04-10-2004 00:02									#1
	Grassland Wheat - Irrigate or Mine? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

This question plagues me. I can never make up my mind. Is there a good rule of thumb?

	04-10-2004 01:09									#2
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just irrigate all bonus food resources from the start of the game, and you will always get the extra food. Except for sugar.


As someone once said "Stupid sugar..."


Basic early game strategy can be found here. Credit where it is due, Cracker (of CFC) is a good teacher.

Last edited by Krill on 04-10-2004 at 01:19

	04-10-2004 03:28									#3
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Link doesn't work, but I've seen that article before.

I always feel that a square producing no sheilds is kind of wasteful. The value of a wheat square with four food instead of three (in despotism) is that it can contribute to feed another worker who will gain shields. However, each added laborer adds one unhappy ciitzen.

Is sugar only a plains thing? I've never seen it on grassland.

Lastly, do you even irrigate wines?

	04-10-2004 03:45									#4
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The main reason to irrigate food bonuses is to get the magical +5 food which allows for serious worker pumpage.

Irrigate Wines on grassland + Cattle/Wheat on grassland = +5 Food.

If it's not going to help you get +5 food, I think just mine it so you get +2 under a GA... unless you need the food because of like a mountain w/ gold or something.

Last edited by Blake on 04-10-2004 at 03:52

	04-10-2004 06:55									#5
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I irrigate all bonus food.

Why?

Read my "Case for Food" article linked in my sig.

	05-10-2004 04:53									#6
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My answer would be... it depends.

+5 food for a Pump doesn't mean sh*t if you don't have some shields to back it up... although, that depends ( ) on if you can poprush to make up for it. But then, happiness, prolly from luxuries early in the game, might make a difference... so it depends ( ) on what size town/city you can sustain for the Pump. Then again, given terrain, you may be REXing or not, or going for an early Rush of some kind, or trying to nail an early GW... it depends ( ).



[Edit: On reading my own post... boy, was that annnoying!! ]

	05-10-2004 05:33									#7
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Saying "it depends" helps nobody. Just tell the n00bz to irrigate everything and they'll learn eventually on their own.

	05-10-2004 05:48									#8
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I'm not a n00b. I am quite good at this game. I simply have obsessive-compulsive issues, such as irrigating too many shielded grasslands and mining grassland wheat in despotism which make me not quite as good as I should be.

	05-10-2004 05:53									#9
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Answer: irrigate all bonus food.

You should have enough Workers to irrigate bonus grass and mine wheat and such later on during Republic before your GA or mobilization without it hurting you much.

	05-10-2004 06:29									#10
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"Irrigate all Bonus Food" is not really helpful if you do not know what to do with extra (unhappy) population. You can easily have too much population, but rarely do you have too many Workers.

So might I suggest: "Irrigate all Bonus Food, make Workers when your pop gets too high".

	05-10-2004 06:43									#11
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Making workers

I've been paying a lot more attention to workers and their functions, and concluded that it's impossible to have too many workers in the early game. Every square you have laborers working on should be fully improved.

	05-10-2004 06:55									#12
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In my games I seek to have at least 2x the number of Workers as I have cities.

	05-10-2004 07:10									#13
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A vague answer is better than a misleading one. The only "always" is to adjust your approach to the situation.

I mine Grassland Wheat about 1/3-1/2 the time. Once you've switched governments, if you need +1 food to get to the desired fpt (+5) and can irrigate a Wheat or a BG, it's better to irrigate the BG and mine the Wheat. Then in your GA or Mobilization you'll get 4 spt instead of 3.

The exception is when another city can use the tile as well, then exceeding +5 fpt can make sense if you are willing to put up with swapping tiles virtually every turn.

	05-10-2004 07:14									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Trip In my games I seek to have at least 2x the number of Workers as I have cities.

That number depends on how tight your city placement is. But you should always have at least one per city until all your tiles are roaded and irrigated or mined. It's hard to have too many.

	05-10-2004 17:36									#15
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You can get away with a 1.5/1 worker to city ratio with industrious civs. Not creating enough workers and too wide spacing were the things that kept me stuck at Monarch for ages.

	06-10-2004 03:36									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Dominae So might I suggest: "Irrigate all Bonus Food, make Workers when your pop gets too high".

Now that is a good simple rule. I would add:

"Irrigate all Bonus Food, make Workers when your pop gets too high, and when a town/city reaches its then-maximum size and still has excess food."

