Flood plains: good or bad?

[Phrederick]

This is inspired by this quote: " One might be tempted to place the city at 2SE of the settler and thereby getting all the floodplains, the gems and both elephants in our BFC. But in doing so, we'll have so much [unhealthiness] that our population limit peaks very early. Jungles and floodplains are kinda unsexy in that way." However that post isn't unique and I don't mean to pick on them poster(especially since that spot had jungle too); over the past few years I've heard a lot of downplaying of flood plains, and I don't understand why.

I've heard a lot of people mention that having too many flood plains is a negative, but I really don't understand how under any circumstance that could be true. A floodplain has a base +1 food and .4 unhealthy, as well as the 1 commerce from the river. Under what circumstances is that worse than a river grasslands? With .4 unhealthiness, 5 floodplains gives +2 unhealthiness. However, they give +1 food over a grassland, so if you work two out of every five flood plains, you're negating the penalties completely; you have two more unhealthiness and two more food, so it's a net wash.

If you need to work 2/5 flood plains for the penalties to be negated, that means that if the entire BFC is flood plains (20 tiles), you need to work two times four tiles, or eight tiles before the penalty becomes a bonus. If there's 10 flood plains (close to the upper limit of reality), you need to work four tiles before that point is reached. It's common to have 5+ starting health, especially if you have fresh water (and you should, with a river and the huge bonus that levees will eventually give you), if there's ten flood plains giving -4 health, you'll start at the limit of healthiness/unhealthiness, but since you get an extra food for every population point working a flood plain, as long as you work all flood plains you'll never be worse off than if those were all grasslands.

So, what downsides of flood plains am I missing? There's no early downside since you have an early health surplus, and later on the additional food lets you deal with any unhealthiness that may develop.

 

[Gocho]

Never to many floodplains! If there is that many then you have 2 cities to split them up instead of taking all the unhealthiness in just 1.

 

[JujuLautre]

As you said, if you have lots of floodplains you are basically bound to work them to offset the unhealthiness. So mainly, low production.

I do not say that floodplains are bad heh, just trying to give points for your question

 

[Phrederick]

Never to many floodplains! If there is that many then you have 2 cities to split them up instead of taking all the unhealthiness in just 1.

My post was exactly about that. The unhealthiness doesn't matter. If you work the flood plains, the unhealthiness doesn't matter at all. If you're able to work them, the unhealthiness is counteracted by the extra food they provide. When the city is small there's usually enough extra health to make the unhealthiness not matter, and when they're big they better work the floodplains, why else build a city there?

As you said, if you have lots of floodplains you are basically bound to work them to offset the unhealthiness. So mainly, low production.

I do not say that floodplains are bad heh, just trying to give points for your question

Plus, after levees, a floodplains can yield 3f/2h/7c with towns/US/Free Speech, 4f/3h/3c with watermills/State Property/Electricity, or 3/5/1 with workshops/Caste System/State Property. A grasslands hill with a mine and railroad is 1/4/0, and a grasslands workshop is 1/4/0, 1/5/0 with caste system, or 2/5/1, with caste system, state property, and a river. A grasslands watermill is 2/3/3 with electricity and levees, or 3/3/3 with state property as well. In the late game, two workshop flood plains has 6f/10h, which feeds an engineer giving a total of +12h. A biology farm and a mined railroaded aluminum plains hill gives +4f/+8h, so each floodplain is essentially 2h better than an aluminum/coal/copper/iron resource. Without caste system, it's 1h better. Without caste system or state property, it's still equal to the best production resources in the game. Adding in the -.4f due to unhealthiness, it's slightly worse to have flood plains than aluminum/coal/copper/iron if you don't run caste system or state property, but it's better if you run one of them, and still much better if you run both.

Early game, either with Caste System or Guilds, two flood plains workshops are more productive as a farmed grasslands and a mined grasslands hill, and with both they're more productive than a farmed grasslands and a mined iron grasslands hill. I think they can be pretty damn productive. Granted, a food resource giving +6f can feed two plains hills (total 8 hammers, 10 if one has copper/iron), but three floodplains can provide 11 hammers with one extra food to either feed half an engineer or to pay for the unhealthiness; you can have up to 4 flood plains with only +1 unhealthy). 11 hammers is better than an irrigated grasslands corn with a plains hill and an iron/copper plains hill, and 1 hammer worse than an irrigated grasslands corn with two iron/copper plains hill.

