"Thou Shalt Not Work Unimproved Tiles"

[oyzar]

At what point does a plains forest overtake the whip in terms of efficiency? I know it does eventually. Same for a caste workshop (and there may be other reasons one might want to run caste), although of course depending on city specialization you can just run a specialists there instead.

If you're using few workers, lean on special tiles, specialists, and the whip. Don't neglect cottages in all cities forever, but these things can cut down on the need for more workers, or get you more workers .

Edit: I forget at what point a plains hill mine becomes more efficient than the whip, but a grassland hill mine *always* is. Of course, efficiency isn't ALWAYS the focus (aka mass troops ASAP, theoretically the last one you'd make would be whipped to save time or something).

At pop 10+ the whip is pretty costly. I'm almost certain a plains forest is better than the whip by then, but that doesn't mean you should be working it.

Grassland farm is better than a mine up to size 5...

 

[Fetch]

what do I do with the city that I settle late in the early game that has 10 forests in the BFC? I don't want to chop them in anticipation of lumbermills. Is it better to work unimproved tiles for a few hundred years until lumbermills come online, or to chop them down and be less optimal down the road?

 

[Dirk1302]

@vicawoo, about grassland forest being better than plain hill mine, i seem to remember that thread too, it seems to me though that it's dependent on things like happy cap and food surplus. Have to read up really.

simple example, 4 grassland forest and a plain hill mine, happy cap at 4, i'd feel working 3 forests and the mine > 4 forests and whip at 5 but i'm not sure really. These things tend to get complex soon.

@Codex,
We're talking beginning of the game here, not having most tiles improved when AP comes around is just not so good.

 

[Daedal]

what do I do with the city that I settle late in the early game that has 10 forests in the BFC? I don't want to chop them in anticipation of lumbermills. Is it better to work unimproved tiles for a few hundred years until lumbermills come online, or to chop them down and be less optimal down the road?

Depends how badly you need that city to be doing something useful. If you have a 40 city empire one dud isn't a big deal so you can save it and build NP there (better use of massively forested cities than mills IMO). Personally I'd chop them. Lumbermills and NP are too little too late to make a significant impact on the game.

 

[popejubal]

Grassland farm is better than a mine up to size 5...

And even above size 5, the whip is significantly better if you have things to rush that can be bought with 2 population because you can whip yourself down to population 2 or 3 and then let your city regrow to size 4 where you can whip again at outstanding levels of efficiency.

When you need commerce from the city, let it regrow, but while you are cranking out units (especially units that cost 2 pop each), whip down to your number of food specials and then let it regrow to the point where you want to whip.

It's amazing how much you can produce then.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And even above size 5, the whip is significantly better if you have things to rush that can be bought with 2 population because you can whip yourself down to population 2 or 3 and then let your city regrow to size 4 where you can whip again at outstanding levels of efficiency.

When you need commerce from the city, let it regrow, but while you are cranking out units (especially units that cost 2 pop each), whip down to your number of food specials and then let it regrow to the point where you want to whip.

It's amazing how much you can produce then.

Show me a situation where this outdoes grassland hills or caste/guild workshops, assuming you have one or the other. When we're talking about efficiency, we're talking about average hammers of the period of time you're producing units...at least consuming consistent production. A whip cycle can't compare to working equal food of grassland mines at ANY population, so those are #1 sites for hammers.

Whip is for high food cities without the hammer tiles, or with insufficient hammer tiles so you're not killing people working specials, grass hills, or whatever.

Apparently a plains hill is to whip away @ size 6 also. It's very much an early game or fast-massing-at-expense-of-bit-city type civic.

 

[mirthadir]

There are times not to work improved tiles:
1. You are REXing to block. If you have to go balls to wall to get the block it can often mean a good number of turns before you can escort a worker up to your blocking city(ies); this is especially true if you do minimal fog busting and you start getting warriors/archers near then end of your blocking run.
2. During chopfests. One of my preferred methods to get a stable cultural border is to settle two cities towards the AI I intend to not to fight (early) and chop out the Oracle in the third city (with a CoL slingshot, the second city founds a nice religion). Due to time constraints on higher levels, this means that I literally can't wait 4 turns to drop a farm, mine, or whatever while I quickly slash and burn 7 or so forests. Likewise when I'm chop/whipping units (though sometimes buildings/wonders) I find that spending 4 turns getting up a marginal farm is less important than quickly getting in another 20(30) .
3. Isolated cities where the boat landing the settler or barb crushing troops couldn't bring a worker.
4. Jungle resource grabbing cities waiting for you to get IW.
5. Farming forests for the NP.

Its rare, but there are times where you literally can't spare the turns to make another worker or to build marginal improvements. There are also times where you need to settle places you can't exploit now to claim long term strategic advantage.

 

[Iranon]

There seems to be confusion between 'is it worth working food-deficit hammer tiles at all' and 'is it better than working an additional grassland farm'.

With a Granary, the conversion rate is roughly 30 : (10+size)

***

First the trickier bit, to answer the actual question of 'is it better than another grassland farm?'

For now, I'm assuming we are unconstrained by the happy cap and considering a 1-point whip - pretty much as good as it gets for Slavery.
I'm also assuming that we have a food equilibrium when working the hammer tile and any food saved by not supporting that tile would go towards whipping.

*

A grassland Forest feeds itself and requires 30 turns to produce enough hammers to be equivalent to a 1-pop-whip (which I'll use as a standard to simplify things).
A grassland farm gives you a net 30 in that time, which translates into more production via the whip below size 20.

Plains Forest: You need to work it 15 turns for 30
Again, working a Grassland Farm instead gives you 30 more in that time period and is superior below size 20.

Note that this doesn't imply all forests are equal - the period length is shorter for the plains forest! In short, below size 20 1 whipped > 1.

*

Grassland Hill: At 1 deficit, 10 rounds are needed to produce the 30 equivalent to a 1-pop whip. A Grassland Farm would result in an additional 20.
Below size 10, a farm for whipping will do more; this is of particular interest to people torn between Slavery and Caste System for workshops equivalent to a grassland hill.

*

Plains Hill: 7.5 rounds needed for 30, at a total food deficit of 15. In that time period, a grassland farm would result in 22.5 to play with.
At size 12 the grassland farm produces better results, at size 13 and above the plains hill is superior.

*

*****

Some thing many people confuse with this for some reason: 'Is it worth working a food-deficit production tile at all, even if we have no more food-surplus tiles available?'. This one is easy.

Grassland Forests give a hammer at no investment of food, so they're worth growing into, even if they are thoroughly unexciting.

Plains Forests and Mined Plains Hills both convert food into hammers at a rate of 2 : 1. Below size 6 we shouldn't bother and simply whip.

Grassland Hills give a conversion of 3 : 1, which is better than anything attainable by the whip.