What to do with Plains

[mcorey]

I have a city with Clam, Pig, and Iron. The rest of the tiles are all flat plains. No rivers. What do I do with the plains? The only available options are Workshop or Cottages. Suggestions?

 

[Framesticker]

A picture of the city screen (and, hell, a tech situation) would be nice. Although, from what I understand, you placed the city in a bad situation (lots of sea tiles due to using Clams + lots of plains). Generally in the early game you want to settle your cities along rivers with grasslands and hills (and resources, obviously).

Generally speaking, though, as you progress through the game Workshops and Watermills become equal and even better than hills for production while providing some others bonuses (commerce with Electricity, food with State Property, all that shizz). If you're quite early, than it'd probably not been a good investment to settle said city.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Hey you got pigiron, you got all pigiron *giggles*

I'd cottage a few of the plains but probably just whip stuff there. Maybe a workshop or 2 if you can feed it (pig is 5-6 food clams 4-5 with lighthouse) so that 5-7 surplus so you can work 5 plains, 3 if workshopped?

 

[Wreck]

Clam/Pig/Iron and plains will be a decent, though not great, hammer city once you get to Civil Service and can chain irrigate. Until then, use it for whipping. Build a lighthouse and use the coast for storing people in between whips. Whip out the few buildings one needs in a hammer city (granary, barracks, forge), then use it to build units.

Once you do bring in irrigation, irrigate all those plains except perhaps one or two that should be workshops. Then you still use it for whipping, but instead of using coast to store pop, you use irrigated plains and get a few more hammers from the deal.

 

[DaveMcW]

Ignore the plains, use the surplus food to run specialists.

 

[Ergo Sum]

I am no expert, but I'd tend to agree with DaveMcW before Wreck. The cost of chain irrigating the plains is the maintenance you have to pay on the extra population. Getting ~1 hammer per population point does not seem terribly efficient. If you use specs, you can get a better yield for each population point, and less gold spent on your total population.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ignore the plains, use the surplus food to run specialists.

+1 for this.

Or, if you really need hammers whip it.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ignore the plains, use the surplus food to run specialists.

+2 ... atleast until workshops are decent or until biology, whatever happens first

 

[Wreck]

1 hammer per pop is, at least, still profitable. (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=314674)

Running specialists is superior when the GPP generated will eventually pop a great person. (Even then, only up to a point.) Unless the OP is going to make this city his GP farm (which seems rather unlikely to me, given it has just two food resources and no other ways to get food), then it might pop a great scientist or two early, but not much more than that.

If you can't complete a great person, then GPPs have no value and specialists are a bad deal unless you've hit the happiness limit. (And even then they are easy to beat; i.e., a plains workshop.) Below the limit you're better off farming and whipping.

 

[stopstopp]

Farming isn't available in this current situation.

2 hammers vs 3 beakers

Unless your building buildings I don't see how the hammers beat the beakers since even building science isn't over three beakers. Or are hammers worth more than beakers in this situation? Although we have no idea if the poster has guilds or not.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1 hammer per pop is, at least, still profitable. (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=314674)

Running specialists is superior when the GPP generated will eventually pop a great person. (Even then, only up to a point.) Unless the OP is going to make this city his GP farm (which seems rather unlikely to me, given it has just two food resources and no other ways to get food), then it might pop a great scientist or two early, but not much more than that.

If you can't complete a great person, then GPPs have no value and specialists are a bad deal unless you've hit the happiness limit. (And even then they are easy to beat; i.e., a plains workshop.) Below the limit you're better off farming and whipping.

Whipping maybe, spending worker turns farming that...no.

The thread you linked supports NOT working the plains farms, opting instead to work specialists as cities incur less maintenance when smaller.

A plains farm is the same raw output as a grass forest (technically weaker by .5 ) - not efficient to work until the pops are huge, other than as a whip sink. However, the coastal tiles and specialists are better whip sinks normally!

Paying x food to grow 1 pop gets you 1 hammer at the cost of some maintenance - almost nil gain with significant opportunity cost: engineer for hammers/turn, scientists for beakers/turn, or merchant for gold/turn (or the best net yield IF you utilize it: a spy). You would have to grow 3 population and put them on building wealth to get as much gold as you get from a merchant, all while increasing maintenance and reducing the efficiency of whipping (more pop = less efficient whips). This city wants to be working its 3 specials constantly. If you are whipping every time whip anger cools, you're not going to get past 6-8 pop ideally (to whip back down). Growing past that offers very minimal production gains or in the case of engineer/AW priests possibly production loss, while forgoing faster raw outputs. And JUST to do this sub-optimal thing, you have to burn worker turns that can be better utilized somewhere else, or invest extra hammers up front on the worker turns so that you have one available here in addition to elsewhere. If you want to grow for a big whip, use the coast tiles!

