Strategy suggestions

SGOTM14, you are already in this challenge. I bet OSS will farm all the riverside tiles!:lol:

Its not the same, there is whole team thing, which team might not like the idea of using few months long game, in which many players participate for a way of settling CE vs SE dispute. Also, it will take a whole year at least to make those 3 wins in a row ;)

And as I understand Shyuhe, you are taking the glove thrown, lets set the details :)

I am giving you full freedom to choose leader, nation, etc. I will choose after you. I suggest we make it in the lobby, smaller map, simultaneous turns, 2 separated landmasses to avoid the unnecessary early warring, mirror type reflection so the terrain and resources are equal, quick timer to be able to finish at least 3 games in few weeks at few sessions :)

Say your thoughts.
 
Eh, it's not like you'll be double-moving chariots into one another's capitals.

Still, that would probably flip it in favour of the cottages. Cottages are easy to micro, you don't have a ton of time to make decisions under a blazing timer. Cottages take a long time to mature, time you have on a continents mapscript. And one of the appeals of running lots of scientists is that you have no compulsions against whipping all those scientists into axes and horse archers (if you are brave enough to kill your research and sense a good attack window).
 
If enough time to make your turns properly (pitboss) farms are the way to go generally.
That's what I do and I tend to do alright. ;)

For a CTON league/ladder game cottages are fine as you're so low on time you can't micro cities, but that doesn't mean much.
 
If enough time to make your turns properly (pitboss) farms are the way to go generally.
That's what I do and I tend to do alright. ;)

For a CTON league/ladder game cottages are fine as you're so low on time you can't micro cities, but that doesn't mean much.

Cottages are a lot closer to farms w/o tech trades than with them. I feel like specs are still necessarily higher return rate at first though. How far back does NTT push the break even on cottages vs specs, assuming the cottage guys at least have enough sense to farm/manage some GPP?
 
I also tend to do alright using cottages and that is why I asked if someone can prove me wrong defeating me few times using farms :)
 
I also tend to do alright using cottages and that is why I asked if someone can prove me wrong defeating me few times using farms :)
Too much hassle, sorry. :)

Go ask PB veterans like Elkad or Munro what they think about my farms.

Cottages are a lot closer to farms w/o tech trades than with them. I feel like specs are still necessarily higher return rate at first though. How far back does NTT push the break even on cottages vs specs, assuming the cottage guys at least have enough sense to farm/manage some GPP?
You gain some you lose some. NTT also means slower tech pace, which means wars are easier to fight early on. Then hammers are key.

What 1F is worth varies depending on sizes, but it's +/-2 hammers at low sizes, which means that you can put these 2 hammers into a wonder with marble/stone (perhaps forge and OR) and get a return of 4 gold or more. Yes, cottages are still far behind. It also leaves you more flexible, which is crucial against the irrational humans.

Still often a good idea to cottage the capital though, if it's one suited for it. Then the gold from building wealth/failed wonders help even more.
 
Nothing to sorry for, this way your point still stays unproven to me. Munro I dont know, but will ask Elkad - we played in few games where I was replacement. Not to try measuring of tools ;) but about my cottages you can ask the first page on civplayers.com for me having 14 victories in a row while I still had time to play there.
 
Going cottage mental hurts your production. Like rusten said if u have a potential cottage capital do that. This solves a couple of problems in 1 decision. 1/ U can cottage nearly every tile in cap(including non riverside) 2/ Leaves u free to utilise all other cities any way u like. If cap aint good for cottaging, move it. My standard advice next, build oxford(fast). As for lib, everyone has different opinion. If u playing computer u can delay it until competition has education. Best lib with MoM is nat. Oherwise go for steel. Diplomacy seems to go more smoothly with cannons.:mischief:(If u production is low make sure u have a few trebs to upgrade)
 
Too much hassle, sorry. :)

Go ask PB veterans like Elkad or Munro what they think about my farms.


