Are cottages backwards?

[Sureshot]

specialists would be better if the time to make them didnt increase so much each time

 

[QES]

specialists would be better if the time to make them didnt increase so much each time

Well in theory, a specialist is a replacement for working a tile that'd A) not grant food anyway and B) wouldnt have income generated as high as a specialist.

Makes sense, But i love specialists, and i wish they were in more .
-Qes

EDIT: Made me sad to see the free specialists go in caste system.

Maybe they'll come back somewhere else? Yes Yes Maybe? NO....Back to work....

 

[griffin71]

After reading all of the posts in this thread, let me give 2 points that would improve the game imo. In the second point, I have tries to merge many ideas that have been brought in on this thread.
I really hope this will be implemented one day in some form!

1. Total economic redesign
I think that the basic flaw in Civ is that goods have no units. Once you have access to a resource, the amounts that can be extracted appear to be infinite. In the real world this is obviously different.
Implementing this would mean a total redesign of the civ economic system. I have once considered this, but it would be way too time consuming for me to work out the idea. If goods were tradable, there would/could be much more scarcity. This would increase international trade in order to obtain goods not available in your lands.
For FfH, this would mean that much more land would need to be worked in order to maintain a population of give size. This would be a natural limit to growth, both in popultion and in wealth. You could not build only cottages and towns, because you would need the land for producing goods.

In this notion lies the proposal for FfH:

2. Feasible changes to the great FfH 2 mod
I agree with the following observations:
* though better than in vanilla, Cottages (i.e. cottages, hamlets, villages, towns) are still too powerful. Spending 90% of you income for science is making the later game leratively uninteresting.
* enormous amounts of Cottages yields no scenic graphics.

Proposal:
cottages can only be built
- next to rivers (on every second square, if you wish)
- in the 4 squares immediately adjacent to the city
- next to a tile with a special resource; only 1 allowed per resource square
- on junctions of trade routes, and along trade routes within your city's squares (you would need something to mark trade routes if you want to implement this, and it might be an option to demand maintenance of 1 gold per 3 squares of trade route; trade routes are good and broad roads connecting cities, and workers need time to build these)

production table
size food gold
1 cottage as is 1 (as is: unworked land yield)
2 hamlet -1 2
3 village -2 3
4 town 0 4 (all space is occupied by buildings, no food!)
food production is at least 0

The above means that you will need other tiles to produce enough food to maintain a Cottage, thus preventing you from spamming the land with them.

 

[Pelaka]

It sounds like there is alot of support for doing something about cottages. However, I my original point wasn't so much about fixing cottages, as making lumbermills, windmills, waterwheels and workshops more attractive. If the intellegent decision is to always make a cottage, and these all appear later i the tech tree then cottages... then there is a big problem. We need to either:

1. Weaken the cottage line so that they aren't uniformly better then these other improvements.

2. Make the other improvements better so they represent valid alternatives (at least to some racial/religions combinations).

3. Move cottages after them in the tech tree so that these represent interim improvements that are eventually replaced by cottages.

Pel

 

[QES]

It sounds like there is alot of support for doing something about cottages. However, I my original point wasn't so much about fixing cottages, as making lumbermills, windmills, waterwheels and workshops more attractive. If the intellegent decision is to always make a cottage, and these all appear later i the tech tree then cottages... then there is a big problem. We need to either:

1. Weaken the cottage line so that they aren't uniformly better then these other improvements.

2. Make the other improvements better so they represent valid alternatives (at least to some racial/religions combinations).

3. Move cottages after them in the tech tree so that these represent interim improvements that are eventually replaced by cottages.

Pel

I like the tech tree adjustment the most. Also means that the world feels less "populated" until later. All those towns imply population, and it would make sense the world is covered in peoples much later than earlier.
-Qes

 

[Nero's fire]

2. Make the other improvements better so they represent valid alternatives (at least to some racial/religions combinations).

I have a couple of ideas for this
1) Have certain buildings increase the yeild of those imporovments. Like a Grain Mill could add +1 food to windmills or Forges could add +2 commerce to Workshops.
2) Dwarves get special mines, Elves get to build in forests. Orcs don't seem to get much special. Letting them work jungles has been recommended so there is some love out there for the orcs. It seems that being a more aggresive race they might make better workshops perhaps +2 shields.

 

[Grey Fox]

In vanilla I never really used Workshops, but I did see the potential with them with the +1 State Property, and the fact that they got +1 from some tech. I dont know if they get +from some tech in FfH, but they should.

And they should also get +1 with a civic. Maybe Guilds?

Windmills should get +1 from some tech, and then maybe +1 from another tech later. And it should come quite early. I did use them in vanilla when I needed extra food.

