KoS5 - Mansa Musa and The Cottage Economy

Welcome to my fifth hosted SG!

The fourth one can be found here. We successfully managed a Domination victory without capturing any AI city.


The start:


Game settings

Emperor Difficulty
Normal Speed
Inland_Sea (Flat world wrap)
No huts/no events

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Variant

Mansa Musa loves his cottages... so much he's instructed his workers to only build them!

Since his workers will be working so hard to put cottages everywhere, he'll want his citizens to work cottages only.

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Rules

1. We can only build cottages improvements!
2. Only cottages: no mines, no farms, no workshops, no windmills, no fish nets, no whaling boats, no watermills, no plantations and no forts!
3. Roads are allowed as they do not later the tile itself.
4. No specialists allowed as long as there are cottageable tiles!
4a. For example, in a city with 10 cottageable tiles, you can only start using specialists after size 11.
5. No further restrictions (can settle on resources to get the bonus etc.)
6. Every victory condition is open, although it is encouraged to win domination/conquest.

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Roster
As usual, I like a 7-player roster. All spots open - first come, first served!

1. kossin
2. neilmeister
3. TCMIV
4. Mutineer
5. Rusten
6.
7.

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I don't expect the game to be very hard... production will be hard to come by in the beginning for certain because of no mines/slow growth but after Democracy the game is won...

For applicants, please specify your preferences:
1) Map type
2) Difficulty level
3) Huts/no huts [no events I hate them ]
4) Anything else?

you mean no farming special resources? It will take ages to get settler. The only way to produce settler would be to chop him... Hmm...

Is chopping allowed?

Honestly, I fail to see how you can raise enough of an army to get going on a higher level of difficulty, without any base production or food for whipping. Maybe I'm just not creative enough in my thinking? It might end being some ninja culture or AP attempt?

Chopping is allowed, how are the nice cottages going to be built otherwise
No improvements other than cottages... yea it's going to be a pain.

@bbp
Rushbuy!

Need to get there with size 6-8 cities and without breaking that with wonders as we did in no happy... If you think it's doable, I'll believe it. Are you talking Emp+?

I don't know if it's doable no, I haven't tried it
Production will be limited that's for certain... at least we should have enough money to upgrade troops.

Emperor would be a nice challenge I think... Monarch might be pushover since we can just out-tech the AI and get them to wage wars while we tech peacefully.

I'll join this suicide game. No Copper, No Iron, No Horses, No Happy or Healthy, should be fun.

1) Probably Archipelago
2) Emporer
3) No huts
4) Nup.

Not a sign-up, but I think early pyramids will solve your production problems. City growth will be painfully slow though, so not much early whipping. Arboria (the one with green forests) will probably make the variant easier.

@shuyhe - I don't know. Early game grassland town is 1h directly + 4/3 of one from US cash - that's good. But towns take a loooong time, and before that the rushbuy potential of a village is way less than farming the grassland and whipping. Also of course, with no normal production building the pyramids involves chopping some place with a bunch of forests after settling on stone.

I'll sign up but the next week and a half is pretty hectic. Should be ok after that but would make sense to put me near back of roster.

May be of interest:
Cottage Cheese - this was much easier of course, could build the appropriate improvements on resources, and windmills so non-riverside plains hills weren't totally useless.

Finally Ready for Noble A and B. Some similarities - slow growing cities, have to settle resources to connect them (of course we have things much easier with being able to build roads).


Settings: Emperor (no offense kossin, but I think you might be underestimating how different playing without food boni will be...)/Normal. Probably a pangaea or other land-heavy map.

hey I see a loophole, actually 1 loophole and one conundrum.

Loophole, we can not build anything but cottages, but no one sad we have to destroy non cottages. So, if we take city from ai, we can keep it size so it work only available cottages, but
Keep Farms/mines.. etc on special resources.

conundrum

We can only work cottages, but when we build city there no cottages and we can not use specialists. So, we have to work non cottage tie?

Not a sign up yet, (I'm trying to decide if I will have time) but here are some thoughts.

I think you've certainly picked a good leader for it, the SPI will help diplo to keep everyone off your back and FIN will help the cottages early on the UU will be nice and cheep to keep people off our backs and the UB will help get more gold if you go for early US. I wonder if Hatty might have been a bit better for the cheep library (easier to get it in every city) and saved hammers on no monument. Though on second thought, the culture of each city is probably really unimportant as long as it isn't being pushed.

I think one major challenge will be the lack of GPP for Academies, Philo/edu bulbs and merchants, as I don't see how you could follow the spirit of the rules and have any surplus food to feed the specialists.

Stone will certainly be nice, if not for the 'mids because of the massive hammer investment than for the hanging gardens which will be very helpful.

neilmeister said:

I'll join this suicide game. No Copper, No Iron, No Horses, No Happy or Healthy, should be fun.

