Best Tile Improvement for "Plain"

[mouthpuncher]

*Oops, I just realized I put this into the wrong section of the forums. It is now properly placed here...

Sorry if this has been asked and answered already but I could not find an answer but what is the best improvement to put on the plain tile (1f, 1h, 1g) especially if they are next to a river?

I find they are only useful when they are cottaged and that is only when I have other tiles in the BFC to provide the food output but when my entire BFC is littered with them I am at a loss as to what to build there. It seems like the food output from these tiles are so abysmal that it is just a waste. Workshop improvements are only good when like cottages, I have food output from other sources. If I am not next to a river and haven't unlocked civil service yet this seems to be a bigger dilemma as I have almost no food output to grow the city.

Any tips some of the more seasoned players can offer? BTW these cities are usually set up to block off a neighboring civ which is why I have this unavoidable problem and deadbeat cities = no good.

 

[UWHabs]

Ignore them. If you have the food, run specialists instead. Once you get late game, then it's fine to watermill/bio farm them. If you don't have the food, doesn't matter what you put on them.

 

[catfish99]

Ignore them. If you have the food, run specialists instead. Once you get late game, then it's fine to watermill/bio farm them. If you don't have the food, doesn't matter what you put on them.

Usually. But if it is by a river, as the original post suggested, it may be useful to farm the tile in order to chain irrigation to grassland tiles w/out access to fresh water.

 

[Bostock]

I find farmed riverside plains to be nice tiles for growing into whipping/specialist size. They're like coast but with no need for a lighthouse and with a hammer replacing one of the coins.

But I remember that the applicable DaveMcW quote here is "ignore plains until biology" - he calls plains cottages "worse than a specialist" and doesn't even grace plains farms with a mention. While I don't know the math, etc. of his reasoning, it's certainly true that in a low-food situation you don't want to tie yourself to the long-term working of a tile that slows your growth by 1/4, 1/3, or even 1/2.

I think the truth is somewhere inbetween - use them if you must (at least the ones you can farm), avoid them if you can - I suspect the thing to do is to deliberately stagnate at some size that's not big enough use them anyway by building workers, running specialists, running mines, etc., and utilize your worker-turns somewhere else and/or spend the hammers you'd normally put into the workers for developing that city on something else. And carefully consider blocking-city placement in search of a path to more food... maybe there is one.

 

[Elliot]

I posted a thread about this a couple of months ago.

The crappyness of plains tiles is one of the major problems with civ4. Its usually best to ignore plains until biology or state property unless you have a massive food surplus. Then again, it may be better to use that food surplus for whipping or specialists.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Ignore them. If you have the food, run specialists instead. Once you get late game, then it's fine to watermill/bio farm them. If you don't have the food, doesn't matter what you put on them.

If you have the food to run specialists, then you have the food to run plains/cottages, which have competitive yields. Hell, plains/workshops have the same food requirements as specialists and have comparable yields.

Plains are subpar tiles if you can't cottage them, but I'm still partial to riverside plains, even if they have to be farmed to be sustainable. Large patches of non-irrigable plains aren't viable city sites if you can't get the surplus food to make something of them.

 

[mouthpuncher]

Thanks everyone for the tips!

What if the land surrounding me is littered by just plains? Restart? Ha ha. I'm not playing at a level where I can win on noble easily except via culture and that method is growing tiresome.

Can anyone suggest any tutorial vids where the player starts on some crappy terrain?

Sorry if these threads feel like whining. I'm just having a lot of trouble finding a solution to the poor terrain starts and know there has got to be something I am overlooking here.

 

[r_rolo1]

The best solution for dealing with maps filled with plains is to stick to the food resources and ignore the rest for the time being ( that is, until Biology and/or food giving corporations ).

About tutorials... well, any game with a map generated by the tectonics script will be good enough for that

 

[DigitalBoy]

Thanks everyone for the tips!

What if the land surrounding me is littered by just plains? Restart? Ha ha. I'm not playing at a level where I can win on noble easily except via culture and that method is growing tiresome.

Plains can work alright if you have surplus food to work them. If food resources are really scarce, you might try founding coastal cities. Coast tiles aren't the strongest by a long shot, but they're at least food neutral, and you may find some seafood off the coast somewhere. You may also want to pursue an early war against a neighbor. If your land's not so good, you can maybe take his instead.

 

[DrakenKin]

I am no expert, but what I generally do is improve all other tiles and leave the plains last. Then I either make farms, since the +1 food means the tile has now 2 food and sustains itself. Or if I have a lot of excess food I will make cottages (early) or workshops (late game).

Later on the worshops become very interesting (long before biology) and even if you don't use them continually you can switch to them manually when you need the extra production. This is espcially useful if the city has little in terms of hills/mines... anything less than 2 mines on a city and workshops become almost necessary.

