Watermills?
- Thread starter Drawmeus
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2 food and 1 production > 2 gold.
Build an extra trading post as suggested above and work it with the free food, you will end up producing 3 extra production from the watermill and hill, and the maintenance cost of the watermill will be paid off with the trading post's gold.
Everything else that your city then makes will be built significantly faster. It is completely worth building a watermill first plus a trading post in any riverside city.
Which takes an extra population, which itself takes a large investment of food, and costs happiness. At steady state, it's better to think of switching a citizen from one tile to another -- from a post-CS farm to a post-economics tradepost, for example, will cover the maintenance, and you're left with one glorious hammer. It's better in a production city, where you can switch a farm to a mine, and net +3 hammers for -2 gpt. Still 40 turns to pay back your hammer investment. And it's better with multipliers -- it costs post-multiplier gpt and gives you pre-multiplier hammers.
But what this really shows is that a watermill is pretty poor "at steady state", except perhaps in a dedicated production city. It's best early when you aren't happy-capped, and in cities without a good endogenous food surplus, and when you don't have a bunch of maritimes. In these situations, extra food is the main point, not something you use to offset the costs.
Sometimes I open 2x worker -> water mill -> 5 warriors and attack (in multiplayer). Its good against an opponent who settles aggressively towards your capital. It won't work if he gets swordsmen before turn 36, or if he builds extra troops instead of workers, but this is uncommon, and in this situation you will need the warriors for defense anyways. It provides a good production base for NC and other stuff after. It provides for a more mature capital than any other player, which can be taken advantage of with Monarchy after Landed Elite.
You get the food from the watermill!
You dont need to grow your population or end up unhappy, you simply build a watermill, and then move a citizen off a food tile and onto a hill trading post instead. You can keep your population however you want it, and build everything else so much faster in that city.
Its so simple I dont get how how people can overlook it so much.
+2 food and +3 production for free with watermill by working a hill tile with a trading post. Its a no brainer if you want to be building cities up, I build one wherever I can as the third building after a monument and library.
Heres an example:
You are capped for your happiness and dont want to grow your cities anymore. Your riverside capital has 4 population points and is working two food tiles and two production tiles with stagnant growth. You want to have some extra production in your capital without adding more population - what you can do is build a watermill, and use its bonus to move a citizen off one of the food tiles onto another hill with either a mine or trading post.
Your population remains the same, but you have the added production boost from the watermill + the extra hill tile you are now working. Later on when you have more happiness and you want to grow your city, you can also manage that a lot faster with watermills already in place.
Martin Alvito
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The question is this: what can you build that is more effective with 70
? If you're going vertical, an Aqueduct is going to yield a lot more Food than the Water Mill, making it well worth the extra 30 investment. If you're going horizontal, Maritimes are much cheaper than putting Water Mills everywhere, and 70 now for 1 per turn later is terrible return on investment.
By your logic, a Granary is always a better choice whenever there is a single Deer or Wheat tile in the radius.
A low-population capital is a bad example because any production-centric strategy should be running Maritimes, and will not be at the Food cap as a result.
This depends on how much Food you're producing. The marginal impact of +2 Food when you're already running a large surplus is minimal.
? If you're going vertical, an Aqueduct is going to yield a lot more Food than the Water Mill, making it well worth the extra 30 investment. If you're going horizontal, Maritimes are much cheaper than putting Water Mills everywhere, and 70 now for 1 per turn later is terrible return on investment.By your logic, a Granary is always a better choice whenever there is a single Deer or Wheat tile in the radius.
A low-population capital is a bad example because any production-centric strategy should be running Maritimes, and will not be at the Food cap as a result.
This depends on how much Food you're producing. The marginal impact of +2 Food when you're already running a large surplus is minimal.
I think it is this:
1
Then 5.75
Now someone pipe up and tell me what the bonuses should really be so I can edit this and fix it.
*edit* Bleh, already found a problem. Maintence costs for workshop and rail connection also need to be figured in unless of course you are planning on always having workshops and rail connections and the only question is to Watermill or not to Watermill.
And also we would need something that calculates the raise in population in. How many hammers is 1 unhappyness? :-(
The question is this: what can you build that is more effective with 70
Aqueducts come much later, and you dont need to spend gold on buying Watermills, they are easy to build after a monument and libray.
Heres my second try at an early 4 city REX, it is very easy to build watermills and granaries before you get to aqueducts.
