Terrain improvement in the first few turns

[SixArmedMan]

Plains, you irrigate if you can. Grasslands? I mine. Anyone else agree?

The rationale of course, is you don't get more than two food tiles on your grasslands until you discover monarchy which is usually about 80 turns away? Something like that. So think about it... 80 turns with 3-4 extra shields (If your city is surrounded by that many grass tiles). When monarchy comes around, if you need growth, then convert. But there's really no arguement against this, is there?

[ChrisShaffer]

If the square naturally produces 3 or 4 food, then the despotism decrease is already factored in, so irrigating is beneficial. An irrigated grassland with cows will produce 4 food under despotism.

[SixArmedMan]

That of course being the exception. But most tiles for the most part won't have special resources. I think there's still an impression that irrigating grasslands is still the best thing to do from the get go as monarchy wasn't very far in civ2. In civ 3, it's a significant amount of turns away. Thus, mining your grasslands is the best way of gaining the full marginal utility of your tiles.

[Whiplashr]

I agree. I tend to avoid irrigation until I get near monarchy,
however there are some exceptions as detailed above.

For me, the best use for the first settler is to build roads and
or mines on 2 or 3 squares around my captiol, and then start
building a road to the next city, and do the same there.

If you are like me, and crank a couple settlers and a worker
from new towns before building them up, they aren't going
to get more than size 3 on any regular basis until later, so
you only need a few maxed out squares. Later on as you have
more workers running around and get nearer to monarchy, I
will try to irrigate some grasslands that are in use so that I'm
growing faster, or perhaps can move a worker to a forest
square without losing my growth rate (gained one on the plains
due to irrigation, lost one by moving from a plains to a forest).

The extra trade from roads at the start is a big boost if you
want to kick start your science, however I've only just learned
about the value of mining grasslands squares (you couldn't
do this in Civ2 could you??). That also helps alot. But still,
for new cities, I think the most important thing is that they
generate some trade and grow by at least 2 food per turn.
I'd focus that way, and start the mines a bit later, as they
are going into the temple and growth phase.

Jim
PS> Everyone remember in Civ2 & SMAC how things
worked regarding growth of a city to 2 and making a
colony pod / settler? If the city was going to grow to
2 in "6 turns" and the colony pod was also done in
"6 turns" you'd get the warning that it would disband
the city or whatever, and it would delay the production
a turn or two. So often you'd try to have the growth
in "6 turns" but the settler in "7turns".

Not so in Civ3. The city can grow on the same turn
as Settler production. I think this is great. I've been
doing it all the time. Growth in 2 turns, settler in 2
turns. No problems.