Just had a game with Saladin (Arabs) and instead of my normal strategy of going cottage crazy, I instead went farm crazy. I'm talking about 90% farms, and 10% cottages mostly, for every city. I went nuts on the food basically and made sure production was good, but care little for commerce.

Then what I did was use the civics -- Representation, Beuracracy, Caste System, Mercantilism, and Pacifism, also Philosophical leader. I obviously used the civics when I got them, and I aimed for them on the tech tree to get em as fast as I could. I also got Representation a little early from capturing a capital city with pyramids.

What happened next was the AI was automatically putting tons of specialists in every city. Now, normally people say to keep one city farming specialists to maximize GP counts, but with the effects of representation, I was gaining crazy science and out tech'd the AI at least 20-25% faster than I normally would in a Prince game. I also popped out at least 20 GP the entire game, mostly scientists. Even though every city was competing for GP pts, they had so many pts and research coming in, I was still generating science and GP like crazy.

I don't have stats or anything, but normally with my cottage spamming, I would have a few powerhouse commerce cities with really high science scores, and the very late modern techs would normally cost 8-10 turns to complete. With this strategy, those same techs were taking 3-4 turns to complete. I had a lot more cities though, and just spread out everything, no real specialized city.

Funny I tried something similar today , before I even read your thread. I was at least 40-50% ahead of the AI in research ( but thats on noble ) normally I'm only 20% or so ahead .... because I'm always making wars.

I did this with the Japanese , went straight for civil service for irrigation , spammed lots of very small cities and used caste system... worked really well. Mostly generating great scientists , but also merchans and engineers where good. Sold alot of my useless techs for other ones and alot of gold too. Always had 100% research on , but so damn quick in just a few turns can research almost anything.

Well, you guys will stumble upon happiness effect, you know? Do you play at the easier difficulty?

If you manage to get the Pyramids, then you'll be outteching cottagers early on. The problem is that once cottages develop, you get Universal Suffrage and Free Speech then the Financial cottagers will begin catching up. Make sure you use your advantage to the fullest while you can. It's a great strategy for Peter, use your tech lead to get Cossacks early and conquer the world.

Based on the math farms are not better than the cottage, but the error many are making is using cottages exclusively which misses out on a lot of growth potential. I play this strategy in OCC game throughout but in normal games you can't manage than many people and keep them all happy.

If it wasn't so damn difficult to get enough farms in all my cities, I'd try it. Honestly though, it's such a problem to spread out enough farms before Civil Service, and Cottages can go anywhere.

Hidden benefit: when they pillage you it's not so devestating if you only have farms to go after, rather than fully developed towns. And now you can fully specialize cities, IE: go for only science buildings in science cities, treasury builidings in treasury cities, etc rather than having to build all of them in your commerce cities and risk missing out on a lot.

Hidden problem: while this works well to generate production centers, the hidden problem is you're actually netting less science. This comes from determining the amount of people farming needed to support the extra specialists, then comparing them to the same amount of people working cottages.

Early Game:
2 farmed grassland supporting 1 scientist = 3 science.
3 hamlet grassland = 6 commerce

Mid Game:
2 farmed grassland supporting 1 scientist under Representation = 6 science
3 village grassland = 9 commerce

Late Game:
1 Biology farmed grassland supporting 1 scientist under Representation = 6 science
2 Printing Press town grassland under Universal Sufferage = 10 commerce + 2 hammer

Essentially once you factor in the food required to support the specialists, cottages become much more efficient. GPP points make this equation closer, but not equal, since the specialist arrangement would need to be almost double in most instances to match with the cottage arrangement.

Well once someone hits the happiness limit, then the farm v. cottage needs to be looked at in a population effect so

With representation+specialists
6 science from 3 population units (1 specialist and two farmers)

With cottages
3-12 science from 3 population units

The advantage of the specialist strategy is
1. you reach those 3 population units that much earlier (assuming all 3 tiles grassland and 2 fpt already.. assuming 20 food required... yeah its off, but this isn't necessarily the first three pop units either.)
Cottages
Turn.. Pop..cott,ham,vil,town... total commerce so far
0....1....1,0,0,0
10....2...1,1,0,0..10
20....3...1,2,0,0...10+30=40
30....3...0,2,1,0...40+50=90
40....3...0,1,2,0...90+70=160
50....3...0,0,3,0...160+80=240
60...3...0,0,3,0...240+90=330
70...3...0,0,2,1...330+90=420
80...3...0,0,1,2...420+100=520
90...3...0,0,0,3...420+110=530

Farms
turn..pop..science
0....1....0
7....2...0
12....3...0
20....3...0+48=48
30...3...48+60=108
40....3...108+60=168
50....3...168+60=228

so actually they are nearly comparable for the first 20-50 turns, (eventually specialists fall behind)
However, the GPP and decreased pillage impact lead to an early game advantage (plus those excess population units can always be switched from specialists to mines, etc. making them more flexible than raw commerce)

The main difference I see with farms over cottages is the fact you have more population, thus usually more hammers for that city (unless it had a completely grassland tileset). I had no problems with happiness due to expanding and grabbing a lot of resources and building a lot of improvements.

