Farm/Cottage/Mine vs Workshop/Mill

[Attaturk]

I am playing at Emperor level, occasionally venturing into immortal. Mostly, I follow Snaaty guide for higher levels that works great.

The one thing I noticed is that I never ever build workshops or mills of any kind. I wonder if I am missing on something and can improve my game by utilizing more types of land improvements.

Usual game goes as follows: I build up my initial 6-8 cities empire with cottages / farms / mines and conquer my continent. (Canons / Maces or Treb / Rifles). Then pursue the space race / domination.

When do you start using workshops / windmills / watermills to improve your cities?

 

[Jet]

Workshops if I'm going to be in Caste System, especially after Guilds. Or after Chemistry.

Windmills if I need the food or maybe if I'm Financial with a river, or between Replaceable Parts and Railroads, or with Environmentalism.

Watermills just late.

It just follows the yield numbers, simple as that.

 

[Bleys]

I have noticed I tend to build cottages on all grassland tiles, workshops on all plains tiles that cannot get a watermill, and watermills on all plains tiles that they can be built on. I generally mine all hills, except desert and tundra, which I windmill. I never chop forests in tundra either, saving them all for lumbermills. This pattern seems to work well for me. Occasionally, if I it becomes apparent that I will spend a large amount of time in Caste System, I will workshop some grasslands, but not until late. I am one of those people who stay in Slavery for most of the game, and whip hard and often,

 

[CivCorpse]

A lot of it depends on what my cities combined can produce. And on the city itself. If I have one of those crappy plains-o-rama cities I might just farm the whole darn thing and have a spy pump for most of the game. If it has one or two food sources then it might get cottaged. It depends on what my empire as a whole is short of. I recently played a game with few happiness resources but decent food and the Mids . Since pops would be low until I snagged happiness somehow I went the Workshop route. Trying to get the maximum out of the low populaions. If i find myself having the ability to really up the happy capthrough resources or HR then I am more prone to farm/mine/cottage. i like big fat cities. A nice rule of thumb is if short on happiness go the workshop route, short on food go mines/cottage/farm

 

[hal08]

If your domination games last until Communism, then State Property with watermills and workshops is a shoe-in. It's great being able to turn virtually any city into production, especially newly-conquered territory. Without SP, watermills are still effective tiles, but workshops will require excess food...Sid's Sushi is an option if you can be bothered to found and spread corps.

I use windmills in commerce cities post electricity for a small boost; the presence of rivers and/or financial means more windmills. Or they can be used for low food cities.

 

[oyzar]

Windmill all hills and workshop everything else after replacable parts(unless going for space then you go in emancipation and cottage probably...). Workshops are good if you need production(not enough mines) after guilds(with caste) or otherwise after chemistry(amazing with caste) windmills + workshops give so much more yeild than farms + mines it is not funny...

 

[aelf]

IMO there are no fixed rules. If your city needs food (for more specialists, for example), consider replacing mines with mills. If you need production but have no hills but have some river tiles, considering replacing cottages with watermills. If your city has mostly water tiles and only a few land tiles (and Maoi is not an option), consider building workshops. These are examples of how you improve the land depending on the particular situation of the city.

 

[mboettcher]

Depends on the city, civ, gov type, tech situation, military situation and victory goal. In other words there is no straight answer. There are no equations that hold for every city. Sometimes workshops are more valuable (by a lot) and sometimes cottages are. For ex. if you are in a war and have to run state prop and are at the point where you have to run a few culture points to keep citizens happy and can't run much science then your most productive cities are most likeley goign to benegit the most from workshops. Especially if your running either/both caste system and state prop. Thats because the commerce from cottages is wasted on cultural slider and it cost 4 gold per hammer plus start up costs (which are 50% of total cost unless one turn is waited).
Its extremely realistic to have 10 cities producing a unit every two turns or less with workshops and mining corp. This is very difficult to achieve with a cottage economy w/o a massive econ base. Granted other facets of production like research suffer but if your even a mid-sized civ looking to war its hard to turn down such a bonus.

 

[UncleJJ]

When do you start using workshops / windmills / watermills to improve your cities?

I seldom build workshops before I have Chemistry and Guilds so they give full hammers. The same with windmills and watermills, so we're talking in the late Renaissance or early Industrial ages otherwise I find farms and whipping plus hills to be more effective. Then it depends on whether I'll adopt a SP strategy (low cost and avoiding colonies on other continents) for conquering more territory or FM and corporations (usually Sushi and / or Mining Corp). That will change the food / hammer / commerce balance in my cities. If cities are still short of food I might go with windmills (or if I am going to run a couple of golden ages). If a city isn't able to produce another GP then I might turn its farms into watermills and workshops to turn a high food GP farm into a production city.