Floodplains certainly have some complexities; you either need extra happiness for the specialist or a plains hill to feed, as well as needing extra healthiness to make optimal use, but in almost every point in the game, they have the potential to be the absolute best tile in the game after researching Metal Casting and either CoL or Guilds. Before that, they certainly aren't the most productive tiles. However, at all times they are twice as productive as a grasslands river tile (a workshop grasslands needs a farmed grassland to feed it, but has half the productivity of two flood plains workshops).

The only downside I can see in flood plains is that they tend to be accompanied by deserts. However, tile for tile, floodplains are the best basic tile around, and are the equals of most resource tiles for productivity.

 

[oyzar]

the unhealthyness matters at the higher difficulty levels when there are no other bonuses than +1 for difficulty(or 2) and +2 for river. Say you have 10 floodplains in your capital and you can see why it becomes a problem. That is in the very early game before you manage to hook up reasources. Ofc after you get over the "point needed to gain point" floodplains are pretty good. That said there are other titles you want to work too so it should be specified that you need to work say 4 floodplains not 4 titles. If that point comes at pop 6 when your happy cap is at 4 and your health start going green at pop 3 you can see the early problems.

 

[mrchadt]

I've recently been trying mansa musa on earth 18civs senario, it sounds like you are refering to his start. I play on BTS monarch level. If I start with 8 flood plains and lots of jungle I am sick at 1 population, this makes it 20 turns to build a worker! I feel there is a problem, others may think differently. I think there is such a thing as too many flood plains.

 

[torsoboy]

I'm the one being quoted. At the time I thought it would be funny to say that certain landscapes were bad for baby-making (unsexy). It sounded funnier in my head - probably because I'm not a native speaker. I don't think floodplains are bad at all, in fact they're priority spots for my cities because I love playing as the Dutch.

 

[Percy]

the unhealthyness matters at the higher difficulty levels when there are no other bonuses than +1 for difficulty(or 2) and +2 for river. Say you have 10 floodplains in your capital and you can see why it becomes a problem. That is in the very early game before you manage to hook up reasources. Ofc after you get over the "point needed to gain point" floodplains are pretty good. That said there are other titles you want to work too so it should be specified that you need to work say 4 floodplains not 4 titles. If that point comes at pop 6 when your happy cap is at 4 and your health start going green at pop 3 you can see the early problems.

That's spot on, i think. Early mass-floodplains can kill a city.

 

[Bhruic]

My post was exactly about that. The unhealthiness doesn't matter. If you work the flood plains, the unhealthiness doesn't matter at all. If you're able to work them, the unhealthiness is counteracted by the extra food they provide.

No, it's not "counteracted", it's managed. The fact you get 3 means you can afford the . But you're still losing growth speed because of it, it's just not enough to completely eliminate growth. If you split them among 2 cities, however, then you can reduce the to the point where it's not a factor at all. That means all those 3 tiles can actually provide you the full . It'd be silly to simply accept the when you can avoid it completely.

Bh

 

[JimT]

No, it's not "counteracted", it's managed. The fact you get 3 means you can afford the . But you're still losing growth speed because of it, it's just not enough to completely eliminate growth. If you split them among 2 cities, however, then you can reduce the to the point where it's not a factor at all. That means all those 3 tiles can actually provide you the full . It'd be silly to simply accept the when you can avoid it completely.

Bh

It is counter acted.
Farmed Flood plain (4 + o.4 ) is 1.4 surplus
farmed Grassland (3 + 0 ) is 1 surplus

I even thought you had to work floodplains for it to cause unhealthiness but that may be my aged mind harking back to previous versions. If it isn't then maybe you would want to split it but your still wasting a prime site for a GP farm.

 

[Percy]

Your reasoning is flawed. Also, since you seem to be unsure about that, no, you don't have to work the plains for them to bring unhealthiness. And 4 - 0.4 is 1.6 surplus, not 1.4.

Anyway, the problem with this reasoning is that in the case of flood plains, you HAVE to work them to counteract the effect they bring even if you don't work them. So when you don't want to grow your city, and want to use mines or workshops instead, the floodplains you don't work still bring unhealthiness, and so potentially COST you food instead of bringing some.

Now, as it has been said, floodplains are a good terrain to have, but i wouldn't want more than 7 ever, and that's if i get an health bonus (Expansive or settling on a river). If i have both, then it may be ok to not worry about them.

