Non Riverside plains tiles

[lumpcalhoon]

Ok so what is the best use for non Riverside plains tiles? I know the easy answer is whip and work them but in certain situations it's not the answer. I've read some very old Posts on it lol But what's the current thoughts.

 

[coanda]

Basically useless until mid-game. When you've got Guilds and Caste System, they start being decent with workshops. Add in Chemistry and State Property and they become very respectable.

 

[lumpcalhoon]

Yeah that's basically my thoughts..just workshop them.

 

[Bibor]

Large surplus of food and/or financial trait makes plains cottages somewhat interesting. Also not a bad tile to work during golden ages (farm or cottage).
Considering how important food is in this game, I workshop them last, though, definitely no workshops for me until at least guilds with caste.

 

[ArchGhost]

If they are non-riverside they aren't worth even looking at until CS. Better off farming green tiles that you can spare (or ones like lakeside green that are free to farm and don't necessarily need to be cottaged unless you NEED the commerce) and then whipping/running a specialist instead.

After CS use them as first priority for irrigation chains, sacrifice a riverside tile if you have to in order to start. Around this stage of the game I whip so heavily they'll never even be worked anyway since they aren't food positive, with most cities not getting above 6 before whipped down again if I'm really cranking units. Still, before workshop upgrades it's a far better use of them than they'd get otherwise.

You can workshop them after you have 2 of Caste, Guilds, or Chemistry, just like green tiles. Not really worth it until they provide at least 3 hammers, and that's pushing it. I still don't generally like them even then since the whip + green farms + mines does just as good. With all workshop upgrades they finally become good endgame tiles to work IMO, though if you don't run State Property you pretty much need Biology to offset them enough to even use in large cities due to unhealth cap.

 

[lumpcalhoon]

That was a great post @ArchGhost

 

[krikav]

They are almost always ignored untill very late in the game.
Either when caste/guild/chemistry/stateproperty make the workshops a better alternative than surrounding mined hills, or when you have enough happines to have a need for them anyway, perhaps with biology.

Circumstances vary however...
Some cities have such an abundance of food, that it makes sense to use plains to help handle surplus food.

I could figure out a dozen or so situations where there could be some marginal utility of a plains farm or cottage or unimproved workshop, but the real bottleneck in the early game is the workerturns.
Plains are one of the worst tiles you have, and as such the workers who always are pressed to the max simply doesn't have time to get to them.

In one situation a lake/oasis powered plains farm could be nice to grow to pop4 to whip a lighthouse if there is no grassland forest to work instead (2F 1H).
But the utility of this farm would be so small, that it would be better to just work unimproved grassland (2F) while you reach for pop4, then having to divert 5+ workerturns to make the farm.

 

[ArchGhost]

In one situation a lake/oasis powered plains farm could be nice to grow to pop4 to whip a lighthouse if there is no grassland forest to work instead (2F 1H).
But the utility of this farm would be so small, that it would be better to just work unimproved grassland (2F) while you reach for pop4, then having to divert 5+ workerturns to make the farm.

Yeah. If stuck in the situation where you have to work either a 2f grassland or the 2f1h plains farm, neither is really a great option (but you do what you have to sometimes), and even if the only way to get even one more 2f tile is to make that farm, those worker turns are really wasted since it's not really powerful enough to keep working and is just whip fodder. I usually just work even a coast without LH in such a situation, or the highest hammer tile I can after Alpha/Currency. Then that pop at least contributes some economic yield. I maintain a much more macro-oriented approach though.


Just as a more illustrative example for you TC, consider this:

Spoiler :

This city has 2 non-riverside plains that are actually capable of being farmed. However, for the potential purposes of this city, there are several reasons I won't bother until much later, if ever:

-Even without the cow, oasis + green farm will net +2fpt at size 2 and at size 3 let me run a PH mine (also 5 worker turns) instead of pFarm, until it's possible to 1-pop-whip in a Lighthouse in <6 turns, at which point I can just grow onto 4 yield coast tiles continously. Can't run scientists this way, but it makes the city viable without a "real" food resource.

-Workshopping them is likewise wasteful as I can just mine the hill in 1 less worker turn and get double the yield per pop as a weak 2h workshop. I don't even need to do that anyway to make it economically viable as running a pair of scientists while yielding +3gpt building wealth and +3 commerce is pretty decent for such a small city.

-This city has enough food to just sit there and run scientists at size 3 on the cow only, or run scientists while slowly gaining food (+1) at size 4. There's no need even for a Lighthouse or even the green farm if I don't wanna do anything else, though the green farm helps get to 4 faster so I don't have to delay the scientists as long.

