I've been playing Civ on and off since Civ 2, but have really become more of an avid Civ4 player in recent months. (I've been on and off these forums since Civ 3, but this is my first post).
Despite having played the Civs for a while, the one thing I am bad at is cottage, farm, workshop, etc. placing. Despite reading many of the posts and stuff in the Info Center, I haven't come across something that explains the intracacies of the placement of these items. Am I just missing it? If so, can someone point me in the right direction?
I think my playing will take a step up once I understand those structures a little better. Thanks in advance for anything you can pass along.
Another welcome to the forums!
Most terrain improvements give a specific benefit. One improves food (farm), another production (workshop, mine, lumbermill), another commerce (cottage) and some add a bit of everything (windmill, watermill). In general it is as simple as identifying what is the most needed resource or most beneficial resource in your city. However, that might be very difficult without a bit of experience in this game.
If your city won't grow any larger while using the most food producing tiles in the city radius and not suffering from unhappiness or unhealthiness, then it might need a few farms so that it can grow and use more tiles within the city radius.
If the city has a production of 3 and can't even produce stuff at a decent rate with pop rushing (using the slavery civic to rush production while sacrificing population), then it might need a few mines, lumbermills or workshops.
If the city has a decent production and food total, then it is very important for your economy to have a good commerce output so that you can research at a decent rate. So add some cottages. Most people consider the commerce output and the related science output the most important variable of your civilization.
Many civ players will also recommend you to specialize your cities. The idea is that a city that has a huge hammer output won't have to construct a library and other such buildings, while a city with a huge commerce output won't need a barracks for unit production but only libraries and such. I only partially agree with this line of thought.
A huge commerce city needs a library, university, observatory and research laboratory for research. A market, grocery and bank for civic, city and unit upkeep of your empire (at higher difficulty levels, a significant part of the total commerce output is needed to pay for these things and thus you better get a bonus on your gold output). Because it is large, it also needs the grocery and market for health and happiness bonusses. It also needs a harbor for health and trade route income, an aquaduct for health for its large population, a forge for happiness, a granary for health, etc, etc... There are actually only a few buildings that it doesn't need like a barracks and those are not very expensive. Those buildings don't appear out of thin air, you need hammers to build them. So in practice, even the large high commerce cities that I build will still have some tiles that give a decent production output. Most of the tiles may contain cottages, but some will be used for production output to be able to build the buildings that improve the city.
I do specially cities with the excellent national wonders. Oxford University increases the research output of a city with 100%. That is such a huge bonus that you'd have to be stupid not to place such a building in your (potentially) best research city and then improve that city further towards.
I'll give you some screenshots from my latest game as a non-financial leader. These are late game screenshots and the balance between the various improvements does change during the game. For instance workshops are (widely considered) useless before guilds and are (in my opinion) quite good in the late game with chemistry and the state property civic.
(Actually, these screenshots are from a game with slightly modded rules and I'm playing a financial leader. But the tile outputs are virtually identical to a game under normal rules for a non-financial leader. So just assume it's a non-financial leader.)
Technology level is industrialism and every tile has all the late game bonusses. At the start of the game most tile improvements are less beneficial. I'm using state property which adds 1 food to watermills and workshops and I'm using free speech and universal suffrage which add 2 commerce and 1 hammer to towns (fully evolved cottages).
This screenshot is from a random inland city (click link and enlarge to full size to be able to actually see the values of the city). It's not perfect. But we don't need a screenshot of a perfect city, we want a realistic city. I added some signs so that you can see which improvements I have in each tile.
cot=cottage
work=workshop
plant=plantation
wm=windmill (on a hill), watermill (on a river)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Random_inland_city.JPG
This is an inland city and those are usually decent for production. I improved a few tiles with a workshop as the city didn't have any good production tiles except the horses + pasture. Still most tiles have cottages which have evolved into towns and also add 1 hammer thanks to the universal suffrage civic. Usually hills are used for production but if those are not available, then workshops can be quite ok in the late game (with the state property civic). 1 cottage is not evolved. It used to be a camp on top of the ivory resource, but ivory got obsolete, so I build a cottage at the camp site.
The city has an 85% research bonus (library, observatory and seowon (Korean unique building replacement for the university)) and a 100% tax bonus (marketplace, grocery, bank) and a 100% production bonus (forge, factory, coal power plant). I'm researching at 80% science, 20% tax. 32 gold per turn, 106 science per turn, 54 hammers per turn; a good city at this point in the game, fully improved with buildings. Not the greatest city but quite good.
Now for a random coastal city:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Random_coastal_city.JPG
This city has a river and I build a watermill on it, maybe the best late game terrain improvement if you are using the state property civic. They can however only be build on one of the two sides of a river and are not that great in the early game. The city has a few extra production improved tiles because the water tiles don't add any hammers at all. 1 of its cottages is again not fully developed yet. Because it is a coastal city with a harbor, it has
far better trade routes than the previous city. It's total hammer, gold and science output is very similar to the previous city with the same bonusses applied to gold, science and hammers.
