Let's Discuss.. Terrain Improvements

[yogiebere]

What do you think of all the improvements? Only having played 1.5 games, here's my take on them so far:

Basic Improvements:
Farm: available very early but felt rather weak in the mid game as compared with markets and mills. Gets huge boots from Imperialism or Freedom. The adjacency bonuses are nice but I didn't feel inclined to spam farms to get a +2 adjacency, triangles seemed the right balance. Especially seems the best improvement next to rivers.
Mill: the other option besides cutting all the forest/jungle into farms/markets. A rather weak improvement by itself, but allows you to keep forest/jungle which is quite strong with Herbalist and Workshop. It seems worth keeping some forest/jungle in cities for a strong midgame production boost when Machinery/Workshops come online.
Mine: seems fine especially when you get forges for a pretty early +2. Seemed very outclassed by midgame Mills and especially by Terrace Farms when I was playing the Inca.
Village: pretty awesome, was giving +1 prod, +4 gold, +1 culture in midgame. Obviously requires careful positioning with no adjacent village allowed and city connection giving bonuses (place near roads). I found myself nestling these next to luxury and bonus resources allowing open bonus-less terrain to form farm triangles.

Resource Improvements:
Camp: obviously necessity for luxuries, but with deer/bison didn't feel particularly strong. Worse than Bananas and a bit better than a farm. Great if your deer have forest though.
Fishing Boats: obviously necessity for luxuries, fish didn't feel particularly strong either until midgame with Harbors and Seaports.
Pastures: seemed pretty great, like Vanilla but with even better scaling. The +2 from Stable is a huge boost
Plantation: liked these more than Vanilla as well as bonus +1prod from Herbalist is a strong early boost.
Quarry: pretty strong!! A desert stone with stone works gets a full +5prod, pretty darn good for desert, not to mention on a decent tile as well.

Civ-Specific Improvements:
Brazilwood Camp: quite niche, just for culture, but quite a bit stronger than in Vanilla, much needed buff
Chateau: similar to Brazilwood Camp these seem pretty decent with the addition of food
Eki: cool new improvement: seems like farms but a bit stronger, big variety of yields. Do you spam these as the Huns?
Encampment: rather similar to Eki, seems quite good
Feitoria: wow, seems crazy powerful. Obviously limited tiles you can place on however.
Kasbah: seems good, strong but limited placement.
Kuna: looks great, never had a straight up science tile before other than Academy. Still probably wouldn't spam these.
Maoi: wow even stronger than Vanilla didn't think that was possible. Not useful on Pangaea however.
Polder: quite good but not all that powerful given it's fresh water reliance and Netherlands' weakness overall.
Terrace Farm: love these, found myself building them on some hills even without mountains next to them.

Any of the above I've misjudged that you love or hate?

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

I like every Unique Improvement other than the encampment. You want them, but if you max them out, they kill all farm clustering. Other improvements either can be clustered themselfes, or are restricted to certain areas.
And I definetly spam kunas, its one of the strongest science sources until very very late in the game.

 

[Stalker0]

Barring unique improvements my first focus is on villages. Anytime there is a road space open a village is going there...even if that breaks a farm cluster. And of course make sure to have a trade route going through your roads.

Early game one internal tr spanning most of your cities can generate enough gold and hammers to easily out weigh an external tr. and then later on trade routes coming in will often do that job for you.

Farms I only bother with in clusters or if there is literally nothing left to build.

Mines are an important short term bonus. I generally work farms and villages by default...but it’s nice to switch to heavy mines when you need to crank out production quickly. So they tend to be a second priority to me, but still useful for their niche

 

[RAuer2]

+1 for pro-villages. I try to maximize villages in my empire and mentally set aside one or two internal trade routes to create long routes going from one end of the empire to the other. At least, that is the goal, though it all depends on empire shape and such. I set aside those internal routes even if I am playing a Civ like Germany.

