A little guidance...

[Blake]

Chopping forests in your first couple cities makes a lot more sense than chopping forests at 1000 AD.

Not really. Sometimes it makes more sense at your first couple of cities to build growth enhancing terrain improvement, or roads. Forests are still very useful later on to pop out later units and wonders. I'll quite often chop out catapults, macemen etc. I'll chop the Kremlin, and I'll chop SS parts. Later in the game chops enjoy a higher multiplier.

Tundra forests always should be saved unless they are never going to be on a city.

I'm actually going to say Tundra forests should never be saved. Always chop them down. Yes the land produces nothing, but the yield of a tundra forest is actually very poor. For most of the game it isn't worth working, because using whatever food is available for slavery is better. Come railroads, nearly all tundra cities have 1 or 2 hills, which will probably be enough to eliminate the food surplus, even without hills it can be worth just creating specialists (especially with rep). So always chop down those tundra forests if hills alone are enough to use up the food surplus, and even otherwise, since the influx of hammers will greatly speed the development of the tundra city.




In general, on the topic of chopping, I say chop if you need the hammers for something and if you don't need the health benefit. The main benefit of leaving forests around is not lumber mills but the passive boost to food from health.

[Iustus]

when I place my cities I don't count food as carefully as suggested here

All very good points.

I would still suggest that someone trying to get better does count food carefully. I posit that doing so religiously for a while will step your game up a level.

After you are very familiar with counting food, and you start to understand the importance of food 'in your gut', then I would suggest moving past it, as Zeviz suggests.

The very best players are thinking about all those other factors, above food, because the food thing is so ingrained that they automatically understand the tradeoffs they are making with regard to food when deciding what improvements to make.

On the other hand, I have found many beginning players, including myself when I was starting, and including mbuna120 it seems, do not truely 'get' the whole food thing. I find by counting it religiously for a while, the key aspect of food playing a major factor in what improvements to build is learned.

On to the more advanced topics. I know many people subscribe to the 'require as few farms as possible' school, but I am not personally convinced. I like the flexibility of using farms to work more mines, rather than windmilling all the excess hills. Of course, I think you were talking more about city placement, rather than what improvements to build once the city was placed.

-Iustus

[Blake]

Right. Food counting is just automatic to a player like myself, altough I did it manually in my report for Adv13.

On to the more advanced topics. I know many people subscribe to the 'require as few farms as possible' school, but I am not personally convinced. I like the flexibility of using farms to work more mines, rather than windmilling all the excess hills. Of course, I think you were talking more about city placement, rather than what improvements to build once the city was placed.

It's not quite "As few farms as possible" but "Only build farms if you have to".
Also typically certain tiles - such as plains hill, river tundra, non-river plains etc, are considered simply worthless. It's not a question of what you do with it - you just don't do anything with it and leave it fallow, unworked. Typically the arrival of Replacable Parts, Biology, Electricity etc will upgrade these tiles to workability (plains mines are worth working to build wonders). With something like farmed tundra river - 2-0-1, bear in mind that cities have upkeep per population. This largely erodes any income from that 1c. You're better off just whipping to death any population on such crap tiles, or creating specialists so they never get worked.
It's the same logic behind chopping tundra forest - it's never worth working so it doesn't matter what you lose by being unable to work it.

[theGrimm]

Farmed tundra sucks, sure. But if you can farm it, you can cottage it. And if it's cottageable, it's likely on a river. And if you're financial, that's a 1F3C tile from turn 1.

[Drugged_Unholy]

Post biology tundra farms are 3F

A strategically placed river can mean a Tundra city reaching size 15 or more.

[sooooo]

Tundra cottages are pretty good if you've got some food resources. Many tundra cities are coastal, with crabs and maybe deer. You can turn them into nice little commerce/slavery cities.

[Sullla]

Plains hill tiles worthless? I understand the argument Blake is trying to make (better to use food tiles + Slavery for production), but surely this is an exaggeration.

[Blake]

I don't think I properly justified the exception that plains hills are worth working for building wonders (since whipping is heavily penalized), they are also worth using to moderate whipping anger (to soak up excess food). Mines are useful in cities with such high production that productions outstrips the ability to whip (a good Heroic Epic city popping out a unit every other turn).

But plain hills are one of the more niche terrain types and with the exception of wonder cities should mostly only be improved when workers are bored.

[mbuna120]

This thread has become even more useful than I had hoped. Good info, guys!

[LKendter]

I think the biggest rule in Civ4 is FLEXIBILITY.

One think to remember, not all cities have to pay for themselves. A good floodplains cottage city can pay for several cities.

I think it is a lot harder to create automatic rules for the game. I've create good production cities with multiple plain hills. The city sucked for income, and I didn't care. It cranked out the wonders nicely.

Check out epic6 where I build a city to claim 4 farmed flood plains, to use all the hills. This city become my heroic epic city and really cranked troops all game long.

Now the tile I feel is truly useless is ocean. The food and income is so horrid I prefer to run a specialist.