WoundedKnight's CIV Strategy Guide

[travathian]

If you pay attention to where you place your city, this isn't a real problem. Most of the time you have a couple of resources that produce extra food, so you start with an effective net of +6 or so (+2 from the city and +4 from a couple of reosurces like bananas or pigs or fish or corn). This surplus gets drawn down by hills and plains that you work, but it's enough for quite a bit of growth.

I've won culture victories with size 9 cities before, but more typically, my big commerce cities manage to get to size 15 to 18, with the only farms being put on farmable resources (rice, wheat, etc).

This is absolutely true. If you can find two food sources near some hills, you have a great production city in the making. But you still can't just watermill/cottage every tile and expect to grow your city big enough to take advantage of all those mines. Ideally you'd farm the special resources to maximize food, while growing your city on other food netral tiles (+2) such as grassland with forest/cottage, grassy hills with windmills, or grassy river tiles with watermills. Your corn/pigs continue to provide surplus food allowing you to grow very fast. By the time you have tapped out all of your food neutral tiles you may be at a size 6-9, at which point you start nabbing those mines, growth slows, but production skyrockets. Eventually you stagnate but it doesn't matter since you have a decent commerce income, plus great production. Everntually Biology comes along and for every two farms you can work another tiler, boom, more production.

 

[walkerjks]

Everntually Biology comes along and for every two farms you can work another tiler, boom, more production.

I'm the oddball on the board who wins games (culture) without ever reasearching Biology, so granted, my situation is unique.

I basically do as you, in terms of hitting the food neutral tiles heavily early. This both allows for fast growth and develops the cottages for science boosts. And yes, at around size 7 to 9, I might have anywhere from 2 to 4 people working on mines (particularly if they are the grassland hills, +1 food, +3 hammer variety). Where I differ significantly from you is in the endgame. When I hit the culture slider (around 1500 AD) to start the clock to a 1900 AD culture win, I shift production off of the hills and onto more cottages. I need the production less (I have built 90% of the culture producing buildings I need), and by this time I have democracy anyway for the +1 hammer town bonus.

Not having biology really does change the equation heavily in favor of cottages. Sure, I drool over the though of how many specialists I could be producing on a flood plain city with farms and Biology, but by the time I would get Biology from where I usually quit researching, the other civs would be 25 turns closer to winning a space victory. I want them to be at thrusters when I win, rather than at stasis chambers.

 

[travathian]

Actually more than half of my wins come via culture before the advent of Biology. Cultural victories seem to be one of things the AI is weakest at. But I do leave my big production cities on production simply to try and finish any and every cultural building, especially cathedrals, asap. Even if there are none to build, I'll switch to just producing flat out culture. Then crank the cultural slider up all the way and cross my fingers. With all the excess gold I made with those cottages, I can run 100% culture until I win.

 

[WoundedKnight]

The holier than thou attitude just makes you look petty dude. As to your cry of profanity, a google search of the forums shows 533 instances of the word ass. Hmm, think the mods have 532 other posts to censor before mine? And as to your claim of a personal attack, maybe you should evaluate the tone in your posts first?

And way to dodge all the holes I put in your strategy man. Just admit you're wrong, update your guide and go on with your life. Its ok, really, you can't be right all of the time. Remember, my name isn't in the title, yours is. Thus the onus is on your to prove your strategy works.

All the holes? LOL!!! Quite a comic you are!

Speaking of tone, you have made a number of bizarre and floridly untrue comments about my strategy "not surviving to the late game" and claim that the strategy is "damaging to n00bs," and you acknowledge that you have never tried it. Yet when I point out deficits in your understanding you claim that I am making the personal attack?!??

If you wish to criticize that which you know little about, be my guest...the loss is yours, not mine. I am happy to answer strategy questions from those who want to raise serious strategy points and can do so. Unfortunately your attempts to discredit that which you haven't tried by exaggerated claims and name-calling and vulgarities only discredits you.

As far as state property coming to late in the game to be useful, speak for yourself...it comes remarkably quickly with this strategy due to rapid tech, but since you haven't tried it, it seems that you wouldn't know.

