From what I am reading, cottages seem to be the way to go when it comes to improving your tiles. However when I try to build cottages, my cities always end up as useless 1 shield per turn cities. One answer to this question may be to specialise my cities, but my cottage cities will only end up producing 1 shield per turn, making them usless even as commernce cities.

I dont like the idea of cottageing some tiles, and production-focusing other tiles of the same city either, because then my empire ends up with bad production and bad commernce.

So now all I do is focus on improving my tiles for production, research currency early, then put some of my cites to wealth while others do the production. This idea realy is great once state properties come along, and I can get cities creating 200+ hammers. But untill I get that far on the tech tree (wich takes the entire game for me in some cases because of the lack of science), my civilization is creating hundreds of axemen to try to take down cities of a couple of riflemen.


My question is, how do improve your tiles to create a civ that is both cottage-rich, and productive?

Cottage cities don't need hammers.

A library is nice if you can find the hammers somewhere, but you don't NEED it. After you have 10 cottages you can consider sacrificing 2 of them to get the library built.

Cottages are not "the way to go". City specialisation is.
Commerce cities (where you want a lot of cottages) not need [a lot of] hammers.
You only build the buildings there that the city really need (Multipliers, Happy/Health). These you can rush/chop/whip or build first and then convert the tiles to cottages.
Other cities serve other purposes and should be improved accordingly.

First you make some food to grow your city, ideally with a food source otherwise with farmed flood-plains or even farmed grassland tiles. Then once your city is at or near happy cap you can build cottages on grassland/floodplains, even if it means building over some of your farms. A grassland cottage can sustain itself (until poor health kicks in at higher pops) and a floodplain cottage can even allow more growth or help support a food poor square (like a mine).

Don't cottage over special resources you can develop properly, leave those doing whatever they do best.

Can you post a screenie of one of your cottage cities? There's some people here who really can help. They really helped me.
Cottages are your friend, if you use them right. All that commerce they generate as they age means more research and money for upgrades and promoting units. I've gone from being a marginal player to running a really good economy and teching well, just by learning to use cottages. If you have a good cottage city, who really cares how much production it makes? It makes money. That's what's important. Build things elsewhere.
It's a wee bit more complicated than that, but I'm sure the next few posts will explain it nicely.
Good luck. :)

Whip culture-building if needed and granary and maybe library then start working cottages and you're set.. go ahead and get some mines up later if you need a courthouse or something and don't want to whip it.

So im getting the feeling that I should infact build special cottage-focused cities, and use the wip to get my buildings in place.
That makes good sence, yet still its one less city that I can use to make units, and one less city can make a difference on smaller maps. What about alternative methouds of generating science and commernce? What alternative methouds are there and how effective are they?

One final note;
-DaveMcW, I have no idea what you are talking about; how do you sacrifice cottages?

You whip them away, of course you grow them back afterwards.

If you want to tech faster you have to sacrifice production... It just so happens that it is better to sacrifice a city(or more like half your cities) rather than some tiles(more like half the tiles) in each city for it...

yet still its one less city that I can use to make units,

Correct. Commerce cities do not (usually) build units. Thats what production cities are for...

Also with regard to whipping you should try to do that while you still have surplus food so the pop will grow back quicly.

I believe when DaveMcW says to 'sacrifice' a cottage he means to convert it into a workshop to increase production once the techs/civics for a good workshop is in.

The major alternative to a cottage economy, CE, is a specilist economy, SE.

SE emphasizes food and then running scientists and merchants. The great people can then either be bulbed to get a tech for alot of trading or Settled.

The best approach is to play into the map you recieve and specialize your cities. Good Cottage site, i.e. alot of grassland, Cottage. Good specilaist site, alot of food and not alot of hills, Specialist City a.K.a Great Person Farm. Specialization makes since due to national wonders.

You can also plan to transition from a SE run during the mid game while running Representation, caste system, Merchantilsm and Pacifism into a CE once you hit liberalism and get Free Speech and then Universal Suffarage.

I believe when DaveMcW says to 'sacrifice' a cottage he means to convert it into a workshop to increase production once the techs/civics for a good workshop is in.

I doubt that very much. Replacing a mature cottage with a workshop only makes sense if you no longer need so many beakers from the city in question. Doing it so you can build beaker-multiplying buildings would be a strange move indeed.

i agree, I dont eat my cottages, but what else would he mean.

He means sacrificing 2 population using slavery to get the library built. You will then, for a small time at least, be working 2 less cottages.

You should have at least a couple of cities which you cottage as much as possible (20/20 tiles in the BFC is ideal) Production is irrelevant, just set it to build a library and work as many cottages as the happy cap will allow. You may want to use slavery or chopping to get some buildings built but you don't need many.

i agree, I dont eat my cottages, but what else would he mean.

i already answered the question before your post...

I doubt that very much. Replacing a mature cottage with a workshop only makes sense if you no longer need so many beakers from the city in question. Doing it so you can build beaker-multiplying buildings would be a strange move indeed.

Indeed, the only time work-shopping over mature towns would only make sense in a space race normally, if your tech rate exceeds your ability to produce the ship parts (which is pretty typical).

oh yeah duh the whip. THANKS!