ReX ON Luxuries - net happiness through expansion?

[EscapedGoat]

Hi,

I just started playing CIV 5, and having a good time so far. I just read another post about settling cities on top of luxuries - apparently if you have the tech you get the happy benefit as well. The advantage is that you get the resource ASAP, disadvantage is you can't work the tile i suppose. However, special tile yield is way way less in this instance of CIV than say CIV 4 so I don't care much about that.

IMO one of the best investments in the game is the settler - because city squares are just great - and because of the way social policies and city states work. (+ to each city modifiers)

So what if you combine all of this and build 1 settler for every luxury resource you see and settle right on top of it? Unhappy from a city is 2, unhappy from pop is 1 and each happy resource is +5 so that seems like a net gain to me or a size 3 city The benefit of settling ON the resource is of course that you don't have to get a worker to make the improvement, which could potentially be a great benefit in terms of turns saved, esp. if you plan to build a new worker for each city.

So, is this the best way to expand or not?

 

[bhavv]

If you see a luxury resource on a tile you wouldnt normally want to work, such as a desert or non riverside plains, settling on it just loses you about 3 gold in most cases, and you can make up for that with a couple of trading posts.

One viable reason to settle on a lux resource would be if it gets you more resources within the city radius that you would otherwise miss. However, I wouldnt ever settle on gems / solver / gold as those are greatly improvement with the mint building.

 

[nekom]

Thanks to cIV I have a strong aversion to settling on resources, but you're right, in ciV it really isn't as big of an issue. May have to give it a shot.

 

[sovarn]

Also you only get +5 happiness from each unique luxury. So you can only probably do this a few times in the early game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It is a very ideal strategy. (at the Very least, get a settler+worker... since some luxury tiles are really worth it.)

Of course it only works for Unique resources, so that supports maybe a 2-4 Settler rush

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yes. Settle, improve, resell, buy allies. There's an upper limit to effectiveness, since settling single luxury sites quickly becomes unprofitable as Maritime allies make your cities huge.

But you absolutely must get to the multi-luxury sites before the AI does, which dictates some REX.