I stand by what I stated. I continue to have success without building any farms except on specific resource squares and have had cities consistently continue to grow quite large in both the early and late game. I post about that which I know and have tried, and you post about that which you do not know and have not attempted. I consistently can get size 13, 15, 18 cities in the mid-game without ever building a farm except on special resources. I am not saying that there are no viable alternative strategies using farms, as there may well be, but your assertion that my strategy is not viable is false. In the absence of any effort from your part to understand instead of criticize, I don't know how to state it any more clearly to make it comprehensible to you. I'm happy to discuss strategy, but would appreciate civility if you wish to post here.

Yes, I will post screenies when I get to it, although it seems unlikely that any amount of data would be convincing to one of your attitude and demeanor. If you were to actually try the strategy yourself before attacking both it and me, I am sure that it would be much more beneficial for your CIV education than any amount of evidence I could produce to a skeptical critic who has already decided that I must be wrong before lifting a finger to examine the data.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Here are some screenies of cities using my strategy. Note that all cities are large and are very productive. These cities include many plain and hill squares. There are NO farms, except on special resource squares that require farms. Only watermills, cottages, mines, and resource-specific improvements. Many of the cities have specialists as well. And ALL of the cities are still growing.

Is there a role for farms? I think so, but I find few uses for them. As I mentioned, I build cities on rivers whenever possible for multiple reasons (bonus health + food from watermills + commerce). The one time when I think farms may come in handy is for cities far from a river in unfertile areas (plains, hills, but no grassland), but even then the player faces the difficulty that the irrigation has to come FROM somewhere: you can't irrigate squares without access to water without the appropriate technology. Thus the irony that farms cannot be built in the early game in the squares where they are the most needed, leaving them with limited utility.

Of course one could argue that early farms can accelerate city growth. Again the problem that I find with that tactic, especially on higher difficulty levels, is that city growth -- at least, the growth of appropriately placed cities -- is typically restricted by happiness and health rather than food until the cities are already very large and the empire is highly developed. I find the watermill/cottage/mine strategy as I have outlined it to be most beneficial as it allows for city growth that is steady but does not grow at such a high speed that citizens are sick or unhappy. Additionally, because cottages take lots of time to grow, they are coming into their own and becoming a major economic and productivity force that catapults both science and production by mid-game.

If someone has what they feel is a good strategy centered around building lots of farms, more power to them. But claims that my city improvement strategy does not allow for viable city growth are, as one can see here, uninformed and contrary to fact.

 

[travathian]

Here are some screenies of cities using my strategy. Note that all cities are large and are very productive. These cities include many plain and hill squares. There are NO farms, except on special resource squares that require farms. Only watermills, cottages, mines, and resource-specific improvements. Many of the cities have specialists as well. And ALL of the cities are still growing.

No farms except on special resource squares that require farms?

1st screenshot: Farm south of Nanjing on plains, another 2NE of Bejing on plains. 2 more south of Cologne, appear to be on floodplains, which could be considered a special resource.

2nd screenshot: 1st square due east of Shanghai. 4 food, looks like a farmed grassland. Makes sense since you're at future tech, so you have biology. Also note that half of your production capacity is via Engineers, which aren't available in numbers early in the game.

3rd screenshot: This is the typical example you have been giving, lots of watermills, cottages, mines, and no farms. Which is cool, once you're this far in the game. Lets see what this city looked like 2000 years earlier.

4th screenshot: This is the typical example I have been giving. Most tiles provide two food, which is enough to continue growth but not work a mined tile with 0 food without stagnating. The sheep (?) provide a much needed +1 food which means you can work one of the plains mines. I also see a grassland with forest and . . . a lumbermill? Why not chop it down and put up a cottage?

5th screenshot: I count seven farms, only 1 of which is on a flood plain. I can tell because they are all grasslands and you don't have biology yet. I'm assuming this was done because the watermills have yet to provide a +1 food, so they are not self sustaining, thus the need for additional food.

Excess population in the early game is a good thing because you can make use of slavery to rush build much needed buildings, while saving those forests for later in the game when you're no longer running slavery or for lumbermills.

And as far as criticizing your strategy without trying it, I don't need to play a bunch of games to test this strategy. All I have to do is fire up one of my previous saves and look at my cities. I take out the little improvement chart and start doing the math to compare all of the various tile improvements between the two strategies. I can see if a tile was grass or plains, and the net effect of different improvements. I do this every game though, for every tile, in every city. I put whatever improvement is best for that tile, for that city, for my current strategy.

