When not to Improve Resources Appropriately

[Hesha]

I've noticed in conversation here and also in some of Lain's videos, that contrary to what n00b players like I would assume, pro players don't always seem to improve special resources appropriately (i.e. not put a winery on wine).

What situations are there, to do this? I am aware that some appropriate improvements are rather poor or at least provide less benefit than, say, a town. At the same time, you lose access to the resource, if you don't build the appropriate improvement.

There is no use to the player in having more than one of any resource (which is kinda stupid, but okay), unless there is another civ to trade with. How highly do you rate trading? Or would you rather just connect one resources and put other improvements on the other tiles?

One other, related question: Is there an overview anywhere of what types of tiles / resources provide additional yields to cities founded on the tile? My reasoning has always been to try and put a city on as crappy a tile as possible (deserts come to mind), because it will be upgraded to 2F/1H/1C regardless. But I am also aware that Plains+Hill will give it +1H and that riverside wine (as I just learned) will give it +1C (which is why plains hill wine riverside is awesome), so I assume there are other types of locations you can benefit from and it would be great to have a way of looking this up!

 

[krikav]

City center and settlement:

What you get from where you settle is just as easy as looking at the tile in question.
The capitals center will never reduce a yield, but it will increase them up to 2F1H1C.
So if you settle on a sugar (3F) you get a 3F1H1C city center.
If you settle on riverside sugar (3F1C) you still get 3F1H1C.
If you are financial and settle on riverside dye, (2F2C) you get a 2F1H3C city center.
Notable exception is the floodplain, which is sort of a "improvement"? Similar to forest.
So you have to disregard floodplains and forest.

Improvements over resources:

It mostly depends on when you get access to what improvements.
Wine you can only improve properly once you get monarchy, which is usually ages after you get access to pottery, thats why you sometimes make a cottage on a wine.
Why do you do this? Well, it instantly gives you a very good tile.
It can be bulldozed later and replaced with the proper improvement.

Also, at some point, you lose the benefit of some resources, such as that jungle city with 8 dyes.... You only need so many dyes to provide happines and for resource trades, and if the town is superior, then it makes sense to go that route.

Similarlly, toward the end of the game, it's common to place workshops over elephants and horses.

 

[Hesha]

Great, thank you! This should be in some wiki or library or something ^^

 

[6K Man]

IMO, there are surprisingly few situations where a non-standard improvement for a resource is a good idea.

In the early game, it can make sense to mine Pigs if you don’t have access to Animal Husbandry yet. Pigs are better as a food tile, though, so those usually get Pastured when that becomes possible. Sugar is a good candidate to be cottages, because the Plantation improvement just gives +1 food and is available much later than Pottery is (the other option is a Farm, which gives 4F, the same as a Plantation). A 3F cottage can be worth a lot more in the long term than a 4F Sugar tile. And if you’re playing Always War or otherwise don’t have people to trade with, nonstandard improvements on extra resources like Sugar, Silk, and Spices can pay off (assuming you can keep those resources from getting pillaged in AW, anyway...).

If you are playing a big map with lots of trading partners, you’re probably better off with the diplo bonus (“We appreciate the years you supplied us with resources!”) and the cash that comes in from trading surplus resources. I’ve had many games where I was getting 20, 30, or even 50 gold per turn for a surplus resource in trade.

 

[lymond]

yeah, as krikav says, i call it "what you see is what you get"..there is really no need for a guide for this as long as you are aware that forest will be removed by the a city, as will the flood plain (that gets 3F otherwise). A city center tile does not add more than what you see on that tile and its base 2F1H1C.

River plains hill wine is a nice double bonus indeed, even better with FIN. You can even settle on flat river wine.

I tend to focus on settling PHs if possible without losing the good food resources, or other bonus tiles like sugar or bananas. Plains marble and stone provide a whopping 3H to the tile, and as you see in your Ram game, desert stone gives 2H.

Sometimes one will even settle on plains hill gold if there are more gold around anyway. gold is a food deficit tiles anyway so no harm in settling on it if you have another to work later. (gold does sometimes spawn multiples very close to each other)

I sometimes even farm a river wine tile. Not a great tile particularly but considering overall food of the city it does provide some commerce early while being food neutral instead of food deficit.

