The Loom of the Land

Variant ; No cottages , No specialists.

Addicted to cottages, lightbulbing? This could be the thread for you.

Dont know if it's been done. Doesn't matter.

Sources of income ; trade routes, shrine gold, sea tiles,river tiles, mining gems/gold, other resources, selling techs, pillaging, conquest gold, extortion, missing wonders, asking for gold, building gold/tech, Spiral Minaret , Sangkore,....

Great people spawned from Wonders can lightbulb, golden age, hurry buildings, build a shrine or culture bomb, but not settle. No building GL , but it can be captured. Same with Statue of liberty and Temple of artemis (free priest)


Level, Prince. Monarch is hard enough without removing cottages and specialists so Prince it is.

A city at pop 20 or a city which has less than all it's tiles available due to overlap will have to run citizens.
In this case it will be better to re-improve the tiles. Some micro involved here, but it's a SG, you only play ten or fifteen moves at a time so MM is not so bad, and it can be interesting to get the best out of a city with these rules. With city automation on 'Food', you dont get many specialists popping up.


In conquered cities, all cottages destroyed, all specialists 'fired'.


Leader, decided, Roosevelt. Organized,Industrial

Victory condition. All possible.The variant lends itself to Domination, but we could also do space race.


Normal speed, turnsets probably 20,15,10,10,10... (open to discussion)

Map fractal, standard size

I'd suggest Huyana, if not, Asoka.

my friend, you are crazy, but i already knew that

this isn't a sign up, it's merely me being a brat, and the queen of technicalities.

"In conquered cities, all cottages destroyed, all specialists 'fired'."

if the conquered cities has towns, well, towns aren't cottages. they've grown up, they're towns now. so could you keep 'em?

Are, eagle eyed as usual.

No , all manifestations of the cottage are doomed.

Vra, yea, Huyana would be good.

Whipe/draft/produce economy is very powerfull. You can easy do it on monarch.
With (forgot name, Charismatic/financil leaser with UB giving extra Trade route) you probably easy can do it on emperor on archipelago map.

Mutineer said:

Whipe/draft/produce economy is very powerfull. You can easy do it on monarch.
With (forgot name, Charismatic/financil leaser with UB giving extra Trade route) you probably easy can do it on emperor on archipelago map.

Click to expand...

Yes I think so, if you can play usually at that level it should be no problem.I remember in the 'no cottages' games, you guys didn't use specialists all that much.

Hannibal Charismatic/financial, harbor, If some monarch players want to do it on monarch I would try, but I still have difficulty on Monarch by myself.

Good idea, my friend. Good challenge.
Well, sign me up for this. But I should be able to start next week only. So, leave me at the bottom of the roster, please.

I'd prefer some easy going leader. I'm on the same boat as you are... Prince is easy, but Monarch is too tough. Why don't we play as Ragnar in a low-sea-level, maybe snaky continents, Archipelago map? Should be easier to tech, but tougher to war. And Berserkers get Amphibious promos right off the gate.

Fbelintani, Great to have you on board. Next week is no problem , and it might take a while to form up a team anyway.


About water maps, I don't think it's a good idea you know. I played this variant out 2 times and both times the econ was fine on continents maps.

Production is key, and I wouldn't like to have the limited production of a water map. We just need to get some coastal cities up soon.

If we chose a financial leader it will be doable. My attempts were with organized, Asoka and Napoleon (but he's out because of the Salon's free artist).

lurker's comment:

If you install the Play the dutch mod, you can play Johan de Wit of the dutch who's financial and organized!

Man, looking at the charts to help deciding a good leader to try, I have some random thoughts...

• Philosophical is really wasted.
• Creative is not that useful too
• Financial is only good enough for coastal tiles, riverside Windmills and much later, Watermills with Electricity.
• Spiritual is always good. But I don't think we are going to change civics that much. Only Vassalage/Theocracy with Bureaucracy/OR. I don't know if it's worth.
• Organized is a must. We won't have much commerce, so the less we spend on upkeep, the more we have for research.
• Industrious is good too. Specially for the half-priced forges. Oracle for Metal Casting is always a start.

