Flood plains: good or bad?

[KMadCandy]

- if AND ONLY IF you happiness and health resources, and pottery, spam cottages there. Then it's useful without any infrastructure. Otherwise, you can wait until metal casting, democracy, super-slavery or something.

i'm trying to understand your logic here, no sarcasm, i want to learn what works for you. background: this week i tried the latest isolated start game with Willem VanO (dunno if you followed that and know the map) and had a lovely city with a lot of FP, the production was basically a grasslands iron tile. 2 grassland forests that i didn't usually work. i was on my own island so i had big health issues in that city, couldn't do resource trades or expand my territory for ages upon ages.

it was a great city. i cottaged it to heck and back and those guys researched many many beakers for me. but it's the only city where i never did build a forge! i didn't play thru the late-game health techs, and given the landscape i had so very few hammers there before windmills, 25% of 10 hammers or so isn't all that much. going by memory but even with the AP (so +4 hammers there) it was a low hammer city.

i'm not sure why you're talking about waiting until metal-casting for that type of city? you mention happiness, maybe it's for the forge to double the 3 luxuries, but i don't think so. waiting for democracy to rush-buy i can picture, but that's awfully late if you don't have the pyramids. anyway, i built my infrastructure thru the whipping away of bodies in a lot of cases, IMO that was going to better long-term than putting a forge in there i could never get rid of. it also happened to end up double holy and there was no freaking way i was ever gonna get wall street in there without a GE but it didn't come to that .

what am i missing? thanks, signed, the flawed logic permanoob who yup, sometimes wins emperor+ but also can lose below warlord level. i'm flexible!

 

[popejubal]

it was a great city. i cottaged it to heck and back and those guys researched many many beakers for me. but it's the only city where i never did build a forge! i didn't play thru the late-game health techs, and given the landscape i had so very few hammers there before windmills, 25% of 10 hammers or so isn't all that much. going by memory but even with the AP (so +4 hammers there) it was a low hammer city.

These cities often need all the hammers that they can get, so I'll often put a forge as a relatively high priority even with the low production.

One other benefit of the forge here is that you can run an engineer specialist. With all of the Flood Plains, even if you have lots of cottages instead of farms, you'll still have a decent food surplus. You may even pop a Great Engineer eventually. Settle him in the city and suddenly you get a free Grassland Hill worth of production without having to "waste" the population point on working the hill. ...and considering that you may not even have a hill in the first place, that's not a bad bargain.

If I had just a few flood plains and lots of grasslands, I'd probably farm one of the Flood Plains and then cottage most of the rest so that I had a big food surplus for growth. It's certainly nice to be working a cottage instead of a farm, but if you don't start with a good food surplus, then working a farm means that you'll get to work more cottages a lot sooner.

 

[popejubal]

oh but i had such fun changing my civ's name from my usual Candyland Empire for the purpose of this screenshot silly goose however did you miss it :crazyeyes:. i think maybe you means giggles instead of grief . plus you did open the spoiler box, buyer reader beware!

8 food on one tile? Sure, pigs are nice. ...But they're not Wheat.

(I'll admit that I added a Levee to the city to keep up with your production.)

 

[Percy]

These cities often need all the hammers that they can get, so I'll often put a forge as a relatively high priority even with the low production.

I often find that the couple of hammers i'd get from a Forge are not worth the unhealthiness i'll get, which is probably already a problem due to floodplains.

 

[popejubal]

I often find that the couple of hammers i'd get from a Forge are not worth the unhealthiness i'll get, which is probably already a problem due to floodplains.

I'm usually not willing to trade food for hammers on a 1 for 1 basis, but if I pick up 2 hammers (which is entirely reasonable on almost any city), then I'm trading 1 for 2 roduction:. That's not a bad trade. I can also run an engineer specialist if I need the production and GP points more than I need to work a cottaged tile.

It's not an optimum solution, but it's often better than not building a forge. If I do whip the forge, then I'll also get the bonus on the overflow hammers and I'll grow back fairly quickly since I usually put a farm on the first flood plain for zippy quick growth.

 

[KMadCandy]

I'm usually not willing to trade food for hammers on a 1 for 1 basis, but if I pick up 2 hammers (which is entirely reasonable on almost any city), then I'm trading 1 for 2 production. That's not a bad trade. I can also run an engineer specialist if I need the production and GP points more than I need to work a cottaged tile.

actually i know why i was looking at it differently. that city was running my scientists. the capital had pyramids and HG, it was my GE source. so #1 i didn't want an eng running there, and #2 i wanted high pop to run the specialists to get my GSs, the forge would make that harder. the city was cottaged but still had extra bodies to sit back and beakerize, and was never going to have to produce much. because i was isolated so i knew i'd not need troops at all from that city, it was only ever going to be scienceville ... that's definitely not always the case!

and about your silly wheat: "(I'll admit that I added a Levee to the city to keep up with your production.)" my piggies are on a river, they can get a levee too. how ya gonna keep up then? *giggle*

 

[Percy]

Well, i find i'd rather have 1 Food than 2 Production in a floodplains-heavy city. Especially since getting +2 Production from the Forge is not that common in my experience, for a city focusing on cottages or specialists, and thus not running mines.