You say yourself that cottages come into their own mid-game, but then turn around and say that Communism comes quickly due to this strategy. Communism comes towards the end of the mid-game (assuming you go all the way to FT). So the cottages only help with that final push, assuming you even have enough population to work them with no farms. This is, once again, assuming you survive long enough to do any of this. Building watermills everywhere you can isn't quite so beneficial if you never survive to Communism. And if you counter with "but I always do so well against the AI" I'll just counter with "turn the difficulty up a couple notches and retry". If you're trouncing the computer so easily, try it on a harder difficulty and see if your strategy still works.

 

[DementedAvenger]

WoundedKnight, what difficulty level do you play? Judging by your screenshots, it looks like Settler or Chieftain to me (I count +4 bonus health and +6 bonus happiness in both Liverpool and London, which is the bonus for the first two difficulties) - you should probably mention that these strategies are for low difficulty levels, and may not necessarily work on the higher ones.

Also, there are a few things you say that are a little iffy, like saying farms aren't very useful or

Even cities on the plains with no water and no hills can become modestly productive through the construction of towns alone: every square is contributing something to production; there are no "food-only" tiles.

I don't think travathian is trying to attack you personally, but is merely questioning the usefulness of some of your strategies on higher difficulty levels, which I think is fair.


Please correct me if I counted the health/happiness bonuses wrong.

 

[segawang]

Fairly speaking, WK's cottage-windmill strategy though goes to an extreme, did point out that an excess of food is not as encouraged as in Civ3.

As we all know, unlike in Civ3, a city in Civ4 does not drop populations after producing settlers and works. Also, the population size of a city is more limited in Civ4, especially in high difficulties. As for a city facing population limit in Civ3, you could simply build a settler or a couple of workers, making it go back to normal. While in Civ4, you could only whip products with slavery to reduce the population size effectively (very handy strategy if you got a flood plain start). Otherwise, you could only build settlers and worker continuously (not a bad idea at the early stage )... The point here is: food excess in Civ4 is not as awardable as Civ3 (it's actually punished somehow).

This is not the whole story. The revolutionary change in the tile setting from Civ3 to Civ4 is: Road no longer brings commerce, while cottages do, and in an interesting way. In Civ3 it's more or less a balance between food and shield only, as you definitely built roads anywhere. However, in Civ4 it's a three part balance, which is much more challeging! But there is ALWAYS a BALANCE.

Any deviation from this balance would show certain predictable consequences down the stretch. In a strategy like cottage everywhere, no farm at all, it would be easier to be technologically advanced. However, the slower of population growth (compare to 'farmers'), and the relatively short of hammers (partly caused by the slower growth), would result in less infrastructures (this will affect the population limit most, so another balance point here) and less military forces.

What would happen if a 'merchant' meets a 'farmer' in a multiplayer game? I could see that at least in the swordsman era, the merchant could be several tech ahead. But if the farmer launches a good timing war, he would take great advantage. The farmer's military force will outscore the merchant, maybe not much, maybe even not enough to take the key cities. But his force should be enough for him to pillage the villages or even towns. The farmer would get rich in no time after having launched a timing war. Another great design in Civ4!

WK made this fabulous thread to educate Civ4 newbies (I guess the oldest player here is still a newbie ), as well as to share information. I think we should all respect his work. However, the work itself is open to be criticized and improve. I think the words like 'never build a farm' represents an unbalanced play, which possibly would result in serious consequence, as I have pointed. Of course, to build several early cottages is a VERY good idea , especially in high difficulties in term of keeping up with (maybe should say chasing up instead) AI's tech speed. It is particularly true when using financial civs. It's much more appropiate to say 'farm is not as important as in Civ3'. You rarely need to build an extra farm in the city that grabs more than two food resources.

 

[WoundedKnight]

WoundedKnight, what difficulty level do you play? Judging by your screenshots, it looks like Settler or Chieftain to me (I count +4 bonus health and +6 bonus happiness in both Liverpool and London, which is the bonus for the first two difficulties) - you should probably mention that these strategies are for low difficulty levels, and may not necessarily work on the higher ones.

Please correct me if I counted the health/happiness bonuses wrong.

No, as I mentioned at the beginning of the guide, these saves were played on noble level where neither the player nor the AI gets any bonuses.

