Road first, or not?

[cromagnon]

This topic has come up several times in Succession Games, and I have seen players champion both strategies.

In the beginning of the game (ie in the first 1-2 turns in the entire game), you have one worker, and a newly settled city. There will occasionally be a nice tile such as grassland with wheat on it, which most people irrigate. Assume the worker is on this tile, and it has access to irrigation. The question is: Do you Irrigate a tile first, or build a Road?

 

[wilbill]

Roads first. Probably out of habit as much as anything.

 

[Chaps]

Roads first - makes it easier to defend my vulnerable worker agains barbs or the hostile AI.

 

[Padma]

Generally speaking, I will irrigate first, then road. Like willbill, probably out of habit as much as anything.

But the logic still holds: normally, I want the benefits of irrigation (more food!) first, and I can live a few turns before I get the added gold from the road. Sometimes, however, I have an urgent need for the gold, and I will road several tiles before I begin irrigating/mining.

 

[TedJackson]

You would need to consider:

What map size are we playing on?
What is the world type (archipelago, pangaea, continents)?
What level are we playing at?
What traits does our civilisation have?
Is there a "u" in the day?

Circumstances alter cases and I don't think you'll get a very representative response unless you tighten the specification.


regards

Ted Jackson

 

[Panzer]

road first, I need as much gold as I can to boost my research.

 

[Gothmog]

Irrigate first (or mine if that's the case), it has become a habit because it is the right thing to do most of the time. One food or shield is simply worth more than a few gold, especially early in the game. My primary exception to this rule actually has nothing to do with gold, sometimes I will road first if it will give a soon-to-be-produced settler an extra step on the road.

 

[Gainy]

As the situation varies, so do i. Depending on what im trying to do in the game, ill do different things. Also it depends on the surrounding terrain. Ill only irrigate a tile(for my first city) if it has a cow on it, on grassland. Or wheat on floodplains.
I chose not to vote on the poll.

 

[Naval Power]

I road first because I turn up science 100% early in the game and I need gold to support the first few units before I have to lower my science.

 

[fazzoletti]

Roads first (usually). I want the first couple of settlers I build in my capital city to be able to quickly get to there destination site.

 

[Grey Fox]

usually irrigation first. If I get more food, I can get more citizens, which means more tiles with roads on them

 

[kryszcztov]

Did not vote, cause it depends on the circumstances.
Still, I usually irrigate or mine before roading, as I learned from reading cracker's opening sequences. Before (in Civ1 and Civ2) I would road first, simply because it's done quicker. But sometimes I still do it (road first) when irrigating or (I mean : all the more) mining first won't give any food/SHIELD advantage by the end of both improvements (when your unit is almost built, for example). This I learnt from succession games.

For every medium players (and for me !) : cracker's lessons and succession games help a lot, I really mean it. It helped me to forget Civ2 in order to get good Civ3 habits.

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Usually irrigate/mine first, mainly for there reasons stated above; gives me access to that extra food/shield earlier.

 

[Sirp]

At the very beginning of the game - i.e. the very first tile you're improving - it's almost certainly better to mine or irrigate first. Your worker is in no danger at that stage, and a road has little or no tactical value (it might have some value in that your first warrior or scout can use it to start exploring). At the very beginning, if there is a bonus food tile nearby, getting it to maximum food production should be a very very high priority, and so I'd definitely irrigate before building a road.

Later on though, the situation is more murky. Often I will build a road first, and then send other nearby workers along the road to help with mining or irrigating. Also, if there is any potential that the worker may have to abort the job, to flee from enemies, I will road first, so he can get away faster, and so that the tile can be returned to to be reworked later faster.

So generally, I mine/irrigate first for the first 30 or so turns, and then start roading first after that, but it does depend on the precise situation.

-Sirp.

