a quick one: Mine or Irrigate?

[Rock_Strongo]

Whats the difference between mining and irrigation? I assume that when you check the terrain for what it will yield, if you irrigate it, you get the food and if you mine it you get the gold.....what about the shields.......just wnated to make sure my assumptions are correct......

 

[wilbill]

Irrigation increases food production, mining increases shields. To increase gold, build roads.

 

[MadScot]

Just to add to wilbill's reply:

When you right click on the tile, the number of shields, food and gold it says is the number of each it will give you if a town's citizen is assigned to that tile. If it is plains beside a river it will be 1 food, 1 shield and 1 gold, so you will get one of each.

If you irrigate the tile you will get 2 food, one shield and one gold
If you mine it you'll get one food, 2 shields, one gold
If you build a road you'll get 2 gold instead of one, and this can be in combination with either irrigation or a mine. You cannot, however, have both an irrigation and a mine in the same tile.

Your question implied the idea that irrigation or mining were needed to get the food, shields or gold; this is not the case, they just, as wilbill said, increase what you get.

 

[Rock_Strongo]

my strategy has been to mine/irrigate the hell out of any land not occupied by a city...is this a good idea? oh yeah, i build and LOTS OF ROADS.....

 

[Frisian Warrior]

There is also the Despotism penalty. In Despotism and Anarchy, every tile which would normally produce 3 units of food/shields/gold, will actually only give 2. So much 'improvement', for example irrigation of grassland will not make any difference in those governements.

 

[MadScot]

Yes. (simple answer)

One key for the better players is to never have a citizen working an unimproved tile; if you look at the games of the really good players in the Game of the Month Quick Start Challenge (QSC_) you'll see they all have LOTS of workers, even early in the game. That makes it easier to improve the tiles.

It isn't, however, worth improving many more tiles than you have citizens. (if a size 6 town has no other city able to get to the 21 tiles in it's radius, don't wast worker time improving all 21 tiles - unless every city already has enough tiles improved anyway, and you are preparing the ground for new citizens)

 

[Padma]

Just a reminder for Rock and others, we do have a Quick Answers thread stickied at the top of the forum to handle "quick questions" like this.

 

[jidosh]

Irrigation (food) has a more direct effect on your score. Every citizen equals 2 points (if happy), 1 point (if content). Mines(shields), however, allow more cultural improvements which makes your borders expand which increases score, and more military units which allow you to take more territory from your rivals, which increases you score. I think it's 1 point for every land, coast, and sea tile (not ocean).