Unshielded Grassland: the best thing to do

[André Alfenaar]

is:
1. build road
2. plant forest
3. cut forest
4. irrigate

Probably you should do the same thing with plains. Unfortunately, automated workers don't follow this sequence.

[Theseus]

Mine?

[André Alfenaar]

If you think you would end up mining the square, you had better keep the forest.

[Roadrunner]

IIRC the thing with planting a forest and then cutting it down again was removed by a patch (at least the 10 shields revard). Correct me if i am wrong, maybe it works one time each field.
I normaly also mine and then road. Sometimes the other way round, it depends on how urgent the road is.

[Theseus]

You are saying never mine? Forest from the beginning?

[vondrack]

Originally posted by André Alfenaar
If you think you would end up mining the square, you had better keep the forest.

Not true. In the early game, a proper city growth is usually a big priority. A forest generates 1 food and 2 shields. However, the citizen working the forest tile consumes 2 food and thus slows the city growth down, pulling the missing 1 food from another worked tile. OTOH, a mined grassland generates 2 food (->does not hamper the city growth) plus 1 shield (->adds to the production), which is usually better.

[alexman]

Originally posted by André Alfenaar
If you think you would end up mining the square, you had better keep the forest.

With railroad:
Forest: 1 food, 2 shields
Mined grassland: 2 food, 2 shields

[SanPellegrino]

Originally posted by Roadrunner
IIRC the thing with planting a forest and then cutting it down again was removed by a patch (at least the 10 shields revard). Correct me if i am wrong, maybe it works one time each field.

yes, it works once on each field.

At the beginning of the game settlers are IMHO most important, so I like to emphasize food first, therefore foresting grassland is contraproductive to my approach.

[cracker]

You cannot answer this in the vaporlock of looking for an answer that says "always do this". That is just a stupid approach to the game that ignores the fundamental process that you need to master terrain evaluation.

In the early phase of the game, your towns will need 4 to 6 productive squares while you expand rapidly with settlers. You should look at the squares in your 21 tile city radius and see which 6 tiles are the most powerful tiles to support your strategy. You can master this skill by reading the article on:

Improving Your Opening Play Sequences

In most cases, you will find that you have squares available in your city radius that are either bonus squares or plains squares that could be irrigated and these squares should be developed first before wasting time on a common grassland square.

If you have the choice of irrigating a plains square or mining a grassland square, irrigate the plains first because it will cost two less worker turns.

Another factor in this decision process is the presence of rivers. Squares with an edge on a river will yield 1 extra pile of gold coins per turn. Most novice players miss this factor and fail to prioritize improving squares next to rivers before the blindly trudge off to start mining common grasslands.

On the forestry issue, I have covered this in great detail on a 20 page strategy article that details:

Forestry Operations

In the early game planting forest is not an option but in the later game there are 4 different phases depending on where you are in the tech tree and what form of government you have chosen. Just blindly hacking down forests is also and indicator of poor game play skills, but in general every square of forest should be harvested and every square that could get forest planted should be planted and then harvested.

I often plant an cut forest on every possible square in the game but I play in a style that tries to kill the game completely dead and maximize score instead of just simply winning.

[planetfall]

Cracker--

Glad to see you are posting again on apolyton. Been awhile since went over to civfan. Good articles as usual. Thank you for the posting and reference.

-- PF

[Enriquillo]

often plant an cut forest on every possible square in the game but I play in a style that tries to kill the game completely dead and maximize score instead of just simply winning.

I play this game for fun and relaxation, If I need a competitive game I'll play AoK, which has a lot more pace and strategy in it.

That's why you won't see me playing this game MP, I just don't want to spend the time to learn every single trick there is to know about Civ3, in order to be competitive.
Cause that's what a lot of the strategy in this game is, a trick

Another thing that keeps me from MP is the random warfare, there is just no way to play this game in a fair manner the way it is now. It feels too much like playing the boardgame Axis and Allies, no way to be sure about winning a battle unless you outnumber the opponent by a lot.

[Cartouche Bee]

I think early in the game you should mine grasslands in your productive core. The only time I irrigate grasslands is when food is scarce or milking for score or the city is in the corrupted belt. But don't do anything in the square if it is not going to be used by your citizens, no point developing the tile if the city is size 2 with 8 developed tiles already surrounding it, your wasting your workers time.

[cracker]

Cartouche Bee is reinforcing my primary comment that you have to understand terrain basics and look at the terrian tiles that lie around your city before just blindly throwing down worthless improvements that cannot be used.

Roads have a military movement value that may cause you to add roads to squares even when they cannot be worked by citizens. Irrigation may also need to be applied to transfer the irrigation ability to adjacent squares. But mines have no peripheral value.

If you master the terrian evaluation skills you will quickly find that most common grassland squares should not be mined or irrigated at all in the early game because you have lots of smarter choices you can make.

Here is an image from the Improving Your Opening Play Sequences article that is taken From the CFC GOTM10 game:



The position on a strong grassland location shows that you have 8 possible choices of squares you can work adjacent to the city center and then 12 additional squares one step out. In these choices, there are 10 squares that make higher priority choices than beginning a mine of the first common grassland square. If there were some plains tiles in this position, all of the plains tiles that could get irrigated would have a higher priority that the common grass.

I have not done hundreds of tests on the subject, but now that I know how to play the opening sequences, I rarely find myself in a position to even worry about the issue of what to do with common grass in the early game. Usually the best answer is to do nothing and look at other choices.

If you haven't read the article on improving your opening play sequences, then you are depriving yourself of the power to really enjoy the game instead of being its perpetual victim.

[Destroyer]

I would Irrigate all squares without shields, and mine those with, if it were mid game, or I had few high production cities.

Otherwise I would Irrigate all of the squares, then mine all the squares once it reached size 20

[Theseus]

Destroyer... huh? That seems backwards.

Follow Cracker's lead and you'll do well... short of that, mine everything except plains and floodplains.

[cracker]

Theseus you old wardog, good to hear from you again.

Destroyer,

I would second Theseus's comment that you may have things exactly backwards. We have had this discussion before (about 10 or 20 times) and my take on the irrigating grasslands is that it is almost always a bad idea in any game where you have not had your Golden age yet or where you could even possibly need war mobilization. GA and Mobilization adds one shield to teh production of any square where you already have at least one shield being produced. When you irrigate grassland you preclude the chance of that square producing a shield and effectively give up any benefit from the GA or mobilization. A pair of two squares (one bonus grassland and one common grassland) would still add up to have the same raw production values under your scheme and the recommended approach, but you would end up with somewhere between 6 and 12 fewer shields per city per turn on the average.

Who do you think would win the game?

[vmxa1]

You don't need my two cents, but you really can not disupte Cracker on this subject. If you are not taking that advice you are hurting your game, simple as that. You can do that and it may not even be fatal, but it will slow you down. To make it simple, do not irrigate tiles before hospitals, unless your city is not growing. The exception have been noted, such as you need to get water to another city for growth (I hate that).

[alva]

there 's a very good thread on this the Apolyton directory aswell
By DeepO of all people

DeepO's very good advice on grassland

[vmxa1]

It is an interesting article, but the two big points he makes as I see it are not always relvant. Mobilization is not used by many, so it will not be a big factor. GA will be a factor, if it did not come before RR. Anyway to me that is good data, but does not have the impact that early improvements do. I say this as you have preordained your fate before you get to the point he is talking about.