 

[barron of ideas]

Will more food or more shields impast the number of turns it will take for you to build whatever you are working on? You decision can't take place in a vacuum, if the extra food or extra shield go to waste, because you already have 5 per turn, or whatever number you have, and micromanaging won't change the situation favorably, then on phiolsophical grounds you should do whatever will have an impact on your production. Maybe you need to move to another tile? If so, and you believe you should never leave a tile without building a road, then road it.

But this is one of the questions that doesn't have an answer without a complete situation, a particular city trying to build something, or grow to a particular size, or some other objective.

Might as well ask how far should you hit a baseball. Where are the fences? Do you need a homerun to win?

 

[jack merchant]

This actually got discussed in the GOTM19 pregame discussion, and there it showed that for an industrious civ, it was better to road first. as the first mine wouldn't speed up the first warrior, while the road first would give some extra commerce. OTOH, the calculus for irrigation would probably work out different - if thhe first obvious tile to improve could do with irrigation first, I'd do that instead of roaading.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It's in the early game, so I'm assuming your government is a despotism and I'm also assuming that the tile will give an extra food after irrigation.

Lets use some rudementary mathematics on this one:

Road first: You'll gain the road 2 or 4 turns earlier this way (depending on industrious or not) and thus have an immediate and one time benefit of 2 or 4 gold (or research points).

Irrigation first: You'll gain an extra foodpoint per turn 2 or 3 turns earlier this way (depending on industrious or not). So you'll gain 2 or 3 food. These food points can very well make your city grow one or maybe even two turns earlier. Your city will grow from 1 to 2 pop 1 turn earlier, from 2 to 3 pop one turn earlier, from 3 to 4 pop one turn earlier, etc. This means that if you do this while in fase 1, you'll have gained the benefit of one tile extra 3 times by the time your city is fase 4. The extra gold from this extra tile will by that time be comparable to the extra gold from the road first option and the extra production from this extra tile might accumulate to a settler finished one turn earlier.

A one turn earlier settler is a great advantage especially if it's the first settler you build in your empire. So I'll go for the irrigation first.

An exception to this is when I can make a settler use the road to get to its destination on turn earlier.

 

[Chieftess]

I usually irragate first, especially if I want to get a worker or settler out quicker, or to make a border town grow quicker.

 

[YNCS]

Originally posted by cromagnon
In the beginning of the game, you have one worker, and a newly settled city. There will occasionally be a nice tile such as grassland with wheat on it, which most people irrigate. Assume the worker is on this tile, and it has access to irrigation. The question is: Do you Irrigate a tile first, or build a Road? (Emphasis added)

At the beginning of the game, you're in despotism. If you irrigate that nice bit of grassland with wheat on it, you get no (that is ZERO) benefit from the irrigation! Until you become a monarchy or a republic, grassland does not improve its food production when irrigated. Therefore, don't bother to irrigate grassland right away, there's no benefit doing so.

However, under despotism if you road a tile, you do get a GP benefit. So road those tiles before irrigating them.

Of course, plains, desert, hills and tundra all give a food increase if irrigated during despotism. So irrigating a plains tile, especially with a wheat or cattle, is preferable to roading.

 

[Sirp]

YNCS, irrigating wheat on grassland does increase food production under despotism.

The despotism penalty is to reduce food/shields/commerce from a tile by 1, if the food/shields/commerce is 3 or greater.

Normal grassland produces 2 food normally, and thus 2 food under despotism. Irrigating it would put it up to 3 food, but because of the despotism penalty that gets reduced to 2 food, and so irrigating is of no benefit

Wheat gives a +2 food bonus, and so grassland with wheat on it produces 4 food normally, and this is reduced to 3 under despotism. Irrigating it will make it produce 5 food normally, and thus 4 food in despotism. Thus irrigating grassland with wheat DOES have benefit under despotism.

It is only tiles that produce 2 food normally that do not benefit at all from irrigation under despotism. (And likewise tiles that produce 2 shields normally have no benefit from mining, and tiles producing two commerce have no benefits from road other than increased movement).

-Sirp.