what to irrigate and what to mine?

[ThePrankMonkey]

im sure there is some article/thread on this site about what do with grassland prairie and all the other kinds of terrain in regards to working them.

im starting to manually use my workers rather than automating them so an article on this would be immensely helpful.

 

[thetrooper]

Mine green, irrigate brown is an old schlager. And irrigate bonus food resources.

 

[Own]

Mine whenever you need it and irrigate whenever you need it. If a city is size 12 and no hospitals yet, and it has excess food, mine every thing you can.

 

[Mathias]

Own: not when to irrigate/mine, but what to irrigate/mine.

This only matters early in the game while still in despotism. Outside of despotism, it doesn't matter where the irrigation is, as long as you have enough it. Mine anything that isn't irrigated.

 

[Moonsinger]

im sure there is some article/thread on this site about what do with grassland prairie and all the other kinds of terrain in regards to working them.

im starting to manually use my workers rather than automating them so an article on this would be immensely helpful.

The answer is not about "what" but "when"? When do you mine and when do you irrigate? Mine it when you need to pump out more shield and irrigate it when you need to pump out more food. It's that simple! The real secret is to have a lot of workers.

Edit: I didn't realize Own has already answered this question.

 

[mastertyguy]

Over 20 pop, reduce food to 40 or 41.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

im talking about in democracy and getting ready to build hospitals en masse. i notice the workers tend to do only irrigation a lot of the time with a mine ocassionaly, irritates me since being in the industrial age 15 shields doesnt build squat with any kind of speed, even after building a factory...so im manually going back through my cities in my current game and i am tinkering with working the terrain, mostly just prairie and grassland to get an optimal amount of shields and food.

im still tinkering with the workers and seeing what works and what doesnt. with the games im playing (the difficulty really) automating them for one city is fine but i think i need to start manually moving them and deciding what squares get worked and how. i know it will increase the efficiency of my empire and make me a better player.

 

[brennan]

I NEVER let my workers automate. They are world class idiots. Generally I have a couple of irrigated tiles for growth and mine everything else. After hospitals/factories are built I irrigate everything for max pop, which generates most trade/happiness/science. At this stage of the game your core cities should have all improvements already, building new ones should be a short break from pumping out military and so production is secondary to trade.

At the beginning of the IA go for Sanitation, build hospitals everywhere and make sure all cities have a good excess of food, watch your population explode and you get a good edge over the AI in terms of research because they are slower at taking advantage of the potential pop boost.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

i stopped building hospitals so early because i got tired of having all my workers clean up the pollution. so i reseach that tech after i build mass transportation and recycling centers and doesnt interfere too much with production. it kind takes away from reasearch since all my cities are at 12 instead of 20+ but that fixes itself quickly since i wind up having them all build hospitals at once.

im sure thats stupid strategy in some way but thats how im doing it for now.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Well it is a painfully long way from hospitals to mass transit, but you should be able to trade Sanitation from the AI long before you reach the modern era.
Ultimately, though, I think the power of early hospitals depends on your city placement. If they don't overlap much, getting hospitals up needs to be a top priority for the start of the industrial. If you've been doing some proper cramming, it isn't so important.
Also, it depends when you are expecting to win (or lose). If you'll finish in the mid-industrial, you might find you have better things to spend your shields on than hospitals which will only be of use for a couple of dozen turns.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

i ususually spend most of the industrial age building stock markets, civil defense (out part of my cities anyway) and building up my military.

i know i need to go up a difficulty level or two since i generally have a firm lead on tech research by an entire age (generally by the end of the industrial age).

so i started a new game yesterday and im manually using a lot of my workers, though not all. im finding it too tedious to work everyone of them but im getting use to the idea that i will one day. old habits die hard, i need to learn to relax and enjoy playing the game instead of rushing to the next turn.