Question to workable city's tiles

[Meich]

Hey there,
i'm wondering since the beginning of my first game, is a city able to use tiles outside of it's 3x range ? As example http://www.ericsbinaryworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Civ5Screen0029.png . Would my city be able to make use of the cows on the left or the cotton in the left down corner ?
After a decent amount of time my citywill be huge with 5 -7 tiles in each direction and i was wondering if it's even useful to build modernizations or get more than 19 residents (ignore specialists) to use field tiles.

Thanks for anwsers :)

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

No it wont be able to work that Cotton nor the Cattle more then 3 tiles away.

Good news is that eventually the culture will reach those (Quite a long time though), and you will be able to place a plantation on the cotton to get the +1 to Luxury. However the Cattle is still relatively useless unless you place a city more to the north to grab that Sugar that's way up there.

As for specialists, they're good. They help produce great people and with certain policy choices or civ's will give bonuses you could never achieve working a farm Plains tile that gives 3 food and 1 hammer.

edit: With that being said you should be able to have 36 people working at once if you really wanted, not just 19.

[GobboKirk]

Not sure on the max number of tiles, but yes the border around the city will expand as it grows.

[Damsteri]

Your city can work only first three rings of tiles (total of 36 tiles), but city borders can grow to fourth and fifth rings (and not further). What this means then?

Benefits and drawbacks you can get from 4th and 5th rings:

• You get luxury resources for happiness or trading, if improved
  
• You get strategy resources for military units or trading, if improved
  
• You don't benefit from bonus resources at all (fish, bananas, cows, etc.), because you need to work those to get a bonus yield
  
• You can't work any natural wonder which is in 4th/5th ring, so they are useless (with exception of NWs which give happiness if they are inside your borders)
  
• You don't get wonder building bonus from marble, if your only marble is in 4th/5th ring
  
• You can't build any building which requires a resource, if your only copy of that resource is in 4th/5th ring (horses/ivory -> circus, gold/silver -> mint, marble/stone -> stone works, etc.)
  
• You don't get any resource diversity gold bonuses for trade routers from resources which are in 4th/5th ring (Brave New World expansion)

Usually, you should not improve any 4th/5th ring tiles, unless there is a lux/str resource. Improving other tiles would be useless, or even harmful, because enemy can get gold (and health in BNW) when they pillage those improvements.

Consequences in your screenshot:

• You eventually get the marble and that another cotton for trade/happiness
  
• You can't build stone works and you don't get wonder bonus from marble
  
• You loss a little bit of gold, because you don't get resource diversity bonus from Marble (this would require BNW expansion though)
  
• You have two deers and sheeps in 4th ring, so they are give no bonuses because you can't work them
  
• Sugar is on 6th ring, your city will never grow that far

[Meich]

Great answers, thanks alot guys :)

[Bullwinkle]

Damsteri, that is a great answer! I would like to add that (in Gods & Kings at least) working fish from outside the 3 rings does increase your empire's cash flow. It can be pretty significant on some maps, such as Small Continents. Might apply to BNW... or not.... I wouldn't know.

[Damsteri]

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

Damsteri, that is a great answer! I would like to add that (in Gods & Kings at least) working fish from outside the 3 rings does increase your empire's cash flow. It can be pretty significant on some maps, such as Small Continents.

Thanks. How can you work that fish tile outside first three rings? You can't assign citizens to tiles in 4th and 5th ring. I haven't played G&K for a long time though, but I think that 3 tile working radius has been there since vanilla.

[EnigmaVisionary]

So what is best to do ?
When you start, the first city you put it somewhere (sure on the best start position).
The second city should be on the 7th ring away ? (1+3+3 rings).
So you will get full bonuses and so on on both cities ?
Or should i put the second city about 11+rings away, then later i can put another city between those two ? (capital+3rings + 3rings+city + 3rings+city +3rings+city ... and so on).

Or should i put :
capital+5rings + 5rings+city + 5rings+city ... and so on.

[Bullwinkle]

Originally posted by Damsteri:

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

Damsteri, that is a great answer! I would like to add that (in Gods & Kings at least) working fish from outside the 3 rings does increase your empire's cash flow. It can be pretty significant on some maps, such as Small Continents.

Thanks. How can you work that fish tile outside first three rings? You can't assign citizens to tiles in 4th and 5th ring. I haven't played G&K for a long time though, but I think that 3 tile working radius has been there since vanilla.

If you use Alienware, it is simple ;-P
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405939077

[The Rock God]

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

Originally posted by Damsteri:

Thanks. How can you work that fish tile outside first three rings? You can't assign citizens to tiles in 4th and 5th ring. I haven't played G&K for a long time though, but I think that 3 tile working radius has been there since vanilla.

