Managing Terrain: Mines or irrigation?

[star mouse]

What terrain management policy do you use on grasslands? Do you build all mines, or have some irrigation? If you have a cow or wheat, do you irrigate or mine it? How are these decisions influenced by the presence of bonus grassland?

I have found that mining the bonus grasslands works well, especially early in the game. When railroad is available, these become quite productive. I will mine some of the other grassland squares and irrigate the rest. I always mine wheat squares so I get production and food from them. I irrigate or mine cow squares according to need, but I usually mine them.

What about plains squares?

I usually irrigate the lot without a second thought. When Railroad is available, there's a good case for mining half of them to gain a big production boost. Two plains squares, one irrigated and one mined and both with a railroad should generate four food and four production between them.

So how do you manage plains and grasslands?

[Dis]

Mine all grassland during despotism. I irrigate planes. After that I usually turn most grassland into irrigation. But I still keep some grassland mines. as getting large cities in civ3 isn't all that great anyways. I'll take the production over food.

[notyoueither]

Ditto Dissident.

Specialists aren't as useful as increased production, until...

You realize that the relative production cost differences of Cav/ModArm are not that great for most cities.

Once you are able to build ModArm in 2 turns (what, about 61 shields?) might as well crank up the food and get some gold out of the rather mild tax collectors. 2 turns is 2 turns is 2 turns, since there is no carry-over.

Hey! Did someone at Firaxis design this as wishful thinking of how the IRS might be?

OTOH. Space ship parts will reward the heavy industrial centres. So a mix seems to be in order. Although, that's why I colonize cities near lots of hills.

Salve

[Dis]

unless you are in a super tight race for the space ship. You really only need 4 to 6 high producing mineral cities. This should be enough to get your space ship up and running.

I like to keep my other cities moderately productive. Nothing too fancy, just fast enough to get city improvements built in a reasonable amount of time along with offensive military units if need be.

then you have cities that are worthless from corruption. you might as well expand the population to get points from population for your final score.

[player1]

In despotism:
Mine grass, irrigate plains.

In other govenements (grass & plains):
I usually combine in such way that my cities grows in 5 turns (granary included).
Exept if it has alreday reached its limit. Than I try to mine more so city won't have much spec. (prduction is better).

I never had 25+ pop cities, nor I want to (NEVER play just for scores).


P.S.
This is main reason why automated workers suck.
You can't optimize mine vs irrig. with them, you can do it only manualy.

[Purple]

Depends on the surrounding terrain.

In general grasslands get mines and plains get irrigation (given a source of fresh water). But if a city is located near tiles that don't produce much food, for example, mountains, I irrigate enough grassland to enable continued growth.

[Arrian]

I only irrigate certain squares under despotism (start of game):

Wheat on F.P. (can't mine anyway)
Wheat on grass (though depending on the situation, I may mine)
Cow on grass (same as wheat on grass)
Plains w/o wheat or cows

I think that about does it. Later, some irrigation is done, but I like my cities to stop growing around size 18-20.

-Arrian

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Mine grassland, irrigate plains.

The only reason I'd irrigate grassland is if the city using it will be using numerous mines. Otherwise, cities will max their population looooong before you can build hospitals. Once a city is size 12 (or 6 if that seems optimal), I'll mine that irrigated land to minimize food waste and get another shield.

[Windwalker]

What I usually do is make sure my city will be stable or only producing 1 excess food when at size 12, which is where I keep my cities for most of the game (pollution is such a bother until your workers are done building all the railroads). However, some cities are worker/settler factories, so they will always have a lot of irrigated squares to recover quickly from the pop loss.

This is the Size 12 Boring Strategy

- Windwalker

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Windwalker
What I usually do is make sure my city will be stable or only producing 1 excess food when at size 12, which is where I keep my cities for most of the game (pollution is such a bother until your workers are done building all the railroads). However, some cities are worker/settler factories, so they will always have a lot of irrigated squares to recover quickly from the pop loss.
- Windwalker

With a few worker factories your cities only need to not have a food deficit to grow. If you have two worker factories one of them can make a settler and immediately regain both pop points with the help of a worker from the other, all with each city only having 1 excess food.

[Oerdin]

Originally posted by barefootbadass
With a few worker factories your cities only need to not have a food deficit to grow. If you have two worker factories one of them can make a settler and immediately regain both pop points with the help of a worker from the other, all with each city only having 1 excess food.

I believe v1.17f has greatly reduced the effectiveness of the worker/settler factories as it relates to ICS.

[Worthingtons]

Basically, for all my cities on 'good' sities, I simply work the mines/irrigation around getting the City to size 21 (maximum tiles worked providing no overlap, which i rarely have) and no bigger, Specialists are useless so if there is excess food then i turn it into production...