Why you do NOT want to mine shielded grasslands!

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'm wondering if there's a way of using this approach to maximise the despotism GA. I suspect not, as the only way to benefit is to have a lot of mined non-SG and irrigated plains. It's difficult to have lots when cities are pumpin' settlers, so it'd mean not expanding much, but growing three or four cities up then triggering the GA.

I don't see any way to maximize the GA in despotism, because there is no way you can get more irrigation using just grassland in despotism. However, if you get your GA just before switching to republic / monarchy (this sometimes happens, and a gov switch might be good, as you won't get many bonusses in despotism anyway), you sometimes are already irrigating land, even if it won't do you any good in despotism. In this case, it is no problem to start irrigation the SGs as well, because these will provide 2 shields in a despotism GA, whether they are mined, irrigated, or bare land. And mining normal grass will give them the 2 shield bonus as well, so you don't lose anything doing it a bit earlier then needed (you won't gain anything either)

DeepO

[wonkyrat]

I like to mine grasslands until the city has built an aqueduct and again until it has built a hospital as if you can't increase population size anyway it is useless to concentrate on food production, better to concentrate on shields. Once I get engineering, the mining becomes forest. After hospitals I irrigate every bit of land I can.

[Hurricane]

What about waste? Later in the game, a very large number of cities will only produce 1 shield/turn because of waste. I usually end up irrigating all tiles around these cities so they can grow at max speed and thus increase my score. The only improvements they get are Aqueducts and sometimes hospitals.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by wonkyrat
I like to mine grasslands until the city has built an aqueduct and again until it has built a hospital as if you can't increase population size anyway it is useless to concentrate on food production, better to concentrate on shields. Once I get engineering, the mining becomes forest. After hospitals I irrigate every bit of land I can.

Well... this seems like a strange strategy. It all depends on the situation, of course, but unless you have the pyramids or granaries in place there is little chance you will bump into the pop limits before you can build aquaducts/hospitals. Before aquaducts, I try to get 3-4 extra food, which, without bonus resources, you won't get unless you irrigate something. Before hospitals, I aim at 5-8 extra food, again not doable without any irrigation. And after my cities grow, there is no sense in booming their growth beyond size 20, as the specialists you will get are worthless. So, I gradually decrease the amount of irrigation, and get as much mining as possible, as shields are useful and specialists are not.

This is about the counter strategy to yours...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, wonkyrat, I forgot to mention this: why do you forest mined tiles? That one I don't understand, as you lose food with it, and thus need irrigation somewhere else to support your citizens. Mines are fine on grassland, and with RR produce exactly the same amount of shields as a forest, but more food.

Originally posted by Hurricane
What about waste? Later in the game, a very large number of cities will only produce 1 shield/turn because of waste. I usually end up irrigating all tiles around these cities so they can grow at max speed and thus increase my score. The only improvements they get are Aqueducts and sometimes hospitals.

True, to a certain extent. The problem is that you will have to 'see' where you will not get any shields anyhow, in those cities you only need irrigation, and preferably not too much either (as you don't have the shields to build temples, cathedrals, marketplaces so you risk of only gaining unhappy citizens). But many of the cities can have some shields, but for instance only 85% of normal, uncorrupted cities. If you have 20 shields coming from mining etc, that's still 3 shields instead of 1. Not something terribly productive, but at least you can build some improvements on your own, instead of having to rush everything.
But it is only worth it in a few cases, like when you need a beachhead, or you're planning on relocating your palace, or you're going for the best possible score. Otherwise, just forget about those cities. Automate your workers, start building on a temple, a marketplace, and an aquaduct (or a temple, marketplace and a cathedral), set the governor to manage moods, and just let it do its thing without any interaction on your part.

DeepO

[rflagg]

Another thing to think about, though I've always been one who mines SGs and irrigates the regular Gs, is when your territory is under attack.

Most AI civs like to do some pillaging, and if you mine/irrigate the way that's suggested here, you'll be less likely to be severly hurt when a pillaging occurs.

Quick example in case you don't see my point: The AI pillages your irrigated-RR grassland which was bringing in 3f/0s. Your loss will be 2 food, which is usually quite a bit in a border city that's main goal is expansion, not production. However, with the "new" strat, you would lose only 1 food, while most likely losing shields that aren't even gaining you anything anyways.

This is an idea that's never crossed my mind in the 3 Civ games to come along, and any time I'd see the auto settlers/workers do this, I'd cry foul at the stupid AI, because it obviously didn't know what it was doing to my land. I guess it helps to go against the grain (or wheat)!

-Rflagg.

[DeepO]

you are right... however, you wouldn't want an AI pillaging many tiles of your land, and you should have some reserve improvements to cover for those.

