Improvements after Machinery

[Redslider]

Up until Machinery I think developing plots around cities is straight forward - farms, mines, cottages, if necessary add workshops. When you get windmills and watermills, however, I put the workers on auto, hoping the auto function will decide what is optimum. I have seen the charts which tally all the yields, but it is so complicated especially since a civic change, new tech or wonder can throw more complexity into deciding where to put watermills and windmills. Should I just change out all my mines for windmills? The medieval times is about where I give up manually running my workers as I am getting between 12 and 20+ cities. Is there a simple approach? Is there a simple guide in the forums that would help me manually run my workers without spending forever on each city every turn?

I'm playing BTS, epic, noble, continents, domination or space race.

Thank you for any help,

 

[Windsor]

The mills sucks until replaceable parts.

Grassfarm + grassmine = 3
Watermill + windmill = 2 (4 at replaceable parts)

For workshops you'll need two of caste/guilds/chemistry before they match mines.

 

[kossin]

If you automate workers, make sure to tick 'Leave old Improvements'. In general it's better to keep control though.

Mines vs windmill: a lot of discussions have been made on this point. Basically my opinion is if you need food and have happy cap to grow, replace some mines and make windmills as needed.

Watermills are kinda moot pre-RP but you can replace riverside forests to gain 1 commerce. Usually I wait about when I'm about to hit Replaceable Parts or State Property.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, I don't usually worry about windmills/watermill or workshops until a bit later. As mentioned, I wouldn't bother with a workshop until 2 of caste/guids/chemistry.

Windmills I've gotten to like more. If I have a cottage-heavy city, I do sometimes windmill some of the hills. In a production city, I'll keep with farms/mines.

Watermills I hardly use, except when I'm in SP. I should probably use them more, but again, they only really become useful later in the game.

 

[iggymnrr]

They happy cap advise is good. If you happen to be lucky to have many workers and a few cities that will take some time to grow, it's probably best to windmill in advance and have options available.

 

[NihilZero]

I always have generally preferred mines whenever possible, but changing one or two hills to windmills can obviously give you enough food to work another tile, maybe with a mine or workshop on it for significantly more total hammers.

Also, lately I've started to specialise my Oxford capital more (and to some extent other commerce-heavy cities). I used to favour a double purpose capital, run bureaucracy for a long time and have the HE there too. If you can do it though, I think it makes more sense to squeeze as much out of your Oxford multiplier as possible and convert your cap for more commerce later in the game. That means putting HE somewhere else and changing your capital's mines to windmills, which also has the effect of allowing you to change more farms to cottages giving even more net commerce.

Post electricity, windmills and watermills are not too shabby commerce-wise. Fully boosted watermills, with RP, SP, Electricity, and a levee are absolute monster tiles and you should run lots of these in production cities. In State Property the food bonuses for watermills and workshops means you can eliminate a lot of farms while still getting more population working more hammers.

As for the question:

Should I just change out all my mines for windmills?

the answer is definitely not, in my opinion. In production cities with hammer mulitpliers you want to get as many hammers as you possibly can.

 

[Redslider]

Thank you for the thoughtful replies - this last game I kept the workers on manual until modern age, and the cities seemed good. Ticked the "leave existing improvements" option too.

 

[MyOtherName]

In production cities with hammer mulitpliers you want to get as many hammers as you possibly can.

In some age & civic combinations, that requires you to windmill over your mines and watermill/workshop over your farms.