Spoiler :
skallben
Diplomat
You built Watermills before Granaries in cities with wheat and/or bananas. Granary would be superiour in those cases. Aqueducts might come later but there are other things to invest into aswell than just food buildings. No, I am with Martin on this one. Maritimes are superior and gold is more flexible to have, the maintenance is too high IMO.
I didnt need the extra food from the resources, I had plenty enough from the base resources. If you look at the tiles I was working, you would see that I was working farmed riverside plains as the wheats and banana tiles werent producing any gold. I have watermills, temples, monasteries and universities in all my cities later into the game, and my cash flow is still possitive from selling luxuries. The +1 production is far more helpful early on while your cities are still small to boosting food from tiles which already have enough food, you cant grow or make much use of granary bonuses until you have a few happiness buildings built anyway.
I havnt had anything else to invest in early on in the game by the time I have monuments, libraries, watermills and granaries built. For military, 2-4 archers is more than enough, and workers you can easily get for free.
I've pretty much stopped using maritimes so much since they got nerfed, I tend to play entirely without patronage now, so I dont get much effect for gold invested into maritimes whereas granaries and watermills give a permanent resource boost.
The 2 gold maintenance is absolutely nothing, and you make plenty back once you start selling resources.
Martin Alvito
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The maintenance is 2
per Water Mill per turn. The maintenance on a Maritime is around 8 per turn without Patronage. A Maritime costs you 200 to buy (you sold a luxury that you replace for 300). So 8 Watermills yield the same 
as two Maritimes in a horizontal empire at the same cost. The choice between 70*8=560 yielding 8 per turn and 400 is very, very easy - especially since you can drop the Maritimes in many turns earlier.In a vertical situation, the early build order is cluttered because you're building relevant specialist buildings and the setup buildings for National Wonders. There just isn't room for a Water Mill in there until later, and by then Aqueducts are both available and needed.
I suppose that depends on how many cities you build. If you try a small 4 city rex, you wont have anything else to build after a monument and library other than the granary and watermill Barracks and Walls are a complete waste to build, and are never needed against the AI. I couldnt even bother building Kreposts in my Russia game, by the time I had monuments + temples + liberty, my borders were expanding rapidly enough. I have found both food buildings easy to build in this 4 city approach. I prefer to create puppets after that, I tried a few ICS games a while ago and I really didnt like it in Civ V.
For ICS rexers, or domination type people, building every building in every city isnt going to happen. For small empire building, the early build order isnt really cluttered if you stick to 4 cites at first.
Just to answer this, this isnt helpful for my games because in the early stages I am keeping my cities small at around size 4-6. Working tiles which only produce food is far less desirable to working production tiles. With both a granary + watermill in place, you can set your cities working more production tiles without them growing. When your happy cap increases, you only need to switch over to food tiles for very few turns with both buildings to get them to grow, and then switch back to production tiles. With both a granary + watermill built, you can get your first few cities very productive even with a small population. Without them, you do end up wasting a lot of production by working food tiles instead.
More food from tiles (I.E Granary) is NOT helpful at the start of the game, more food in the city square from the base bonuses from granaries, watermills and maritime states is more helpful, but when you only have a few cities, the maritime bonuses dont really pay off until you have built a lot more cities.
More food from tiles is very helpful as France, because early Monarchy removes the happiness pressure. Deer/Hills/Camp/Granary is a 2F 3H hex, which is fantastic early game (equivalent to a pre-patch manufactory!). Mines are a great complement to more food heavy tiles, like 4F 1H from wheat/granary (which changes to 5F 1H after civil service!)
Epic amounts of Food is not very helpful, I agree. But Civ is all about maximizing F+H. Civs with less cities can do great timing attacks, which will punish a civ that expands very fast. I almost always get more food and hammers than other civs, while frequently having less cities. Concentrated hammers are also better, because then the heroic epic helps more, and national wonders are easier to get.
Wide Civs will always win Steady State analysis contests. But tall Civs get that transient advantage.
Epic amounts of Food is not very helpful, I agree. But Civ is all about maximizing F+H. Civs with less cities can do great timing attacks, which will punish a civ that expands very fast. I almost always get more food and hammers than other civs, while frequently having less cities. Concentrated hammers are also better, because then the heroic epic helps more, and national wonders are easier to get.
Wide Civs will always win Steady State analysis contests. But tall Civs get that transient advantage.
troytheface
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wrng thred
Strategist83
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I too have been thinking about the Water Mill lately and contemplated opening up a thread similar to this. The question, it seems to me, is: Isn't it unfair that the Water Mill costs 2 gold? Shouldn't that be 1? As has been discussed, Granary is superior if certain resources are near. The problem is that Granaries are available everywhere while Water Mills require rivers. Shouldn't the Water Mill thus be better than the Granary when its requirements are steeper, as a way of rewarding settling near rivers?