However, your example I don't fully get. A irrigated + RR grassland gets 4food, 0 shields. Pillaged that would be 2 food. Mined, it would be 2 food, 2 shields, going to 2 food again. Your loss won't be one food, but zero!

But, an immediate comment, even if this is true in theory, you are not very likely to see it happening in game. The AI will pillage whatever is on its way towards your city, or nets you something special. So resources are pillaged first, and further the path towards your city (most of the times taking the defensive rout, so over hills, forests, jungle, or any other way you force him to). By the time he reaches you, you should be able to at least damage him so he returns without pillaging you too much

DeepO

[MJW]

Originally posted by Velociryx


and I tend to shy away from having too many cities bigger than size 13 (too much pollution for me).


-=Vel=-

In the endgame pollution does not matter because you can clear it away in zero turns and Gobal Warming does not matter because it hurts everyone the same.

[Hagbart]

Yeah you must be right that it is best to have mined grassland and irrigated shield-grassland when going into GA. Thx for the tip.

[André Alfenaar]

What about putting forests on regular Grassland (non-shielded)? Wouldn't this be a nice trick to increase your production if your cities are placed in a flat -low production- country of mainly grasslands?

[Theseus]

Good call Andre... not just under the circumstances you describe, btw.

In the period prior to Sanitation, many cities get stuck at 12 pop... you might as well forest all unshielded grassland, to the point where there is no excess food.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Have been looking through strategies since geting access to PtW in an effort to maximise the efforts in my current game, and I couldn't help but notice and comment here.

ALl of this irrigating SGs sounds well and good if you want to have to go back and change all your mined SGs (and it seems all agree mining SGs early on is THE way to go), but frankly I have got to the size where I don't want to do that. It takes too long and too much MM. Furthermore, it seems to me that the main idea behind irrigating SGs is to be able to access those mined hills earlier on. OK, but if you are

1.making tonnes of food from flood plains
2.already have the pop to use said mined hills
3.away from your GA (either you had it before or you aren't going for it for some time)

then mining SGs is still the best way to go.
The only exception to where these situations apply would be where you have a city that is far too corrupt to be of much production use, in which case irrigating will at least give you extra pop for workers/settlers/poprushing in a wartime return to Despotism.

So, in brief summary (disclaimer: read the rest of the thread - this is a gross simplification), mine SGs in Despotism. Since in Monarchy irrigating grassland gives you extra food (where it didn't in Despotism), it can be useful to irrigate so your cities can grow to use the high-shield terrain around more quickly. Once you are using this high-shield terrain, go back to mining the SGs, provided you have enough food for your city's size.

[Theseus]

Without re-reading the thread, I currently find that, due to tight city spacing, I really NEED to re-irrigate SGs late in the game to get further city growth, especially past 12-13 pop.

And with the exception of artificial situations like AU 203, it's not like I don;t have a GAJILLION foreign workers hanging around anyway!

[theNiceOne]

Originally posted by Theseus
Without re-reading the thread, I currently find that, due to tight city spacing, I really NEED to re-irrigate SGs late in the game to get further city growth, especially past 12-13 pop.

By tight city spacing I assume you mean that each city has around 13 squares each. In that case, why would you sacrifice production for growth after the city has reached size 12?
Each additional citizen after the 12th means:
* Two more food has to be produced, which again means two less shields.
* One more gold (if the new citizen becomes a taxman).

So you trade away two shields and get one gold. This can be a good trade if the city is so corrupt that the shields are simply vasted, or if you just care about score (since one additional citizen adds to your score).

But if you have a well-developde city with factory and a plant, you get 4 shields (minus corruption).

[DeepO]

MrWhereItsAt, that was not the point of this thread, if you don't need irrigation, I don't want you to start irrigating SGs... but if you have any irrigated grassland, it should be shielded if possible, as this will give you the most benefits. In produced shields, that is, not in food.

But indeed, it requires MM if you need to go back, but most people here do at least part of the terraforming and thus MM themselves. And just a few workers on manual can do this, while the majority is on automatic.

DeepO

[Theseus]

@ theNiceOne:

Sorry, that post was a little bit specific to AU 203 ("currently" indeed!).

I'd been dealing with being outnumbered and stuck in Communism... thus population (for rushing and drafting) becomes much more important.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by DeepO
... but if you have any irrigated grassland, it should be shielded if possible, as this will give you the most benefits. In produced shields, that is, not in food.

DeepO

A little puzzled by this, DeepO. Some posters here have stated they need to irrigate SGs to keep their pop going, OK. But once you reach the max squares around you being used, there's no need for that anymore, unless you just want a ridiculous city size for showing off. Specialists (with the exception of Entertainers when you really need them and a single scientist in the case of setting your Science rate to zero) seem to be useless. And surely if you have hills around, with one or two SGs and lotsa non-SGs it's best to irrigate the non-SGs only? This way you are specialising each terrain in food or shields, with the SGs giving you 2 of each (before RRs) instead of 1 shield and 3 food. My point is you can have too much food - once you reach the pop to use your whole radius, stop. But you can never have enough shields.

