What is your LEAST favorite special?

[DaveV]

Shameless imitation of Julius's "what is your favorite special" thread.

For me, fish has to be my least favorite. If I build a city with a fish in its radius, I know I'm going to be spending millenia moving new citizens off that fish square. Each time the city grows, the AI will put the new worker on the highest-food square it can find. Since I rarely irrigate, and I'll build cities on top of other high-food specials, the highest-food square is always the fish. I'd much rather have less food and more production, so I have to move the new worker manually to a different square. If I forget to move the new worker, the city may grow into disorder before it can build a settler.

[drake]

Those worthless gems!

[Sieve Too]

My least favorite are the ones I have to make my Settlers work on to get right. Corn, when I really want Silk and Pheasant when I really want Buffalo. Iron is also annoying since you can't utilize it until your city grows big enough to withstand the loss of food or you terraform it to Wine.

[Chainsaw]

I can fully agree with you, DaveV!! One more thing annoying me about fish is, they provide less production and more food than is good for a size1 or size2 city. That`s because if you don't micromanage the worked squares, the production of needed martial law units / the new settler will take longer than the filling of the foodbox. The city will revolt because of that. As you said, annoying micromanagement is the only way to prevent riots.
I don't like fruit, either. (uhm, in the game, I mean )

[suas333]

if you ever play double production, Coal becomes the most worthless special. It starts equal to a forset but is doesn't improve with monarchy.

[Seeker]

Yes the stupid fish and iron.

gems and I think it is peat. whatever else is in the jungle/swamp. bananas seem worthwhile for a jungle. but I chop it down anyways. I don't care for saving the rainforest.

[drake]

Dissident Agressor- about the peat.....it is the only four shield tile that produces food.....quite useful...but hey, if you don't like that sort of thing......

what terrain is it in?
I prefer high food over production. as long as the square has 1 prod (shield grass/plains) I'm happy. facts/ hoov dam/ and man plants improve that to a respectable level. I usually have hills to improve that more.

[weird god]

quote: <font size=1>Originally posted by suas333 on 12-05-2000 02:54 PM</font> if you ever play double production, Coal becomes the most worthless special. It starts equal to a forset but is doesn't improve with monarchy.

true, true suas, coal is worthless......btw iron is the best special you can start with. build a city on the top - you get one "extra" food, and as long as you don´t get a 2nd city you can push out setts without disbanding the city even on size 1...not to mention other units later on and a 200% defence bonus for your capital (and wonders) up there.

fish, yeah it´s fish....simple....it smells funny

------------------
mankind made alcohol, god made weed.....whom do you trust?


[This message has been edited by Ming (edited December 10, 2000).]

[Everyman]

Ivory, because it's usually surrounded by useless glacier tiles.

Same reasoning goes for peat. Takes too long to transform the surrounding swamplands into something useful.

[mark13]

I would go with DaveV's fish. It really is too much of a pain to take your workers off the fish tile every other turn, and make them work something useful....

[kcbob]

What's ivory? Is that the goofy walrus/seal? If so, it's a no-brainer. Whoever builds around them in the first place???

------------------
Frodo lives!

[drake]

In a double production game, an arctic coast can be quite potent. Get a whale, the ivory that no one likes and or a fur or oil tile, and you have quite a productive city.

[Blaupanzer]

Arctic oil. Hard enough to survive in that region at 1X without having to consider an all production special.

[kcbob]

Arctic oil.

Tipped a goody hut and found an advanced tribe with one of these. Guess what? You can't irrigate 'em! Bummer!!

------------------
Frodo lives!

Fish are okay. I don't like gems!

what do you guys have against fish?! Fish tastes good. I look at it this way. Yeah has no production, but the added food bonus will quickly increase the pop of my city giving me a worker I can put on a high production squear like a hill with a mine.

[Seeker]

...meanwhile, if you don't have MC yet and you have lots of cities, those fish-eaters (Portuguese?) are spawning unhappy citizens like mad, forcing you to constantly change production.

that's what elvi are for. and when you do get michs and bachs you have a higher population that can quickly become a high prod city. build shakespear and king richards to really kick some ass.

[suas333]

quote: Originally posted by weird god on 12-05-2000 08:57 PM true, true suas, coal is worthless......btw iron is the best special you can start with. build a city on the top - you get one "extra" food, and as long as you don´t get a 2nd city you can push out setts without disbanding the city even on size 1...not to mention other units later on and a 200% defence bonus for your capital (and wonders) up there.

If i see an iron, i usually build on a forest in the city radius, so i can pump out some settlers, but am not forced to stay on the iron after i built my 2nd city.

[Crustacian]

I like fish, gems, peat and iron. The only trouble with iron is the time it takes to be able to use it by your govt and the mining time.

Any of you who dislike gems ought to try building a city on them and see how that goes.

But my least favorite is pheasant, and I always change it to buffalo for the trade as soon as possible.

Musk ox can be dissapointing too...
[This message has been edited by Crustacian (edited December 06, 2000).]

I love pheasant. 2 food and a production bonus! trade is nice, but not the crutch of my game. I do like to mix pheasant up with one that has decent trade though.

[Ribannah]

Definitely Musk Ox and Oil(G). All the others are already great or can be changed into something better early on (Peat, Pheasant). Of course for Iron and Oil(D) it also depends on the rest of the terrain.

------------------
If you have no feet, don't walk on fire
[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited December 07, 2000).]

[Ribannah]

Hmmm, something caused my post to appear twice. Oh well, we have rubber ... (Hey! A new resource! )



[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited December 07, 2000).]

[Scouse Gits]

Don't knock the lowly musk ox - build on it! a viable city in the middle of desolation ...

p.s. I like specials - fish are poor early, but what the heck you mean you don't micromanage 100+ cities??

------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[Scouse Gits]

Fish - In my version of ICS, I do build up the capital and usually have a SSC. In addition I sometimes build up another city, but the only improvement this place has is a barracks. A high production city quickly churning out vet units is a great boost to the military early in the game. The cities that over produce food are controlled by food caravans to the places that need to grow.

If I am using Xin's Size Five Strategy the food caravans also feed these places.

------------

SG (2)

[Blaupanzer]

Hey Gits, I hadn't really considered porting the food away with food caravans from those two fish-square cities we all end up with somewhere. That's a great idea. Properly handled, these could assist cities exploiting gold, iron, or glacial oil in their radia. I, too, was surprised to hear that micromanagement was abandoned just because it takes a couple of hours a turn -- the audacity!

Building on musk ox is really the only way to get much use out of that resource in the heart of desolation.

[Mercantile]

In single player, the worst special IMO is iron as you need other specials like corn or in most cases you need to irrigate for awhile first before it can be properly utilized.

In MP double production the only special that is useless is the coal as it doesnt' upgrade at all. In reality its a forest trapped in a hills body

[Bohlen]

My vote goes to the Ox. It's all about location, location, location.