I switch both mines to farms. This takes my food surplus from +1 to +5. I grow in 3 turns. Then I work all three mines for 12 turns. Total turns on the mines 0x3 + 3x12 = 36.

In this example, +3 was a lot better than +1, but +5 was only a tiny bit better than +3.

Another example, with cottages instead of mines. To keep the math simple, let's say we need 12 surplus food to grow, currently at rate +1F, we have three cottages (2F) that we can turn into farms(3F), and a 4th currently unworked.

+1F takes 12 turns, so that's our baseline.

Growing at +1 for 12 turns: 3x12 + 4x0 = 36 + 0F
Growing at +2 for 6 turns: 2x6 + 4x6 = 36 + 6F
Growing at +3 for 4 turns: 1x4 + 4x8 = 36 + 8F
Growing at +4 for 3 turns: 0x3 + 4x9 = 36 + 9F

So we get the same number of cottage turns either way, but extra food. Notice too that the amount of extra food we get falls off pretty quickly - just like we saw with hammers before.

There's a bunch of mathamancy somewhere about idealizing city growth rate for cottages when you are way below the happy cap. How many farms to plant before you start cottaging, and so on.

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

My last question is which buildings are considered neccessary to build in every city?

None are necessary - and certainly not necessary in every city. But unless you are showing off - "Look, Ma! No buildings," you are going to construct a lot of granaries.

[nofudgeplz]

So generally speaking, it's not necessarily a bad thing if some of my cities starve for a short period so that they stay within a certain size range?

[AbsoluteZero]

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

So generally speaking, it's not necessarily a bad thing if some of my cities starve for a short period so that they stay within a certain size range?

Starve? No you should whip away excess population if you are reaching your happy cap. Or switch from working food to running a specialist or two.

Ideally you want to be as close to your happy cap as possible. So if your happy cap is only 5 then you want 5 improved tiles, unless you're running specialists.

[Um the Muse]

Whipping is much better than starving, but I think starving 'em also has its place, assuming you have a granary.

What brought up the question? Maybe you need help with city placement?

[nofudgeplz]

Originally Posted by Um the Muse

Whipping is much better than starving, but I think starving 'em also has its place, assuming you have a granary.

What brought up the question? Maybe you need help with city placement?

No not really, I was just curious about its usefulness in late game stages.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

So generally speaking, it's not necessarily a bad thing if some of my cities starve for a short period so that they stay within a certain size range?

Food deficit for manageable periods is ok - it's not usually used as a population management technique so much as a "maximize my production" technique.

Starving -- actually losing population because you aren't producing enough food -- is almost always very bad, you effectively lose a full bar of food when somebody starves to death.

[Um the Muse]

Well, if my advice and VoU's advice differ, trust him instead of me.

Though, VoU, isn't a full bar an exaggeration? I mean, when you grow again, you get half of it back again plus the losses on the turn of starvation "don't count" because it doesn't matter how bad the starvation is. Isn't that part of the reason behind using Starving Scientists in a golden age under Caste? Besides the bonus to GPP and not to food, I mean.

[vicawoo]

When you grow with a granary, you get about half the food from the granary. When you starve, you get 0 food from the granary. So starving 1 pop then regrowing takes a full bar of food, whereas just growing takes half.

I'm assuming the other half bar is from the starving itself.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally Posted by Um the Muse

Though, VoU, isn't a full bar an exaggeration? I mean, when you grow again, you get half of it back again plus the losses on the turn of starvation "don't count" because it doesn't matter how bad the starvation is. Isn't that part of the reason behind using Starving Scientists in a golden age under Caste? Besides the bonus to GPP and not to food, I mean.

Heh - you just taught me *why* the food bar starvation mechanic works the way it does.

Yes, you're right that the net effect is about half a bar of food.

Starving scientists depends on the same granary magic that whipping does. You do have to be careful with the micro, though - you're paying thoughtless cost if you don't micro your food bar to 0/X before you starve, I think.

Counter nit pick - you don't actually need the granary when you starve, as long as you have it before you grow back.

[Mylene]

Personally i always avoid losing population during GAs, spending all stored food is fine (sometimes, really good and big cities with loads of good tiles/specialists to work need second thoughts), but starving in extreme means rather bad planning while preparing for GAs.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by nofudgeplz

Also how many farms is reasonable to build in a city - in other words, what food surplus should I be at when i have multiple cities?

I find +6 for the beginning perfect. Later, when cities have reached sizes of 12+ it can also be lower. In some very food-poor cities, +4 is also enough but lower than that leaves the city without any growth when constantly whipping.

My last question is which buildings are considered neccessary to build in every city?

Actually, you only need Granaries and sometimes Barracks. Libraries are nice in longer games, Forges also, rest is only if you play for something else then early Domination imho or if your Games last as long as Panzers, then you'll also want Banks & Kremlin for rush-buying and / or possibly Levees and Factories. As national Wonders you only need the HE then, though the NE is also worth the Hammers imho. Worthful Wonders are the Oracle, the Mids, GLH, TGL, MoM, everything else should be built for Failgold if you have the Ressource speeding up the specific Wonder.

[Um the Muse]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

I find +6 for the beginning perfect. Later, when cities have reached sizes of 12+ it can also be lower. In some very food-poor cities, +4 is also enough but lower than that leaves the city without any growth when constantly whipping.

This is food surplus, right? Not the number of farms?

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by Um the Muse

This is food surplus, right? Not the number of farms?

It is surplus, I answered to the 2nd part of his question, where he explains himself. Number of Farms would relate to nothing as one doesn't know if those are plains-farms (never build those as I've heard, unless you're blocking land of with that city), grassland farms or even fp-farms.

+6 imho is a good number that gives growth while still whipping and correlates well to worker-turns. Might be a little high if one consideres worker-turns as one really has to improve a lot land with the fast growing cities but is actually sometimes even too low when doing some hard whips, so it's somehow exactly in the middle.

Actually I just read VoU's post and am not so sure about this anymore, I am quite sure still though that +6 is somewhat a good surplus. Don't know who Huge / Marathon plays into this.

[Um the Muse]

Originally Posted by VoiceOfUnreason

Heh - you just taught me *why* the food bar starvation mechanic works the way it does.

Yes, you're right that the net effect is about half a bar of food.

Starving scientists depends on the same granary magic that whipping does. You do have to be careful with the micro, though - you're paying thoughtless cost if you don't micro your food bar to 0/X before you starve, I think.

Counter nit pick - you don't actually need the granary when you starve, as long as you have it before you grow back.

I taught you something new? All right!

On the "needs micro" point, I think you're right most of the time, but if you have unhappies/ unhealthies, you might just get rid of the pop as fast as you can. Anyway, if you're not too fussed about squeezing every last drop of benefit, you can "micro" fairly easily; keep working food resources, but stop working other tiles, especially things like grassland farms used specifically used to grow that big in the first place.

On the granary point, I concede . I suppose that'd be useful to remember if you have a lot of plains hills and floodplains or something.