I think the strategy is good for mass expansion/warmongering to gain tech instead of cottages where no hammers or increased population are coming out. Cottages are simply just that...commerce powerhouses, but if you plan to go military, you need hammers, hence farms/mines and use specialists to gain your science.

I usually play on Prince difficulty. At the end of my Arabian game, I had at least 25-30 happiness in each city, due to resources and improvements giving +2 to resources, plus religions and cathedrals with state religion.

People keep saying that cottages are better, that the maths workout that way > but thats not actually how things turn out in the game.

Those cottages just take too long , you cant even found any decent military , and when I use farms instead I steam roll over the closest AI and take everything ! my score suddenly DOUBLES.

I dont think people realize in Civ4 how important it is to be aggressive , much better to take my enemies land than sit in my own spot waiting forever for those cottages , which are tasty little snacks for pillaging.

Also I never have problems with happiness , just keep lots of small cities and build a few happiness improvements (plus representation gives plus 3 happiness in 5 largest cities anyway )

At the end of the day , those people that keep saying how they play on higher levels than noble. > go try a Pangea map , your cottage strats will be ruined. All I find usefull is as long as I have lots of beakers and have my science at 100% , and have 1 production city for military I'm well ahead.

Draetor24's strat works better than expected in REAL games situations , doing amazing math sums is not really how things turn out.

I have to say I haven't tried a game with cottages yet, so I'm familiar with this one. Can't really compare the two. Probably Civ3 coming out in me in wanting lots of civilians and great people, but it seems to work OK so far.

People keep saying that cottages are better, that the maths workout that way > but thats not actually how things turn out in the game.

Those cottages just take too long , you cant even found any decent military , and when I use farms instead I steam roll over the closest AI and take everything ! my score suddenly DOUBLES.

You can still steamroll everyone while building cottages. I don't think you'll lose that much production from building cottages.

If you're using your extra population from farms as specialists for research, then you'll have comparable hammer production in cottage cities and farm cities. Your military will not suffer from building cottages. If you're not using specialists and are using all of the extra population for production, then you'll fall way behind techwise against Civs that use cottages.

I prefer to steamroll nearby civs while building cottages and then steamrolling the next ones with my upgraded units.

I'm not saying your strategy doesn't work, I'm just saying that I think you can still play aggressively while using cottages.

I too have found that pumping up the food production and relying on specialists can work rather well for a philosophical civ in particular. Caste system, representation, and earlier on, mercantilism, combo very nicely together.

Some people are overlooking some of the benefits this has over cottages, which range from the obvious to the more subtle:
-obviously it's faster. You get a straight 6 beakers right off the bat. With biology, you're capable of getting 6 beakers out of any irrigated grasslands tile. This is even overlooking the obvious value of flood plains (which I'd put cottages on AND turn excess food into scientists, for good measure). And it's not as though the tile still can't produce some commerce to go towards research as well (like if it's on a river, or my favorite, a state propertied waterwheel). It takes quite a while for a cottage to develop up to the point where it can overtake the sheer number of beakers made this way, and in the early game, it's noticeably much much better going.
-it's flexible. Once you've got a forge and a factory in a city, you can quickly switch over to engineers/priests to build any neccesary research augmenters, and then hop back to scientists when you're done building it. This is a big weakness of a super-commerced city that hasn't matured most of its tiles into towns yet (and that's assuming you're using universal suffrage, which may or may not be the case) - it's difficult to build much of anything in a commerce city without compromising it's pure commerce role. It's not quite so bad with specialists.
-It's flexible, part II. If you a specific city to become a cultural beacon, or a gold-reaping city or anything of the like, you can switch your specialists over to do so. This is not to say a commerce city can't do the same (it actually does it better), but you have to change your slider for the whole empire. I don't always neccesarily want all my cities to be going culture crazy or gold crazy, and it's helpful to be able to tweak cities at a macro level.
-culture. With the Sistine chapel, you're cranking out an awful lot of extra culture for all those extra specialists you've got in your food-based cities. Combine this with culture augmenting buildings or civics, and you've got an excellent means for swamping enemy cities with culture without having to go all out.
-Great People. You get a lot of them. A LOT. Especially scientists, which is both good and bad. While you may not (in the end game) generate more beakers than a commerce-based city, you'll have generated a lot more great scientists, which means you've either had more golden ages, more academies, or more instant-techs, all of which help to tilt the odds back in your favor.

