When do you NOT spam cottages 2: Electric Bugaloo

Ok, as suggested in my (now somewhat heated) thread about my ability to win by spamming cottages and my aversion to doing just about anything else, I am starting a game to be played with advice from the civ fanatics community:

Leader: Peter
Philosophical is allegedly good for specialist heavy strategies. I wouldn't know as I don't use them. Expansive is just awesome. No early UU or UB so his early game won't be anything special, which is good for this example.

Fractal map, default settings
Standard Size
Normal Speed
Ancient Start
No events or huts (to reduce randomness in any shadows)
Emperor Difficulty (where I can reliably win with cottage spam)

I also considered Gandhi, but then my lands would be pink on the map and I'm not cool with that.

Here is the deal. I am going to try to win this with a strategy whereby cottage spam is NOT the defining characteristic of my economy. I'm not saying I won't build any cottages, but I want to do something significantly different than what I describe in this other thread. I know there are other powerful ways to play than cottage spamming, and I want to add those ways to my repertoire and learn when one way or another is appropriate. My cottage spamming skills are to the point where I might be able to start winning on immortal with them, but I haven't tried anything else since Prince, basically.

So cottaging my oxford city is fine, but cottaging every non-GP non-production city is not allowed. That being said, feel free to cottage spam in shadow games if you want. It would be neat to compare how cottage spam and non-cottage spam games turn out.

I think scout move and settle placement discussions are pretty asinine, so I am going to play the first turn. Feel free to criticize it endlessly, but I'm not doing it over.

So, the leader (in case you don't have them memorized):


The start:


Hmm, flood plains. Just looking at this start I can garuntee I'd win with my normal tactics solely based on the strength of an Oxford/Bureaucracy capital here. I figure this scout move is the most likely to reveal an alternative settling site, if any. Think I did that right?

I brifely consider this alterante location to get the rice and an extra FP at the cost of a turn and a 2 hammer city tile. Should I? Is there an even better option I am missing with my cottage blinders on?


I decline and settle in place. Nothing special revealed. Considering Worker first, Agri->AH tech. Thought about AH first because the cows are the best tile, but I get a discount on it if I go agri first, and I assume I'm going to be farming these FP, right? Or should I stick to cottages for a Bureaucracy capital and vary my strategy elsewhere? I'd perfer not to, as that incorporates a major element of the normal playstyle I am getting stuck in, but if it is the best option I'll consider it.


So, civ-fanatics, where do I go from here? Post feedback, advice and criticism as usual. Shadows in spoilers please. Also, if giving advice, please state your usually difficulty level if isn't your forum title.

I have BUG installed in custom assets, so you guys shouldn't have trouble opening these, right?

If you have a FP heavy capitol, it is good to use it for cottages. Try rolling a start that makes cottage bur cap suck or else just cottage that city and farm/mine/spec the others.

One vote for a cottage bureaucracy capital from a very good player who can win either way.

That was my instinct, too (informed at least in part from watching your recorded games). Lets see what the anti-cottage advocates from my other thread have to say about this capital location.

TheMeInTeam said:

Try rolling a start that makes cottage bur cap suck

Click to expand...

Could you describe such a start? Some locations are better for cottage/bureaucracy capitals than other, obviously. This is one of the better sites, but I have a hard time imagining a situation where it would be a BAD move. In my experience the tactic is so strong that I virtually always do it, unless my capital is my only site suitable for a GP farm, and even then I sometimes move my palace and do it elsewhere.

I'm not going to re-roll this game, but if I do more than one I'd consider rerolling until I found such a situation, if you can tell me what to look for.

Izmir Stinger said:

Could you describe such a start? Some locations are better for cottage/bureaucracy capitals than other, obviously. This is one of the better sites, but I have a hard time imagining a situation where it would be a BAD move. In my experience the tactic is so strong that I virtually always do it, unless my capital is my only site suitable for a GP farm, and even then I sometimes move my palace and do it elsewhere.

I'm not going to re-roll this game, but if I do more than one I'd consider rerolling until I found such a situation, if you can tell me what to look for.

