City tile yield

[AlphaCentauriBear]

Anybody can explain or point to the article or existing thread about how to understand the city tile yield? I tried to search it but the game is older now and there is no much about it.

Specifically, does city tile benefits from resources? Is it a waste to place city on them?
Does it imply road in the city tile? A railroad?
Does it imply irrigation or mine?

 

[tjs282]

Specifically, does city tile benefits from resources? Is it a waste to place city on them?

The only resources you should really try to avoid Settling on, especially in the early game, are bonus-food resources like Wheat and Cattle, or Wines on flat ground. Reason being, that a town-tile will only ever yield 2 food (or 3 if Agricultural and on freshwater/ out of Despotism), so the extra food from the bonus will then become unusable.

Other bonus- or strat-/lux-resources can be safely settled on, and you will (eventually) get the bonus commerce/shields from those -- although sometimes this will not be visible until you're running a non-despotic government, and/or the town has grown to a City/Metropolis.

Increasing settlement size also increases the town-tile's base commerce- and shield-yields, as do the Industrious, Commercial and Seafaring traits -- though I can't remember the exact details offhand.

 

[justanick]

As food production of the city tile does not depend on the tile, low food is preferable. You should always settle in the desert.

Commerce and shields are usually fully usuable, but it may take having reached city size to net a benefit. The german wiki lists all the details.

https://wiki.civforum.de/wiki/Stadtfeldertrag_(Civ3)

 

[Chicken Pizza]

Settling makes the tile "clean" without possibility to irrigate or mine, sets the food to exactly two, gives you a free shield if there isn't one or more already, and roads it.

So on normal grassland you lose a potential extra food but gain a shield. On a hill you lose two potential extra shields but gain a food, and 50% defense.

Settling on bonus grassland wastes the extra shield. This includes when you settle on a forest on top of a grassland, it gets auto-cut and the grass under happens to be bonus.

I think that gold is unaffected, but I'm not entirely sure, so settling on a plain with ivory is perfectly fine.

 

[justanick]

Settling on bonus grassland wastes the extra shield.

Only below city size.

gives you a free shield if there isn't one

Only below city size. What happens is here is that zero is sort of rounded up to 1 to prevent the possibility of zero production.

City size gives a shield while metropolis size gives 2 shields or even three if you are playing an industrious tribe.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Anybody can explain or point to the article or existing thread about how to understand the city tile yield? I tried to search it but the game is older now and there is no much about it.


Does it imply road in the city tile? A railroad?

Other answers covered your other questions

Yes, a city implies the tile is has a road. Yes, once you discover the tech Steam Power (and have coal hooked up), the city tiles automatically get a railroad. If you're planning to send some settlers to fill in gaps in newly conquered territory, you need not build any improvements on tiles that will get a city. If you already have workers (or newly captured slaves) in the area, it can be useful to build roads and irrigate around your planned city sites.