And of course, there's some disadvantages:
-less total optimized beaker yield. Once the cottages blossom into towns with their supporting techs and civics, they'll generate more total beakers than you could get through specialists. There are some mitigating factors (see above), but the flat truth is that in the late game, cottages are usually better when it comes to "hard" numbers.
-shackled to representation. It's absolutely neccesary. Should you change to another government civic, watch as a little under half your research falls out from under you. Some could argue that the cottage-heavy strat relies on universal suffrage just as much to keep the developed cities competitive, and betweeen the two I'd say representation offers more than suffrage (the extra happiness and lower upkeep, as well as side benefits for ALL specialists, much less scientists, helps out a lot).
-cities get huge. And I mean huge. While this may help for winning UN votes, it's gonna sting hard when it comes to maintaining the health and happiness of your citizens. Your large cities stay pretty close to the anger threshhold, so it doesn't take them much to spiral into outright rioting. Keep an eye on how quickly your citizens revolt when you fight an agressive war. Additionally, abandon caste system as soon as you have enough science buildings to support a good number of scientists, as otherwise the penalty for Emancipation is going to end up biting you in the arse. The war penalty is complicated by being shackled to representation, so you can't default to police state in times of trouble. Woe be unto you if you get stuck in a war longer than you expected. This leaves you with three options:
a) goad other civs into attacking you first
b) fight quick, decisive wars
c) don't fight wars at all and go for a peaceful victory
Anything else will leave your cities uprising much faster than you'd like, and with so many people they are difficult to pacify even with liberal application of the culture slider.
-Emancipation. As I said earlier, Emancipation will come around to bite you. If you're going all out food and specialists for your beakers, you have no real incentive to drop caste system for emancipation, as the extra cottage growth is of no real consequence to you. Keep an eye on your happiness to see if someone else picked up Emancipation so you can switch over as soon as your cities start rioting about it.

I might suggest a couple tips to avoid the downsides while augmenting your advantages when playing like this:
-play as a philosophical civ. Obviously. The extra GPPs go a long way, as do the cheaper universities.
-Go for a peaceful victory. I might suggest Diplomatic or space race, either would do. For various reasons, you can't do protracted agressive war, so that's out of the question.
-Get Representation ASAP. This obviously means you need the Pyramids. Either build them yourself (ugh, takes so long without stone), or better yet, steal them from someone else.
-Agressively expand a religion you found. This isn't hard with philosophical. Simply building stonehenge and/or the oracle early on will give you enough great prophet GPPs to generate 2 or so great prophets. This will be enough to instantly learn a religion-founding tech and then build the holy city. You will need the extra money from the religion to offset your lower total commerce in the beginning. This is almost essential, rather than just being a pleasant coincidence like it is in other games.
-Sistine Chapel is incredibly useful for this strategy. It's not neccesary, but it's very helpful.
-Once Emancipation is available, it would be a wise move to start transitioning over to cottages. By this point, you should have enough scientific buildings built to hold on to a good number of scientists without Caste System to blunt the temporary hit your research will take. All the same, you should be in the lead scientifically by now and you can take the hit.
-Alternatively, a spiritual civ (I'm thinking you, Saladin) could transition into a police state with other war-mongering fringe civics in times of drawn-out agressive war. This cuts down on the disruption and anarchy, but still leaves you with much-decreased research. As long as you're wed to the specialists, you can't have both long wars and good research. This is even moreso the case than in usual protracted wars (which can be disastrous to your economy).

That's all I got. Oh, and this is my first post. First time poster, long time lurker. Nice to meet you all.

~Snipafist

I may try this in my next game.

Do you think this strat would be much less effective in an OCC, primarily because it's only 1 city...?

Oh, and welcome to CFC Snipafist!

I too have found that pumping up the food production and relying on specialists can work rather well for a philosophical civ in particular. Caste system, representation, and earlier on, mercantilism, combo very nicely together.~Snipafist

Very nice post. Good points. I hadn't thought of combining philosophical with farms. You could have a couple awesome GP farms.

I tend to play with financial civs. That's probably one reason I prefer cottages. Cottages on rivers with financial immediately produce 3 commerce. Hard to pass up.