You gain some you lose some. NTT also means slower tech pace, which means wars are easier to fight early on. Then hammers are key.

What 1F is worth varies depending on sizes, but it's +/-2 hammers at low sizes, which means that you can put these 2 hammers into a wonder with marble/stone (perhaps forge and OR) and get a return of 4 gold or more. Yes, cottages are still far behind. It also leaves you more flexible, which is crucial against the irrational humans.

Still often a good idea to cottage the capital though, if it's one suited for it. Then the gold from building wealth/failed wonders help even more.

I don't think there's any reason to not cottage up the capital (if you can get away with it). But I'd be wary of dumping whip overflow hammers into wonders, because all those hammers are a sunk cost until someone bites the bullet and completes the wonder. And is anyone really going to prioritise a weak wonder like the Great Wall or Chichen Itza in a no-barb MP game?

My rule of thumb is: cottage rivers, farm lakes. Rivers make working those tiles a high priority for the innate +1c, working lakeside tiles is optional (especially if you're going to be working specialist slots instead of the land).
 
What 1F is worth varies depending on sizes, but it's +/-2 hammers at low sizes, which means that you can put these 2 hammers into a wonder with marble/stone (perhaps forge and OR) and get a return of 4 gold or more. Yes, cottages are still far behind. It also leaves you more flexible, which is crucial against the irrational humans.

As expected from one of our better deity players, this is an interesting way to look at it. It also shows why people carrying FIN are quick to cottage spam while other traits use them more situationally.

Farm ----> cottage trades 1:food: for 1:commerce: at first; pretty raw deal. However, let's say you're not IND and don't have marble/stone for fail gold. At that point you're only putting 1:food: into 2:gold: with fail gold and pre-writing don't have a lot of other options...falls behind a cottage pretty quickly as 30 turns cottage investment will beat out the farm.

The complication here is writing ----> 2 scientists early on. Hard for non-FIN cottage to break 1:food: ---> 1.5:science: and 1.5 GPP. Without the GPP yes; with it, no.

So cottages will tend to win when:

1. You don't need as much production as you need research
2. City can't realistically expect to farm great people

Otherwise, farms/mines/whatever are better. Running the #'s this way the obvious conclusion is that people over-cottage generally w/o FIN. However, I'm not sure I'd be as inclined as say Duckweed to go the "almost never build cottages" conclusion. Still in a 6-9 city empire it seems like a good idea to dedicate 1-2 for commerce, if only to fund the others being set up/productive sooner while eventually contributing significantly themselves.

This is of course barring odd variants that can be substituted for that role, such as:

- GLH (everyone knows the greatabusehouse)
- Colossus (Colossus coast > non-riverside cottage according to DaveMCW. Experimenting with it, I agree. Takes cottages too long to catch colossus coast using non-river cottages, and by the time you obsolete it you have more reliable + faster long-term alternatives to cottages)
- Oracle an early power tech, like say currency + get trade routes. Infinite expansion gogogo!
- Shrines on unorthodoxly huge maps. 30+ gold/turn w/o building missionaries is no joke, and it can happen on those.

Edit: Cottages are, of course, great for defense-less cheese culture games. That's not for MP though obviously.
 
Another advantage of scientists if you're rexing and have a low slider: you are guaranteed to be using your +25% science multiplier to its maximum capacity.
 
As expected from one of our better deity players, this is an interesting way to look at it. It also shows why people carrying FIN are quick to cottage spam while other traits use them more situationally.

Farm ----> cottage trades 1:food: for 1:commerce: at first; pretty raw deal. However, let's say you're not IND and don't have marble/stone for fail gold. At that point you're only putting 1:food: into 2:gold: with fail gold and pre-writing don't have a lot of other options...falls behind a cottage pretty quickly as 30 turns cottage investment will beat out the farm.

The complication here is writing ----> 2 scientists early on. Hard for non-FIN cottage to break 1:food: ---> 1.5:science: and 1.5 GPP. Without the GPP yes; with it, no.

