I am totally addicted to cottages. I build them practically everywhere. I'd really like to know if there is a definitive guide that tells you all about city Specialization. Like that if there's a lot of food, it's a GP farm, and how to improve it. Or if there's a lot of hills, you mine them all and it can be a production powerhouse.

So what I'm looking for is a guide that tells you:
Where to put different types of cities(GP farm, Production cities) And what kind of terrain they should have/what sorts of resources.

How to improve these cities

And basically some advice on improving land.

Try my no cottages/no wonders game challenge.

Alternatively, just follow DaveMcW's rule of thumb: If a city can support 10 cottages pre-biology it becomes a commerce city. Cottage spam it. If it can't, then it is a production city. That means no cottages, just production improvements (farms/mines early; watermills/workshops added later). Your highest food city should be your gpfarm, get the NE, etc. Only farms in this city with some production for buildings.

Also, just try out some games with philo leaders and try out running a pure FE (farm economy). Farms everywhere. Get beakers from specialists and focus on whipping/drafting military until you conquer the world.

OTAKU wrote a very nice article on this subject. Sisiutil's guide for beginners also addresses this. Both of these are in the strategy articles forum. Work on your search-fu, grasshopper.

My personal philsophy on city selection: everything flows from food. Without food, you have no city (unless it's some arctic outpost to grab whales, etc.). Map out your area and settle the food cluster areas. If there are a lot of commerce/river tiles, that's good for cottaging. If there is a lot of food but not much else, GP farm. If there are a lot of hills, production city.

But it all starts with food. Starting with a food-down approach makes it a lot easier to make these decisions, as the cities' specialization is essentially dictated by the tiles within the BFCs of the food clusters.

About the only city that can get away with no food bonus tiles is the pure cottage city. Every other city needs at least one food bonus tile or a couple of floodplains to provide a food surplus to grow, work hammer tiles, and/or hire specialists.

Try doing a lot of warmongering -- so you'll have more use for non-commerce cities.

Try prioritizing caste system and the machinery & guilds technology line -- so you'll have useful non-cottage improvements available. (This synergizes quite well with the former idea)

If it has one food resource and grassland, cottage it.

If it has 2 food resources and grassland, cottage it and run 2 scientists to build an academy.

If it has 3+ food resources, GP farm.

If it has mixed food resources and hills, production.

If it has zero food resources, raze it.

(Note: floodplains count as one-third food resource, two-thirds grassland.)

The easiest way to kick cottage addiction is to think differently about city placement.
Focus on per-city-bonuses (shrines, religious wonders, trade routes, Mercantilism, Statue of Liberty, corporations) and spam cities everywhere. You will find that you have too little space to get a decent balance of cottages, farms and production squares, and cottages are the most expendable part.
When everything is a farm or a hammer tile, you have impressive production potential and specialists + the per-city-bonuses should be enough to keep your research going. This approach isn't vital to run a successful non-cottage economy but it's good for kicking the habit.

City specialisation is mostly trivial, and mostly come down to not wasting bonuses (e.g. don't run scientists in a Bureaucratic capital where direct commerce/hammers are more valuable than beakers, or in your Wall Street city where gold gets a much better multiplier; build your National Epic either in a GP farm or in a production powerhouse spamming wonders, that sort of thing).
A cottage economy also wants a few dedicated production cities so the cottage cities can do their thing without diverting production into units but a non-cottage economy can scrape together production as needed without a big loss.

For city placement/specialization guides, I recommend OTAKUjbskis "WHERE I do it" article in the War Academy.

That said, a simple rule of thump; If a city can build and work 10+ cottages, cottage it.

Frankly, the last couple of games, I have totally forgot to build cottages. I'm doing fine techwise though :rolleyes:

I tend to do it by looking for the hardest-to-find city types first. To me, on most maps, great early-mid game production cities are the hardest type of city spot to find. If a city has the potential to be that (roughly 2 food resources and 4 tiles with decent production), I'll make it so. Next most difficult to find is the GP pump, which preferrably has 3 food bonuses, but you can get by with only 2 if you have to. (Captured enemy capitols are often excellent in these roles.)

With everywhere else, just make what you can out of what you've got. You only really need one colossal commerce city (for Oxford U.). The rest can be either middling commerce cities or middling production cities, depending on what your empire needs more of.