Last night I played a game using Alexander (philosophical and agressive), and tried the cottage spam strategy. I was alone on the an island, across the water from Qin Shi Huang and Frederick. So I spreaded out to about 8 cities, first three cities (emphasis production and science), and all others emphasize commerce and build solely cottages. Anyway, it didn't work out as well, since Qin invaded me in 1600's with a stack of riflemen, when the best I had was a couple of musketman. Anyway, I am just wondering if I should go with massive farm strategy instead. Attached are two saves, one after I completed the oracle, and another near the end. If anyone wants to have a look/play, and give me some tips, it would be much appreciated.

China ( Mao ) is perfect for the farm stratergy ! , he is philosophical but also organized (you waste 50% less on civic upkeep cost ), which can be even more usefull than financial.
Plus he has the UU chu-ko-nu , will keep you safe.
They start with mining too , so quickly get bronzeworking to chop and get the pyramids.

The main advantage with cottage is that you have a total versatility between money and science.

Assuming you have the Kremlin, you can build a whole army in 5/10 turns (1 unit per 2 turns in every city) by lowering science to 50/60% and having some 400-500 golds/turn. Speaking with a 8-12 cities civ.

Using farms, you cannot create such a breakdown.

Another positive point : maintenance cost is lower, since you need less hapyness/health improvements in your cities.

The real disavantage of cottage-attitude is that before universal suffrage, you cannot produce as much as the others, and you are not so able to switch to production (because if you try to, you lack food). So you need to have a few production-oriented cities to support your empire, especially on the military point of view. And, obviously, cottage is even more a strategic attitude for a financial civ with rivers. Of course.

Think about cottage as an investment to crush in the industrial era when you can build tons of units to trample them. Not a good aspect for a pure warmonger that will want to go on war much sooner.

What people seem to miss, is that city size increases the commerce you gain from trade routes. So if you can handle the health and happiness problems and you aren´t financial, it seems to be better to go for full growth.

I guess that's one reason to possibly consider Environmentalism. If your whole civ is maxed out on farms, then that +6 health just might be the ticket.

Wodan

Do you think this strat would be much less effective in an OCC, primarily because it's only 1 city...?
I am a cottage spammer for most games, by farms are the only way to go in a OCC, in my opinion. In a OCC, your production and science will not be generated by the land you work, but instead by the specialists (and more importantly, the super specialists) you have.

But of course, as with all specialist generating science strategies, if you don't build The Pyramids, your science will take a major hit.

I made a post about this earlier, but whether or not you use cottages/commerce or farms/scientists.

The percentage slider you use to allocate science per turn is NOT EFFICIENT.

The sider turns one commerce into one slider vial.

You can pull a citizen off a commerce square and potentially generate more science using a specialist.

Instead of operating at 70% science with 30% going to pay for per turn maintenance try dialing science back to 50% and making specialists.

If done properly your science percentage will be lower, but the time to research that tech will actually be FASTER because you are generating more science overall.

I play on Diety where maintenance penalties for number of cities and distance from capital are just HUGE. I rarely have that much left over commerce to put into science and it's pretty evident that I can keep up with science operating at 0% science most of the time by converting citizens on hammer or extra food squares into scientists.

I think what people are forgetting is that to get a lead in this game you really have to focus on the early turns.

All the good farming techs are really late.
It takes over 40 turns to turn cottages into towns.

Farming, Pyramids for Representation and Libaries are available early on if you want an early lead.

You can still build cottages and let them grow, but they are a long term investment. You still want to jump start your game.

I usually build farms on floodplains first. This grows my city so it can work other floodplain farms faster and extra food is good for scientists.

I'll build cottages on grassland squares especially ones which are not next to fresh water. Each grassland square generates two food which is enough to support the extra population working it.

This is a growth plan. It is better to grow your city and get more squares working early on than gunning for science. More squares worked is more growing cottages for more science later. Science tech is a fixed humber of beakers whether you get those beakers early on or later.

Later on you can fine tune your city to use specialists until cottages grow up. You just don't want to spam all cottages or all farms.

Pyramids, Writing, scientists and Farms >> Cottages early on.
Towns >> Scientists later on.

Know when to use both and when to switch.

Playing on Emperor, I regularly set new cities up with a few farms and just run scientists....early in the game. Your growth is limited due to health/happiness, and a single scientist specialist is a huge deal. Plus you just can't afford several, large cities. But my captital, for example, gets chopped/cottaged from the get-go. My research slider gets pretty low, 20-30% sometimes.

Once you've secured more happiness/health, then I start using less scientists until eventually I use no specialists.

Sometimes after you have a couple cities with cottages and markets/libraries, it's better to raise the slider and use merchants over scientists. This is especially true if you've been on a wild conquering spree and have over a dozen cities, when you need the merchants just to keep from losing your army.