So cottages will tend to win when:

1. You don't need as much production as you need research
2. City can't realistically expect to farm great people

Otherwise, farms/mines/whatever are better. Running the #'s this way the obvious conclusion is that people over-cottage generally w/o FIN. However, I'm not sure I'd be as inclined as say Duckweed to go the "almost never build cottages" conclusion. Still in a 6-9 city empire it seems like a good idea to dedicate 1-2 for commerce, if only to fund the others being set up/productive sooner while eventually contributing significantly themselves.

This is of course barring odd variants that can be substituted for that role, such as:

- GLH (everyone knows the greatabusehouse)
- Colossus (Colossus coast > non-riverside cottage according to DaveMCW. Experimenting with it, I agree. Takes cottages too long to catch colossus coast using non-river cottages, and by the time you obsolete it you have more reliable + faster long-term alternatives to cottages)
- Oracle an early power tech, like say currency + get trade routes. Infinite expansion gogogo!
- Shrines on unorthodoxly huge maps. 30+ gold/turn w/o building missionaries is no joke, and it can happen on those.

Edit: Cottages are, of course, great for defense-less cheese culture games. That's not for MP though obviously.
How often do you work cottages before writing? I am not that anti-cottage, there are situations when I use them, but I can't remember ever wanting to work them that early. At this point in the game you're only working special resources and whipping/mines. If you are I would suggest that it's one of your bad habits that should be rooted out.

Yes, cottages get better while the farms don't until biology, but before that there's SP workshops, where again you have the option of trading hammers for lots of gold. How soon you reach this depends on map/settings. In a slow game I'd be inclined to make 1-2 commerce cities like you suggested. If it's a rich map you will reach SP (or at least guilds+chemistry+caste) workshops early.

Nick Carpathia said:
I don't think there's any reason to not cottage up the capital (if you can get away with it). But I'd be wary of dumping whip overflow hammers into wonders, because all those hammers are a sunk cost until someone bites the bullet and completes the wonder. And is anyone really going to prioritise a weak wonder like the Great Wall or Chichen Itza in a no-barb MP game?
It works for national wonders too. And you can complete the wonders yourself. ;)
Great Wall is actually excellent for MP, even without barbs.
 
This argument tends to be drawn out till everyone is asleep :D
I've seen games from Kossin, Dirk and others where they go pottery first (i value commerce a lot early too, there is a reason why we all like gold mines righto?) to set up some cottages, yip in the capital too instead of mines and stuffs.

There is usually more than 1 way to play it (or we would be all booored of civ4 by now :D ), so...
there is no definite answer to "is a farm or cottage better in situation x". When it is in question anyway, sometimes it's clear.
It depends on the profile and style of the player, Deitys like all others have different strengths and weaknesses.
Nobody knows the perfect answer for all situations, i often scratch my head during a game and think what should i do now.
 
Relevant both to current discussion and OP (and to show that I can give credit to cottages when due).

Some early game things to notice:

Identify the map

By that I mean figure out what is the bottleneck/troublesome part of it. For simplicity let's narrow it down to builds/economy and keep AI/diplomacy separate now.

This game was clearly low on commerce which everyone identified. In such situations you need to be careful with when and where you settle. It is crucial to reach writing and alphabet to be able to power out of increasing maintenance. When I said that I needed to watch out for "crashing my economy" I did not mean going on strike or getting negative income. What I meant was delaying the big techs by many turns.

If you swap the corn in the capital with gems I would play very differently. I would be able to expand more freely and still reach the important techs in a timely manner. Here I did not have this luxury so I was forced to squeeze out commerce from hills.
Spoiler :


It can be tempting to keep settling cities until you reach 0 gold, but this can have a very detrimental effect if the cities are not exceptional. While working cottages ensure that you won't go on strike it will take a long time for them to get you to the "big" techs (Alphabet, Currency, Monarchy). Once you have reached these "threshold" techs there's a while before the next crucial one -- meaning that you can afford to let the economy slide a bit again. Furthermore, you now have tools to make almost all cities productive instantly by producing research/wealth. In this game I chose to prepare for war, but if there were more good cities available you would see me expanding a bunch after currency.

