accidentally placing a city above hidden resource

[mynystry]

Well, this has happened to me sometimes and i find it really unfair, when you discover that there were horses in the place where you city lies, and you are no able to build the pasture in order to get the profit out of them! I think it would make sense that cities above resources would get the full benefit from the resource, as if the citizens there build the stable by themselves. Of course the Civ would requiere to know the tech to exploit such resource, for example; a city lying above banana or spices would requiere to know Calendar in order to get the profit... just an idea.

 

[LucyDuke]

Well, the good side is that you don't have to build the improvement, or hook it up, and that defending the resource is automatic as you defend your city. Also, cultural encroachment of your borders can't touch the resource unless your whole city goes under.

Some sort of benefit for putting the city on top does sound reasonable, though. Maybe half the production/food/commerce? It might be overkill to get the whole caboodle. You're right, you should get some kind of bonus for it.

 

[br_casino]

Just think of it like there is really no room in the city to build a farm or a plantation.

 

[Sparta]

Just so you all know, you actually do derive some small benefit when a city center is placed atop a resource (whether done before or after revelation of said resource). AFAIK, the 'bonus' is always capped at one resource unit though, but you will still get one extra hammer by having most strategic resources in your city center, one extra food typically by having most health resources in a city center, or one extra gold (again, typically; there may be exceptions) by having a luxury in the city center. As such, rather than the typical 2-food 1-hammer (1-commerce?) yield for your city center tile, a city founded on top of pigs for example would yield 3 food (post AH), and a city founded on top of iron would yield 2 hammers per turn.

I believe this can compound with the one extra hammer you can get from settling on plains hills (the only non-resource city-center bonus achievable that I am aware of*), so theoretically you could have a 3-hammer city center by settling a city on a strategic resource on a plains hill.

I hope that helps some; it does seem to make some sense I think (IMHO at least) to handle things that way, as otherwise the potential for having cities whose base yields were like triple a 'normal' city's would probably have been too unbalancing in the very early game.

(And mynystry, just to be clear, you will still get benefit of any resource in a city center in the sense of your civilization using it (as a strategic resource/lux/etc., after applicable techs of course), but you just wouldn't get [all of] the bonus yield from that individual tile. Because of this, deliberately placing a city atop a crucial or rare resource (e.g. oil) can sometimes be a decent play simply for the added protection of the city's garrison (especially in the sense of adding to the chance of thwarting spy sabotage attempts).)

*Edit: aside from one extra commerce for riverside maybe now that I think about it, but really, who is that concerned about commerce in the opening anyway?

 

[mynystry]

Well, the good side is that you don't have to build the improvement, or hook it up, and that defending the resource is automatic as you defend your city. Also, cultural encroachment of your borders can't touch the resource unless your whole city goes under.

Some sort of benefit for putting the city on top does sound reasonable, though. Maybe half the production/food/commerce? It might be overkill to get the whole caboodle. You're right, you should get some kind of bonus for it.

i think sometimes you get a hammer or something out of it, but still i think you should get the whole profit out of it... I think it make sense about the room... if you hace place in a city to build a nuclear plant, a hydroelectric, the pyramids, etc. I think there is enough place for a stable.

Also one thing I find kinda weird is that it is possible to found cities on desert tiles... when they usually produce no food at all... but founding a city suddenly it produces 2 food... how? Is God throwing Mana to them? I think if they want to make desert tiles really unhabitable, it shouldn't be possible to place cities there.

 

[Sparta]

i think sometimes you get a hammer or something out of it, but still i think you should get the whole profit out of it... I think it make sense about the room... if you hace place in a city to build a nuclear plant, a hydroelectric, the pyramids, etc. I think there is enough place for a stable.

I think the problem would come in that if that were the case, it would almost always be better to settle on resources rather than near them, and as a result starts could have much more widely disparate value depending on the mere layout of the resources (e.g. if you start where optimal position forces a settlement on regular grassland, but I start where I can settle on top of corn and get like 5 food per turn from the city center alone, that would be a gigantic hole for you to have to attempt to climb out of, and may well be impossible/game-breaking). I would think that keeping the city center yields reasonably close to equivalent helps to nullify a problem of that sort somewhat.

Also one thing I find kinda weird is that it is possible to found cities on desert tiles... when they usually produce no food at all... but founding a city suddenly it produces 2 food... how? Is God throwing Mana to them? I think if they want to make desert tiles really unhabitable, it shouldn't be possible to place cities there.

Gah! Deserts are bad enough already - don't give them ideas!!

(I still miss terraforming and irrigable deserts of old, myself. Making useless land even more useless would not add fun to the game. )

I hope the info in my previous post may have helped clarify the mechanics in question a bit though. Have a good one!