And even if you're running a cottage-based economy, don't neglect the power of Specialists in the early going. 2 Scientists running in your capitol can really speed your research along through the classical-medieval era.

OTAKU wrote a very nice article on this subject. Sisiutil's guide for beginners also addresses this. Both of these are in the strategy articles forum. Work on your search-fu, grasshopper.


Yeah, sorry bout that, just that I'm lazy. :blush:

Thanks for all the advice, it's perfect, since I think I understand the basics, just needed a few guidelines.

Edit: Wow, read Otaku's article- It was perfect. I would post in there, but it was kinda awkward; everyone was talking about necroing.

cottage spam is the way man , you going the right direction :D

cottage spamming can work great, but you have to understand the timing of it. in the early turns of the game, production is so important, especially if you have a rushable neighbour. once you've expanded a bit and have your production needs taken care of, then you can start working cottages to support your economy. by the mid-game you can have numerous specialized commerce cities all happily working cottages.

of course the exception is the capital where a cottage or two is fine due to the higher happy cap and greater number of special resources. especially if you have a financial leader. and especially if semi-early to early bureaucracy is a goal you have.

The easiest way to kick cottage addiction is to think differently about city placement.
Focus on per-city-bonuses (shrines, religious wonders, trade routes, Mercantilism, Statue of Liberty, corporations) and spam cities everywhere. You will find that you have too little space to get a decent balance of cottages, farms and production squares, and cottages are the most expendable part.
When everything is a farm or a hammer tile, you have impressive production potential and specialists + the per-city-bonuses should be enough to keep your research going. This approach isn't vital to run a successful non-cottage economy but it's good for kicking the habit.

Agreed. Build more cities and pack them in between larger cities and try hard to make use of infrastructure that gives free output like temples under the AP and UoS and later in the game jails and intelligence agencies. Don't be afraid to part build a wonder in a city if you have the resource bonus, the gold can keep research high. This type of empire is ideal to whip and draft a large army from since you'll have lots of little cities. So traits like Aggressive and Protective or a UU like janissary make drafted muskets good and then rifles later. Just run Nationhood the whole time as you draft and use EPs to see who to attack and even steal a few techs to help research.


City specialisation is mostly trivial, and mostly come down to not wasting bonuses (e.g. don't run scientists in a Bureaucratic capital where direct commerce/hammers are more valuable than beakers, or in your Wall Street city where gold gets a much better multiplier; build your National Epic either in a GP farm or in a production powerhouse spamming wonders, that sort of thing).
A cottage economy also wants a few dedicated production cities so the cottage cities can do their thing without diverting production into units but a non-cottage economy can scrape together production as needed without a big loss.

In BtS I am beginning to think that city specialisation is a myth or at least many players make a lot more fuss over it that it is worth. Most cities in BtS can be hybrids and mix a few cottages with some farms and mines and build cost effective infrastructure. I think this is partly due to changes in the terrain on the maps and also due to the introduction of the per city bonusses Iranon is mentioning. A city with some commerce (cottages, coastal tiles, trade routes, resource tiles) and enough hammers and food to install good infrastructure (library, forge, market and AP temples etc) seems to outperform a "pure" commerce city with tons of cottages and little or no infrastructure due to low hammers during the middle part of the game (before towns and US hammers). Of course you still have to be smart and not build everything everywhere just the right stuff in the right place. More than 50% of my cities in BtS are better described as hyrids and don't fall into the simple it has to be a commerce or production city paradigm.

The game has gotten a lot more complex than vanilla where specialisation of ordinary cities made more sense. Of course I still optimise my cities that have special resources or a national wonder and these make up the remaining 50% of my cities. When I analyse my empire in the late game and take account of when they were acquired and how they were developed (at an empire size of 30 cities say) I realise that most are hybrids of some sort and contribute a little bit of everything to the overall economy. But they would not be much improved by specialisation nor would they have made a better contribution in beakers, gold or hammers as units if they had been developed in a more specialised way. I think this is a feature of BTS and is a sign of how much the game has developed since vanilla.

...but, what if you're Financial and you have a lot of coastal cities? Isn't it better to just use those squares at the start since they'll give you 3 commerce each (4 with Colossus)? And if you do go this route how do you convert to the cottages later on?

3 commerce is not enough to compete with grassland cottages, especially when you factor in the initial cost of building a lighthouse.

