Road or irrigation?

[Rodgers]

I recently discoverd that building roads all round my cities improved their shield, food and science production much more than irrigating the same squares.

Anyone found similar results? At what stage is irrigation better than road building?

 

[duke o' york]

Building a road gives you an extra trade arrow on certain types of terrain. Building irrigation gives you an extra food on certain types of terrain. Building a mine gives you an extra shield on certain types of terrain.
Which you want depends on the stage of the game and which other squares the city has in its radius. If a city has grassland squares then I will always road them at the beginning of the game before other improvements as the city will be able to grow to size 8 easily with the two food that grasslands produce. The roads are transformed into extra science with my slider settings so that I can get to the important techs quicker in the game. I will then leave a size 8 city producing settlers until I can build them an aqueduct and start to irrigate more. You automatically get a road when you found a city, so there will always be at least one trade arrow in each city. The more cities you have, the more trade you will produce so lots of cities is often a better bet than a few with improved terrain. Roads also allow you to get your units between cities quicker in case of barb attacks so you can get by with a mobile defense force rather than have units in all your cities. This also works as a mobile happiness enforcer - allowing you to keep order in the city with martial law until the temple is built.
You will need to irrigate the squares of a city once you cannot grow with WLTP days and to ensure that you can use other, resource-rich squares. I will only mine a hill or mountain if I can maintain the growth with other irrigated squares. It is entirely up to you and depends upon the setting for your city, but I recommend roads before irrigation in most cases.

 

[Rodgers]

Nice one - you really are the expert

 

[Sodak]

Don't forget that at the beginning of the game, you are in despotism. Under despotism, you gain no benefit from irrigating grassland. Until monarchy or republic, don't bother, build roads instead.

Roads are crucial before trade and caravans - they are your main source of arrows. It is a rule of mine to never put a worker on a grassland or plains terrain square that does not gain at least one arrow. In the early game, even switching two or three workers in your kingdom from 0 arrow tiles to 1 or 2 arrow tiles can speed your research rate by several turns. Well worth it, if you like a tech advantage.

 

[Kev]

duke really covered everything in detail.

In my more simplistic view: roads take fewer turns for a settler to complete and provide a dual benefit (increased trade and increased movement). That's good enough for me and I daresay that I'll put up 4-5+ roads around a city before I'll even consider irrigating (unless it's in the very late game and I need to bust a city to size 3 in a hurry to celebrate or keep it growing once it does).

Having roads about will also help you track down barbarian leaders after their escorts die at the gates of your cities.

 

[Smash]

Road sheild grasslands.Road trade specials.Irrigate buffalo and wheat early is ok.Mine and road wine ASAP.Oasis can be mined and roaded and you have an inland whale of sorts.

I like to re-forest rivers and cut other forests for plains.

 

[starlifter]

You automatically get a road when you found a city, so there will always be at least one trade arrow in each city.

For a river terrain, yes.... for Mountains, forests, galciers, tundra you won't, unless some specials. I like building on hills for protection and irrigation + mining (settlers must work in groups of 2 or 3 for mining), and this is where I really would like that arrow .


Roads also reduce corruption when connected to the capital via the "correct" route, plus increase trade bonus by 50% and trade by 50% (if the right route is roaded.... just any old road will not do).


I like roading over a hill, or even mountain, in early game, so I can set and win a barb trap. 150g in early game comes in handy! And fighting outside your city eliminates pop loss if you lose.

You can successfully irrigate a wheat in Despotism, BTW (e.g., you get extra food). That's because of the way production is reduced & rounded (see Nethog's Civ 2 Info Pack, which can be found in the Info link in my sig block for summaries).



I road first, and irrigate my capital and/or SSC as early priority.

 

[Dark Ascendant]

Roads first, irragation later. It's just easier to build a road than to plow the land or chop down the poor trees. I don't even bother to mine or irrigate until I can get out of despotism, inferior gov.

 

[eyeball]

I always build the road first, then irrigate or mine. Except if I want to clear forest etc. where I will clear it first.

 

[starlifter]

Welcome to CFC, eyeball. I see you joined today! We have a type of Civ 2 game called "Democracy" going that you might want to sign up for :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26570


And we also have something called the Game of the Month (GOTM) here:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2gotm.shtml

Plus we have Multiplayer games:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=13

 

[Pongui]

Something to watch out for when you build a road over plains in MGE: the automatic worker allocation doesn't seem to know the difference between plains with roads and plains without.

 

[funxus]

Something else the AI doesn't care about is whether a square has trade or not in the cityscreen. Sometimes when I open a city I see them working a jungle, 1 food, instead of working one sea square, I food, three arrows. Well, I'll just have to check the cities once in a while