 

[DementedAvenger]

No, as I mentioned at the beginning of the guide, these saves were played on noble level where neither the player nor the AI gets any bonuses.

Sorry, I guess I didn't see that. Just FYI, you still get 3 bonus health and 5 bonus happiness on Noble, but the AI gets the same bonus, which is why the level is "even."

 

[snepp]

Sorry, I guess I didn't see that. Just FYI, you still get 3 bonus health and 5 bonus happiness on Noble, but the AI gets the same bonus, which is why the level is "even."

Since we're FYI'ing...a couple notable difference between human and AI on noble.

Human pays 50% unit costs while AI pays 100%
Human pays 100% unit support while AI pays 35%
Human pays 100% unit upgrade while AI pays 30%

AI gets 10 free hammers in a new city for first build. This is an interesting one, appears to be hardcoded. Not sure if it's effected by era, requires further observation.

That's just a few differences, the others can be seen by browsing the handicap file.

(apologies for the thread hijack, thought it might be relevant in some way)

 

[SmartMuffin]

WK,

I'm a relative noob compared to most of you guys (played a lot of Civ1 and 2 back when I was a kid with no job and no responsibilities, skipped Civ3 because I didn't really care for it much), and am willing to at least give your cottage strategy a shot.

My question though is whether or not your strategy is too dependent on randomness to be effective all the time. Judging by the games I've played, it seems to me that on randomly generated maps that per every five cities, I'm lucky to have one that is set up to be production-centric. Hills seem to be rare, and depending on watermills (which require rivers that you don't always have in abundance AND certain middle/late level techs to fully utilize) doesn't seem like a solution to me.

The vast majority of the time, my cities are surrounded by plains, grasslands, and forests. Production is always my biggest problem. Hammers are very hard to come by, especially as you start chopping those forests down to rush things. My question is, how do you improve production in the early/mid stages or in cities that aren't near rivers or hills? Or is the strat dependent on having only one or two cities with anything near decent production?

 

[podraza]

I am the epitome of the noob WK wrote this for. I used WK's strategy in a very easy Chieftan game. While my experience may not match that of others, I found that population growth was steady, if not fast. There was a point or two where I was forced to build a farm to keep growing in certain cities. But for the most part new technology allowed me to squeeze enough food out of my farmless map enough to grow.

I thought playing with WKs strategy was a terrific learning tool as well. As a total novice at micromanaging city tiles, I felt overwhelmed by the number of choices and didn't know what to do when. Playing with a simplified set of choices allowed me to get a handle on just what exactly I was doing, and how the whole thing works. I feel like I could now throw in a couple more worker improvements if I felt it was right to do so.

Anyway, the point of this story is that WK's strategy allowed me to grow pretty much in line with the health and happiness limits. For most cities, had I built farms, I would have exceeded those limits before I was able to build some new improvement or tech that would raise them. So I'm wondering:

Can we agree that a city is in the best position when its population is the maximum allowed without exceeding the health or happiness limits? Compare a size 10 city with no sickness or unhappiness to a size 11 that has one of either? Sickness and unhappiness cause waste and waste is always bad in Civ no? Sickness and unhappiness are signs that you are NOT being as efficient as you could be, right?

Remember, me = noob.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Well I have to apologize for being an idiot and posting the wrong pics. It would help if I posted screenies that actually came from a game using the strategy I posted. The screenies above were from my first couple of games, the one had the workers on auto and did not reflect my strategy at all. Sorry!

Let's try this again with the proper screenies.

You'll notice that the cities are quite large, up to size 20.

Of course good city position is important: I position on rivers wherever possible (extra food from watermills), and near bonus resources wherever possible. If you don't get good city position (which most of the time you should be able to do with proper planning), be prepared to build more farms.

One important acknowledgment: I see in a couple screenies that one of my automated workers (I had them on manual until the last few years) snuck in one farm (size 20 city) or a couple (size 17 city). But you can see that there are also many specialists in the cities, that the farm adds no more food (pre-biology) than a single watermill, and that the farm is not at all critical to my strategy: the cities was already very large and the AI built it after several of my towns were plundered in a recent war with the Chinese. You can also see that there are lots of cities here with no farms at all which are quite large, very productive, and growing.