Watermills are already restricted by the fact that they can only be built by rivers, and only one one side of the river (you cant build on the opposite side if you have one on the other). They should come slighly later then farms, and give +1 +1 +1 initially (might be too good with + and + from the start, but since they cant be built everywhere anyhow). And with a tech they should get +1, and maybe another tech give +1.

Lumbermills are the only of these 4 I already build. Since you seem to get less hammers from removing forests in this mod anyways (might be just me). And I usually like having the health from the forests around. But maybe they need a +1 from a tech?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Here's why cottages are so good in FfH:

Vitalize. With this spell, just about anyone can make it so that all of the tiles in a city's fat cross give two food (except when they give 5). Now, each of these self-sustaining tiles can have a cottage put on them. In vanilla Civ, you had to put farms near city's that didn't have perfect starts in order to get a city up to size 20 to work all of the tiles it can.

What's so incredibly different about FfH that means it needs to delay cottages so much to be well balanced? They're already far, far weaker than those in vanilla Civ.

Vanilla Civ towns
Base: 4
Printing Press: +1
Free Speech: +2
Universal Suffrage: +1

Fall from Heaven town
Base: 4
Arcane Lore: +1

I still don't see why you think the cottages should be pushed back even farther. What major gameplay issue would this correct?

I like this post Chand but I think you took it only goes halfway point. If you don't mind I'd like to bring it on home.

You are right. The difference between Civ and FfH is the preponderance of cottages. Vitalize, and Spring, mean Cottages might be built on 75% of all the tiles in your FfH empire. In Civ you generally cannot afford to build cottages all over the place. Deserts certainly do not turn into suburbia in Civ.

Yes, one Civ cottage will eventually outproduce 1 FfH cottage, but that is not the an important comparison WRT FfH. The important comparison is the FfH Cottage compared to the FfH Everything Else. The FfH Cottage at +4 +1 is more productive than the FfH Lumbermill, Windmil, Mine, and Farm. It's not as good as a Civ cottage, but it's still the best deal in town. Then terraforming allows the most productive improvement to be placed virtually everywhere, eventually.

Delaying the introduction of cottages, or slowing the growth rate of cottages, addresses this my reducing the value of each cottage. The overall value of an improvement is best measured as its total production over time. I'm not sure it would do enough, but it does tend to make the other improvements a bt more competative compared to cottages. But probably not enough to offset the terraforming aspect. That is the driving force behind cottage concern.

However this point cannot be brought home completely without mention of the Ljosaflar. With terraforming and forest builds, Ljo can raise cottages on 90% or more of their tiles. If terraforming is cut back, Ljosalfar's economic advantage grows even wider because their forest build ability remains. So long as one civilization can ultra-spam the single most productive terratin improvement, all civilizations will need the ability to spam that improvement.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

It sounds like there is alot of support for doing something about cottages. However, I my original point wasn't so much about fixing cottages, as making lumbermills, windmills, waterwheels and workshops more attractive. If the intellegent decision is to always make a cottage, and these all appear later i the tech tree then cottages... then there is a big problem. We need to either:

1. Weaken the cottage line so that they aren't uniformly better then these other improvements.

2. Make the other improvements better so they represent valid alternatives (at least to some racial/religions combinations).

3. Move cottages after them in the tech tree so that these represent interim improvements that are eventually replaced by cottages.

Pel

In the spirit of (4) All Of The Above, a germ of an idea hits me.

1. Weaken the Cottage line by 3. slowing their growth by tying them to tech tree development, specifically with 2. certain race/religion tweaks in mind. How can that be accomplished? Civics.

e.g.

Cottages can be built under Education like now. But they a cannot grow to Hamlets until Arisotcracy is in place to supply the local country Lord. Or let's say Republic allows growth all the way to Village ... unless you're also running Sacrifice the Weak in which case you're back down to Hamlets. Not only are their fewer people to go around, for some reason, you want to keep them close to the "processing center" for the exact same some reason. I could probably think up an effect for Guardian of Nature, if given some quiet time and a generous alottment of fine single-malt scotch.

The exact effects abve just for demonstration. A little thought can flesh out the idea. In FfH our suburbia wouled ebb and swell according to changes in social conditions, technology, cutural values, what have you. There's a chance civics tweaking is a route to balance, and can be fairly targetable.

 

[Nero's fire]

Will hidden nationality units be allowed to pillage? This might make cottages a very nice target since you won't have to declare war to get their bountiful pillage bonus. If so then cottages might be restricted away from your border cities or require constant vilgilance. It hasn't been a problem for me in war for three main reasons

1) Wars don't last the entire game (usually)

2) Focus is already on getting a military to defend your lands

3) Ususually over in THEIR borders taking down THEIR cottages

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Ah, you know, allowing hidden nationality units to pillage would be really nice. You'd probably have to either get rid of the gold you get from pillaging with hidden nationality units, or at least reduce it, but it would make improvements like cottages much more difficult to sustain. I'm hoping that hidden nationality units will become a more important part of the game.