4 commerce with the Colossus is enough to make it useful.

3 commerce is not enough to compete with grassland cottages, especially when you factor in the initial cost of building a lighthouse.

What about the cost of getting the cottages built?

I don't disagree with your conclusion, but it's misleading to include the cost of the lighthouse and not include the worker turns.

Financial coastal squares offer a better short term gain then cottaging. However this bonus is really quite short as financial also helps cottages. So you only need 15 turns (on Epic) to get the cottage up to speed with the coast. Of course coastal city's produce more commerce if you are financial but cottaging is still important.

The Colossus does change this. With 4 gold per tile the Cottage will need 45 turn to get up to speed, and a total of 90 turns to surpass the coastal bonus. To really get mathy also realize after the 90 turns the town would need to work for another 75 turns to make up the gold lost while growing. So financial with the Colossus gives you about an 150-200 turn window to take economic advantage. However realize you NEED to do something with this as the renaissance will kill your economy. (appearance of free speech/printing press + loss of colossus.)

I like DaveMcW's short and sweet "rules of thumb" that new players need. It's a lot better than a long-winded response with "it depends" in the beginning of each paragraph.

You could warmonger with both a specialist and a cottage economy. With a cottage economy, you are looking at attacking with a huge stack of doom, while with a specialist economy you are looking to gain a tech advantage to attack your enemy with an equal-number army but a generation ahead in tech. I find it difficult to sustain a large army early in the game with a specialist economy, and usually end up lightbulbing my way to some military advantage before I attack. In the end I am still a cottage-economy player at heart, even though I know full well how the other approaches are done.

A city with some commerce (cottages, coastal tiles, trade routes, resource tiles) and enough hammers and food to install good infrastructure (library, forge, market and AP temples etc) seems to outperform a "pure" commerce city with tons of cottages and little or no infrastructure due to low hammers during the middle part of the game (before towns and US hammers). Of course you still have to be smart and not build everything everywhere just the right stuff in the right place. More than 50% of my cities in BtS are better described as hyrids and don't fall into the simple it has to be a commerce or production city paradigm.
What you describe is what I would call a "cottage city". You describe a city whose task is to fuel your finances via commerce, mainly from cottages. It harvests hammers for the sole purpose of generating improving its ability to perform that task.

Only when the city generates enough surplus hammers to perform other tasks (e.g. military, wonders, expansion) would I call it a "hybrid city".

In BtS I am beginning to think that city specialisation is a myth or at least many players make a lot more fuss over it that it is worth. Most cities in BtS can be hybrids and mix a few cottages with some farms and mines and build cost effective infrastructure. I think this is partly due to changes in the terrain on the maps and also due to the introduction of the per city bonusses Iranon is mentioning. A city with some commerce (cottages, coastal tiles, trade routes, resource tiles) and enough hammers and food to install good infrastructure (library, forge, market and AP temples etc) seems to outperform a "pure" commerce city with tons of cottages and little or no infrastructure due to low hammers during the middle part of the game (before towns and US hammers). Of course you still have to be smart and not build everything everywhere just the right stuff in the right place. More than 50% of my cities in BtS are better described as hyrids and don't fall into the simple it has to be a commerce or production city paradigm.

The game has gotten a lot more complex than vanilla where specialisation of ordinary cities made more sense. Of course I still optimise my cities that have special resources or a national wonder and these make up the remaining 50% of my cities. When I analyse my empire in the late game and take account of when they were acquired and how they were developed (at an empire size of 30 cities say) I realise that most are hybrids of some sort and contribute a little bit of everything to the overall economy. But they would not be much improved by specialisation nor would they have made a better contribution in beakers, gold or hammers as units if they had been developed in a more specialised way. I think this is a feature of BTS and is a sign of how much the game has developed since vanilla.

I agree with this strongly - overspecializing is as bad as not specializing. Cities which build national wonders should be heavily specialized, but there are lots of valuable cities that perform different roles as the game goes on - sometimes running specialists in the early game to help generate that scientist you need, sometimes running cottages because you are short on cash, sometimes whipping or drafting troops.

I still have my super specialized GP farms, HE city and super specialist or super cottage cities. But they are only built on the very best land. The hybrid cities get build on less optimal land and fill multiple roles depending on the needs of the empire at the time.