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I don't think it is quite that bad, the rules do let you settle on strategic resources, but I expect happy (units hard to build for each city or we are in US) and health (especially b/c of chopping) will be hard to come by.

shyuhe said:

Not a sign-up, but I think early pyramids will solve your production problems. City growth will be painfully slow though, so not much early whipping. Arboria (the one with green forests) will probably make the variant easier.

Click to expand...

Like timmy I'm not sure how much the pyramids will help before we get gold multipliers as we will want to be spending most of our on research.

Mutineer said:

hey I see a loophole, actually 1 loophole and one conundrum.

Loophole, we can not build anything but cottages, but no one sad we have to destroy non cottages. So, if we take city from ai, we can keep it size so it work only available cottages, but
Keep Farms/mines.. etc on special resources.

conundrum

We can only work cottages, but when we build city there no cottages and we can not use specialists. So, we have to work non cottage tie?

Click to expand...

Well I think keeping non cottages would be out of the spirit of the game, but I doubt that we will have the hammers for much more than an early rush through tree chopping anyways. I suspect that diplo will be much more important in this game than in the previous KoS SGs.

Re the conundrum, I think it is fairly simple to add a rule like "until the city works a cottage it must build a worker to build cottages"

Not a signup, but a thought!

Fishing boats still allowed?

Perhaps some variant of ICS would suit - the happy/health caps will be tiny - growth slow, aim for the Apostolic, spiral & university combo?

Not a signup (yet?).

Sounds like an interesting and hard variant to me. Definitely no archipelago as there is no way we can use the seafood, I'd like pangaea or inland sea.

Emperor, with those restrictions does sound quite hard to me as we have to settle on resources to get the / benefit and can only work crappy tiles until we capture some from another AI (like, with a skirmisher rush ). With a successful rush, emp should still be challenging, however it won't be quick as we need either BW or pottery to make any use of workers while we'd need archery for the military...

Definitely no huts.

Regarding the mids, they might help alot but it would cost so much to build them this slowly... I'm not sure it would pay off. Another idea is the GW for a GSpy or some kind of oracle sling... to solve early teching issues.

shyuhe said:

Not a sign-up

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Stochastic said:

Not a sign up yet,

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BobRoberts said:

Not a signup

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mystyfly said:

Not a signup (yet?)

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Congrats Kossin, looks like you've developed an SG that has me and the Civ Fanatics community (with the notable exceptions of neilmeister and timmy) petrified!

@BobRoberts: Not a bad suggestion for the "religious econ" especially since we are SPI for cheep temples, I just wonder if there would be enough trees around to chop those out?

Re the Map type: I was thinking that a continents map might be good to keep the diplo relatively easy especially since wars won't be a serious consideration until post contact years anyways (though it runs the risk of being isolated with Toku which would probably be fatal )

Yeah, I forgot we could settle on some strateic resources. I was thinking 'pelago map so we don't have to worry as much about military, which will be hard to come by with no production to speak of.

Stochastic said:

Congrats Kossin, looks like you've developed an SG that has me and the Civ Fanatics community (with the notable exceptions of neilmeister and timmy) petrified!

Click to expand...

I'd actually prefer to play this game on immortal. I just don't know if I have the time to commit right now.

neilmeister said:

I'll join this suicide game. No Copper, No Iron, No Horses, No Happy or Healthy, should be fun.

1) Probably Archipelago
2) Emporer
3) No huts
4) Nup.

Click to expand...

As others pointed out, you can settle on resources. Archipelago will be weak however with so few cottageable tiles!

shyuhe said:

Not a sign-up, but I think early pyramids will solve your production problems. City growth will be painfully slow though, so not much early whipping. Arboria (the one with green forests) will probably make the variant easier.

Click to expand...

As long as Stone is around and plenty of forests... yea Mids can be done. Probably find a plains hill stone for settling the capital hehe
Arboria is an interesting choice with plenty of forests and green land for cottages - might be too easy though as it doesn't really restrict early production.

timmy827 said:

@shuyhe - I don't know. Early game grassland town is 1h directly + 4/3 of one from US cash - that's good. But towns take a loooong time, and before that the rushbuy potential of a village is way less than farming the grassland and whipping. Also of course, with no normal production building the pyramids involves chopping some place with a bunch of forests after settling on stone.

I'll sign up but the next week and a half is pretty hectic. Should be ok after that but would make sense to put me near back of roster.

May be of interest:
Cottage Cheese - this was much easier of course, could build the appropriate improvements on resources, and windmills so non-riverside plains hills weren't totally useless.

Finally Ready for Noble A and B. Some similarities - slow growing cities, have to settle resources to connect them (of course we have things much easier with being able to build roads).


Settings: Emperor (no offense kossin, but I think you might be underestimating how different playing without food boni will be...)/Normal. Probably a pangaea or other land-heavy map.

Click to expand...

Oh, I don't mind a challenge to be honest
I'm trying to push the settings a bit here. Monarch I'm 100% certain can be won without even trying so odds on Emperor shouldn't be too bad.

Mutineer said:

hey I see a loophole, actually 1 loophole and one conundrum.

