How many of each luxury do I need?

[CasperP]

Dear all, I am new to the Community here but have been playing Civ forever, since the early days, and my long relationship with Civ I/II/III, and now Civ IV has wrecked at least 2 relationships for me. Still, I am now happily married to a woman who tolerates my late nights in front of the screen.

Here is my question: if I have, say 4 wine, and trade 2, then is it safe to cottage or farm one of them? So I have one for myself, and the two for trade? In other words, is there any reason to have extra wineries?

My understanding is that I can safely cottage or farm the left over luxuries, but I would love to hear an experienced Civ IV player explain this.

Thanks, people!

Casper

 

[mirthadir]

1. You may find new trading partners (or just be able to sell the suprlus to an old trading partner).
2. The AI (in BTS) will start burning down tile improvements with spies, having a spare is a good thing.
3. Some luxury resources (not wines) help with corps; total count is more important there.
4. Wineries are a rather good tile improvement in their own right. A plains farm is normally garbage; a plains cottage worse; a 2 food quasi-cottage that comes from a winery isn't half bad (particularly early game). Late game you might consider running a SP WS or mill overtop of it for the and .

 

[Skallagrimson]

After all possible trades have been made, for non-corporation resources, I still like to have at least 2 extra, preferably 3, due to spy nerfs, events (especially volcano next to a mountain), AI plunders in wartime, etc.

If I've got like 5 extra, sure, revisit the worked tiles and see if a farm or cottage or mine makes more sense (but often it doesn't, as mirthadir explained).

 

[ppciv4]

if there's no more AI to trade with.
farm it and run specialist.

 

[mirthadir]

if there's no more AI to trade with.
farm it and run specialist.

How? Plains farms are at best 3 . That doesn't feed a spec; given that a bio farm is only a gain of 1 for a loss of .

 

[Supr49er]

I'd keep it in reserve for a future trade.
Maybe you could interest your wife in civ?

Welcome to the Forums CasperP.

 

[z0wb13]

1. You may find new trading partners (or just be able to sell the suprlus to an old trading partner).

i can't ever think of a time when it would be better to deny yourself access to a resource than have a *marginally improved tile. so settling on a resources is sometimes a good idea.

somebody will pay at least 2 g/t for your extra wine resource. plus, there are less obvious diplomatic bonuses.

 

[mirthadir]

i can't ever think of a time when it would be better to deny yourself access to a resource than have a *marginally improved tile. so settling on a resources is sometimes a good idea.

somebody will pay at least 2 g/t for your extra wine resource. plus, there are less obvious diplomatic bonuses.

Once I have enough food to work all my tiles via corps I'll cottage right over surplus wine; very rarely can I just sell the sucker for ~15 which is what the town will get me. Likewise in production cities I will mine/WS over certain resources if I no longer need them. Pigs and sheep in my IW or HE cities once I have corp food enough to work all 20 tiles without the pasture get mined. In my GP farm, I'm willing to farm over a jumbo to get another spec online. Many times if I have a town that pops oil in my WS or Oxford cities I just let it be (assuming I have enough).

 

[ppciv4]

How? Plains farms are at best 3 . That doesn't feed a spec; given that a bio farm is only a gain of 1 for a loss of .

I value 1 food as 4 commerce.
2 food= 3 beaker+ 3GPP+ability to grow faster while extra comes /after whipping

of course, it changes while I'm going bankrupt and do not have currency to build wealth...

 

[mirthadir]

I value 1 food as 4 commerce.
2 food= 3 beaker+ 3GPP+ability to grow faster while extra comes /after whipping

of course, it changes while I'm going bankrupt and do not have currency to build wealth...

Please read carefully:

It is NOT TWO FOOD

A winery is 2 (on plains tile); a farm is 3 (on a plains tile post-bio). A plains bio-farm will feed .5 specs. Thus according to your *own* definition the commerce of the winery is equal to the increased food from the farm; of course with the winery we get a good we might be able to sell for 1 GPT to some dumb AI or just insurance vs spies. Farming wineries is a *really* marginal improvement in food yield and you have to pretty much not care about at all to come out ahead with the farm. Pre-bio it is a DOWNGRADE.

 

[ppciv4]

2 food= 3 beaker+ 3GPP+ability to grow faster while extra comes /after whipping

Er... maybe it looks better this way:

1 food= {3 beaker+ 3GPP+ability to grow faster while extra comes /after whipping}/2

 

[mirthadir]

Post bio, you are getting 1.5 and 1.5 GPP; this is exceedingly marginal yield off a resource tile; particularly if you can sell it for even minimal amounts of GPT. It is virtually never worth farming over wine.

 

[macmert]

I usually gift it to other AI in order to keep good relations... It is not always the profitable course but it is good to have +n relation boost with AI...

 

[Zack]

Casper the technical answer is that you don't need any luxuries... they're luxuries.

 

[Tephros]

I'd consider cottaging fur, silk, or dye if there literally was nobody in the world who would be willing to trade the resource. Think long-term though. If you're on a continent and you haven't yet opened up trade with the other continent via astronomy you may want to reconsider. But if you're on a pangea map with 12 silk and everybody already has one, I'd turn some of those into cottages and gain more in the long-run. Generally I'd keep at least one surplus, though. Given that it provides both food and commerce I would never do that to wine. Consider a watermill (or a windmill) for better yields if it's parallel to a river in the late game and you're running state property, though (that happens more often to ivory resources after industrialism).