 

[Draconian]

Simply moving cottages to a later tech or making them significantly weaker in the early game won't work.
At the moment cottages are the only improvements that add commerce early on without depending on a specific ressource, if you take that away it would make starting positions with luxuary ressources way to powerful. Imagine you had two gold ressources in/near your capitols fat cross, without early cottages the other players wouldn't be able to keep up with your research (probably 2x theirs). You would get the tech needed for cottages way before them and the gap would grow even bigger. If you don't allow cottages to grow until a certain tech is researched the same will happen to a lesser extent.

If you think cottages are to strong buff the other improvements (watermills for example...) or make towns weaker in the late game.

 

[Uberslacker]

You'd probably have to either get rid of the gold you get from pillaging with hidden nationality units...

Utterly concur. After all, those filthy mercs are only in it for the promise of pay and whatever loot they can get their hands on.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Simply moving cottages to a later tech or making them significantly weaker in the early game won't work.
At the moment cottages are the only improvements that add commerce early on without depending on a specific ressource, if you take that away it would make starting positions with luxuary ressources way to powerful. Imagine you had two gold ressources in/near your capitols fat cross, without early cottages the other players wouldn't be able to keep up with your research (probably 2x theirs). You would get the tech needed for cottages way before them and the gap would grow even bigger. If you don't allow cottages to grow until a certain tech is researched the same will happen to a lesser extent.

If you think cottages are to strong buff the other improvements (watermills for example...) or make towns weaker in the late game.

With respect, I disagree. When you are at one or two cities, even +1 commerce is significant. Restricting early cottage growth to say Hamlets would actually have a rather small impact on the opening game.

As for an imbalance caused by luxury resorces near the start, I don't see this scenario occuring very frequently. First of all, many of these resources need both Calendar and Bronze Working or Sanitation to develop as they are often under forest or jungle. Secondly, every startup will have some of these resources. Once civ might be lucky enough to have a few extra, but it's not going to be a doubling or trebling of everyone else.

Lastly, how is this scenario any different from the status quo? Rigth now the startup lucky enough to have a lot of flood plains or a lot of fishable resources has an advantage over others. Lots of early food means lots of early settlers. There will always be poor startup locations, good ones, and great ones. What's the difference if 'great' means flood plains or if 'great' means gold deposits?

As for making all the other improvements even more productive, perhaps that'll provide some good results. However I see no reason to declare weaking cottages off-limits. I don't think FfH suffers some from too little production, I think it suffers some from too much production. Adding even more production via lumbermills and the rest strikes me as adding gasoline to a fire that is already uncomfortably hot. But I could be wrong about that, so it's best to keep an open mind.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Ah, you know, allowing hidden nationality units to pillage would be really nice. You'd probably have to either get rid of the gold you get from pillaging with hidden nationality units, or at least reduce it, but it would make improvements like cottages much more difficult to sustain. I'm hoping that hidden nationality units will become a more important part of the game.

This is bound to be fun, but I doubt these units will cause much more than nusiance-level economic damage between evenly-matched opponents. It will be hard to cause enough long-term economic damage to recoup the construction cost of units with brief lifetimes. I have to think defenders will have a large advantage over raiders. (Hidden recon units will be the defensive unit of choice to spot 'em kill 'em and/or call in the cavalry. )

I doubt hidden nationality units will have much of an impact on the importance to Cottage spam. The successful early cottage spammer is probably the same well-funded guy or gal out hiring them mercenaries to raid the poorer, less-cottaged-up, neighbors. In that sense it is possible the HNUs will exacerbate the situation.

But fun, I do expect they will be fun.

 

[Draconian]

Ok I'll throw in some numbers: capitol base commerce is 9 now lets add an elder council and maybe two worked river tiles to one player, that would equal 13 research for many turns without early cottages. New cities aren't going to contribute research fast.
An other player with two gold tiles could gain 9+2x6=21 (gold was +6 right?) research easily. Add an elder council here aswell and you nearly have double the research. You only need to research 1-2 techs or luck with goody huts to build mines and I have never seen a gold ressource with a forest on it right from the start. Wine isn't bad either, you can improve it even earlier than gold and I have had starts with three wines + flood plains.
The status quo is different because you can build cottages to catch up (as you said: every commerce counts in the early game). Of cource the other player can build cottages as well, but having 20 research vs 30 is way better than 13 vs 23.

There are great, good, ok and bad starts and there is always luck involved in where you end up. But delaying cottages or making them weaker early on makes great commerce starts even greater. I don't think that this would be good, why should the impact of luck at the start of the game be increased?
Granted, those starts are rather rare but they do happen.