Food or Production?

[Patrick Pelikan]

I started an OCC game as ARC and run into some questions.

First the Game condition:
Diff: Soyuz
Map: Small, Skirmish
Terrain: Desert
Water: Rivers (I wanted flood plains, cause I like them)
Sponsor: ARC
Ship: Tectonic Scanner
Colonist: Artists
Cargo: Worker

After Planetfall, I find myself on a flood plain, surrounded by by 5 more floodplains and one desert river hill with 7 Titanium. Of course my first works one of the floodplains (+2 +2) for some growth.

Now my question: What tile should I improve and what tile should I assign my 2nd ?
- build farm on floodplains that is already worked for +1 and assign the 2nd to the next flood plain
or
- build farm on floodplains that is already worked for +1 and assign the 2nd to the titanium
or
- build mine on the titanium for +6 (or so) and assign the 2nd to the mine
or
- build mine on the titanium for +6 (or so) and assign the 2nd to a second flood plains and assign the 3rd to the mine

What's your oppinion on that matter. I tend to go for the first, cause I really like the growth. And playing OCC I don't need that much production I don't build any colonists (so enough time for all the buildings, workers, trade convoys, soldiers, etc).

Should I prefer the early over ? How would assign the when playing a normal game (not OCC)?

Thanks for your input!

 

[Ryika]

Don't have any experience with ooc, but I'll answer the non-ooc-part, assuming you use Artists and Africa as starting conditions:

As long as there's enough food available naturally, I think it's best to always improve the titanium asap, as you can sell them to other Civs (at that point I'd sell them 1 by 1 for 2 ept each to make sure you can rushbuy recyclers in your new cities) and you'll want to work that tile rather soon. With 2+ 2-food-tiles available I usually let the second pop also use a food tile and the third one will then use the mine to push out the first trade unit and the settler after that. If I have a tile with 3 base-food available, then I will use another food tile for the third pop as that city will manage to reach pop 4 before I want to start the settler (which delays the settler by a turn or so, but gives more yield from that first trade route once the city is done and thus I think is stronger in the long run) - in that case you can squeeze out a farm first, if the tile with titanium doesn't have a forest on it that needs to be removed..

/edit: There may also be an exception for a non-3-food-tile-start with the rare scenario that your worker starts on a 2-food-tile close to the flat grassland tile with titanium on it. If none of these tiles have forests on them, then it may be possible to squeeze out a farm on that starting tile before building the mine and still getting everything in time - that should be good, because that titanium tile will also yield 2 food, thus allowing you to once again squeeze out that fourth pop without delaying the settler.

I think using that second Pop on a mine is generally a waste as long as there are other decent tiles available. Your trade route will be 1-2 turns faster, but as it's only a +50% Growth modifier for the outpost it won't really grow much faster - and if you stagger the growth of your capital too much, then trade routes to other cities will once again have lower yield than they could have had.

The fact that you landed on a flood plain (and thus removed the flood plains and basically landed on desert) will slow your overall growth quite a bit, bit it sounds like you had to do that in this scenario.

 

[Patrick Pelikan]

Thanks Ryika for the fast answer!

As long as there's enough food available naturally, I think it's best to always improve the titanium asap, as you can sell them to other Civs (at that point I'd sell them 1 by 1 for 2 ept each to make sure you can rushbuy recyclers in your new cities) and you'll want to work that tile rather soon.

I never thought about the trade aspect. That makes sense, considering you get more energy but also maybe a small positive diplo modifier with a close neigbour(s).

[...]delays the settler by a turn or so, but gives more yield from that first trade route once the city is done and thus I think is stronger in the long run

How exactly are the trade yields calculated? Is there a post/thread that explains that? Off to the search function!

/edit: There may also be an exception for a non-3-food-tile-start with the rare scenario that your worker starts on a 2-food-tile close to the flat grassland tile with titanium on it. If none of these tiles have forests on them, then it may be possible to squeeze out a farm on that starting tile before building the mine and still getting everything in time - that should be good, because that titanium tile will also yield 2 food, thus allowing you to once again squeeze out that fourth pop without delaying the settler.

Makes sense, but I guess that is a rather rare situation. I seldom see titanium on grassland, but maybe it's just my games. This would be probably the only situation where I'd prefer the worker starting on an empty tile (somehow my worker never starts on a "useful" tile (fruit, tubers, etc ) when I have one)

I think using that second Pop on a mine is generally a waste as long as there are other decent tiles available

That was my impression as well, thanks for confirming it!

The fact that you landed on a flood plain (and thus removed the flood plains and basically landed on desert) will slow your overall growth quite a bit, bit it sounds like you had to do that in this scenario.

True, but it was the best spot IMO to settle. It is after all a desert terrain skirmish map. There are also 2 desert tubers in the second ring. I would have to had settled away from the river to get them in the first, what I didn't want to do. Unfortunatly there are no Affinity ressources nearby, which sucks for an OCC game, but I wanted to try it anyway. At least, I will have basicly free academies on these flood plains later on (still giving 2 food). Thats also the reason I chose this map setup.

Another question to all of you guys: How does your ideal starting location looks like? Mine I guess would be a lot of river, grassland, some hills (one with titanium), maybe some forested plains/grassland for biowells, of course some affinity ressource (preferably firaxite for the observatoirum and the science), some basic ressources like fruit, chitin, reslin... I actually would prefer a non coastal start!

 

[tedeviatings]

How exactly are the trade yields calculated? Is there a post/thread that explains that? Off to the search function!

There is no post (that I'm aware of) because nobody really knows. We do know a couple of basic facts, like bigger cities (i.e. more base yield) get more out of a trade route than smaller cities and all that... But that's about it

Another question to all of you guys: How does your ideal starting location looks like? Mine I guess would be a lot of river, grassland, some hills (one with titanium), maybe some forested plains/grassland for biowells, of course some affinity ressource (preferably firaxite for the observatoirum and the science), some basic ressources like fruit, chitin, reslin... I actually would prefer a non coastal start!

No water, river on all tiles. A couple of good food tiles, production with titanium (ideally on grassland and/or desert hills only) and everything else can be flood plains.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

As for how I normally focus if playing a regular game -

I almost always choose production over food. The health penalties from a large, growing population almost always outweigh the benefits of a bigger population itself so I tend to focus on production wherever possible. Staying healthy is a major struggle I have in this game, it's too hard and the raft of health buildings you can get typically come so late in my games as to be non-issues as I've already all but locked up the win.