Some might say I've been running a CE here, but that would be misleading. What kick-started everything here was hammer economy (which I've now transitioned out of). Now I am bureaucracy based (if only I could remember to adopt it :p).

2: Population.

When you expand in the BCs, try to think of your empire as # of population points -- not as number of cities. It is far more useful to have 20 pop divided over 4 cities than 12 over 6 (assuming there are decent tiles to work). Always grow your cities to the happiness cap and take advantage of hereditary rule -- you want double-digit cities in the BCs if health allows it. Growing early helped bring me a 50 base commerce and 22 base hammers capital now.

City examples:
Spoiler :


If I had expanded more I would not have gotten monarchy as fast, which would mean much slower growth -> less cottages matured and the city would not look like this until much later.
 
No, no, no ... I cant agree with this Why would cottages be not good for a MP?

It's not the cottage part I'm talking about. It's the part where you don't build defenses and go culture. Surely, you don't think THAT is a good idea in MP :lol:.

How often do you work cottages before writing? I am not that anti-cottage, there are situations when I use them, but I can't remember ever wanting to work them that early. At this point in the game you're only working special resources and whipping/mines. If you are I would suggest that it's one of your bad habits that should be rooted out.

Honestly? Rarely. I've actually done better by doing so on rare occasions, because their turnaround is at its best. The problem is, as you say, production. You don't want to start them too late either, however, or they're not going to pay the opportunity cost of building/working them before one decides the outcome of the game.

Probably the most common time I've built cottages before writing is the early rush (chariot or axe), after the units are out and before maintenance sends me careening into strike. Admittedly, that is virtually never on deity, but not quite never (garbage super UUs and very slow game speeds come to mind).

That synergizes well, too, because cottages are pop efficient rather than tile efficient, and if you successfully rush you just pulled in a ton of tiles :/. This is probably the reason a lot of the good HoF deity space race games run lots of cottages; they cook the settings so they can ASAP grab the land :lol:.

How soon you reach this depends on map/settings. In a slow game I'd be inclined to make 1-2 commerce cities like you suggested. If it's a rich map you will reach SP (or at least guilds+chemistry+caste) workshops early.

SP shops are just soso, it's when you add caste/guilds/chem that they look spectacular. I guess after edu you can go gunpowder ----> chem ----> sci meth ----> communism and backtrade guilds (every single AI hearts the knights!), but even that delays bio to some extent (and forgoes the research multiplier and potential overseas capabilities of astronomy route to communism, but if you take that bio is even later). I have a hard time juggling this. I know, as you say, that it comes down to land available but realistically my strength there is probably just so-so.

Cottages can be maxed out around the same time (FS, democracy), and are actually halfway decent at that point. It's no magic bullet, however, because the infra needed to make them readily converted into :hammers: :)gold: %) + probably kremlin are problematic to acquire while actually working the cottages, pre demo :/.

IMO a lot of this really does hinge on the presence and quality of both tech trades + trade routes. I've yet to find a way where somebody, with NTT, can just bulb their way straight to communism in a timely fashion. You'd need very many GS and even then some good raw research rate. Where do the beakers come from? 8:commerce: palace, trade routes, wealth/research, and however many scientists one can run. Assuming 25% (75% capitol) multipliers until education, You'd need a tremendous amount of scientists just to reach 100 beakers/turn, and happy cap/caste to run it. Am I underestimating trade routes here? Without GLH most you can expect in capitol is like 2 3:commerce: routes with the 8 palace :commerce:. Even with bur, you're talking about ~16-30 :commerce: (+8 to 15) with 75% research...this doesn't come close to the kinds of stuff I see people pulling...and that's assuming 100% science! You wont pull 100% science in NTT environment unless you stay very small (bad idea) as maintenance catches up.

