Skip to content
CIV.GAMES

Colonization · Terrain

Plains

5 food · cotton 2 · ore 1

The richest farmland in the New World. Five food a tile — nothing else comes close — with cotton and a little ore alongside it. Found colonies on plains and they grow themselves.

Plains (Colonization terrain)
Source: Sid Meier's Civilization wiki (Fandom), CC BY-SA

What it does

Yields 5 food, 2 cotton and 1 ore, on open, fast ground with no defense bonus. The Wheat resource raises its food yield higher still.

Key details

Food
5
Movement cost
1
Defense bonus
+0%
Commodities
Cotton 2 · Ore 1
Bonus resource
Wheat

About terrain in Colonization

Every square grows food and, usually, exactly one raw commodity — tobacco, cotton, sugar, furs, lumber, ore or silver. A colonist assigned to a tile harvests one of them, an expert in that trade doubles the take, and rivers, plowing and roads add more on top. Forest tiles hide open ground beneath them: a Pioneer's plow clears the trees permanently and leaves the terrain listed on each entry.

Strategy — Read a colony site by what it can specialise in, not by its food alone. You want one strong food tile to grow on and a cluster of squares yielding the same commodity — three prairie tiles of cotton beat six tiles of three different crops, because only concentrated output is worth a master planter, a weaver and a warehouse.

Related terrain