Click to expand...

A start with a lot of food ( think 4 fish ) or with a lot of hills and few rivers. Also, no flood plains.

Any tectonics map would pretty much ensure you wouldn't have good cottage starts ^^

Supp said:

A start with a lot of food ( think 4 fish ) or with a lot of hills and few rivers. Also, no flood plains.

Click to expand...

I have never seen 4 fish. Ever. I've seen 4 seafood, but not 4 fish. Should the RNG gods grant me such a start my normal play method would be to make it a GP farm and cottage spam everywhere else, potential moving my capital to the juiciest one that also has descent production and running bureau from there.

Izmir Stinger said:

Could you describe such a start? Some locations are better for cottage/bureaucracy capitals than other, obviously. This is one of the better sites, but I have a hard time imagining a situation where it would be a BAD move. In my experience the tactic is so strong that I virtually always do it, unless my capital is my only site suitable for a GP farm, and even then I sometimes move my palace and do it elsewhere.

I'm not going to re-roll this game, but if I do more than one I'd consider rerolling until I found such a situation, if you can tell me what to look for.

Click to expand...

Lots of hills and relatively low food, means you have to farm. Coastal with limited land tiles, and a fresh water lake instead of a river.

The problem with no cottages is that it's really hard to pay the bills if you over-expand or conquer too much before courthouses.

vicawoo said:

The problem with no cottages is that it's really hard to pay the bills if you over-expand or conquer too much before courthouses.

Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I always either rush or rex, so this game is going to be different for me. From the other thread my options seem to be NOT over expanding or doing so and bulbing my way through important techs. Not sure how it will work out, but it should be fun.

Any advice on starting tech and build order for a specialist game, or should I just play it like I normally do for a little while?

And I'm not ruling out the possibility of some kind of super production economy, nearby land permitting, though I know even less about how to make that work.

I would say: no cottages in the capital.

I agree with TMIT that a FP is begging for cottages, but this thread is not about cottages, and on a standard size map your capital is a substantial part of your empire. So: farm her up and bring on the specialists

Also, not that there are 2 plains mines and 3 grassland mines (including the marble which acts like one) in the BFC. This consumes 2 + 3*2 = 7 food. Grass cows give 4 food 2 hammers, so you are at approx. food parity working the cows and 2 farmed flood plains (2+3x2). At size 8, this means 2x4 + 3x3 + 2 (cows) + 2 (city tlie) = 21 production, size 9 makes this 23 by working the plains forest.

So, you can also make this cap into a production city, not a true powerhouse but not at all bad, which doesn't waste the bureau bonus. Add the marble and you can crank out some nice early wonders (oracle, parthenon, toa, glib etc)

It's first better to explore the map a bit more to see what other city options you have available for the empire before deciding what to do with the Capital.

Remember to prebuild axeman (put 4 or less hammer into axeman), grow into unhappiness, whip 2 pop, then finish the axeman into your marble wonders to leverage all the hammer bonus.
(Work the farmed FP and not the hills, to learn about slavery and hammer overflow) Most of the production will not be coming from the mines.
(I assume you want to use this as a learning project and not fall back to the usual cottage way)
Grow back to max happy cap, then slot specialist (or work the mines if you need production) when you are waiting for the 10 turn unhappiness to go away.
So you leverage Peter's phil trait.

Look for happiness resources to get early one without having to tech away from your plans. ie. gold, gem on grassland. (fat chance, but still, always keep in the back of your mind)
You'll have to decide if you want to get the mid or not early on (oracle/mc gambit). If no mid, go via monarchy to get the early happy cap raised (you got wine there, you might as well).