	07-10-2004 12:37									#17
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Too many workers result in excessive unit costs, I have found that 1 worker per town/city is enough when used intelligently, more than this and either your military is too weak, or your unit cost affects your gold supply. If cities get unhappy, use a luxury rate if unable to connect or trade for sufficient luxuries.
As for the question about the mining/irrigating, I would irrigate for quicker growth, but if unable to grow past size 6 because of lack of river/lake, them mine for the production

	08-10-2004 01:05									#18
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I irrigate it only if needed to get to +5 fpt. Otherwise, mine.

-Arrian

	08-10-2004 03:19									#19
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On Wheat on grassland, if early game worker pump needed to reach +5 fpt -> irrigate.

If the city is a settler pump, will probably need that tile mined to have sufficent shield output.

Otherwise, normally mine. This is also very high on the list to switch from mined to irrigation once a worker pump is no longer needed in the above case.

	08-10-2004 07:43									#20
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Are teh effects of Specialsists conisderd here?
Lets say your city is 18 right? and no more surplus, now the 3 unused tiles are all graaassland - you can mine 'em all goin' nowhere but maybe replace unmined tiles for a few more sheilds, However ya irrigate and get 4 food for each tile + 6 trade (assume 2 per trade per worked tile), so you city goes to size 24 getting you the flexability of having 6 more sheilds or 9 more science or even more dosh?
Cheers
Matt

	08-10-2004 08:10									#21
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Worth, I'd say that's situational. Assuming a fully developed (factory+Hoover's or coal/hydro plant) core city in the late industrial and none of the grassland's being bonus, you can get 12 shields out of those three tiles (changing your 18 to 17, since the city square gets worked "free").

The question is where those 12 shields put you and what you're building. If you're building units, using the specialists for shields is out of the question, so the net difference is 12. Now, if that 12 gets you from 88 to 100 shields, you're in business and should mine those for single turn output on advanced units. If it takes you from 63 to 75, it doesn't do you a whole lot more good, since every unit you'll want to build will still take 2 turns, and irrigation may be the way to go.

If you're building improvements, the net shield difference is 6, but the same general principle applies. Will 6 extra shields shave turns off my build times or not? If not, I'm better off irrigating and milking the specialists for shields when they help and science or gold when they don't.

Something else to think about: With a policeman, you can often get two shields back from waste (one raw shield doubled due to factory and power plant), plus the added gold/science from one less corrupted gold piece. And those two shields are usable on unit builds. Anytime a policeman will add two shields to production, using a civil engineer is silly.

To put it into an axiom: When building cavalry, 40 shields per turn are just as good as 79.

	08-10-2004 09:47									#22
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Talking about the early game only, when choice of improvements is vital for growth and also because of the limited number of workers, each tile improvement is precious.......I pretty much always irrigate bonus food. This is also because it is a very rare situation where I don't have 2 or occasionally 3 towns that can use a bonus food resource. so if you need shields, switch the bonus food to the second town and work a mined BGL instead.

	08-10-2004 17:45									#23
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Under despotism, food comes from irrigated wheat and prod from mined BG.
Otherwise, food/prod will be more balanced with irrigated BG, and mined wheat.
When city is 12, I could even pla(n)t forest on wheat for more production, but I don't do it very often... maybe I should...?

* Dry suddenly realizes that he never tried it in flood plains... if it is possible then ...

	08-10-2004 18:50									#24
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You cannot Plant Forest on Flood Plains.

	12-10-2004 03:54									#25
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Only possible improvemenst to Flood Plains are:
1. Leave Despotism so you get the 3rd food.
2. Irrigation [4 food per tile]
3. Rail [5 food per tile.] At this point, you can usally mine every land based non flood plain tile and still have the city grow big enough to have specalists.

	13-10-2004 02:38									#26
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FOOD!!

It's a special case, but in those cities too corrupt to ever make anything food is the only thing you ever need. Food isn't affected by corruption, in the early game you just rush what you need to keep pop down. later on you use the food to feed the specialist (who isn't affected by corruption either )

	13-10-2004 17:51									#27
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quote: Originally posted by bongo FOOD!! It's a special case, but in those cities too corrupt to ever make anything food is the only thing you ever need. Food isn't affected by corruption, in the early game you just rush what you need to keep pop down. later on you use the food to feed the specialist (who isn't affected by corruption either )

Later in the the game go COMMIE!!

	13-10-2004 18:11									#28
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Commie? never heard of that

Only rarely enter the modern age anyway

	16-10-2004 08:35									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Solomwi To put it into an axiom: When building cavalry, 40 shields per turn are just as good as 79.

...and 5 food per turn is as good as 6 for growth, right?

(also, when attempting the Worthington Manuvoure, food production is useless and everything should be mined... ;-)

	16-10-2004 09:00									#30
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I've usually irrigated but I mine around my wonder city (even if it was previously irrigated). I may do this around other cities if they already hit their growth maximum. (that should be rather obvious)