Harvesting Builder Question

[Bojmir]

So I see on many guides it talks about having a builder clear a tile before you build a wonder or district on it with a builder. So my question is how to plan these builders. If I build a builder just in normal gameplay usually I'm using all those charges immediately to improve tiles if not in the city it spawned it but a neighboring city. If I save a builder for clearing a tile, aren't I losing the increased production during the save period that I would have had if I used that charge on an improvement. Doesn't that diminish the value of the harvest? Is it the best practice to try to time a builder to be produced one or two turns before you plan to build a new district/wonder (to account for travel time)? Thanks for any advice.

 

[intellectsucks]

The main reason you want to chop before placing a wonder/district is so that the underlying production/food isn't lost. Imagine you want to place a district on a tile that has woods on it. If you chop the woods first, you get a big, one time boost to production in that city. If you just place the district on top of the woods, you can never get that production boost.

Let's imagine a scenario where you have a builder with one charge left. He can either build a mine now, or chop a woods tile where a district will be placed. If he builds the mine, you'll get +1 or 2 production. If he chops the woods, it will yield 70-100 production or more. That production boost will give you the benefits of what you're building (district, unit, wonder, etc) MUCH faster than the extra 1-2 production/turn your would get from the mine. This might mean you have another city up and running five or ten turns sooner, or a district producing science or gold, or units allowing you to go to war, etc. The five or ten extra turns might mean that the AI might settle the city spot you were hoping for, or build the next level of city defenses, or get even further ahead of you in terms of science.

Of course it's IDEAL to produce your builders JUST before they're needed but it's not always possible. It's usually better to have a builder sit idle to get a BIG benefit from a chop than to use him to get a small benefit sooner.

Hope this helps.

 

[EscapedGoat]

So I see on many guides it talks about having a builder clear a tile before you build a wonder or district on it with a builder. So my question is how to plan these builders. If I build a builder just in normal gameplay usually I'm using all those charges immediately to improve tiles if not in the city it spawned it but a neighboring city. If I save a builder for clearing a tile, aren't I losing the increased production during the save period that I would have had if I used that charge on an improvement. Doesn't that diminish the value of the harvest? Is it the best practice to try to time a builder to be produced one or two turns before you plan to build a new district/wonder (to account for travel time)? Thanks for any advice.

You are not thinking big enough you seem to be saying "but I don't always have a builder at hand" and "I'd rather spend the charge on an improvement IF I do have a builder."

Let's analyze that for a moment. At any stage other than the very early game, you should always have builders around. If not, you are doing something wrong. City tile improvements need to be added as the city grows, so except for the very early game, several builder should always be reasonably close by. Besides, some planning is certainly possible, not everything happens right this turn, so you can plan the arrival of a builder by thinking ahead.

Another argument: let's say you do not have a builder, but you plan to build a wonder. In this case, except again for maybe the very early game where harvests have little value (it grows over time with techs unlocked I believe), you should FIRST build a builder, who can then harvest, and THEN place the wonder. You have lost nothing, because you gain back the production you spent on the worker through the harvest (more or less). In addition, you now have a worker with some more charges that you can use to improve your tiles or harvest more to speed up the wonder

Your other argument is: you lose the added production of an improved tile. That is certainly true, but a harvest will correspond to many, many turns of working usually +1 hammer on some random tile. Production now is better than production over time, especially true of marginal yield increases.

 

[Bibor]

If I build a builder just in normal gameplay usually I'm using all those charges immediately to improve tiles if not in the city it spawned it but a neighboring city.

You decide to invest say 150 Production (P) into a settler. That settler takes some turns to build and then to move and start paying off the investment.
But a new city doesn't cost just 150, it also costs a worker. Why? Because a new city starts at pop 1 and lets say in an ideal situation it yields 5 PPT with no worker.
At this rate, it will take 150/5=30 turns to make that city pay itself off.

Add a worker with 4 charges that harvests two marshes and builds two plains hills mines, it's suddenly a population 3 city that yields 5+4+4 = 13 PPT.
So the city pays itself off in 150/13=13 turns.
If you add the cost of the worker to it, it's probably closer to 20 turns to pay the city off, but 20 still beats 30.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

You decide to invest say 150 Production (P) into a settler. That settler takes some turns to build and then to move and start paying off the investment.
But a new city doesn't cost just 150, it also costs a worker. Why? Because a new city starts at pop 1 and lets say in an ideal situation it yields 5 PPT with no worker.
At this rate, it will take 150/5=30 turns to make that city pay itself off.

Add a worker with 4 charges that harvests two marshes and builds two plains hills mines, it's suddenly a population 3 city that yields 5+4+4 = 13 PPT.
So the city pays itself off in 150/13=13 turns.
If you add the cost of the worker to it, it's probably closer to 20 turns to pay the city off, but 20 still beats 30.

Interesting.
What do you need to do to get those numbers down making the city pay off faster or add more value?
Are the numbers different for capturing AI cities compared to building your own?

 

[Bibor]

Interesting.
What do you need to do to get those numbers down making the city pay off faster or add more value?
Are the numbers different for capturing AI cities compared to building your own?

Natural disasters is the free solution for boosting potential city locations, forest fires being my favourite.
Ancestral hall boosted with Colonization card, combined with city placements timed with serfdom card.
Both of these favor building up a core of 2-4 culture-based cities before starting a dedicated simultaneous expansion to 10-15 cities.

If you can stomach the often horrible AI city & district placement, early conquest without (significant) unit losses has enormous production-saving benefits, since you can (sometimes) both pillage and conquer. Capturing comet craters is free production and an all-mounted "pillage but no conquest" campaign with "Raid" and/or "Sack" policy card is also a valid strategy if opportunity presents itself.

*sidenote: this is why Rome is still my favourite civ, because all of its bonuses apply to all maps, styles and all scenarios:
- Free early culture
- Legions for both offense, pillaging and tile repair duty
- free roads for faster movement (which is completely underrated)
- significantly larger income from trade routes
- happiness & growth to pop 10 with Baths once conquests are done, making non-freshwater city placements way easier and cities able to build more victory condition districts (most important in conquered cities).