Try a "trade economy" on an Archipelagos map (it works on other map types as well, but on Archi it's easiest). Spain is a good civ for this, but they all work well (you don't have to be Financial in any case). Portugal is another obvious choice for a civ.

In a trade economy, the bulk of your commerce will come from trade routes. They are totally zero maintenance (no cottages or micromanagement needed whatsoever), and get better and better with each new milestone tech.

The one thing you need is trading partners, so you should start exploring with Work Boats as early as possible to meet those other civs. Definitely don't wait until Optics with this.

Also, the Great Lighthouse is really important, as it gives two extra trade routes to all your coastal cities, and chances are you won't build a single city which is NOT coastal.

You do not need the Temple of Artemis or the Colossus, but they are both very nice to have (obviously).

Your key technologies will be
Sailing (for coastal trading and the Great Lighthouse)
Compass (so you can build Harbors for +50% trade income)
Currency (+1 trade route)
Engineering (+1 trade route from the castle; Spain gets the citadel instead and can make terrifying siege weapons in those cities)
Economics (customs house for +100% to most trade routes; this obsoletes the castle/citadel so might need to be delayed if you play as Spain for military reasons)

Basically you can go crazy with expansion, because most cities will be profitable at 60-70% science right off the bat, due to the instant trade income they generate. Build harbors in all cities.

Most of your trade routes will be "inter-continental", which gives a huge bonus by itself. More importantly, the Customs House (unlocked with Economics) gives another 100% bonus to these trade routes. You can imagine what this means in our case...

I have tried out this strategy lately on Monarch difficulty, and my GNP (commerce) was almost DOUBLE that of my next best rival for hundreds of years all the way into the Medieval Age. I did have a few cottages but their contribution was quite marginal.

While this was not advice on how to handle cottages, you can try it to see how to actually live without them (you seem to be locked in to a cottage spam strategy at the moment, which is why I'm offering this radical alternative).

Why is Spain good for a trade economy? I would think Hannibal's the man for that.

I'd think so too, given the UB. Spain has marginal synergy since they want castles anyway, but that's about it.

Roosevelt is good too just because his traits make it easier to spam coastal cities and get them set up correctly for this (less maintenance, cheaper key building, cheaper wonders).

TR economy is dangerous due to the war-kills-you factor also. I always look at them as a (sometimes HUGE) bonus, not something that can be relied upon the entire game. That said, with a harbor each trade route is comparable to a town if it's intercontinental, which of course does not preclude the use of actual towns or specialists. I've grown to love TR economy in isolation games in particular, making it a favorite in LHC games. After all, ALL of your trade routes will be intercontinental, and you'll have lasting peace bonuses early also....not to mention plenty of coasts typically.

TRs are good, but wars and AIs going into mercantilism hurts. The thing is though if you're at (successful) war you can fund deficit research with the spoils of war.

Roosevelt is one of my fav leaders though. Extremely flexible. Good inland or on the coast. Organized helps a lot with the economy. Building key economic wonders (GLH, colossus, oracle, pyramids, etc.--not all of them necessary) means I never hurt economically. He doesn't have a very good early rush though really so that hurts him imo.

Spain only has a couple of direct benefits for a trade economy in particular (cheap harbours and castles that are worth building).

But it is one of the best civs for watery maps imo (reasons spoilered below), where trade is especially powerful.

You start with fishing.

Grabbing an early religion is often a strong move here, since it can take a long time before one spreads to you (and, assuming you have seafood, you don't need worker techs right away). Missionaries can be used to export happiness and culture from your (few) high production cities to your (many) low production ones. And shrine income plus the GLh trade routes can allow some really aggressive REXing.

Angkor Wat-boosted Priests are great for those high-food, low-production sites, so cheap temples can be a real plus. And cheap granaries are even better, since you'll be so reliant on the whip.

No Anarchy is especially helpful, allowing you to alternate between Slavery and Caste System. When workshops are necessary in your production cities, and both specialists and GPs provide a greater relative return than usual (thanks to the lack of cottageable land), Caste is invaluable. But those low-prod cities need buildings too, and Slavery is generally the quickest way to get them. Cash rushing is another option easily exploited by Spiritual leaders.

Health can sometimes be a problem on these maps, thanks to the limited availability of granary- and grocer-boosted resources, so both the 2:health: and the cheap harbours can come in very useful.