Lain does often cottage commerce resources early. . I've always been a little adverse to that idea myself as later bulldozing said developed cottage seems painful. Like a river grass dye, silk or spice I might just farm instead for more food and still some commerce. But Lain is a super pro Deity player and commerce is really a must early on Deity to keep research up and offset maintenance costs. I win on Deity but don't play it regular for stress management..ha

But as 6k said, most resources will get their natural improvement early, especially food specials with the possible exception of hill pigs or sheep that might get an early mine instead if AH is not of urgency otherwise.

 

[krikav]

@lymond
I hear you when you mention cottaging tiles like wine/dye etc...
I tend to prefer to farm these tileswhen Ihave the choice. Feels abit like I'm getting more benefit right away, and I don't commit to the long term investment that a cottage is, when I might bulldoze it later on.

 

[rah]

If i'm going for mids, I'll usually delay Monarchy so I'll frequently do something else to wine.

 

[Fish Man]

Besides what other posters have mentioned, there are rare moments late game when you built an IW city in a spot with a lot of mediocre "food" resources (cows, sugar, rice, banana, spices etc.). In that case you might want to bulldoze some or all of those for workshops, to get maximum hammers. Best-case scenario, without a river, during a golden age if you have every tile in your BFC workshopped you can get a whopping 101 base hammers, which are further multiplied 100% by forge + factory + power, and then another 100% by IW. 303 hammers/turn makes for a much speedier stasis chamber than lands filled with lame pastures and plantations!

 

[ArchGhost]

Most commonly, cottaging calendar resources then replacing them with plantations later is something that may happen in many games depending on where you start and whether they are jungled before you can do something with them. Granted, you need to spare the worker turns, but cottaging an open Silk or Dye gives a lot better commerce yield than just ignoring it until you get Calendar (and IW if it grows jungle by then too). Even cottaging Banana is comparable to a FP cottage and can even be riverside if you're that lucky. Sugar is usually a good tile to use for this purpose (or farming instead) if you can use an uncovered one, as they tend to come in groups similar to Dye

Also farming over certain resources can be a better use of them for the moment, early on where food is most important for settlers/workers. Farming green cows can still give a decent food tile (and occasionally flatland pig too if lucky enough to get an uncovered one next to water) without having to detour through AH. Exposed banana becomes the same as a rice in a pinch if it has water. More tiles to farm before relevant techs are riverside flatland marble or ivory, when you don't want to detour through Masonry/Hunting respectively. They make decent total yield tiles that help when being worked for settlers (both give a total of 4 combined food+hammers).

I'm personally more picky about "incorrectly" mining over tiles as mines are less useful in that small early game window -- while mines are great for settlers/workers, outside of that they won't see much use unless building fail-gold/wealth until later. Food tiles remain more useful longer because of the whip, so you can swing delaying picking up the proper improvement techs for things like quarries or pastures as long as you get to slavery in a timely fashion. Occasionally you find hill marble/stone worth mining for the hammer boost early (IMP leaders especially). I do like the hill pigs mine though. Any time I can delay largely unnecessary AH I'm happy.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I like to cottage riverside sugar tiles early in the game since they are basically a floodplain without the penalty.

Mining hill pigs is common as well since a 2 3 tile is a quite strong if you aren't planning to get AH or don't need the food right away.

 

[Tobiyogi]

I would also keep in mind the spent worker turns/yield-ratio. So spending 5T on a farm for just +1F is painful in the early game. A mine on a sheep hill costs 5T too, but you get at least +2H and if AH is not in sight yet, it can be very good. For the same reason, I hate farming FP: 7 worker turns for +1F = really horrible. Maybe when you have too much workers or really no other food in your city. I sometimes cottage even a banana or a sugar (before Calender), because it is only 4T and very soon you will have a temporary Oasis, a decent tile in the early game.

 

[earthy]

I think for something like this it makes a lot of sense:

Spoiler start :

Obviously there's lots of possible routes to take here, but what worked well for me was: tech mining into fishing, build worker, city grows to size 2 on unimproved rice while worker mines sheep + deer. At size 2, city works both mines for 4 turn workboat. City then grows on rice+fish to size 3, switches to fish/mines and builds a settler. tech BW and worker chops into next worker before following the settler to improve the second city. Thebes then 1 pops the worker into another workboat, and starts pumping out a few warriors to fogbust while growing to size 4 to whip the next settler.

Had I gone for AH or hunting here to approve the resource appropriately, BW would have been seriously delayed, my worker would have not much to do except road, and pottery would have been quite delayed as well. I'm sure there's a better way to min/max this start, but this is just a small example of how being flexible with improvements can save you some beakers in the beginning of the game.