 

[mynystry]

I hope that helps some; it does seem to make some sense I think (IMHO at least) to handle things that way, as otherwise the potential for having cities whose base yields were like triple a 'normal' city's would probably have been too unbalancing in the very early game.

hmmm... good point... but if it's not possible to get the profit from the resources until you get the tech it wouldn't be such problem, at least for plantations... but you're right that civs starting with agriculure, if they start close to rice, wheat or corn they would have an advantage... maybe they could start profiting the bonus after potery, or building a Granary...

I don't know, it just annoys me a little bit that I am always hoping not to be place a city above copper or horses, which bonus will be unprofitable. In this same sense i think the city radius is also a pain in the butt, if the whales are one square distant then it is not possible to exploit it... I think there should be some way to do it, maybe penalizing some commerce because of the distance or something.

 

[mynystry]

(I still miss terraforming and irrigable deserts of old, myself. Making useless land even more useless would not add fun to the game. )

that would be cool, but you'd need some tough technology to do so

 

[LucyDuke]

that would be cool, but you'd need some tough technology to do so

Oh, it would be worth it. Some late tech and a ton of worker turns to build a canal so an inland city can build ships, or something like that. If it was expensive in many ways, it wouldn't be a "might as well" thing, but you could manage to do it if you really, really needed to.

 

[mynystry]

Oh, it would be worth it. Some late tech and a ton of worker turns to build a canal so an inland city can build ships, or something like that. If it was expensive in many ways, it wouldn't be a "might as well" thing, but you could manage to do it if you really, really needed to.

Yeah! since past Civ games I always wished they made possible to make navigable canals, like Panama Canal just to give an example

 

[jray]

Does anyone know of an authoritative guide (or a place in the .py or .xml code) for benefits of resources on top of cities? I see a lot of weird stuff in my games... things seem to additionally depend on terrain type and features. For example, if I recall correctly, I'll get an extra hammer from a city on Iron on a flat plains tile but not on a tundra hill.

 

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

Yeah! since past Civ games I always wished they made possible to make navigable canals, like Panama Canal just to give an example

I always think of cities founded on an isthmus as canals; often they are strategically vital throughways, saving gobs of movement turns just as the Panama Canal and others like it.

 

[Elandal]

The city tile always gets at minimum 2F 1P 1C. If a tile gives more than that, the city will get it. This means that founding on plains hill (0F 2P) gives the city 2F 2P 1C (the hammer value of the tile is higher than the baseline, so it's retained).

Iron gives +1P to the base tile. Flat plains is 1F1P, so iron makes it 1F2P. Thus, the city gets the second hammer. Tundra hill is 0F1P, so iron makes it 0F2P - a city on tundra hill/iron should definitelly get a second hammer.

When looking at the tile values, remember that overlays are removed when the city is founded. So even if forest/plains is 1F2P, when the forest is removed a simple plains tile of 1F1P is left, and thus the city won't get extra hammer. Floodplain is removed leaving desert, so the city is again 2F1P1C.

My favourite place to settle would be riverside plains hill with wine on it. I find winery improvement to be fairly weak, especially on hill. So settling there gives 2F2P2C (3C if financial), which is a huge improvement especially in the early game. Other places to settle would be eg. stone on plains hill - 3P. If you can settle your capitol like that, you get very high production immediatelly, although you do lose the ability to quarry the stone (which would make it 5P worked, 6P after railroad).

 

[binhthuy71]

Oh, it would be worth it. Some late tech and a ton of worker turns to build a canal so an inland city can build ships, or something like that. If it was expensive in many ways, it wouldn't be a "might as well" thing, but you could manage to do it if you really, really needed to.

I agree. Once you finish chopping and tile improvements there is a long wait until
you put them to work building railroads. As soon as the railroads are finished my workers are all cooling their heels in town, drinking up their paychecks and committing public nuisances for the rest of the game. I'd like to have something for the brutes to do post-railroad.

 

[KMadCandy]

Does anyone know of an authoritative guide (or a place in the .py or .xml code) for benefits of resources on top of cities? I see a lot of weird stuff in my games... things seem to additionally depend on terrain type and features. For example, if I recall correctly, I'll get an extra hammer from a city on Iron on a flat plains tile but not on a tundra hill.

here's one from the war academy. the part we're talking about is at the very bottom of page 2 (which i linked, didn't start at page 1) with pictures.

 

[jray]

Thanks for the explanations, Elandal and KMadCandy! I think it all makes sense now. It must have been a flat tundra where I placed a city on Iron and didn't get an extra hammer.