6 floodplain, 2 gold hills? what to do

MosquitoE

Chieftain
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Oct 31, 2005
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I founded a city with (IIRC) 6 floodplain, 2 gold hills and at least one other hill.
I am debating whether to go GP farm or or cottage spam.

Any thoughts?
 
I had seven floodplains with a couple hills and some forests in my last game. I went cottage and the city almost supported my whole civ by itself, but I was financial too.
 
And a screenie! :)

Me = newb = loves screenies for references

Good luck!

Dave
 
In this game I have several other grassland/river spots that I was planning on cottaging.

It seems like a good GP spot is very similar to a good commerce spot.:confused:

How do you decide which to go with?
 
My first thought for the scenerio is to cottage spam.
I am assuming that this city is being established in the beginning of a game (ie in bc or early ad)

The 2 gold hills can get about 7 commerce from the start. You can build cottages and they will get about the same 7gpt once they are towns, giving approximately 56gpt. Now just add library, university, Observatory, Oxford and academy and you can make this a research hub.

I find that in the early game I rely on monuments and such for my GPs and then around mid to late game I rely more on specialists for the GP. That being said, you can probably wait a bit for the GP factory.

Some may say that you could really use this city as an early GP factory and use the GPs for research or as superspecialists also. That would be a good scenerio to test out with the city you have. I however am a finance crazed civ player and don't rely on GPs too much.

As for whether to Cottage spam or GP factory, its all up to you. I would be more prone to GP factory if the gold hills were not around and you had another 4+ flood plain city, but given only 1 multiple flood plain city I'd always go with the Cottage spam. :D
 
Guerra said:
You know, I never build cottages.

I wonder if I should start.

Any tips?

My tip: build cottages.

I didn't build these either in my first few games, but they're essential especially at higher difficulties.

Regarding GP farm or commerce city mine usually look like:
GP Farm: 3 +food resources (pigs, wheat, corn, fish, clams, crabs, sheep, maybe 1-2 floodplains, whatever I forgot)
Commerce: Floodplains, river(s)

IMO lots of floodplains/river spaces are better as commerce cities while the cities with 3+ high food spaces (5+ food) are better GP farms. I love having a size 8 city working 3 spaces (pigs, fish, corn let's say), running 4 specialists, & still growing.
 
MosquitoE said:
In this game I have several other grassland/river spots that I was planning on cottaging.

It seems like a good GP spot is very similar to a good commerce spot.:confused:

How do you decide which to go with?
In general, they ARE very similar, and it usually depends on what other kind of city-sites are in your empire. However, in the SG game we just started, our city is on a ton of grassland, w/access to fresh water from a lake ~ no confusion at all ~ GPF baby! Generally, if it's on a river, and you already have a GPF, make it commerce, IMO.
 
Don't floodplains add to unhealthyness? Hopefully you have lots of forests at hand
 
I wish I had a couple of such cities in each of my games, and I would do the doctor myself.
 
farm, mine, farm, farm, mine, farm, cottage.......
i would pop rush everything once you've got over half the shields. Also you stand a good chance of getting Judaism due to all the commerce you're gonna be raking in.
 
Skippa said:
Some may say that you could really use this city as an early GP factory and use the GPs for research or as superspecialists also. That would be a good scenerio to test out with the city you have. I however am a finance crazed civ player and don't rely on GPs too much.
unfortunately, in the early game, your city size is restricted by health and happiness and might not be able to support too many specialists...or, rather, maybe not enough to warrant passing up the commerce from flood plains for the first third to a half of the city's development.
 
Mahatmajon said:
My tip: build cottages.

I didn't build these either in my first few games, but they're essential especially at higher difficulties.

Regarding GP farm or commerce city mine usually look like:
GP Farm: 3 +food resources (pigs, wheat, corn, fish, clams, crabs, sheep, maybe 1-2 floodplains, whatever I forgot)
Commerce: Floodplains, river(s)

IMO lots of floodplains/river spaces are better as commerce cities while the cities with 3+ high food spaces (5+ food) are better GP farms. I love having a size 8 city working 3 spaces (pigs, fish, corn let's say), running 4 specialists, & still growing.

I never build GP farms. To me GP just don't seem to do much for the effort it could take to get them. I might make one if I get a Philosophical leader, but other than that, I always cottage spam. I never build farms or workshops. I build Mines on hills, near rivers I build watermills, and the rest, cottages. With all the late game civics giving bonuses to towns and the like, and state property for watermills, you have tiles that are producing a ton of matierials. I rarely use specialists, unless I get the pyramid to run representation.
 
Thanks for all the posts regarding my question.

This is my 3rd city, I have built the pyramids and the map is huge (18 civs). I expect to eventually have a lot more cities. And this map has a lot of green squares (not many plains) so I will probably have many more cities that could easily support a lot of cottages/GPs.

My understanding is that you really only need one GPF, but the more commerce cities the better.

I am still having trouble deciding if I should dedicate this flood plain city to GPF and do commerce elsewhere.

I will have to check my health and happiness, all the floodplains :yuck: might be a limiting factor to how much population is supportable as specialists.
 
Lord Gideon said:
I never build GP farms. To me GP just don't seem to do much for the effort it could take to get them. I might make one if I get a Philosophical leader, but other than that, I always cottage spam. I never build farms or workshops. I build Mines on hills, near rivers I build watermills, and the rest, cottages. With all the late game civics giving bonuses to towns and the like, and state property for watermills, you have tiles that are producing a ton of matierials. I rarely use specialists, unless I get the pyramid to run representation.
I was just thinking on that earlier today...if you're not Philosophical, do you have any need for a GPF?? Maybe for the Science spec...maybe???

also, I was thinking about the Phil trait itself, too. It really seems to lend itself to Great Scientist approach, given the 1/2 cost of uni's. A small thing, to be sure, but perhaps focusing your Phil. efforts into solely GSs may make a huge difference in the long-run.
 
As a rule I allocate my work tiles as follows, assuming the city is not specialised to any one thing and it doesn't have any peaks/unworkable spaces and is not on the coast:

Production (mines, mills, workshops) :- 5/6 tiles
Food (farms, resources) :- 2/3 tiles
Commerce (Cottages, resources) :- 11-13 tiles

Assumes total of 20 workable tiles

I always go research-heavy on the higher difficulties as it is the only way you can keep up with the AI. Great thing about this is that if you get invaded in the middle/late game, then you can use your 'core' original cities (first 6) to fall back on for the bulk of your research even as you younger cities get creamed. By the time the enemy gets anywhere near your capital you can buy him off with gold, ending the war.
 
Elizabeth is great to play for winning the research game.

She is Philosophical and Financial, so you can build universities and banks at 1/2 cost, making available large amouts of cash and beakers for research. The +1 extra commerceon spaces with 2+ commerce is the best bonus in the game.
 
Commerce it up, that bad boy would get cottages and mines from me without a second thought. GP factory works better with a couple of food tiles and no low-food-but-you-want-to-work-it tiles like gold, and I usually don't create one, I'll just keep the farms on one of those AI farmfest cities.
 
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