 

[noto2]

Jeez...I see this advice all the time, and for the life of me I don't understand. Yes, plains are weaker than grassland tiles for most of the game, on their own. A city with no special resources but surrounded by grasslands can be productive simply by cottage spamming it, you can't do that with plains. But then again, how often do you build cities in areas with no resources? For me, I often find many ways to use plains. In fact, I really like having plains tiles in my cottage cities. If you have a city with some high food tiles, like irrigated grains, or pigs, and a few plains tiles, you can cottage the plains and work the food tiles. Or another favourite of mine is a city with floodplains and plains. Cottage all those tiles and you've got a cottage spammed city with some natural hammers. All you need to make plains tiles work is some food resources, or even grassland farms. Plains tiles are an easy way to add hammers to commerce cities. Then, for hammer cities, what's wrong with plains tiles as long as you have high food tiles? I don't get this "run specialists" advice. Is it your GP farm? Why would you have a lot of plains tiles in a GP farm. Are you running representation? What, did you build the pyramids?

 

[lilnev]

You should have settled your city to have some food surplus -- use it to support cottages. You may not be able to work all your tiles, but you can work all your food surplus. And then don't whip, since your regrowth rate asymptotes to zero. And there's no way that a specialist -- minus 2 food -- is better than 2 plains cottages.

 

[r_rolo1]

And there's no way that a specialist -- minus 2 food -- is better than 2 plains cottages.

That is wrong in BtS, unless you consider EP to have a very low value.

 

[mouthpuncher]

Jeez...I see this advice all the time, and for the life of me I don't understand. Yes, plains are weaker than grassland tiles for most of the game, on their own. A city with no special resources but surrounded by grasslands can be productive simply by cottage spamming it, you can't do that with plains. But then again, how often do you build cities in areas with no resources?

I made this city to block my neighboring civ to the north from bordering directly on my capitol. It was either this or the desert so the choice was fairly easy to make. Maybe I just need to do a better job planning out my cities in general. being sandwiched between Ragnar (backstabbing a**hat for 2 consecutive games prior!) and Alexander forced the buffer cities from keeping my main cities from being potentially overrun.

With Biology so far away I guess I don't have a choice but to keep that city for all it really is, a deterrent to my main empire until I can get there and just focus on making up the maintenance cost with more commerce somewhere else.

 

[dirtyparrot]

It probably depends on the era/techs/civics and the surrounding land. I don't think that I've ever cottaged a plain, usually it's between a farm and a workshop.

 

[DrakenKin]

Post a screenshot of your city.

 

[UncleJJ]

You should have settled your city to have some food surplus -- use it to support cottages. You may not be able to work all your tiles, but you can work all your food surplus. And then don't whip, since your regrowth rate asymptotes to zero. And there's no way that a specialist -- minus 2 food -- is better than 2 plains cottages.

Agreed. It is difficult to know what DaveMcW could mean with his comments, he never gives a proper explanation or states his assumptions, and it is obviously the wrong advice in many situations.

That is wrong in BtS, unless you consider EP to have a very low value.

Can you explain what you mean by this a little more fully. Are you suggesting that a spy specialist in an early cottage city is better than 2 plains cottages (that will grow into towns)? I assume that the GPPs will not be useful and Rep is unlikely.

 

[r_rolo1]

Spy specialist = 1 beaker 4 EP
2 plain cottages = 2 commerce 2 hammers ( from the tiles )

Even suposing 100% research ( making 1 commerce = 1 beaker ) and building wealth it is 4 beakers vs 1 beaker 4 EP. This is only a winning combination if 3 beakers are more valuable than 4 EP...

The post I am responding to has no mention of science city. That is what I am responding to: 2 plain cottages vs 1 spy spec.

 

[mirthadir]

Plains tiles are no different than grassland tiles when it comes to improvements aside from a mandatory 1 to 1 conversion (that and plains hills can't be cottaged). If you have the food surplus to work them such that trading 1 surplus is worth 1 (e.g. you are in caste so whipping is out and you have an odd number of food at the happy cap in rep); work whatever would be best for the city if it were a green tile.

Talking about short term cottages is kinda moronic. Early game you have only one spy spec slot, after that non-rep unused GPP specs do compare unfavorably to working cottaged brown tiles. Even the AW priest is only 2 1 vs 2 2 . If you are out with the other spy buildings then you should be close enough to bio to make utilization of brown tiles a permanent feature.

Frankly though, after 10 turns the point is moot and the cottages win (ignoring rep and GPP).

 

[UncleJJ]

Spy specialist = 1 beaker 4 EP
2 plain cottages = 2 commerce 2 hammers ( from the tiles )

Even suposing 100% research ( making 1 commerce = 1 beaker ) and building wealth it is 4 beakers vs 1 beaker 4 EP. This is only a winning combination if 3 beakers are more valuable than 4 EP...

The post I am responding to has no mention of science city. That is what I am responding to: 2 plain cottages vs 1 spy spec.

The problem with your comparison is that in a few turns the cottages will become hamlets and then villages etc and the whole basis of your assertion is quashed. That is what I, and I'm sure lilnev, was assuming. In fact the main reason for working these plains cottages is for them to become towns quicker, so running a specialist is a huge waste of 2 cottage turns every turn

In a cottage city its priority will usually be to install infrastucture and the 2 hammers from the plains cottages will be much more useful for that purpose than building wealth. The value of the hammers is much better represented by what it would cost to instal that infrastructure later when operating under US, in other words 1 hammer = 3 gold.