-Most important in the bigger view: this city is one of 11 so far and I'm quickly adding more to grab land and resources post-Currency. I can't afford to spare the worker turns on relatively useless tiles when this city could be plenty profitable overall just running a couple scientists while building wealth with the cow tile's free hammers (the intended purpose of this city). Post CS it will have plenty of food to use with those green tiles in reach.

This is all compounded by the fact that I'm chopping heavily in marble wonders ATM in this particular game in order to fuel future research with failgold, and all the spare worker turns I can manage after hooking up cities and developing tiles need to go to chops.

 

[krikav]

Nice!
I'll chip in with a graphic example from my current game too:

Spoiler :

I'm here at T130 and I have not yet touched the non-riverside plains around my capital.
The capital (when running buroucracy) is abit of a special case, especially when you have an academy which I do here.
In those circumstances, having cottages on these plains tiles are ok.
So ideally here, I would have wanted cottages on at least the 3 plains tiles which are in reach of other cities (they help the capital mature them).
Worker turns are precious though, and I have not yet gotten to improving them.

This capital is no food supercenter, and the comming 50-100 turns or so I'll probably reach guilds/chemistry and replaceable parts.
When this happens, I'll replace the mines with windmills and gain 3 food. I'll grow the capital more when happycap allows and take over the floodplains and be up at +6 food.
When working the silk, I'm down at +5 food to distribute over 4 plains tiles and I think that cottages are the way to go, or it could be that the cities west and east has enough food surplus to work these as workshops at -2F each.

 

[Bibor]

On the other hand, forested & chopped plains make the perfect border with creative AIs, so there's use for them - they can get taken over by AI culture without me wanting to build Sistine or, in a sense, they can prevent a 600 hammer expenditure overall.

 

[Gumbolt]

If you have no use for tile and don't mind slower growth maybe better to run specialists?

Dead tiles are normally good to whip away. Agree with workshops as above and use of chain irrigation.

 

[elmurcis]

Well, early non-riverside (or non-finansial) plain-cottage is very low priority tile (even with no tech trading - with it it would be even more low) but at some 20 cities (was checking current game) I might have some 9-10 overall (currently worked or with some growth turns in) - can be nice for Forge and/or OR +25% (or also Bureau for capital, although 50% is much more flexible and can be just fine with 1 missing hammer) bonus things (so base hammers like 3; 7 or 11 now would become much more useful 4/8/12. Situational and with question "do I need it?" but not terrible bad as long as good tiles don't get delay in improvement. (when looking outside of chain-farming/ SP workshops or maybe also biology farms)

 

[Fippy]

Agree it's mostly about worker turns, and plains are bad to spend them on.
Sure sometimes a farm or cottage would give small short term benefits, even on brown, but that worker will be missed elsewhere.

SP and Bio make all tiles usable (cept those hopeless ones, like desert or tundra), even then i would argue that plains farms are bad tiles at 3f1h.
They would be decent early, but with those techs you can have green 4f farms or 1f5h brown workshops..

 

[lumpcalhoon]

Well I'm glad I strarted this thread I thought I was missing something by just ignoring them until mid game this really helps thanks everybody!

 

[Bibor]

Yup, every time you roll a double-gems wet corn start, someone else rolls a non-riverside plains with plains cow start. It's our delayed punishment from Soren for even firing up Civ6.

 

[Lennier]

I’ve never fired up Civ VI, and I get the non-riverside plains/plainscow start much more often than the double-gems wet corn start.

 

[lumpcalhoon]

What @Lennier said!!

 

[6K Man]

As others have noted, they’re decent for Workshops once you have at least 2 of Guilds/Caste/Chemistry/State Property.

Irrigation chains to a better tile (grain special). Although this only works after Civil Service.

In a Buro capital, you can potentially cottage them when you run out of rivered/grass tiles.

Otherwise, run a specialist instead. 2 +GPP or 3 +GPP is usually better than 2F1H (Farm), 2 or 3H (Workshop) or 1F1H1C (Cottage). And if you have any of the specialist buffs (Representation, Sistine, or the religious wonders that buff priests) it’s a slam dunk.

 

[rah]

VERY Rarely, but I remember once in the mid-game where I was more busy in conquest than managing cities and I needed an odd number of food to stagnate a city and switched one pop to a plains so I could forget the city and move more troops.
And as others have mentioned, once workshops become good then it's a different ball game.