Tile Improvement Questions.

[soulthirst]

Just need some clarification regarding Tile Improvement and Citizen Management.

1. You gain nothing from Unimproved Tiles, even if its within your borders.
2. You gain nothing from Improved Tiles that has no citizen on it.

 

[Browd]

1. If you assign a citizen to work an unimproved tile, you will get that tile's unimproved per-turn yield. You do not get that tile's additional improvement yield until you use a worker to improve the tile with a permitted improvement.

2. If the tile has a strategic resource on it (e.g., titanium), you will get the resource when the tile is improved -- and can use that resource to trade with other factions or use the resource to build or buy a building or unit that requires that resource. That is commonly referred to as "connecting" a resource to your trade network.

To get any per-turn yield from that improved tile, you do need to assign a citizen to work that tile.

 

[soulthirst]

So it's no use to improve all the tiles in my border if all my citizen already has work (except for the ones that harvest strategic resources) unless I let my city grow first?

 

[GeoModder]

So it's no use to improve all the tiles in my border if all my citizen already has work (except for the ones that harvest strategic resources) unless I let my city grow first?

Yes and no. It never harms to have some flexibility in your city output (like a few mines for faster production or farms for faster growth) if you need something fast(er) or extra population sooner for that new high-output improvement your worker is about to finish.

 

[Browd]

There are two defects to only improving enough tiles for your citizens to currently work:

1. When your city's population grows, the new citizen will have to work an unimproved tile, which will always have a lower yield that its improved yield. Even if you have an idle work sitting on that tile, ready to begin improving the tile, it will take many turns for the improvement to be completed. More realistically, your workers are engaged elsewhere (maybe in another city), so improving that tile will take many more turns.

2. You may want to change the focus of your citizens in a city (say, from food focus to production focus, or whatever). When you change focus, some of your citizens will be reassigned to work new tiles -- if those new tiles are unimproved, see 1. above.

An important variable here is worker travel speed -- it is highly inefficient to shuttle your workers between cities to improve one tile here and one tile there -- you burn as many turns with travel time as you do on improvements. Far more efficient (subject to the needs of your other cities) is to improve enough tiles in a given city to accommodate some degree of population growth and focus-shifting before moving your worker(s) to a new city.

 

[soulthirst]

Oh, I get it now.

Basically, I still need to improve some tiles to add some degree of flexibility and for continuity but I do not necessarily need to improve all of them.

Thanks guys!

 

[Gort]

That's basically it - you want to ensure your citizens are never working unimproved tiles.

 

[Lanth]

The only other aspect to consider is that you can only work tiles within your borders, but you can spend energy in cities to extend your borders (up to 3 from the city).

There are often times when there are 2-3 middling tiles that you can improve for your city to work on, or you can spend some energy to buy a really good tile and then put an improvement on that.

 

[CraigMak]

Also note that I will often not improve some tiles in anticipation of biowells since improving a tile, then tearing it up and making a biowell is not very efficient.

In the long run most cities get big enough to need almost all of your land improved. Like others said you may want to switch from food tiles to production tiles or gold yielding tiles depending on your situation so it pays off to have them all improved.

 

[wayneb64]

I was under the impression that Bio Wells gave +1 health and -2 energy regardless of there being a worker on the tile.

 

[Xenotitan]

You have to work it for the health. Maintenance costs are always there though.

 

[wayneb64]

There should be a little health symbol on the tile then to reflect that. The tiles are usually the best tiles in the city with a few exceptions so they end up getting worked, but it's not obvious to the casual observer that you need to work them.

 

[mellojoe]

There should be a little health symbol on the tile then to reflect that. The tiles are usually the best tiles in the city with a few exceptions so they end up getting worked, but it's not obvious to the casual observer that you need to work them.

Holy crud, i did NOT know this. Thank you! I was wondering why my biowell spam was not giving me the benefits I figured it would. I'll have to go back tonight at one of those old saves and see if I had biowells not being worked.

 

[wayneb64]

Another complication is your city health cannot exceed your city population so adding biowells and working them may have NO affect on health if you already have health buildings and not a lot of population.

I hit this last night and started converting farms I had on river tiles to biowells as the wells get more food than the farm plus the added health and karma.