It might sound counter intuitive, but I would pick my early wonders (1 or 2 max) to build and leave the rest for capture. One way is to get the 2 GP ones, stonehedge and oracle, in the captial and settle all the GP there, so you won't have to waste movements on moving the GP. You'll get your hammer and commerce bonus for Bureaucracy when you have lines of settled great priests.
Use one to bulb theocracy. Time it so that hopefully it'll be the time you have captured an enemy's capital city. Shrine that with the next GP and it'll be your money/wallstreet city.
On higher difficulty, might have to scratch GP idea and keep it GS.
Or it's very likely you'll find another city site with 3 food bonus tiles and use it as your GS gp farm for mid/end game.
This way you get to keep your GP pool clean and guess what your neighbors are not building when they're building wonders for you? Easier to take over with Axeman. (You will have plenty of time to build lots of the later ones, post Aesthetics, at your captial while your army is en route to the target cities.)
Plus rush a neighbor if opportunity arises. Even better if you found an religion and run OR. Slavery and war is what SE is about.
Fortunately, you'll get a 2 capital cities to work with early on. (I'll shadow one later on when I get the time XD)

For mixed gp pool, you can adopt Obsolete's way and wonder whore in the capital after inital rex phase.
If he can get all the wonders except 3 on deity with unimproved tiles, so shouldn't be hard on emperor.

So, two votes (one equivocated) for a production capital, and possibly wonder whoring. I rarely wonder whore, and never early, so I am intrigued by that option. Particularly the ToA, which I never build. Is the free priest a good boost to my non-cottage approach, or should I try for more purity in my GP pool?

Parthenon is good for obvious reasons, and Oracle has its uses. What tech would I pick? Something difficult to bulb? Can't be too choosy on this difficulty level or you miss out. I go for the great library on many games to boost my GP farm, with or without marble, frequently saving 4+ forests in my GP farm to chop it. If we want we could turn this capital into a more pure GP farm with it, or wonder whore for a strong but heavily mixed farm. I can't get them all, even with my marble advantage.

Which should I go for?

I'll shadow this. Although, I'm not really sure that I'm trying to prove a "side" since I'll probably build a few cottages early, and then a lot of cottages later. Would it be better for the purpose of this thread if I did an "extreme" economy of either all cottages or all specialists? It's been a while since I've built the pyramids so I could try doing that.

Also, I agree with the people saying that your capital will be awesome for running cottages.

If you need cash, sea tiles are your friend.

pi-r8 said:

I'll shadow this. Although, I'm not really sure that I'm trying to prove a "side" since I'll probably build a few cottages early, and then a lot of cottages later. Would it be better for the purpose of this thread if I did an "extreme" economy of either all cottages or all specialists? It's been a while since I've built the pyramids so I could try doing that.

Click to expand...

Just do what works for you. I'm looking for realistic approaches that I can use on Immortal when they are warranted. Despite my leader traits not being optimal for it I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that I could win this game by cottage spamming (unlikely things like being surrounded by warmongers and no strategic resources notwithstanding). So I want to try winning with some other approach - learning its strengths and weaknesses - so I will have more options when I move up to a higher difficulty level. I don't want my Immortal experience to be wins when cottages are optimal and losses when they are not. I want to be able to win either way.

I might shadow this tomorrow. Got the same problem as you described in your other thread - the only ways to victory available to me atm are cottage spam and/or GLH trade route cityspam.

edit: or no. Normal speed

Spam cottages on every floodplain.

Playing along in my shadow game that has no issues at all at building cottages, I vote don't reroll the start as I'm almost out of the BC's and doing well for a change on emp!

I agree with Dave here, but following the spirit of the thread, I gave this a go until 680AD.

OK, things may change as we see more of the map, but so far the opinions on what to do with this capital are:

TheMeInTeam - cottages
vanatteveldt - farms and specialists and/or production, but concedes cottages are a good move, too.
Airey - Wonders with an emphasis on prophets and rush, found Christianity. Strange choice, but interesting.
pi-r8 - cottages
DaveMcW - cottages
Ignorant Teacher - cottages. I am so tempted to open your spoiler tags. That was fast, man.

so far we are heavily in favor of cottages. I will wait for a little more advice then start playing, posting at critical decision points. So far it looks like cottages in capital and other approaches elsewhere, but if someone else can make a good case for something else, I might try it.

Izmir, I think you should study the improvements city by city. IMO, the capital is good for cottages and the other cities will have to be evaluated. However, if you want to strictly play with no cottages at all, the map also allows you to.