Perhaps Water Mills should be maintenance free to reward the river requirement being fulfilled. That seems a lot more balanced to me that the current model and I would not be surprised to see Firaxis change it to be so, much like how they removed maintenance on the Monastery and the Observatory. These too are buildings that require special conditions to be met and get rewarded with no maintenance.
Alternatively, if the Mill must stay at 2 gpt - the league of Forges, Temples and even Hospitals, maybe it should provide an impressive +2 production? Or should it be even more to be balanced?
Either way, it seems really curious and out-of-place that a basic ancient era building like this costs not 1, but 2 gpt. All the contemporaries - Monuments, Stables, Granaries are 1 gpt.
Perhaps Water Mills should be maintenance free to reward the river requirement being fulfilled. That seems a lot more balanced to me that the current model and I would not be surprised to see Firaxis change it to be so, much like how they removed maintenance on the Monastery and the Observatory. These too are buildings that require special conditions to be met and get rewarded with no maintenance.
Alternatively, if the Mill must stay at 2 gpt - the league of Forges, Temples and even Hospitals, maybe it should provide an impressive +2 production? Or should it be even more to be balanced?
Either way, it seems really curious and out-of-place that a basic ancient era building like this costs not 1, but 2 gpt. All the contemporaries - Monuments, Stables, Granaries are 1 gpt.
AfterShafter
Deity
Well, the way I look at it is, you're basically paying one unhappiness for that production and whatever you get from the square beyond the two gold maintenance cost... So the real cost of the watermill, over the course, of the game, is the happiness. The gold can be counteracted by working one of those river tiles with a trade post on it, or any square that gives 2 or more gold.
If my empire is doing OK for happiness and I don't have to keep growth tightly in check, I'll build watermills more freely. If my empire is having happiness problems, or immediately running a huge deficit, I'll build them in key locations only.
They're a building that, while the benefits of them are notable and don't take too much work to capitalize on, they can turn into an economic or happiness hit if situations turn bad. A bit of pillaging here, enemy units camping out on a space there, and you've got a building giving you food you don't need or want any more and costing you too gold per turn. Population should rarely if ever be a problem - if you don't doing a bit of micro, just go super-production heavy in the cities in question, or work some specialists, and starve them down a bit. If the money becomes a problem? Well, work gold squares or just sell the damned things.
Any which way, I find they're a building I want in most cities that can build them. Only thing that really slows my building them down is making other things more of a priority or an immediate deficit.
If my empire is doing OK for happiness and I don't have to keep growth tightly in check, I'll build watermills more freely. If my empire is having happiness problems, or immediately running a huge deficit, I'll build them in key locations only.
They're a building that, while the benefits of them are notable and don't take too much work to capitalize on, they can turn into an economic or happiness hit if situations turn bad. A bit of pillaging here, enemy units camping out on a space there, and you've got a building giving you food you don't need or want any more and costing you too gold per turn. Population should rarely if ever be a problem - if you don't doing a bit of micro, just go super-production heavy in the cities in question, or work some specialists, and starve them down a bit. If the money becomes a problem? Well, work gold squares or just sell the damned things.
Any which way, I find they're a building I want in most cities that can build them. Only thing that really slows my building them down is making other things more of a priority or an immediate deficit.
Strategist83
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That's always true, all the food-producing buildings all the way up to the Hospital can be used to convert food into production by allowing you to avoid working farms (side note: the city governor is *extremely* food-happy by default - I really don't want that much food! Clearly Firaxis trying to force their 'tall' empires vision down our throats!), and this conversion is what wide empires want to do to save on happiness. And, this may ultimately be what warrants the Water Mill: Saving on happiness by creating food through buildings instead of population. Still, even though this is extremely useful, I think it should be seriously considered if the Water Mill should not be made less expensive, possibly even free. The Granary simply has too many advantages over it currently even though it has no special requirements like the Water Mill does.
Strategist83
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Good observation
Or maybe +2 hammers and 2 maintenance.
... but the problem with that is we are then putting the Water Mill - an ancient era building - in the league of medieval and even renaissance era technology. Both the Workshop and the Windmill cost 2 gpt and provide 2 production. So no, I ultimately think the healthiest thing for the game would be to keep the Mill how it is but lower maintenance cost to either 1 or 0.
Of course, this would require testing to get right but I am confounded by the fact the Water Mill has remained untouched by the march patch other than the much needed lowering of production cost.
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