The size 20 city with the 1 farm actually demonstrates a worthwhile point: that city has become unhealthy (my only unhealthy city, BTW), in spite of numerous improvements and an extensive trade network, so the farm is actually detrimental or -- at best -- worthless. This city would be far better off with an additional town instead of the farm to get the economic and production bonuses. *especially* at higher difficulty levels, building farms inappropriately will only dig oneself into a hole, creating unsustainable cities with unhappy/unhealthy citizens. Even in an empire that is very large (you can see my score is 2.5-3x that of my closest neighbors) with abundant trade resources on noble level, I am STILL running into the problem of unhealthiness and my city has had all the growth that it can sustain without any help from farms. Extra food becomes absolutely worthless when happiness/healthiness are exceeded, whereas production and commerce ALWAYS result in positive effects: production, growth, research -- and they roll over and cannot be wasted.

To sum it up, the cottage/mine/watermill strategy is very effective and allows for steady city growth. I think that the strategy if anything will be MORE effective above noble level because happiness and health are even more limited on higher levels and the last thing anyone needs is surplus unhappy or unhealthy population that produces nothing.

I think that there ARE times when farms are valuable, but they must be kept in perspective to ensure that city growth does not outstrip health and happiness. Again, poorly-placed cities -- i.e. away from rivers and without significant bonus resources augmenting food supply -- may find a real necessity for farms. And if for whatever reason you have such a surplus of happiness and health in your cities that you want to accelerate growth with a farm, a well-placed farm or two may have its place. If you do notice in the mid or late game that a city is starting to stagnate and is not growing for whatever reason, it is probably a good idea to consider adding a farm or two. The strategy I have described, with this added description of a limited role for farms, is sound: building the early cottages is very important to get economy, research, and production into maturity by mid-game, while farms offer only slight benefits (+1 food initially) until the late game (+2 food total after biology). A role, yes, but I view farms as a "quick-fix" improvement for fine-tuning city growth. They simply don't require the same long-term planning or maturation that cottages do.

Hope this helps.

WK

 

[WoundedKnight]

WK,
The vast majority of the time, my cities are surrounded by plains, grasslands, and forests. Production is always my biggest problem. Hammers are very hard to come by, especially as you start chopping those forests down to rush things. My question is, how do you improve production in the early/mid stages or in cities that aren't near rivers or hills? Or is the strat dependent on having only one or two cities with anything near decent production?

An excellent question, and I appreciate (and agree with) the point that production is much more limiting than food or growth in most cases -- even on low and intermediate difficulty levels, and much more so on high difficulty. .

All cities can become reasonably productive with appropriate planning and strategy. Options for increased production include:

Cottages can be placed anywhere (towns +1 production with universal suffrage), but their production bonus comes late (after full growth into towns) and only with the correct civic.

Watermill. An immediate +1 production boost, with final bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +2 production with full techs and civics. These are very helpful in increasing the production of plains, grassland, or flood plains adjacent to rivers that have little innate production capability. And once you have the correct techs/civics, the bonuses are immediate and do not require the maturation that cottages do.

Mines. +2 production. Of course they can be placed only on hills or appropriate resources.

Windmill. +1 food, +2 commerce, +1 production with full upgrades (replaceable parts, electricity). Similar in final bonuses to watermill except watermill offers total bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +2 production, with the last +1 production requiring state property. Windmill also gives food first and production last, while watermills give the production first and food last. Windmills could be a good alternative to farms mid-game (before biology) at a time when farms offer only +1 food, but no commerce or production bonus. The windmill is a reasonable all-around improvement when you need both food and production, although the commerce benefits are much smaller than towns.

Lumbermill. In the late game (railroad -- very late), +3 to production, and as someone pointed out, chopping down the trees doesn't add any more food production (unlike C3C). I didn't realize early on that forests do not impede food at all, and will need to revise my earlier comments slightly to reflect that the lumbermill is a good way to increase your productivity -- if, of course, you can wait that long for the full effects -- much later than cottages and windmills. The late benefits of a lumbermill must also be weighed against the benefits of chopping in the early game for benefits that can be quite substantial at a time when your civilization's productivity is very low: chopped trees can result in a much faster start, extra cities, or more wonders. In general I favor early chopping, as the late benefits of trees may be moot if your civ falls behind (or, fails to jump into the lead) in the early game.