 

[Diamondeye]

I definately agree with Percy. Your reasoning is somewhat flawed.
You say that the FPs pay off even though they have , and mention that they can be a production powerhouse lategame. Mostly, when founding cities, we are not talking lategame!

If you still can't see the point, try playing an OCC and WBing the terrain around you into floodplains. GL and HF is all I say.

 

[madscientist]

I love Flood plains, my only comment is I will try and split them up into 2 citities if possible.

If you have ALOT of flood plains, sure you get the unhealthiness, but you can build the city larger and get better cottage returns, thus allowing you to add maybe 1-2 more cities to your economy than if you had gasslands. Just make sure the extra 1-2 cities gets you a health resource (such as corn, wheat, or rice) which would negate the floodpains unhealthiness. Even so 5 flood plains gives you 5 extra food and 2 unhealthiness (-2 food) so they are a net +3 food to a city, good enough to run 1 specialist and a plains mine rather than a grassland mine.

 

[Murky]

Floodplains are good. I tend to cottage them like crazy unless it will be a GP farm. You don't want to chop forest around the floodplains because the health bonus is more important than the extra hammers. The ideal floodplain city has no more than 5 flood plains with lots of river and forest tiles.

 

[Handel]

There always are some people which are looking to *impress* the others making baseless posts just for the sake of writing something. Flood plains can never be bad.

 

[Percy]

There always are some people which are looking to *impress* the others making baseless, unargumented, posts just for the sake of writing something.

No matter how hard you say something, and how convincing you try to be, it has no weight unless you use arguments to prove it. Reason and logic is what allows one to have a correct opinion. Not a peremptory tone and self-assurance.

 

[slobberinbear]

I've recently been trying mansa musa on earth 18civs senario, it sounds like you are refering to his start. I play on BTS monarch level. If I start with 8 flood plains and lots of jungle I am sick at 1 population, this makes it 20 turns to build a worker! I feel there is a problem, others may think differently. I think there is such a thing as too many flood plains.

Hattie also has these issues on that Earth map, but she has a wheat tile in her BFC, so once she gets Pottery and builds a granary, it's a little more manageable. In high-FP, often the only solution early is to farm a few of them to "power through" the unhealthiness. In Hattie's case, I farm 'em all for whipping purposes in the early game.

Mansa's only prayer is to farm and cottage his floodplains (about 50/50) and whip out settlers so he can beat Hattie, Isabella, Julius, and Saladin to the key African city locations (Morrocco, Carthage, Congo, South Africa).

To the OP's point: I like floodplains too, but too many of them in one spot can be a pain in the early game before you have health resources hooked up.

 

[axident]

Floodplains are awesome for cottages as the city can grow both population and cottages quickly. Settle next to the river to get +2 freshwater bonus to offset some unhealthiness and cottage the rest. If my capital is food/hill heavy sometimes I move my palace to a floodplains cottage city and let my capital become my HE/WP or city. Forests also help cancel out a bit of unhealthiness. Anyway it's only unhealthiness, not unhappiness, so you can just work more floodplain tiles to have a bigger food surplus to deduct from.

 

[Percy]

The original point remains, that an early city with too many cottage is not optimal, and that two cities sharing the floodplains should be preferred most of the time.

Now, if it's mid-to-late game and you have the health resources to offset the unhealthiness while the city grows, then yes, floodplains in large quantity is good.

In any case, no one is saying that a floodplains tile is not a good one: it's riverside (so +1C), it's +1F, it's great.

 

[xanadux]

Of course flood plains are very good. But suppose I have a starting location with 10 flood plains in the fat cross (I've never actually been so lucky). I would tend to split them between 2 cities, not so much to reduce the unhealthiness, but because it generally take so long to actually use 10 flood plains in one city that for the majority of the game, and likeyl the entire game, 2 cities using them will be stronger than 1. Of course, there are times that on 1 or more sides the flood plains are surrounded by dessert, and there is no real option to make 2 very strong cities. In this case, I would use them all in the capital, but also likely build a satellite city to work some cottages into towns until the point where the capital can make use of all of them (of course assuming I am using a CE).

Although I haven't had starting locations with so many flood plains, I have settled cities with 8 or more, and usually find myself staring at a lot of unused flood plains tiles most of the game because my happy cap won't allow me to use so much food. These sites are, however, very nice globe theatre whipping/drafting factories.