There's no way that's coming out ahead. The tiles will be OK with workshops later, or farms with bio (or cottages with emancipation), but not before that. Before that resources are better spent on useful tile improvements. Also note that with clam and pig, you have a + 7 food surplus from the 2 tiles (9 with city tile). In other words this city can put up 4 specialists and still grow ---> the odds of that producing a GP across the game aren't exactly nil, you know. In fact, if one goes that route rather than heavy whipping 1-2 great people from such a city is pretty likely.

 

[Kid R]

Plains have always seemed like decent cottage land to me if there's enough food otherwise. It's like a regular cottage with a hammer on top - what's not to like? You always see the AI building them too.

@TMIT, interesting you say post-emancipation they're OK - obviously I can see they become better then. Does it all come down to the old 10/6/4 thing again?

Anyway the OP city doesn't sound too bad. With that much food at least you have plenty of options. That's just the kind of middling resource-claimer city I tend to settle and let it sit there and get me my first 2 or 3 great scientists.

 

[stopstopp]

A regular cottage though is already bad. You lose money just to work it for the first 45 turns.

 

[jokoneli]

A regular cottage though is already bad. You lose money just to work it for the first 45 turns.

So you play without cottages?????

If you do, do you run a specialist economy?

 

[stopstopp]

So you play without cottages?????

If you do, do you run a specialist economy?

Of course not, Bureaucracy capital cottages are very good. Or if i'm financial. Although I still have a problem of running to many cottages and not enough hills.

I'm trying to experiment with hill economies so I can reach my goal of infantry attacking AI longbows.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Infantry vs AI longbows is doable even with sad tech rates below deity, just by trading with some and ostracizing others. I've had like 700 BPT at 1700 AD on immortal and managed to do exactly that - take infantry to muskets/longbows (though the target WAS close to rifles) with extremely minimal effort. I did this as recently as that isolated sitting bull game I posted earlier today...rather than my prowess it was the AI being stupid and falling out of trade blocks.

 

[lilnev]

The city described has a pretty good food surplus, but not so great as to make it a primary GP farm. Early on I would run a pair of scientists to pop a GS. But once I've got a real GP farm somewhere else, I'd cottage the plains, grow onto them, and don't whip buildings (war units might be worth it). You'll grow quite quickly onto the first 4 or 5 cottages, more slowly onto more, with a theoretical maximum of 7-9 (you don't specify the base tile of the Iron; I'm assuming the Pig is flat grassland). That's not an Oxford city, but it's a fine commerce contributor to your empire. Post Biology, chain irrigate enough to grow onto the rest of your tiles.

 

[stopstopp]

Cottaging that city is a bad idea. Specialists beat those cottages in research terms until printing press villages or towns, and then those towns have to work off the lead those specialists have made. I'll do some math to see when cottages beat specialists in that city.

 

[Wreck]

Specialists do not beat initial cottages except via GPP. Ignoring GPP value, specialists convert 2F into 3 or 3. Plains cottages convert 2F into 2 + 2. Is 1 more valuable than 2? No it is not. And of course cottages grow in value.

That said, GPP are incredibly valuable early, and continue to be quite valuable through the game if and only if they will be "expressed" as a GP. So making this city a GP farm is sensible, and especially so for a Phi leader, or one running Pacifism. (And anyone can plan to use Golden Age(s).) If we take 500GPP as the average value for GP generation, and assume GPs are worth 2000, then we value 1GPP=4. And then we see why good players like specialists: they convert 2F into 15, more or less. Two plains cottages will eventually get that valuable, but it will be a while.

Once a better GP farm is running, lesser GPP cities will never create a GP due to the moving goalposts. (This depends on the relative GPP multipliers they have, and the total base GPPs they generate from specialists and wonders.) When you have created such conditions, or just moved the next GP very far into the future, then that's the time to shut down GPP generation in a city and concentrate on hammers or cottages.

 

[r_rolo1]

Specialists do not beat initial cottages except via GPP. Ignoring GPP value, specialists convert 2F into 3 or 3. Plains cottages convert 2F into 2 + 2. Is 1 more valuable than 2? No it is not. And of course cottages grow in value.

That said, GPP are incredibly valuable early, and continue to be quite valuable through the game if and only if they will be "expressed" as a GP. So making this city a GP farm is sensible, and especially so for a Phi leader, or one running Pacifism. (And anyone can plan to use Golden Age(s).) If we take 500GPP as the average value for GP generation, and assume GPs are worth 2000, then we value 1GPP=4. And then we see why good players like specialists: they convert 2F into 15, more or less. Two plains cottages will eventually get that valuable, but it will be a while.

Once a better GP farm is running, lesser GPP cities will never create a GP due to the moving goalposts. (This depends on the relative GPP multipliers they have, and the total base GPPs they generate from specialists and wonders.) When you have created such conditions, or just moved the next GP very far into the future, then that's the time to shut down GPP generation in a city and concentrate on hammers or cottages.

Why do people always forget about the spy specialist in this kind of analysis ?