CR3 Trebs (courtesy of the UB and no-anarchy Vassalage/Theology) are very handy when launching an amphibious assault. A few galleons full of Conquistadors and Citadel-trained Trebs (Cannons if possible) can be used to devastating effect against a string of poorly defended enemy cities.

Presenting my guide to cottage addiction

1. We admitted we were powerless over cottage addiction—that our games have become unmanageable spawls of cottages. We get blindsided by montezuma and other warmongers constantly with huge stacks who pillage our beautiful cottages or we give in to our addiction and get out-teched by mansa when we should have warred.

2. Came to believe that a learning to do a good specialist economy could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the wise SE advocates of civfanatics as we understood Them and away from the false prophet that is DaveMcW.

4. Made a searching and fearless analysis of how often we cottage our games. We admit how many of those games might have been won more quickly or won at all if we had foregone cottages.

5. Admitted to fellow Civfanatics, to ourselves, and to our loved ones being the exact nature and extent of our wrongful cottaging.

6. We're entirely ready to have Sid remove cottages from the game.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to cottage addicts, and to practice these principles in all our games.

Nice guide.

Could you make one to help with my food resource addiction? ;)

Nice guide.

Could you make one to help with my food resource addiction? ;)

:lol: now there is one addiction you don't want to overcome :lol:

Why is Spain good for a trade economy? I would think Hannibal's the man for that.
Hannibal has the best UB for a coastal trade economy, but his traits have not much synergy (Financial makes the water tiles more viable, but it does not help trade income at all).

Spain is Expansive, which really helps (cheap Harbors!). I also like the fact that the Citadel gives double benefit.

The only problem I have with Spain compared to Carthage is that the Citadel obsoletes rather quickly while the Cothon reaps in the cash for the entire game. I still think that Expansive in combination with the Citadel (if you actually use the siege bonus) outweighs this.

As I've said, there are many good civs for a TE, Carthage is one of them, but probably not "the best".

I'd think so too, given the UB. Spain has marginal synergy since they want castles anyway, but that's about it.
Expansive + Citadel is more than just marginal.

TR economy is dangerous due to the war-kills-you factor also. I always look at them as a (sometimes HUGE) bonus, not something that can be relied upon the entire game.
Don't forget one important aspect: if you get the Great Lighthouse and focus on trade related techs you can spam cities like crazy, due to the fact that they all become instantly profitable. This is different from every other style of play. Even on Emperor difficulty it is not a problem to expand to 10 cities with the slider at 80% or so. If you combine that with early Monarchy, with the vertical growth it allows, you end up with probably the best way for a peaceful buildup on higher difficulties.

So in a way the TE has the same "kick start" effect as heavy specialist use (+ Mids), with one important difference: it's a lot easier to grow cottages with a TE because you can have your citizens work BFC tiles (instead of specializing them).

The cottages are then matured when you need something on top of the trade income to stay in the race.

I get Spain, but it seems to me that if Expansive and city spam is a good strategy for a trade route economy, then the real winner is Joao? Fretoria, Imperial, Expansive, and the ability to settle across the ocean with Optics (not that really helps now that I think about it) seems almost better than my favorite, Willem of Oranje. (I do so love creative though for city spam.)

I agree with Siggboy, Izzy is a great leader for a trade route based city spam using the Great Lighthouse. The cheap granary and harbour means cities are easy to set up and at least pay for themselves even without a courthouse and then make a good profit once you whip one in. I was lucky in my last game to have stone and that made the walls and citadel a cheaper combination than normal. I managed to build the Great Wall and got several GSpies even though I was isolated :(

Once I met up with the others the rest of my strategy was based around espionage and tech stealing as well GL trade routes. Founding Hinduism and having the shrine meant stealling from any city I had introduced my state religion into gained a further 40% discount. Of course the citadel helps with a nice 25% EP bonus in the bigger cities ... and these cities also have the better trade routes as well as the extra one from the citadel. That made raising the EP slider very effective even before Nationalism (for Nationhood) and Constitution (for jails). I only had about 6 cottages among my 12 cities, but the trade routes were very good after I popped Astronomy from a hut :D. I was able to choose between researching my own techs and stealing from the AI.


The only problem I have with Spain compared to Carthage is that the Citadel obsoletes rather quickly while the Cothon reaps in the cash for the entire game.