Workshop. +1 production, -1 food. With max upgrades they can offer up to +3 production, -1 food. I never use workshops. While I'm not a big farm advocate, I am all in favor of conserving and developing the food supply that does exist, and there are better ways to get some extra production while offering economic bonuses (towns) or both economic and food bonuses (watermills).

In sum, I think that watermills/cottages/mines are great for production and commerce. A reasonably strong argument can also be made for the judicious use of windmills, and -- if you still have the luxury of trees in the late game -- lumbermills. Workshops are probably best to stay away from in most cases, although they may have rare legitimate uses.

-WK

 

[WoundedKnight]

Fairly speaking, WK's cottage-windmill strategy though goes to an extreme, did point out that an excess of food is not as encouraged as in Civ3. What would happen if a 'merchant' meets a 'farmer' in a multiplayer game? I could see that at least in the swordsman era, the merchant could be several tech ahead. But if the farmer launches a good timing war, he would take great advantage. The farmer's military force will outscore the merchant, maybe not much, maybe even not enough to take the key cities. But his force should be enough for him to pillage the villages or even towns. The farmer would get rich in no time after having launched a timing war. Another great design in Civ4! WK made this fabulous thread to educate Civ4 newbies (I guess the oldest player here is still a newbie ), as well as to share information. I think we should all respect his work. However, the work itself is open to be criticized and improve. I think the words like 'never build a farm' represents an unbalanced play, which possibly would result in serious consequence, as I have pointed. Of course, to build several early cottages is a VERY good idea , especially in high difficulties in term of keeping up with (maybe should say chasing up instead) AI's tech speed.

Thank you for raising some excellent points. I am not sure that a farmer will have a better military than a merchant, since the "merchant" will typically be far ahead in tech: As you see from the screenies I have posted, I am running around with cavalry (STR 15) when my opponents have only swordsmen (STR 6), war elephants (STR 8), and a few scattered knights (STR 10) and macement (STR 8). Also the productivity with this strategy is excellent.

You do point out a significant vulnerability that must be taken seriously. Pillaging cottages can be devastating. At normal speed the cottage->city transition takes 70 turns (cottage->hamlet 10 turns; hamlet->village 20 turns; village->town 40 turns), and with civics to double the speed, 35 turns under the best case. In a game that has only 400 turns or so (would have to check on the exact number), this is a big block of time -- and the game is often largely decided well before the end. This is certainly something that the AI exploits, and human players can exploit even more extensively -- cottage-pillaging can trash a civ's economy and tech rate. I suspect that cottage building will be kept in greater moderation in MP games. One must keep this in mind when building cottages. A border city next to the warmongering Mongols or a tough MP opponent may not be a great spot to build cottages indiscriminately.

One thing to consider when cottages are pillaged is that (at the appropriate game stage) watermills and windmills offer substantial immediate benefits (production, economy, & food), without requiring the long build-up time of cottages. Thus these other improvements may be a better choice when rebuilding pillaged cottages, or in close games when immediate food and production are necessary.

-WK

 

[SmartMuffin]

An excellent question, and I appreciate (and agree with) the point that production is much more limiting than food or growth in most cases -- even on low and intermediate difficulty levels, and much more so on high difficulty. .

All cities can become reasonably productive with appropriate planning and strategy. Options for increased production include:

Cottages can be placed anywhere (towns +1 production with universal suffrage), but their production bonus comes late (after full growth into towns) and only with the correct civic.

Watermill. An immediate +1 production boost, with final bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +2 production with full techs and civics. These are very helpful in increasing the production of plains, grassland, or flood plains adjacent to rivers that have little innate production capability. And once you have the correct techs/civics, the bonuses are immediate and do not require the maturation that cottages do.

Mines. +2 production. Of course they can be placed only on hills or appropriate resources.

Windmill. +1 food, +2 commerce, +1 production with full upgrades (replaceable parts, electricity). Similar in final bonuses to watermill except watermill offers total bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +2 production, with the last +1 production requiring state property. Windmill also gives food first and production last, while watermills give the production first and food last. Windmills could be a good alternative to farms mid-game (before biology) at a time when farms offer only +1 food, but no commerce or production bonus. The windmill is a reasonable all-around improvement when you need both food and production, although the commerce benefits are much smaller than towns.

