Mine or farm on Hill tiles next to rivers?

[brasaelal]

What is the best option, considering the whole game length?

I'm building mines and almost always do this, but I'm not realy sure right now if there's any tech that adds production to this kind of tile and I know a farm adds 2 food.

 

[Silverfuturist]

If you chose mines, then you don't have to go back and rework tiles when new resources become available. Plus it is nice to instantly get coal/aluminum/etc the moment the tech for them is discovered if you happen to have a mine already built on that spot.

 

[pirsq]

It depends on what your city is lacking. If it's mostly flat grassland, you definitely want mines on every hill. If it's mostly hills everywhere, you probably want some farms.

You can also start with farms (because they get 2 food very early with Civil Service), and switch back to mines (the 2 hammers comes much later). Obviously this costs worker turns (though by then, your workers won't have much to do anyway), and also causes gives 5 or so turns when the tile is unimproved.

 

[Deau]

Generally farm, unless the city is food-heavy and hammer-lacking (like a full grassland area with a few riverside hills). The strength of farmed hills (esp after civil services) is they are self sufficient. Thus, unless I have a serious problem with happiness, I would rather have my size 12 city with a +4 mined hill keep growing to a size 13 city with two farmed +2 hills. You get the same total production but increase your city size, thus gaining extra beakers all together.

Again, if happiness is a struggle, the above option might not be the best choice.

 

[Alien.Traveler]

Only farms, at least in the first 2/3rds of the game. If you are playing right (as I do), you do not want more thean 2-3 cities, but really nice cities. So, you need grouth first.

 

[roguepro92]

hammer.
hammer is ridiculously hard to find if the city isn't placed well

 

[Alien.Traveler]

hammer.
hammer is ridiculously hard to find if the city isn't placed well

With big population you will have plenty of hammers. To get big population you need farms on hills.

 

[slobberinbear]

It depends on what your city is lacking. If it's mostly flat grassland, you definitely want mines on every hill. If it's mostly hills everywhere, you probably want some farms.

You can also start with farms (because they get 2 food very early with Civil Service), and switch back to mines (the 2 hammers comes much later). Obviously this costs worker turns (though by then, your workers won't have much to do anyway), and also causes gives 5 or so turns when the tile is unimproved.

I endorse this statement. It just depends on the city's tiles and your happiness situation.

I am generally a miner (civ IV habit, most likely). In Civ V, a riverside 2/2/1 farmed hill is considered a decent tile.

 

[Camikaze]

I can't help but feel that mines don't feel all that worthwhile anymore. Farmed tiles both self-sustain and produce something else, whereas mined tiles are relatively one-dimensional.

 

[qyll]

I always farm those. After civil service, food neutral +2 hammer tiles are excellent.

 

[pirsq]

I can't help but feel that mines don't feel all that worthwhile anymore. Farmed tiles both self-sustain and produce something else, whereas mined tiles are relatively one-dimensional.

I would argue that specialisation is actually an advantage. If you have 2 citizens, 2 farmed grasslands and 2 mined hills, you can produce either 8, 44 or 8 depending on what you need. If you had 4 farmed hills instead, you don't get that choice.

 

[TravisATWA]

Well the obvious answer is you build what your city needs, with that said however, i usually farm them. I generally play for tall empires rather than wide ones so that may have a bit to do with it

 

[p_quarles]

I would argue that specialisation is actually an advantage. If you have 2 citizens, 2 farmed grasslands and 2 mined hills, you can produce either 8, 44 or 8 depending on what you need. If you had 4 farmed hills instead, you don't get that choice.

I think you're missing the point of the question. It isn't that having the choice is bad, it's asking which choice is optimal for long term gain.

In your example, the 8 food and no hammers option would work well for getting a new city up to speed with a third citizen. The 0 food and 8 hammers approach would result in population loss due to starvation. In both cases, the results of those decisions show up in a matter of a few turns. I think the question posed was much more about the results that one gets after a few dozen turns.

 

[slobberinbear]

I would argue that specialisation is actually an advantage. If you have 2 citizens, 2 farmed grasslands and 2 mined hills, you can produce either 8, 44 or 8 depending on what you need. If you had 4 farmed hills instead, you don't get that choice.

This is the main reason why it sometimes pays to "over-improve" a small- to medium-sized city, so that when you swap to food/production/gold mode, it actually makes a meaningful difference.

So if you have a city that can do this (probably grasslands/floodplains), it is powerful. Plains cities are less flexible due to their lack of easy food.

I suggest watching Bibor's "thinking ahead" video for more on this. The point is to match your improvements with your needs.

 

[Lyoncet]

Another big question is are you growing tall or wide? If tall, it's a matter of what the city needs more, but I lean towards farming river grassland hills and mining the rest (but of course that depends on a bunch of other things too). If wide, it's likely that your cities can't support that much population anyways, at least until you get a strong enough infrastructure to support all the happiness buildings you can find and enough cash/excess luxuries to trade for/buy every surplus luxury on the map.

One other thing to consider is how many river tiles the city has. I've had a few games where I ended up mining the riverside grassland hills because two of my four cities had literally three rivers running by them, and probably over half the tiles in their 7-tile diameter had river access. Despite that being my second game since the patch before the last patch came out, and having no idea what I was doing and being rusty as hell, I had one of them up to size 39 by the time I won in the mid 1800s. And that was with putting mines on every tile that could support them, and two manufacturies, and 5 or 6 landmarks.