A city that shows some windmills:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Some_Windmills.JPG
This city is a bit more poorly located and has trouble finding enough food from it's tiles. The farm (on rice) and the pasture help a bit, but the city couldn't sustain mines on the two spots where I build windmills. Windmills add 1 food compared to mines and thus the city could use every tile. It's again a city that is suffering from a bit of overlap with other cities. Still it's science and gold and hammer output are quite ok. It seems to have a very high hammer output but that is a bit distorted. It has a drydock and is building ships and therefore gets a 150% production bonus. When it is building anything else than ships, it produces at a rate of 58 hammers per turn. Quite similar to those other two cities. It has the same buildings with the same gold, science and hammer bonusses.
This is a bit poorly located city and some people might wonder if it would be worth building:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Poor_city.JPG
But with a bit of patience it grew to use all the water tiles. I tried to improve the land tiles to give some hammers and used the high food output to get some engineers, but with that many coastal tiles it's hammer output is clearly lower than the other three cities. Still 80 science per turn is quite ok, who wouldn't want this city in his/her empire.
Now for some specialist cities. First the so-called great person farm:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Great_Person_Farm.JPG
Heh, why would it be called that way? This city is optimised for food so that it can use a huge number of specialists and thus add a large number of great person points each turn. Sadly, I didn't have the option in this game to get some great wonders in this city. That would have been nice to further increase the output of great person points. This city also has two small wonders (maximum number of two small wonders in one city): Globe Theatre and National Epic. The first removes all unhappiness from the city, allowing it to grow to such a huge size. The second doubles all the great person points produced in the city. So each specialist adds 6 great person points per turn (would be 9 for a philosophical civilization and 12 for a philosophical civilization running the pacificm civic). At 70 Great Person Points per turn, it is doing ok. It will produce more when some buildings that improve health are discovered and I can add even more specialists to the city.
An ideal great person farm has a lot of special food resources. This one has only bananas and sugar, not too great. The special food resources would allow it to employ a large number of specialist even in the early game. This city is benefitting from the large amount of food that farms give after the biology technology is developed but that is quite late in the game. So while it doesn't have the great wonders and doesn't have many food resources, it is still an ok great person farm. The best one that I could build in that particular game.
I just don't happen to be a philosophical civilization and I don't like the pacificm civic (it just isn't me). Great persons are very nice, but I won't turn my whole civilization in a great person factory. But I'm willing to let one city produce lots of them. It's the most cost efficient way to get great persons.
Now the unit production city. I wonder what people who say that workshops are a useless improvement think of this city?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Unit_Production.JPG
This city is clearly optimised for production. With state property and chemistry, workshops add 3 hammers to a tile and that makes this city very productive. It also has some other good production tiles and uses a lot of tiles, no overlap with other cities here. We try to optimise a single city and not the whole empire in this case. Now why is this city producing units at 210 hammers per turn?
First it gets 60 hammers per turn from the city tiles (could get slightly higher when I get some buildings that solve the health problems). Then it gets a 100% production bonus from the forge, the factory and the coal power plant, another 100% production bonus from Heroic Epic while building units and another 50% production bonus from the military academy while building units. As a second small wonder, the city has West Point which adds 4 experience to a unit. The city also has a barracks (3 experience in Warlords) and a Great Military Instructor (another 2 experience) and my civilization owns the Pentagon great wonder (2 extra experience in every city). I'm not running any civics that improve the experience level of my units because those civics also have some drawbacks and I can do without them in this game. This city is producing units with 11 experience (level 4, 3 promotions) at a rate of 210 hammers per turn. I will be able to improve it to 241 hammers per turn once I solve the health problems and don't need the sugar from those plantation tiles anymore (reimprove with workshops). That is pretty good for a unit production city. You can get better if you have an ideal city position, but this is pretty good.
People also usually build a specialist city for science. You should have lots of evolved cottages (towns) and good trade routes + the small wonder Oxford university and any other building that improves science.
Another specialist city is a gold city. This usually involves a holy city with a shrine of a well spread religion + the small wonder Wall Street and any other building that improves gold. This city also has lots of well developed cottages (towns), but the shrine is more important. It will add its gold even if you're having a 100% science rate and thus the power of the Wall Street small wonder is always used.
Tile improvements are clearly not the easiest part of this game and in different eras of the game, the balance between the various improvements can be different. Still, I hope the screenshots can help a bit. Happy civving.
edit: uhm, post became a bit long, heh
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but might loose on the tech or build front... Once you are in war you should either be the strongest or buy allies to prevent them dogpiling on you...