I have an interesting situation now in my Izzy game. I am nearly at 1800 AD and researching Combustion, with Flight due next. Meanwhile my main rival is Asoka and he's just started researching Rocketry which I'll steal as soon as he completes it. He has Corporation but hasn't started on Assembly Line so I have decided to not steal either Economics or Corporation yet as these would obsolete the citadel and Great Lighthouse respectively. That means I am still churning out artillery and machine guns with 10 exp in several cities with a citadel and I have a powerful seige corp to back up a huge army of rifles and cavalry and conquistadors. Once I have a fleet of destroyers and carriers, pending Combustion and Flight being researched, Asoka is going to lose his big fleet of frigates and a lot of cities. So it seems the citadel can be kept very late into the game under these circumstances :).

I hope to build a few airports soon and then my best cities will have 6 trade routes with the best giving 11 commerce and even the worst cities have internal ones which are a minimum of 2 commerce and this is not too bad when you have 4 of them. The Great Lighthouse and citadel being preserved so late has enabled a very different game to develop from any I've ever played before.

I get Spain, but it seems to me that if Expansive and city spam is a good strategy for a trade route economy, then the real winner is Joao? Fretoria, Imperial, Expansive, and the ability to settle across the ocean with Optics (not that really helps now that I think about it) seems almost better than my favorite, Willem of Oranje. (I do so love creative though for city spam.)
Joao is great, almost too easy. The vastly improved Caravel makes early sea campaigns a lot more viable (since you can run away from their Galleys into the ocean :-). The Feitoria is awesome, almost like a Colossus that never obsoletes.

My ranking would probably be 1. Joao 2. Izzy 3. Hannibal.

OTAKU wrote a very nice article on this subject. Sisiutil's guide for beginners also addresses this. Both of these are in the strategy articles forum. Work on your search-fu, grasshopper.

My personal philsophy on city selection: everything flows from food. Without food, you have no city (unless it's some arctic outpost to grab whales, etc.). Map out your area and settle the food cluster areas. If there are a lot of commerce/river tiles, that's good for cottaging. If there is a lot of food but not much else, GP farm. If there are a lot of hills, production city.

But it all starts with food. Starting with a food-down approach makes it a lot easier to make these decisions, as the cities' specialization is essentially dictated by the tiles within the BFCs of the food clusters.

About the only city that can get away with no food bonus tiles is the pure cottage city. Every other city needs at least one food bonus tile or a couple of floodplains to provide a food surplus to grow, work hammer tiles, and/or hire specialists.

Took the words straight out of my mouth.

Took the words straight out of my mouth.

I'll give them back when I'm done with them. :)

And to add to my previous comment: I am beginning to think that two food bonus tiles is the optimum number. Put another way, if I can spread the food bonus tiles around on a dot map so that every city has two, I would rather do that than load four food tiles on one city and none on the other. This is particularly true with seafood.

Two food bonus tiles lets you pretty much do whatever you need by giving you a 4-10 food surplus from just two tiles.

Often, I can't even consistently use a third (or fourth!) food bonus tile for a long time in the game due to happiness issues. Most times I'd rather just let a neighboring city have that food tile and adjust my dot map accordingly.

I'll give them back when I'm done with them. :)

And to add to my previous comment: I am beginning to think that two food bonus tiles is the optimum number. Put another way, if I can spread the food bonus tiles around on a dot map so that every city has two, I would rather do that than load four food tiles on one city and none on the other. This is particularly true with seafood.

Two food bonus tiles lets you pretty much do whatever you need by giving you a 4-10 food surplus from just two tiles.

Often, I can't even consistently use a third (or fourth!) food bonus tile for a long time in the game due to happiness issues. Most times I'd rather just let a neighboring city have that food tile and adjust my dot map accordingly.



You need to apply whips and drafts then, this will make the ultrafood cities viable. Another strat that makes one of those cities viable is a Super Scientist City with NE and Oxford and running as many specialists as possible :)

Wow. I've always had a high opinion of Izzy, but I never thought I'd see the day where someone else would rank her above Hannibal for any list.

I have to admit, the new Conquistadors + CR 3 Cannon just make me love her even more.