Maybe I'm missing something here though. I must be. With practice I've gotten closer to deity tech rates, but I'm still not like you guys. I've always just assumed this is strictly inferior micro on my part...and that still might be the case...although I'm not ruling out other holes in my play. I do at least have some games now where I'm pulling in 600-800 beakers/turn at 1000 AD and complete oxford before that. Not quite deity level, but a much stronger win% on immortal and occasionally can keep up in deity when I get the right land.

If I had to pick one thing that seems different in your above screenshots, it's the rate of capitol growth. Where do you come up with the resources for that?! You can pound out warriors for monarchy :), but that drains money from cottages and hurts their value. You yourself mention :health: allowing it, but often the only way to get more is trading away :), and even then not always!

Games where I can grow my capitol + surrounding cities a lot on resources tend to go very, very well.
 
Don't have time to respond to it all right now.

Honestly? Rarely. I've actually done better by doing so on rare occasions, because their turnaround is at its best. The problem is, as you say, production. You don't want to start them too late either, however, or they're not going to pay the opportunity cost of building/working them before one decides the outcome of the game.
Yeah, there are exceptions. FP+plains cow start for instance comes to mind. ;)
Starting cottages early in capital can be quite good, at least if you have a quick (fast developement) 2nd city to make your first GS, but cottages in secondary cities rarely makes sense to me.

The capital is a whole other animal and should be treated differently/with its own laws. Bureaucracy is such a powerful civic.

That synergizes well, too, because cottages are pop efficient rather than tile efficient, and if you successfully rush you just pulled in a ton of tiles :/. This is probably the reason a lot of the good HoF deity space race games run lots of cottages; they cook the settings so they can ASAP grab the land :lol:.
True and important to know. Farm-based play relies a lot on overlap for max efficiency.
SP shops are just soso, it's when you add caste/guilds/chem that they look spectacular. I guess after edu you can go gunpowder ----> chem ----> sci meth ----> communism and backtrade guilds (every single AI hearts the knights!), but even that delays bio to some extent (and forgoes the research multiplier and potential overseas capabilities of astronomy route to communism, but if you take that bio is even later). I have a hard time juggling this. I know, as you say, that it comes down to land available but realistically my strength there is probably just so-so.
Caste/guilds goes without saying.
For NTT and MP I would go the lower part of the tree. I use knights a lot in MP, and muskets too. Caste/guilds/chem workshops + musket/knight/cannon is so hard to stop, even for humans.
Some turns later you find yourself with a lot of cottages. :D

And I think I gave you the wrong idea, I don't use farms much late game -- it's all about the SP workshops/watermills.
 
And is anyone really going to prioritise a weak wonder like the Great Wall or Chichen Itza in a no-barb MP game?

My rule of thumb is: cottage rivers, farm lakes. Rivers make working those tiles a high priority for the innate +1c, working lakeside tiles is optional (especially if you're going to be working specialist slots instead of the land).

AIs are incurable wonder-addicts. When they have an opportunity to build a shiny they'll build it. In fact *I* might build GW even without barbs if I'm toying with an Espionage Economy or want to increase GG generation when at war. (Or use the great spy as a golden age civic-flipper mid-game). Chicken pizza just gets built, which means tasty fail-gold if I have stone or am Ind and set a not-so-productive marginal city to the task.

On cottages versus farms, I'm more situational with what other tiles are in the BFC. If it has a lot of hills, riverside or no riverside I'm farming anything I can farm--prod city. If it's massive grassland with enough food to cottage up, I'll cottage up, even off-river. It's more of a city specialization than a terrain specialization. But food count needs can also mean a one-tile fudge factor for non-spec improvements, like the one lone cottage in a prod BFC or the one lone farm in a commerce BFC, just to hot have a 1 food growth/starve cycle at cap.
 
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