Very Quick Question -- Terrain Improvements

[Yosemite]

Because of how inefficient it is, I'm moving away from having the computer automate worker actions. Should I mine grassland or irrigate it? I've been mining it so far.

Also, I should irrigate plains and desert all the time, right?

Any changes in what I should do if there's a resource or bonus resource in the tile?

 

[thetrooper]

Irrigate food bonus squares.

Mine grassland until you 'need' hospitals to continue growth. There are exceptions of course - if you have 50% hills and mountains within the city radius, irrigate the grassland.

I irrigate plains and deserts if the rest of the tiles provide enough shields.

And get out of despotism of course!

 

[psweetman1590]

I usually don't follow base rules like "always mine this and irrigate that"; I try to get every city to work exactly as many tiles as they can - for a full sized city, I cap it at 21. No specialists. If I place my cities closer, I usually cap them at 16 or so. I want every tile worked, with no excessive food. Mine everything that doesn't need to be irrigated to increase production, and that's that. Production is the Queen of Civ, second only to gold.

 

[cyberdaniboy]

I usually don't follow base rules like "always mine this and irrigate that"; I try to get every city to work exactly as many tiles as they can - for a full sized city, I cap it at 21. No specialists. If I place my cities closer, I usually cap them at 16 or so. I want every tile worked, with no excessive food. Mine everything that doesn't need to be irrigated to increase production, and that's that. Production is the Queen of Civ, second only to gold.

Got to agree with you its the best possible thing to do, however i dont see any point of it for now i'm winning easily enough while workers are automated. /Emperor difficulty/. I'm sure however its gonna be required on higher difficulties.

 

[Padma]

The answer, as always in Civ3, is: "It depends".

Rule of thumb: at the start of the game, in Despotism, 'irrigate brown, mine green'. In other words, make all the tiles you work able to supply two food and one shield. But even then, it depends on the totality of the terrain availabel for that city. If you have a lot of floodplain, you can afford to mine some low-food tiles. If you have no fresh water, you're going to do a lot of mining. Etc.

(And kudos on not automating your workers. That is the usual thing that holds back new players. Those that win with automated workers are deliberately handicapping themselves. )

 

[AskReeves15]

I do disagree with the automate workers thing on one count. I really like Shift + A otherwise known as automate workers but leave pre-existing terrain improvements alone. This is very helpful when i finally get steampower. I switch about 75% of my workers over to this and allow them to railroad up my empire. I do keep the rest around to make continued tile improvements. I also greatly enjoy on some of my games allowing my cities to grow exceedingly large (35+) for no other reason than I can. The base rules I hold by when freshwater is present are as follows.

Grassland plus shield = Mine
Grassland = Irrigate
City is 75% plains or higher then Plains = Irrigate
City has less than 30% plains then Plains = Mine
Desert = Irrigate no matter what
Floodplain = Irrigate
I of course mine hills and mountains, most of the time i dont waste time mining mountains until later in the game but i love hills.
Tundra = Forest

But that is just me, you have to take in different circumstances for each city.

 

[vmxa]

Even the Shift A is not a good idea, unless you own the landmass. In fact I would not use period.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

in despotism, irrigating grass without a food bonus is useless, so don't do it unless you have to to get irrigation to a tile with a food bonus.

Once you are out of despotism, it gets much more complicated as to what to to. Irrigating one grass tile for a city can really help it grow 30% faster. (3 extra food means it will go from 4-5 in 7 turns rather than 10, and from 8-9 in 14 turns instead of 20. Irrigating 2 grass tiles will up growth by 50%! (4-5 in 5 turns, 8-9 in 10) More, food doesn't suffer corruption, so irrigating grass tiles allows you to have more specialists in highly corrupt cities.

But in the beginning of the game, if you:

Irrigate brown (except with wine/sugar)
Mine brown with wine/sugar
Mine green without wine/wheat/cow
irrigate green with wine/wheat/cow
And irrigate white

You will be ok.

 

[MAS]

Grassland plus shield = Mine
Grassland = Irrigate

If you can choose between irrigating a bonus grassland or a normal grassland (assuming the same city works both tiles) irrigate the bonus grassland!

It doesn't usually make much of a difference, but if you have a golden age, or if you mobilize, you get one shield added to any tile that already produces one, but not to any tile that produces none.
Thus with an irrigated bonus grass and a mined normal grass, you get 2 extra shields, but with an irrigated normal grass and a mined bonus, you only get 1 extra shield. And when you are not in a golden age or mobilized, you lose nothing.

 

[Jedi_Otis]

Even the Shift A is not a good idea, unless you own the landmass. In fact I would not use period.

I still use shift-A once I get all my cities connected by RR and then all the irrigated and mined squares RR'd in most of my cities. After that the automate AI does well enough to fill in the blanks. Plus, when they're all done, they go nite-nite somewhere until pollution is generated and then they deal with that immediately.

 

[pat4]

go to war academy and read crackers imput it greatly improved my play

 

[Pentium]

I also use Shift-A after all my tiles are Railed, and I have nothing better to do with them.

Pretty much, apart from not irriganting grasslands in Despotism, everything you do will be fine as long as there's a balanced amount of food and production in the city. That amount depends on many factors, so a strict rule isn't always the best.

And BTW:

Production is the Queen of Civ, second only to gold.

The Queen of Civ is without any doubt food. Pop = power. You can't have many shields or gold without a decent population.

 

[Vind2]

Even the Shift A is not a good idea, unless you own the landmass. In fact I would not use period.

I can be in later stages of a milked game when everything is worked.

 

[nerovats]

Food, shields, gold should always be in balance. Were the blance lies depends on the level, map and VC you are playing. There is no one most important, like a processor, memory and harddrive are for a pc, not one of them is most important, they sould be in balance.

In later stages of a milked game shift-A won't work as you want to irrigate all your mines.

 

[AskReeves15]

May I ask what you mean by a milked game. I have never heard that term before.

 

[Padma]

May I ask what you mean by a milked game. I have never heard that term before.

Because of the way the standard scoring system works, there are two ways to maximize your score: Win very quickly (e.g., early conquest), or win via the histograph, after spending much of the game just keeping your people happy: 'milking' the game for a higher score.

Milking can be quite difficult, as you need to have really "won" the game early. You need to keep your populationand controlled land area below the DOmination win threshold, yet you must have your opponents beaten well into submission. But the more Happy people you have, for he longest amount of time you can manage, the higher your score will be. (It can get very tedious, milking a game on a large or huge map.)



But back to an earlier poster: it was determined several years ago that the key to this game is Population. Pop = Power. Unless you increase your population, you will not have enough Shields or Gold to do anything. The more cities you make, the better off you will be.

 

[psweetman1590]

But back to an earlier poster: it was determined several years ago that the key to this game is Population. Pop = Power. Unless you increase your population, you will not have enough Shields or Gold to do anything. The more cities you make, the better off you will be.

But that's the thing: Pop (and thus food) is only important because it secures gold and shields. It is not important for itself, but only for it's ability to provide the shields and food you need. If you have lots of shields and gold, it stands to reason that you also have a decent population. It doesn't always work the other way around.

Conclusion: Shields and gold are the most important things you get from the city.

Yes, I know that by this point the argument is purely intellectual and has little benefit to the game itself...