Loophole, we can not build anything but cottages, but no one sad we have to destroy non cottages. So, if we take city from ai, we can keep it size so it work only available cottages, but
Keep Farms/mines.. etc on special resources.

conundrum

We can only work cottages, but when we build city there no cottages and we can not use specialists. So, we have to work non cottage tie?

Click to expand...

Quote from OP:
Since his workers will be working so hard to put cottages everywhere, he'll want his citizens to work cottages only.
Captured cities should have their non-cottages improvements razed and extra population whipped to avoid going against the variant.

Stochastic said:

Not a sign up yet, (I'm trying to decide if I will have time) but here are some thoughts.

I think you've certainly picked a good leader for it, the SPI will help diplo to keep everyone off your back and FIN will help the cottages early on the UU will be nice and cheep to keep people off our backs and the UB will help get more gold if you go for early US. I wonder if Hatty might have been a bit better for the cheep library (easier to get it in every city) and saved hammers on no monument. Though on second thought, the culture of each city is probably really unimportant as long as it isn't being pushed.

I think one major challenge will be the lack of GPP for Academies, Philo/edu bulbs and merchants, as I don't see how you could follow the spirit of the rules and have any surplus food to feed the specialists.

Stone will certainly be nice, if not for the 'mids because of the massive hammer investment than for the hanging gardens which will be very helpful.



I don't think it is quite that bad, the rules do let you settle on strategic resources, but I expect happy (units hard to build for each city or we are in US) and health (especially b/c of chopping) will be hard to come by.



Like timmy I'm not sure how much the pyramids will help before we get gold multipliers as we will want to be spending most of our on research.



Well I think keeping non cottages would be out of the spirit of the game, but I doubt that we will have the hammers for much more than an early rush through tree chopping anyways. I suspect that diplo will be much more important in this game than in the previous KoS SGs.

Re the conundrum, I think it is fairly simple to add a rule like "until the city works a cottage it must build a worker to build cottages"

Click to expand...

Nah... the city can grow on non-improved land. The variant simply means citizens can't work non-cottage improved tiles (i.e. farms, mines, etc.). Working flood plains is fine... forests, etc.

BobRoberts said:

Not a signup, but a thought!

Fishing boats still allowed?

Perhaps some variant of ICS would suit - the happy/health caps will be tiny - growth slow, aim for the Apostolic, spiral & university combo?

Click to expand...

Fishing boats disallowed. Why build a fishing boat when Mansa can have 1/2 a worker to add cottages?
ICS is a good idea I think... but one of the main strengths of ICS is food+whipping from what I remember. Still... it means more cottages worked.

mystyfly said:

Not a signup (yet?).

Sounds like an interesting and hard variant to me. Definitely no archipelago as there is no way we can use the seafood, I'd like pangaea or inland sea.

Emperor, with those restrictions does sound quite hard to me as we have to settle on resources to get the / benefit and can only work crappy tiles until we capture some from another AI (like, with a skirmisher rush ). With a successful rush, emp should still be challenging, however it won't be quick as we need either BW or pottery to make any use of workers while we'd need archery for the military...

Definitely no huts.

Regarding the mids, they might help alot but it would cost so much to build them this slowly... I'm not sure it would pay off. Another idea is the GW for a GSpy or some kind of oracle sling... to solve early teching issues.

Click to expand...

Single continent map is definitely easier for diplomacy and everything else.
Rush will be hard I think but it might be doable/required.
What's the problem with early teching? Sure multipliers will take a while to complete but that just means we have to carefully select what infrastructure we want. Granary is still important, but do we want to invest 2/3 of a library?

Stochastic said:

Congrats Kossin, looks like you've developed an SG that has me and the Civ Fanatics community (with the notable exceptions of neilmeister and timmy) petrified!

Re the Map type: I was thinking that a continents map might be good to keep the diplo relatively easy especially since wars won't be a serious consideration until post contact years anyways (though it runs the risk of being isolated with Toku which would probably be fatal )

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say they're petrified - the variant isn't THAT bad

neilmeister said:

Yeah, I forgot we could settle on some strateic resources. I was thinking 'pelago map so we don't have to worry as much about military, which will be hard to come by with no production to speak of.

Click to expand...

If we control the flow of wars, we won't need military

shyuhe said:

I'd actually prefer to play this game on immortal. I just don't know if I have the time to commit right now.

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Echoes my feeling a bit about Immortal. I'm pretty sure odds are pretty good to beat this on Emperor... maybe a trial on Emperor and if it's too easy crank it up to Immortal.

I'm in

I generally play fractal but I'd guess something like Arboria would go well with this game type.
Emperor
No huts

Alright 3 sign-ups!

@Everyone else
Please clearly say that you're signing up if you want to partake in the game - it's hard to correctly guess otherwise.

@kossin,
I might pass. Seems fun, but I've got too many games going right now. Don't think I'd be able to contribute enough, as evidenced by my participation towards the end of the last one. Will be lurking with interest.