Stuporstar
Warlord
A Comprehensive Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement.
Contents:
The links within the contents list will take you to each individual section.
Introduction
Terrain Values
The Basics about Terrain
Base Terrain and Terrain Features
Cumulative Tile Values
Worker Improvements
The Basics about Workers
Basic Worker Actions
Worker Turns for Improvements
Terrain Specific Improvements
Base FPC Values for Improvements
Other things to note about Improvements
Chopping Forests
How Terrain Modifies Improvements (detailed charts)
Resources and Improvements
The Basics about Resources
Resource Improvements
Added Bonuses Through City Improvements
Resources and Terrain Types
City Placement
The Basics about City Placement
Resource Bonuses for Cities
Other Important Factors when Placing a City
Miscellaneous
How Civics and Traits effect FPC
Links to related guides
Downloads for pdf and text versions of this guide
Introduction:
The guide will give you a complete breakdown of the types of terrain and their food, production and commerce values (FPC). There is a lot more to it than what is avaliable in the manual or Civilopedia, and this guide is an attempt to cover as much of it as I can. There are five factors involved when using terrain effectively: terrain values, terrain feature values, improvement values, bonus resource values, and civics and tech bonuses--all of which accumulate. I've also made a list of worker improvements and their value modifications for each type of terrain. I've included the bonus value of resources as well; though the information is already in the manual, the way they calculated the values are unusual. I've recalculated them to make them more compatible with the other values in this guide. Having a more in-depth understanding of these terrain values can really help your strategy when deciding where to build your cities, and so I've also added a section on city placement strategies.
This guide was compiled by Stuporstar. I hope that people will find this guide useful. I will continue adding/correcting info as it comes. Special thanks goes to: Heroes for his best income breakdowns and added civics; EridanMan for his excellent guide on forest chopping; and Brokguitar for the most contributions so far, with his screenshots and much added info about terrain, resources and city placement.
PDF and text versions of this guide are available for download in the last section here.
Starting with the Basics: Yields (FPC)
There are three basic types of bonuses that terrain can give to your city: Food, Production, and Commerce. There are also two secondary bonuses, happiness and health, that are given by specific resources (and are a factor in trade) and some types of terrain features. For the moment we will focus on base FPC value. In the game, food is represented by bread slices, production is represented by hammers and commerce is represented by coins. For the purposes of this guide, food, production and commerce will be referred to as FPC.
In the game, FPC value is referred to as Yields. You can see the FPC value for terrain automatically when you click on a Settler unit. On your main screen you can toggle the Yields Display, which will reveal the FPC for every visible tile by either pressing Ctrl-Y,
or by clicking the Yeilds Display button on the bottom right-hand of your screen ==>
The Difference Between Commerce and Gold: I thought I'd mention this here because the two are easily confused. Both are represented by the coin symbol (which can be fairly easily modded into two seperate symbols - I've created a mod for Gold myself which can be found here). Commerce comes from terrain, trade routes and your Palace, which is then divided amongst your sliders into Science, Culture (enabled with Drama tech) and Gold. The Gold then goes into your treasury or is used for city maintenance and civic upkeep. Because this guide deals primarily with terrain, we will mostly be referring to Commerce and not Gold values.
Contents:
The links within the contents list will take you to each individual section.
Introduction
Terrain Values
The Basics about Terrain
Base Terrain and Terrain Features
Cumulative Tile Values
Worker Improvements
The Basics about Workers
Basic Worker Actions
Worker Turns for Improvements
Terrain Specific Improvements
Base FPC Values for Improvements
Other things to note about Improvements
Chopping Forests
How Terrain Modifies Improvements (detailed charts)
Resources and Improvements
The Basics about Resources
Resource Improvements
Added Bonuses Through City Improvements
Resources and Terrain Types
City Placement
The Basics about City Placement
Resource Bonuses for Cities
Other Important Factors when Placing a City
Miscellaneous
How Civics and Traits effect FPC
Links to related guides
Downloads for pdf and text versions of this guide
Introduction:
The guide will give you a complete breakdown of the types of terrain and their food, production and commerce values (FPC). There is a lot more to it than what is avaliable in the manual or Civilopedia, and this guide is an attempt to cover as much of it as I can. There are five factors involved when using terrain effectively: terrain values, terrain feature values, improvement values, bonus resource values, and civics and tech bonuses--all of which accumulate. I've also made a list of worker improvements and their value modifications for each type of terrain. I've included the bonus value of resources as well; though the information is already in the manual, the way they calculated the values are unusual. I've recalculated them to make them more compatible with the other values in this guide. Having a more in-depth understanding of these terrain values can really help your strategy when deciding where to build your cities, and so I've also added a section on city placement strategies.
This guide was compiled by Stuporstar. I hope that people will find this guide useful. I will continue adding/correcting info as it comes. Special thanks goes to: Heroes for his best income breakdowns and added civics; EridanMan for his excellent guide on forest chopping; and Brokguitar for the most contributions so far, with his screenshots and much added info about terrain, resources and city placement.
PDF and text versions of this guide are available for download in the last section here.
Starting with the Basics: Yields (FPC)
There are three basic types of bonuses that terrain can give to your city: Food, Production, and Commerce. There are also two secondary bonuses, happiness and health, that are given by specific resources (and are a factor in trade) and some types of terrain features. For the moment we will focus on base FPC value. In the game, food is represented by bread slices, production is represented by hammers and commerce is represented by coins. For the purposes of this guide, food, production and commerce will be referred to as FPC.

In the game, FPC value is referred to as Yields. You can see the FPC value for terrain automatically when you click on a Settler unit. On your main screen you can toggle the Yields Display, which will reveal the FPC for every visible tile by either pressing Ctrl-Y,
or by clicking the Yeilds Display button on the bottom right-hand of your screen ==>

The Difference Between Commerce and Gold: I thought I'd mention this here because the two are easily confused. Both are represented by the coin symbol (which can be fairly easily modded into two seperate symbols - I've created a mod for Gold myself which can be found here). Commerce comes from terrain, trade routes and your Palace, which is then divided amongst your sliders into Science, Culture (enabled with Drama tech) and Gold. The Gold then goes into your treasury or is used for city maintenance and civic upkeep. Because this guide deals primarily with terrain, we will mostly be referring to Commerce and not Gold values.