What to do with Plains?

Bast · Aug 4, 2009

I hate these tiles. But because I really only play Tectonics these days I get these quite a lot.

I know you can go Arid (to get floodplains) and Wet (to get cleared grassland tiles) but what if you're playing normal and you're surrounded by Plains?

If there's fresh water, I like to farm them. But it takes literally ages to grow these cities. If there are some good food resources, I like to build cottages but this is rare.

So what do you do? One thing I haven't tried is to overalap the BFC on these cities and keep some of them small as fillers or resource harvesters and have bigger cities next to them.

What do you think?

Gorey · Aug 4, 2009

farm is usualy a poor improvement for a brown tile. only time i put down a farm on them is if i need to chain irrigate something.

1st thing is to avoid working that tile until you can put something on it that will yield something more useful. usually one of the "mills" or workshop or cottage. or maybe just not working the tile at all and running a specialist.

aday · Aug 4, 2009

If they are riverside and the city has the food to work them, I will cottage them. Brown cottages seem to not get much love around here, but I like them. Then again, I almost never found cities that don't have at least one food resource.

Otherwise, these tiles don't get worked until much later in the game, when I have Biology (farms) or Guilds+Chemistry (workshops). Instead of working these tiles, I just hire specialists or whip the population away.

Gorey · Aug 4, 2009

a riverside "brown" watermill is pretty good too once you geta levee and electricity.

Benny15 · Aug 4, 2009

Cotteges are the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Malchar · Aug 4, 2009

I definitely hold off on working plains tiles until there is nothing left to do. The only good thing about plains is a plains hill so that you can mine it early. Making an equivalent plains workshop on flat land requires having to wait half the length of the game, and by that time, other options are usually available.

Gorey · Aug 4, 2009

maybe im just in the small minority, but i kinda keep tweaking my cities well past the mid-game.

if i got a plus +1 food surplus. i might consider changing that brown mine to a windmill to get a +2 for a specialist. or maybe i'll swap out a farm for a cottage to break even on food.

a tweak here, a tweak there. but always in regards to what the city is for.

in general, if you got the food you cant go wrong with a cottage if its a commerce city. if its a production city, depends on where it is:

next to a river - watermill
on a hill - windmill or mine (i'd go with mine first.. and then change to windmill later on).
out in the open - workshop
forest - lumbermill

all of these will give you rougly the equivalent to a mine food/production wise once you unlock the needed techs & have the buildings or civics.

Windsor · Aug 4, 2009

If I got plains+food resource then I'll usually prefer to run specialists early and then switch to mills and shops later. Cottages on riverside plains is decent enough, but I still prefer speicalists in many games. I will never work plains-farms. They are horrible.

wickedcherub · Aug 4, 2009

I hate plains. Especially the non riverside ones. I never work them until the late game when I have Sid's Sushi and workshops are awesome because then I workshop them.

Junuxx · Aug 4, 2009

You road them and transform them into grasslands!

Oh wait, that was Civ 2 :mischief:

DigitalBoy · Aug 5, 2009

Non-riverside plains I only think are very useful if you have the surplus food to be able to cottage them. Riverside plains I think are fine as either farms and cottages. I think the +1 :commerce:

from the river makes farmed plains worth working compared to 2 :food:

1

tiles.

Iranon · Aug 5, 2009

Tight city placement; use reseources to feed brown tiles in the quality cities while the filler cities work green tiles.

If food is especially poor, prioritise Machinery and replace mines with windmills.

beestar · Aug 5, 2009

I'm often chopping plains forests and ending up with a lot of flat plains tiles. What's wrong with a farmed plains tile - is it because 2f1h is no better than an unchopped forest?

In the very early part of the game, not a lot of other tile improvements are available. Should one just run a specialist instead?

Nials · Aug 5, 2009

As already mentioned, cottaging riverside plains and working them early is not a bad idea in a commerce city if there is a decent food surplus. In a production city I ignore them until later, typically until watermills/workshops/biology become available

Windsor · Aug 5, 2009

beestar said:
I'm often chopping plains forests and ending up with a lot of flat plains tiles. What's wrong with a farmed plains tile - is it because 2f1h is no better than an unchopped forest?

In the very early part of the game, not a lot of other tile improvements are available. Should one just run a specialist instead?

A specalist is a possibility. In straight production the whip will also be better than a plains-farm (1 whip = 30 :hammers:

if you whip every tenth turn you got 3 :hammers:

/turn instead of 1 :hammers:

/turn)

Gorey · Aug 5, 2009

beestar said:
I'm often chopping plains forests and ending up with a lot of flat plains tiles. What's wrong with a farmed plains tile - is it because 2f1h is no better than an unchopped forest?

In the very early part of the game, not a lot of other tile improvements are available. Should one just run a specialist instead?

In the very early part of the game.. your happiness cap is low as well, so you should be focusing your limited pop size to more lucrative tiles. Later on when the city can grow and more improvements open up (and the techs that make them better), start working the less ideal tiles.

in general though i try not to chop forested plains tiles unless they're riverside or in the first ring of the city's cross. but thats just me. the best use for flat forested plains tiles in my opinion is a lumbermill. if it's a hill chop it for a mine.. then later replace it with a windmill. i'll also use the brown forests for forest preserves that i dont intend to actually work (unless i find myself running envrionmentalism).

in the end, if you have the food to spare, brown tiles are nothing to cry about. your merely trading 1F for 1H

beestar · Aug 5, 2009

Well, if I am considering working a farmed brown tile, I've already got all my better tiles worked, and I still have a spare citizen that's happy and healthy. I guess what people are saying is that I may as well whip him away.

I can never bring myself to keep any forests unchopped ... the early extra hammers are just too appealing. I can't remember the last time I built a Forest Preserve (actually I can, it's SGOTM09 where Sci Meth enabled them in 4000 BC

)

Jamuka · Aug 5, 2009

Nothing, unless you can take advantage of watermills/workshops.

ston · Aug 6, 2009

As I usually play Vanilla rather than BTS, I generally farm plains tiles.

This is mainly because Vanilla-generated maps are way more food-stingy than BTS ones (or so it seems to me!) so most often there's no other way to actually work a plains tile - there's simply not enough food in the city's BFS to support it.

Then Biology comes along - and the farmed plains tiles become pretty useful

bhavv · Aug 6, 2009

Workshops and watermills on plains tiles FTW.

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