Balanced Yield

[sysp]

I used to always farm riverside hills, they were my favorite tile in the game with the 2F2H1G yield under Civil Service.

Nowadays, I almost never farm them, I usually always mine them.

What happened?

I started playing more lean as I moved up past immortal to deity - selling more resources for gold, expanding more aggressively, growing faster - which made me always push my happiness as low as I could get away with, usually hovering just below or above the 0 mark as the yield of surplus happiness beyond 0 is very minimal (infrequent golden ages, one Piety policy for some minor culture - I think that is it?).

As a result of this, I find myself switching what tiles I'm working in the city a lot to maximize hammers when unhappy (since the growth penality is so huge when unhappy it is often best to max hammers as long as you don't starve the city) and maximizing growth when happy (working riverside farms, triggering We love the king day etc).

A farmed hill, being a balanced yield tile, is very inflexible in this situation and give me little opportunity to micromanage my city, hence I've stopped making farmed hills for all but my most food-starved cities and the result have been much, much better.

Specialization in general (techs, units, city focus etc) has raised my level of play a lot - focusing hard on one advantage seems to be a way to get ahead of a cheating AI at higher difficulty levels. IMHO, balanced approaches are rarely OP enough to overcome the odds stacked heavily against you at Immortal and up.

 

[historix69]

... there are multiple wonders & policies that make ... tiles less productive to run than specialists.

Among them:

Statue of Liberty: +2 hammers per specialist, turning the Engineer into 4 hammers plus points towards GE.

One of the Rationalism policies: extra [+2] science per specialist. (...)

And least used, completing commerce tree: extra [+1] gold per specialist.

In OCC and standard games it is desirable that the capital is quickly growing. Thanks to Monarchy a huge capital is not a happiness problem.

Tradition : MONARCHY - +1 gold and -1 unhappiness for every 2 citizens in the capital.

For the capital, Science and Gold scale with population, so the bigger the better. Therefore I build mostly farms on river tiles, grassland, plains and riverside hills to push growth. Riverside farms on plains / grassland give 3-4 Food early with Civil Service. Riverside hills give 2 Food, 2 Production, 1 Gold.

To support switching to massive production I also prepare Forest with lumber-mill (1 Food, 2-3 Production) or hills with mine (3-4 Production) but they become more and more less attractive with Civil Society.

Freedom : CIVIL SOCIETY - Specialists consume only half the normal amount of food.

Apply the specialists boni from above (+2 Prod. SoL, +2 Science Rationalism, ev. +1 Gold Commerce) and keep in mind that specialists still have their basic yield (e.g. 2 Production or 3 Science, ...), produce 3 GP points and consume only 1 Food, then most outside workers on a 1 Food or 0 Food Tile can no longer compete with any specialists.

Working a 1 Food Tile costs you the same Food as one specialist, working a 0 Food Tile costs you the same Food as two specialists.

In late game, even a civilian worker (-1 Food, +3 Prod, +2 Science, +1 Gold) is better than a worker on Forest with lumber-mill (-1 Food, +2-3 Production) or hills with mine (-2 Food, +3-4 Production).

So I prioritize on Food and GP, try to grow quickly and work all specialist slots. When possible I add Manufactories and other maior tile improvements to make 1 Food or 0 Food Tiles around my capital more attractive to work.

However this applys only if you take Freedom.