:agree:10CHARS

Beelining engineering and then miltrad then steel with Izzy's economy though? She's good, but I wouldn't rank her above Hannibal. Joao is amazing for rexing and if you add in the GLH that is superb. However, he doesn't have a lot going for him *besides* rexing, so if you can't do that he is so-so imo. Again, I wouldn't rank him above Hannibal. And if you look at my thread on what trait combo/start tech combo would you want to start with if you don't know the start, etc. Charismatic/Financial is leading ;)

I've been playing a few games with the water maps, and I think I mostly agree with FH. My Izzy game got two gold mines in the capital's BFC though, so she's got that as a bolster, but with Joao, I was able to rex like mad however once I settled all the cities that I could, I had a hard time actually making the win, getting a very late domination win in the 1970's. I had an insane tech lead (having taken out the two civs that were close, Shaka and Ragnar, interestingly enough).

I did love the Frietoria, but the Carrack didn't truly prove very useful - yes, I could settle across the ocean early, but 1) the trade routes were useless and 2) at that period time, I was busy building harbors and universities gunning for lib.

With Issy, I've been lucky with the GPs getting a lot of Merchants for bulbing and trade missions, and once I decided to go on the warpath (or rather, when Napolean decided for me), the CR3 Trebs were a nice bonus of having citadels. Gotta say I'm warming up to her. I had such a massive tech lead I was able to take Steel with Lib (and probably could have held up on that), the next Great Merchant should be funding CR3 cannons. :D

Rexing isn't quite as easy, not to mention the map has been unkind in that regard, not too many places to settle with galleys. However, France is nice this year.. :D

Anyway, this has been a good thread to read. I would have never thought of using Issy for a trade economy (though it makes sense, the Spanish were once one of the great sea-faring empires), I love the Spiritual trait especially early on to minimize the risk of slave revolts (though I got one this game, grr.) I think I've got a good handle on the trade economy, but it definately requires a different tech path than I usually go.

Beelining engineering and then miltrad then steel with Izzy's economy though?
This is completely in the context of a trade economy (on a watery map). Izzy's economy will be fine to blast through Engineering and Military Tradition if you manage to get the Great Lighthouse in the beginning.

I've done it on Emperor and my GNP was ridiculous (almost twice as high as the civ ranked after me). The starting position was good but not overpowered (no early gold/gems/silver/marble/stone). No religious love fests among the AI because it was Archi, so my tech lead was very solid.

I abandoned the game by the time I started pumping out CR III trebs because it wasn't the challenge I was looking for after moving to Emperor difficulty ;-).

This might sound silly, but when I first read DaveMcW's "rule of thumb" I was excited to see something so simple and definitive. However, when I attempted to apply it I found myself confused about what to do in coastal cities that couldn't support 10 cottages due to lack of land-tiles, but clearly weren't production-city material. In such cases should I just consider the coastal tiles pseudo-cottages since they lean towards the commerce side?

This might sound silly, but when I first read DaveMcW's "rule of thumb" I was excited to see something so simple and definitive. However, when I attempted to apply it I found myself confused about what to do in coastal cities that couldn't support 10 cottages due to lack of land-tiles, but clearly weren't production-city material. In such cases should I just consider the coastal tiles pseudo-cottages since they lean towards the commerce side?

Don't get bogged down in the theory. You'll get much better results if you absorb the underlying reasoning behind Dave's comments, rather than attempting to apply his rules of thumb directly.

What should those limited-land coastal cities be used for? Well, what does your empire need more of? Provided they have a decent amount of food, such cities can be used for unit production (whipping, drafting), research/gold (trade routes, coastal tiles, specialists) or just for the population points (where the Apostolic Palace or UN elections are a consideration).

Given the need to wield the whip to get relevant infrastructure built, you're generally better off picking one of these functions and sticking to it until circumstances demand a change of role. Otherwise you'll end up with a city that's packed full of buildings but has added little to your overall strategy.

I don't think there really is a "definitive" way to develope cities and a civ in general. That would require all maps to have the same layout. Early scouting can help you decide how you plan to run your economy. Sometimes you have to focus a city in a direction it is not best suited for because of the needs of your empire. I occasionally find a city site witrh 3 food specials and lots of riverside grassland with 3-4 hills. It screams GP farm. But nowhere else in my fledgling little empire has decent production. So it becomes my unit pump for much of the early game. Look at your map. Do you have enough city sites where specialized cities will meet the needs of your empire? Or do you have to patch together some mongrel cities that all contribute a little in every way. So often i start a game with this "GRAND MASTER PLAN" only to find the map is definately not suited to it.