If you use Alienware, it is simple ;-P
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405939077

That picture does NOT show a workable fish tile in the center. An improved tile, but still not workable.

[Damsteri]

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

Originally posted by Damsteri:

Thanks. How can you work that fish tile outside first three rings? You can't assign citizens to tiles in 4th and 5th ring. I haven't played G&K for a long time though, but I think that 3 tile working radius has been there since vanilla.

If you use Alienware, it is simple ;-P
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405939077

Yeah, improved fish, but you can't work it, so you gain nothing. Same thing with any land tile improvements, useless on 4th and 5th rings, unless it's lux/str resource.

[Bullwinkle]

An excellent point, Sir, and it needed to be made. It posesses great insight and would be worthy of its own PINNED thread were it not for two prickly problems: 1) what you say is not consistent with reality and 2) you're just flat wrong.

Now I realize that technically this is the same point, but it is such a big one, that I thought it worth mentioning twice.

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

An excellent point, Sir, and it needed to be made. It posesses great insight and would be worthy of its own PINNED thread were it not for two prickly problems: 1) what you say is not consistent with reality and 2) you're just flat wrong.

No, he is correct. If you are referring to the sea tile north west of Madrid and right in the centre of your screenshot....that tile is IMPROVED (you put a fishing boat onto it) but it is not WORKABLE. These are totally different things.

Click on your nearest cities....only the tiles with a circle on them (which is either black or has a little green head) are workable, and only those with the little green head are currently being worked. This will not include your example tile, as it is too far from your cities.

That Work boat you built was a complete waste of resources.

[GobboKirk]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

An excellent point, Sir, and it needed to be made. It posesses great insight and would be worthy of its own PINNED thread were it not for two prickly problems: 1) what you say is not consistent with reality and 2) you're just flat wrong.

No, he is correct. If you are referring to the sea tile north west of Madrid and right in the centre of your screenshot....that tile is IMPROVED (you put a fishing boat onto it) but it is not WORKABLE. These are totally different things.

Click on your nearest cities....only the tiles with a circle on them (which is either black or has a little green head) are workable, and only those with the little green head are currently being worked. This will not include your example tile, as it is too far from your cities.

That Work boat you built was a complete waste of resources.

That makes automated workers a lot less desirable or did they actually make them so they just worked on usable squares.

[Bullwinkle]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Originally posted by Bullwinkle:

An excellent point, Sir, and it needed to be made. It posesses great insight and would be worthy of its own PINNED thread were it not for two prickly problems: 1) what you say is not consistent with reality and 2) you're just flat wrong.

No, he is correct. If you are referring to the sea tile north west of Madrid and right in the centre of your screenshot....that tile is IMPROVED (you put a fishing boat onto it) but it is not WORKABLE. These are totally different things.

Click on your nearest cities....only the tiles with a circle on them (which is either black or has a little green head) are workable, and only those with the little green head are currently being worked. This will not include your example tile, as it is too far from your cities.

That Work boat you built was a complete waste of resources.

People should trust Bullwinkle. Here are 2 screenshots (Before & After style) that prove my point.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406265345

Note my empire's gpt increases after the boat works the tile inside my empire, but outside of any city.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406265554

Q.E.D.

[Damsteri]

Hey pal, don't take it too personal. I'm not saying that You are wrong, I'm just saying that there is no game mechanism which allows you to get gold from a tile which is outside city's working radius of 3 tiles.

So, it's impossible to get gold from that workboat. Sure, there is change in GPT, but why? That is the real question. To get any gold from a tile you need to work it, and you can't work a tile outside of 3 tile radius.

This leaves (at least) three possible scenarios:

• Scenario A. There is a bug and game adds gold from a not worked workboat outside city's working radius
  
• Scenario B. You have a mod which increase city's working radius or gives some bonuses from workboats
  
• Scenario C. Something else happened in background after you have planted that fishing boat

I don't believe in scenario A, though it's possible. What about scenario B? You have at least one mod in use (religion), do you have other mods which might cause the bug?

This leaves scenario C. What could have happened? One possible scenario is that planting that workboat triggered city's AI governor to set citizens to work on different tiles and result was that gpt increased. Probably governor had set more balanced citizen setup earlier, but then changed to gold focus, because of golden age. That scenario can be eliminated, if you open city management view and compare citizen placement on those two cases, before and after. AI governor is not the cause of the gold increase, if all 18 citizen are at the same places in both cases.