[vulture]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt

And surely if you have hills around, with one or two SGs and lotsa non-SGs it's best to irrigate the non-SGs only? This way you are specialising each terrain in food or shields, with the SGs giving you 2 of each (before RRs) instead of 1 shield and 3 food. My point is you can have too much food - once you reach the pop to use your whole radius, stop. But you can never have enough shields.

The issue is that specialising doesn't gain anything, but does lose out slightly. To pick a concrete version of your example, imagine a size 4 city, which gets to work a shielded grassland, a normal grassland, and two mountains. You need to have 1 grassland irrigated to do this (assuming we have railroads).

Example A: You mine the shielded grassland (and the mountains) and irrigate the normal grassland. Result:
you get 2/1/2 from your city center, 0/4/2 from each of the mountains, 4/0/2 from the irrigated normal grassland, and 2/3/2 from the shielded grassland, giving a total of 8/12/10 (that's food/shields/gold) and a city fixed at size 4.

Example B: You mine the normal grassland and irrigate the shielded grassland. The difference from example A is that you get 4/1/2 from the shielded grassland, and 4/2/2 from the other one. Total: 8/12/10, exactly the same.

No surprise there - mining or irrigating adds the same regardless of which type of grassland (or plains) it is on. But if you mobilise, or have a golden age, only tiles producing at least 1 shield get the bonus. So we go to example A2: 2/2/3 from the city center, 0/5/3 from the mountains, 4/0/3 from the irrigated non-SG, 2/4/3 from the mined SG, giving a total of 8/16/15.

Example B2: as A2, but 4/2/3 from the irrigated SG, 2/3/3 from the mined non-SG. Total: 8/17/15, for a total of one extra shield per turn.

Since you are using all the available tiles, specialisation doesn't gain you anything. You need one irrigation and one mine to use all the available tiles, and they add up to the same overall totals which ever way around you do it. But in the irrigated SG version, all tiles are producing at least one shield, so all of the get the GA/mobilised bonus. In version A2, the irrigated non-grassland gets no bonus to shields.

So, although you usually want to irrigate the bare minimum of tiles to use all the available squares (unless you want to boost your city growth for a while), the tiles you irrigate should always be producing at least 1 shield when irrigated (plains, bonus grassland, desert) so that you get the GA bonus for it (irrigating floodplains being the obvious exception). Just remember that for plains, grassland and desert, irrigation plus RR gives you two extra food, mine plus RR gives two extra shields, so once you know how many extra food you need, you just irrigate that many (plain/desert/grass) tiles, and mine the rest, and where possible never irrigate a normal grassland.

Of course, if you aren't using all the tiles available yet, there is something to be said for specialising. I always mine SG in the early game, but there you face a different limit to the one relevant to this discussion. Early on, you are forced to work a limited number of tiles, and usually want as many shields as possible from those tiles. Once you are using all the tiles, you want to maximise production by mining as many as possible, but want to have the irrigated ones still producing 1 shield so that they can qualify for the golden age bonus.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I see....

So, in short then, it's best to mine the non-SGs and irrigate the SGs once out of Despotism until you have had your GA. Then, since there is no advantage either way, you want to max shields whilst still ensuring you have enough food to grow to ultimately use the whole radius and no further. Then you probably will be mining those shielded SGs again.

Cheers vulture, DeepO - I will try this the next game I start!

[DeepO]

Well, as always, it's depending on the situation. Most of the times, balance is preferable over specialisation. Not only will it be good in GA or mobilization, but it will also be better in normal game (very hard to explain this, using an example, but think on when you go from one size to another, at which time you also want as much shields as possible, while keeping extra irrigation if possible).

There are exceptions, though, in that if you are in the process of wasting food somewhere (as you only need 3 to grow, but you'd produce 4), non-balanced tiles are better. Note that in case you would be wasting shields instead of food, it doesn't matter which grass you irrigate. But in general, these situations are rather rare and require extreme MM, so that you're better of going for both the balance, and the ability to produce more in a GA.

But again, don't irrigate SGs if you don't need irrigation, I only wanted to tell with this thread that if you have irrigation, it is preferable if it's on a tile that already produces shields too.

DeepO

[ManicStarSeed]

Thank you DeepO,

You have made your case well.

This is one of those many little tid-bits of information that will help me decide which tile I do what with, when I need to do something for my city's growth.

I see this as a chance to realize a small edge in the areana of tile improvment.

Any little bit doesn't make a whole lot of difference. BUT... Lots of little bits can add up to a huge advantage.

Mss