That said, I'd advocate one of these leaders, not in a specific order:

• Huayna Capac: Financial and Industrious. His UB is a granary providing culture. Oracle for Metal Casting needs Pottery, so it's on the path. And building the Colossus will help too. He starts with Mysticism, so we can found an early religion.
• Mansa Musa: Spiritual and Financial. His UB is a money producing Forge. But he is not industrious, so it's a little expensive.
• Roosevelt: Organized and Industrious is the best trait combo I thought about for this variant. The only problem is that his UB is useless and his UU is almost as useless.
• Augustus: Organized and Creative. His UB is useless for us (+25% great people), but.... Praetorians are Praetorians. I just don't like playing Rome in a SG because everybody plays them offline.

For a change, I'd play Roosevelt. I never play as America.
Or we could give the dutch mod a shot. Cannot decide...

This sounds like an interesting idea, I'd like to play if you'd have me

sounds like fun, I'd like to join if you agree

Fro, Xyqtt , great news. I thought everyone was too worried about the variant.

fbelintani, I never played America either, how about it ? Fro, Xyqtt, your pick of leaders?

One other is Victoria. Financial means we can effectively skip the collosus for sea tile commerce, and then her UU is the redcoat for industrial mayhem.

But.. you're right about Organized.We will have a big population so that makes big civic costs.

I'm leaning towards Roosey. Industrial means we can grab some wonders.

I'm not too fond of Roosevelt because as you say his UB and UU are pretty hopeless. I quite like the idea of Hannibal as suggested above - financial, charismatic (bigger cities earlier, more whipping) and the UB with the possibility of even more trade routes. However I'm not too bothered who we go.

Mind you Hannibal's UU is a pile of crap too. Huayna might be fun?

In fact scratch Hannibal. Thinking about it a bit more we really want to be industrious so we can crank out wonders for trade routes, like the Temple of whatever its called.

Wow! Are you trying to beat someone's post count, Fro?

Actually, I thought about Hannibal this last way. His UU is useless. Charismatic is not that useful, as we don't need that happiness level boost. We should a lot, as we won't have that much tiles to work. I've been thinking a lot on hiring citizen specialists to halt growth... Representation should have a value here.

Capac was my first idea, too. And he's not that bad. His UU is useless (I don't see we doing a Queucha (?) rush), except for avoiding archery early, and his UB is good. Financial would claim for many coastal tiles, so that colossus strategy wouldn't be bad with him.

Almost forgot! We cannot build the Temple of Artemis. It gives a free priest.

Mice, your pick: Roosevelt or Capac?

Another random thought: even if I'm not comfortable with, why not switch to epic speed? My calculations are always at normal, but if we plan to war.....

One more: If we find ourselves isolated, we should restart. There's no way we can keep the pace with the AI without cottages or specialists.

I swear it's the last one: Why don't we play 30, 20 first play and 10 onwards? If you choose epic, make it 15 unless at war. The start is so fast. Playing 10 right off the gate will take... 5 minutes.

How about brennus: organized and charismatic. Though UU and UB sucks

And i would prefer roosevelt. wihtout cottages organized > financial

Brennus really annoys me in games,but really we should go for a stronger leader with this variant.

I think I'll flip a coin for Huyana or Roosevelt.

About epic speed, in the Crusades SG it really threw me off my game just because all the timing is different. I see what you mean about warring, bit I would rather not for this reason. Also we may not war all the way. I won with space race 2 times, mainly because the enemy was just too far away.

When you are cranking hammers like we will, you can build beakers all the way to the space ship.

Yes, no ToA , but Glighthouse and Collosus will be good if we get a lot of coast.

Agree on the isolated start.

Ok, so normal it is!

Roll the start! Roll the start! Roll the start!