What to do with Plains?

[OnmyojiOmn]

I usually play Vanilla rather than BTS

Wait, what?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Riverside: Cottage, or in a rare circumstance where my city is really going to need the food, a farm

Non-Riverside: wait until caste-system or guilds and then I usually immediately workshop it, it gives some nice production

 

[ston]

Wait, what?

What didn't you understand?

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

What didn't you understand?

Sorry, I was wondering why you'd play vanilla if you have BTS.

 

[davelisowski]

in general, if you got the food you cant go wrong with a cottage if its a commerce city. if its a production city, depends on where it is:

next to a river - watermill
on a hill - windmill or mine (i'd go with mine first.. and then change to windmill later on).
out in the open - workshop
forest - lumbermill

all of these will give you rougly the equivalent to a mine food/production wise once you unlock the needed techs & have the buildings or civics.

I agree. Workshops aren't useful until later in the game, but yeah, there's not much to do with brown tiles.

I would change brown tiles more so than any other tile. I am a cottage-whore so if I set up a cottage, I want it to be a town. Those I won't change.

 

[ston]

Sorry, I was wondering why you'd play vanilla if you have BTS.

There are a few reasons.

The apostolic palace (or as I like to call it, the "Palace of AI Cheating") is the main 'game play' one . Drives me nuts so it does. From early on I turned off diplomatic victories so that it wouldn't appear in the game.

There are some others, but the biggest reason is that compared to Vanilla Civ IV it runs way too slowly, especially towards the end of the game. I've got a decent rig but when it's a 20-30 minute (or more) grindathon just to get through a single turn (not due to my playing slowly, just the performance of the game & graphics engines) and there are still 150+ turns to go, that's just not an enjoyable gaming experience for me. I just don't have that much patience or spare time.

There is so much I like about BTS over Vanilla (the additional leaders, Espionage, the BUG MOD, the WAY improved map scripts etc.) but in the end it's all let down by the performance issues.

 

[sif]

What to do with 1f+1h ? Make it 1f+2h+0,5f with 0 turns to improve it
.just don't cut the forest. If there's no forest ignore it.

 

[Drakarska]

You road them and transform them into grasslands!

Oh wait, that was Civ 2

Or, you could play a couple of mods that have brought back the terraform tech... That might work too .

 

[AdamCrock]

^ Mods are a good solution to plains lack of usefulness. In FFH2 You can turn them into grasslands if You have water mana In BTS it is a good idea to go for farms and later workshops if the tile is not by the river. If it is by the river than it can benefit mostly from either cottages or watermills

 

[ArchGhost]

I don't often prioritize machinery as I dislike water maps/prefer doing the cuirs thing, so I just farm them if they aren't supportable by food surplus (otherwise I'd run cottage on them). 2f+1h is roughly equivalent to 3 hammers with slavery at lower pops in the earlier stages, where you won't be able to grow up much anyway so you might as well whip. Work them to get free hammers towards current project until the next whip threshold or when waiting for anger to subside. Forges make it sustainable for longer even as you grow up past the early game happy limits.

After workshops start pumping up, they are a logical next step if you want to move away from whipping to working actual tiles for production, but not until they at least get one of their bonuses first (such as at Guilds or in Caste). A simple 0f 2h tile is wasteful to work in my view, as your surplus food could be going towards supporting better tiles or being whipped away. I'd rather work a 2f tile instead since it will eventually support another whip or allow the city to avoid starving when pop becomes important. Exceptions are always there (such as when being forced to slow build something not easily whippable, or just banking fail gold in a wonder, where the whip itself isn't much help unless you abuse overflow), but personally, I hate workshops for most of the game until they become godly with State Property.

 

[sif]

At a cotage city 1f+2h+1/2f (health) that could be used when at war or when need to built libriry or market I think it's worth don't get 30h for once and work them when you need. And 2 forest plains need 2food and 4 happy to work and they give 4h + 1f (health) when a mine over hill plains need 2f and give 4h with 3 happy but no health.

 

[6K Man]

In order of preference:

Whip them (i.e. whip citizens in preference to them working Plains tiles)

Run specialists, especially if you have access to Representation.

Chain irrigate. Watermill or Workshop with State Property.

 

[sif]

Whip is the best option because of the granary but you have to already invest one city grow and then whip and then live with -1hapy for some time so you wait ex.you have a farm working for some turns just to grow your city after you whip and you get the 50/100 bonus of the granary and then you live for some time with not the ability to work.

Example your city have 3 tiles(2 grass +1 plain )and and 2 happy and 2 health
1) you cotag

 

[sif]

1 )you cotage the 1 grass and you farm the other and when the city grow you whip and after you can wotk

 

[sif]

...work only the cotage for a while and ignore the plain
2) you run a special ist dying using 2 farms one the grass

3) you don't cut the forest on the plain you cotage 1 grass you farm the other so you work all the time the cotage and switch according your need you work the farm or the forest plain

 

[sif]

The an cut forest plain are even better when you don't have much grass . So if on the example you have 1 grass and 2 plain then you can farm the grass cotage the 1 plain and don't cut the forest to the other so you work permanently the farm and you work the cotage until you need production when you switch to the forest