Lumbermill. In the late game (railroad -- very late), +3 to production, and as someone pointed out, chopping down the trees doesn't add any more food production (unlike C3C). I didn't realize early on that forests do not impede food at all, and will need to revise my earlier comments slightly to reflect that the lumbermill is a good way to increase your productivity -- if, of course, you can wait that long for the full effects -- much later than cottages and windmills. The late benefits of a lumbermill must also be weighed against the benefits of chopping in the early game for benefits that can be quite substantial at a time when your civilization's productivity is very low: chopped trees can result in a much faster start, extra cities, or more wonders. In general I favor early chopping, as the late benefits of trees may be moot if your civ falls behind (or, fails to jump into the lead) in the early game.


Workshop. +1 production, -1 food. With max upgrades they can offer up to +3 production, -1 food. I never use workshops. While I'm not a big farm advocate, I am all in favor of conserving and developing the food supply that does exist, and there are better ways to get some extra production while offering economic bonuses (towns) or both economic and food bonuses (watermills).

In sum, I think that watermills/cottages/mines are great for production and commerce. A reasonably strong argument can also be made for the judicious use of windmills, and -- if you still have the luxury of trees in the late game -- lumbermills. Workshops are probably best to stay away from in most cases, although they may have rare legitimate uses.

-WK

WK,

I appreciate the input, but I'm not sure you really addressed my question. I am aware of all the options to increase production, but very few of those options are viable in the early/mid stages of the game (ie, when it really matters because you want to get ahead of the AI). I don't often go with US unless in a time of war, which negates the Prod. bonus of towns.

Also, I'm not knocking mines or watermills or windmills, but those are both very location-dependent. I try to place my cities in very well-rounded locations, but sometimes you just don't have the option (what with the mass-expanding AI cornering you in before 500 AD). There are going to be some cities that aren't near a river, and aren't near any hills either. And production is important everywhere for every strategy. Obviously I wouldn't choose a city like that to be my military city, but in the early game when you're just trying to crank out settlers, workers, and defense units, specialization isn't nearly as vital.

I don't often employ the early-chop method, as it seems that the vast majority of production in most of my cities comes from Forest tiles (which seem to be abundant in this game). I am a big fan of lumbermills, but by the time you have replaceable parts, most of the game has fallen into place already. I guess there really is no solution to my particular problem, other than to try and place all cities in production-heavy areas. It just seems to me that commerce is remarkably easy to generate (you can build cottages in any terrain, get the tech to do so almost immediatley, and have greater control over how it is used) but production is kind of a "You're screwed if your city is surrounded by only grasslands and plains" situation.

 

[AnotherJon]

About organised:

In a recent game during war time with Police State, Vassalage, Caste System, Free Market, Theocracy enabled my civic upkeek was 118 gpt and 181 after 54% inflation. This was on a small map with 20 cities, many of which were not very productive as I was heading for domination and they had not had time to develop following their capture. Financial may still have been better but it not obvious.

 

[AnotherJon]

I guess there really is no solution to my particular problem, other than to try and place all cities in production-heavy areas. It just seems to me that commerce is remarkably easy to generate (you can build cottages in any terrain, get the tech to do so almost immediatley, and have greater control over how it is used) but production is kind of a "You're screwed if your city is surrounded by only grasslands and plains" situation.

Hope you don't mind if I comment.

With cities that have very low production I just tend to farm the tiles and make frequent use of the whip in the early game before switching over to cottages. Not sure if this is optimal, but so long as you can build defensive units elsewhere I don't think it inhibits growth so much (especially not if the granary is the first building you rush). I tend to do this at coastal as well as plains-bound cities.

 

[MosquitoE]

I found a lot of WK's guide very helpful, I even printed out some of it as a good reference on civics.
I am currently playing a game on the great plains map. And unfortunately it is pretty much what is says.. a lot of plains. There is very little food bonus squares, rivers or hills.
The mine/watermill/cottage strat is not as effective without some grassland squares to give you the base +2 food to start on. I find I need to use farms just to get enough food for the workers to support themselves.

On the edges of the maps there are mountains, hills and rivers. I am trying to get a few cities over there by some floodplains so I can get some higher pop cities to work on commerce and greatpeople.

Thanks again WK.