I value lumber mills and logging camps because I also value forest/jungle. I may be in the minority, but I clear as little forest/jungle as possible. Both forest and jungle heavy cities can pay off later in their own ways and the terrain can be amazing for defense depending on the opponent/promotions. A drawback is that a city heavy with either terrain types take time to come together.

 

[tu_79]

Pastures: seemed pretty great, like Vanilla but with even better scaling. The +2 from Stable is a huge boost

Stable doesn't boost pastures. It boosts the pasture-able resources. Important difference. If you place a great person tile improvement over a horse, you don't lose the bonus from stable. Fealty improves pastures, and there's a pantheon that enhances them too.

Village: pretty awesome, was giving +1 prod, +4 gold, +1 culture in midgame. Obviously requires careful positioning with no adjacent village allowed and city connection giving bonuses (place near roads). I found myself nestling these next to luxury and bonus resources allowing open bonus-less terrain to form farm triangles.

Double bonus for a passing caravan. If you don't want to break farm clusters, place a road so you leave your farm cluster untouched, the road is longer, you pay more maintenance, but you can have both farm clusters and improved villages.

Mine: seems fine especially when you get forges for a pretty early +2. Seemed very outclassed by midgame Mills and especially by Terrace Farms when I was playing the Inca.

Mine is special. There are a few mineable resources, so if you consider it as a resource improvement it's quite good. For basic improvement it's not that great, but useful when you need to focus on production for a while (building wonders).

Farm: available very early but felt rather weak in the mid game as compared with markets and mills. Gets huge boots from Imperialism or Freedom. The adjacency bonuses are nice but I didn't feel inclined to spam farms to get a +2 adjacency, triangles seemed the right balance. Especially seems the best improvement next to rivers.

We try to build farms in clusters, yes. Triangles, sometimes hexagons. Even if you end up working just one of those tiles, having one more food makes it a workable tile in late game. It's specially good when working specialists, you'll need every food yield you can find. (Well, maybe in this last release not that good, since unhappiness from population has risen). Good thing is that farms outside city reach give adjacency bonuses too.

Quarry: pretty strong!! A desert stone with stone works gets a full +5prod, pretty darn good for desert, not to mention on a decent tile as well.

Again, stone works don't improve quarries, only a few resources. Quarries are enhanced by castles now, and there's the related pantheon too, but that's it.

 

[yogiebere]

On the pastures and quarries, well sure it improves the resource, but when can you have a pasture or quarry without a resource? Hadn't thought of putting a GP improvement on a horse, sounds decent..

A passing caravan gives the road bonus again? Does a road need to be under the village or just next to it? Seems worth building 1 or even 2 extra road tiles just to connect a village.

 

[tu_79]

On the pastures and quarries, well sure it improves the resource, but when can you have a pasture or quarry without a resource? Hadn't thought of putting a GP improvement on a horse, sounds decent..

A passing caravan gives the road bonus again? Does a road need to be under the village or just next to it? Seems worth building 1 or even 2 extra road tiles just to connect a village.

A few unique improvements also can connect luxuries. Kasbahs, for example.

The bonus is +1 production +1 gold, IIRC, when the trade route pass over the tile. Using roads, you can influence where trade routes are passing. Sometimes it pays off to not connect cities by the shortest path, so you leave room for a farm cluster. It doesn't work in Communitas map, as there are too many resources in that map, but pretty much every other map works.

 

[CrazyG]

Mines aren't something I work as the normal tile for a city, but can be really useful when building a very important building, wonder, or even a settler. Just work them for a few turns, then return to some food tiles. There are exceptions, usually in coastal cities which have very little produciton available to them, but tons of growth.

On the pastures and quarries, well sure it improves the resource, but when can you have a pasture or quarry without a resource? Hadn't thought of putting a GP improvement on a horse, sounds decent..

You can also build something (usually a farm) on a tile before you discover the resource. The AI will do this pretty often on higher difficulties, you will see a farm built over stone or cattle.
Its a bit gimmicky, but you can just leave it as a farm all game and its sometimes the better tile that way. Its worth considering putting great people on resources, it has advantages and disadvantages.