Tiles to develop / work on?

[RigasMinho]

I think I found an issue or stradegy i've been doing.

Is it a good idea to be developing every single tile near a city?
For example:
Develop every mine / build a cottage / build irrigation on every title?

 

[Monsterzuma]

Well no, if ever you can you should be economic with your worker turns and spend them where they most count. If all tiles around your cities have no prospect of being worked in the near future you should just put your workers on chop duty. If chopping is out of the question it looks like some poor choices as to the number of workers produced were previously made. A band-aid solution would then be to start building "useless" improvements (such as roads that only give marginal help to defenses) or to disband workers, though it would be optimal to have anticipated this work-vacuum and spent the hammers that were used to build workers on other units/buildings instead.

The above advice should be used in relation to the earlier turns of your games. Of course there is always a point in the game at which all necessary improvements are in place; this can not be avoided. Most of the time, though, by this time the workers will have paid off their hammer-worth and their upkeep costs been dwarfed by income.

 

[KiTBOH]

A mistake I made for quite a while was building improvements on tiles outside my BFC. I now tend to draw the BFC of each city on the map so that I don't do things like that anymore

It can, however be useful if there's a source of fresh water outside of the BFC to build a row of farms to spread irrigation.

 

[Celebithil]

Note that while improving a tile you do not work yet is a waste of the energy put in building the worker, it is in general a much greater waste to work tiles which are unimproved. Indeed I believe it is much better to build a few workers too much, so that your tiles are improved quicker, than building just enough workers so your tiles are improved by the time some new improvement comes around. Sure, you're workers are sitting around doing nothing half the game (possible solution: capture some land), but that is much better than working unimproved tiles for half the game.

Oh, one last hint: be like the AI and build forts over resources outside your BFC. This will immediately provide you with the resource once you get the prerequisite tech (and is often more useful than putting the resource specific improvement on that tile).

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Oh, one last hint: be like the AI and build forts over resources outside your BFC. This will immediately provide you with the resource once you get the prerequisite tech (and is often more useful than putting the resource specific improvement on that tile).

That's also good for inside the BFC at times. When you get the required tech to work the resource, you get it straight to your civilization right off the bat, and don't have to worry about not having it while building the correct improvement needed to use it.

However, a Fort doesn't change a tile's output. Keep that in mind if you plan on using that strategy inside the BFC

 

[vicawoo]

Since you have limited worker turns early on, improve the highest yield tiles first. In general, if your workers are improving much faster than you're growing, they should go somewhere else.

Generally, plains tiles aren't worth improving if you don't have a large food excess.

Some exceptions, if you're at some bottle neck (jungles before ironworking, don't have hereditary rule yet), you can improve some resources ahead of time. Also remember to build efficient roads towards other civs, fort resources you can't use (or don't want to, like incense), and if you are forward minded build some forts at chokes to stop enemy stacks.

Also, if you improve/road tiles, it will stop forest growth, which is not good.

 

[yanner39]

Oh, one last hint: be like the AI and build forts over resources outside your BFC. This will immediately provide you with the resource once you get the prerequisite tech (and is often more useful than putting the resource specific improvement on that tile).

Stupid question: Even if you have the necessary tech available, doesn't the fact that the resources is outside the BFC make that resource unavailable to you?

 

[Iranon]

No, they just needs to be connected to the trade network.

 

[Gliese 581]

Different sorts of improvements also gives you a greater ability for micromanagement. Perhaps you have a size 4 city that sometimes want to work 2 grassland farms and 2 grassland mines, sometimes 4 grassland farms and sometimes 4 grassland cottages. An exaggerated example but in this case the city would actually want 10 improved tiles + anticipated need for size 5 configurations.

 

[UncleJJ]

Stupid question: Even if you have the necessary tech available, doesn't the fact that the resources is outside the BFC make that resource unavailable to you?

The resource also needs to be within your culture and connected to your trade network via a road or river. In the tundra zone I sometimes get resources that are two tiles outside my BFC by just by boosting culture (needs 500 culture for 3rd border pop) rather than building an expensive city that will have low growth.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Different sorts of improvements also gives you a greater ability for micromanagement. Perhaps you have a size 4 city that sometimes want to work 2 grassland farms and 2 grassland mines, sometimes 4 grassland farms and sometimes 4 grassland cottages. An exaggerated example but in this case the city would actually want 10 improved tiles + anticipated need for size 5 configurations.

I find that in the early game there aren't enough worker turns to make this practical, although in theory it would be great if you could do it. Despite my reputation (and well deserved) for neglecting micro I do a lot of early game tile-swapping as IMO it's kind of necessary at high levels (I've gotten to the point where I can outright remember what tiles I'm working in which city when we're talking 8-10 cities or less).

My goal for the early game is usually to make sure I have enough workers that my cities aren't working unimproved tiles (other than the very brief period immediately after founding for aggressively settled cities, and of course the turns building the 1st worker).

Once expansion to key areas (to beat the AI there, or to get enough military to pull a rush) is done, more workers can then help with tile swapping options, but the priority seems to be getting the cities at all that early without tanking!

 

[Fetch]

you can run specialists if you can't improve a tile very soon. Running a specialist removes a citizen from the land around your city and puts them to work on a specific function.

 

[Gliese 581]

I find that in the early game there aren't enough worker turns to make this practical, although in theory it would be great if you could do it. Despite my reputation (and well deserved) for neglecting micro I do a lot of early game tile-swapping as IMO it's kind of necessary at high levels (I've gotten to the point where I can outright remember what tiles I'm working in which city when we're talking 8-10 cities or less).

My goal for the early game is usually to make sure I have enough workers that my cities aren't working unimproved tiles (other than the very brief period immediately after founding for aggressively settled cities, and of course the turns building the 1st worker).

Once expansion to key areas (to beat the AI there, or to get enough military to pull a rush) is done, more workers can then help with tile swapping options, but the priority seems to be getting the cities at all that early without tanking!

The priority is definitely to make sure every city has more improved tiles than citizens, which can be a daunting task in itself.
The whip helps alot obviously.

 

[popejubal]

That's also good for inside the BFC at times. When you get the required tech to work the resource, you get it straight to your civilization right off the bat, and don't have to worry about not having it while building the correct improvement needed to use it.

However, a Fort doesn't change a tile's output. Keep that in mind if you plan on using that strategy inside the BFC

This is especially important for Oil. You can build a Fort on Oil as soon as you discover it and then you will get the benefit immediately when you discover Combustion. That means you don't have to wait the 3-4 turns that it will probably take to hook up the oil by building an Oil Well on the tile.

You can always improve the resource normally once you have the workers and tech available simultaneously.

 

[knowltok2]

Also remember to build efficient roads towards other civs, fort resources you can't use (or don't want to, like incense), and if you are forward minded build some forts at chokes to stop enemy stacks.

What do you mean by not wanting to use incense?

 

[v8_mark]

Because incense is often on a desert tile, the only yield it gives you is the coins from the plantation, which usually means it's not a tile you want to work.