I have noticed I tend to build cottages on all grassland tiles, workshops on all plains tiles that cannot get a watermill, and watermills on all plains tiles that they can be built on. I generally mine all hills, except desert and tundra, which I windmill. I never chop forests in tundra either, saving them all for lumbermills. This pattern seems to work well for me. Occasionally, if I it becomes apparent that I will spend a large amount of time in Caste System, I will workshop some grasslands, but not until late. I am one of those people who stay in Slavery for most of the game, and whip hard and often,

Interesting, I often farm grasslands (post Civil Service) and cottage plains in the early game (and playing an SE or Hybrid economy). I find that gives more options for micromangaing the city and lets me whip / draft and regrow fast. The food from the farms allows me to either run the cottages or work mines. Of course the plains cottages are just a secondary form of income and don't get worked all the time, but once they've grown to village size they're better at raising gold than working hills and building wealth. I find that I expand so fast by conquest that in the middle game many of my cities have to build wealth to maintain any sort of research rate when I have a big army and lots of newly conquered territory. This rule (farm grasslands, cottage plains) would apply to my second rate cities, with limited tiles and a max of one food resource, but this would be about half of my cities. My best cities might still cottage grasslands if they can't produce a GP easily and they would concentrate on building infrastructure to boost beaker and gold output.

Lumbermills in tundra is a good idea but I've found that limited chopping, done intelligently and post mathematics, can lead to extra hammers... because forests regrow. Tundra cities really benefit from getting a granary or courthouse built early or a library or theatre to boost culture and capture tiles outside their BFC. If you do some chopping select a tile that is bordered by 3 or 4 other forests (chop in a chequer board pattern) and that will give a very good chance of regrowth and don't build a road on the chopped tile as that halves the regrowth chance. It seems to take about 50 turns on average for a forest to regrow. This tactic works really well on marathon as there are more turns and more chances to recover the forest in time for lumbermills.

 

[Babibo]

On hills :
mine : +2 (+3 after Railroad)
Windmill + 1 + 1 (with Replaceable Parts) +1 (+2 after Electricity)

On flatland :
farm +1 (+2 with biology)
watermill : +1 with State Property +2 +2 after electricity
workshop : -1 (unless under State Property) +2 +4 (with Caste System & Chemistry)

In the modern era, I'm typically running 2 kinds of economy :
(1) Either Cottage spam (w/ Free Speech & usually Free Market, although State Property is possible)

(2) Either State Property + Caste System

In case (2), with all techs enabled
Farm -> Workshop -2 + 4
Mine -> Windmill : +1 - 2 +2
Farm -> Watermill : -1 +2 +2

We can see that in the modern ages and in these conditions, it is better to replace mines by windmills and farms by watermills (at least change as much farms as you change mines).
Before railroad, windmills are even better. And Electricity is a must.

 

[Iranon]

In the end, cottages rule supreme. If you have the Kremlin, rushbuying with towns gives you a better output than workshops; flexibility and depending on the earlier and cleaner gold modifiers is also a plus.
mboettcher mentioned some pertinent exceptions though.

Massed cottages make the ideal corporation setup more fiddly though - you want enough additional food that you can cottage all cottageable land and still work it, but excess food isn't very valuable if the best you can do is running vanilla specialists.
Consequently, you want a food corporation in some cities and Standard Ethanol in others and if you have a crowded empire (generally the best with corporations) tile management can become a huge pain in the neck.

Civs that stay in representation are always happy with Mining.Inc and food; here the only nuisance is kicking unwanted specialists.

***

State Property isn't worth giving up the benefits of corporations if you're looking at the long term; it's useful if you are an ailing superpower and decide to go for the throat instead of consolidating and getting a monstrous economy.

Workshops are very decent for both military pushes and spaceships, watermills are the best general purpose improvement for you, equal to fully mature towns without the waiting time. They work well together - getting food from a decent hammer improvement so you can tear down farms for more hammer improvements can somewhat compensate for the lack of Mining.Inc.

***

Farms and windmills depend on whether you have something useful to do with the food. With so many factors and uses from vanilla 2--engineers over drafting to fully pimped priests (2132) they can range from sucky to great.
Farms and mines require solid reasons for not replacing them though; the alternatives are generally stronger.