Are cottages backwards?
- Thread starter Pelaka
- Start date
Chandrasekhar
Determined
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?
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?
QES
Court Jester
Chandrasekhar said: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?
Technically, to perfect all gameplay issues, we'd all be playing "go", as it has the most minimal amount of features, differentiations, and there are never any balance issues that cannot be fixed by Ko.
But were not playing Go. We're playing Civ, which means Feature-happiness.
When Cottages become the mainstay of every civ, when nearly every single tile is going to have them (with the exception of perhaps hills and resources) and every civ is doing this, it gets boring. There isnt much in the way of variety.
It isnt a "gameplay-balance" issue its a gameplay "variety" issue.
If we want the most solid gameplay, we eliminate all possible features, and turn it into very simplistic (but very difficult) strategy, like Go. I love go, and when i want pure strategy, i play go. But when i want features, i play civ. Having improvments is cool, but when its only genuinely feasiable to play in one style, then the "variety is lost" and things begin to look homogenous.
I want mixes and tapestries of landscape. Towns and farms and workshops and water/wind mills, and towers, and ponies and loveshaks and bling-shops and pawn shops and car dealerships...etc.
I kid of course, but I DO perfer variety. As it is right now, you build cottages with the idea that one day they will become towns. There really isnt another way to keep up.
-Qes
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Maybe we can have a couple types of cottage lines?
Like the current commerce line, and then expanding workshops, so that they start as current, then lose the -1 food, then gain another hammer, then gain a coin, then finally something else.
Silverkiss
NekoChan
if all (or at least he ones unused, wind/lumber/water mill, workshops) improvments improved over time, it would be a lot better...
My biggest problem with the current placement of cottages on the tech tree is that civs that start with ancient chants can research education for cottages right away, which gives them a huge leg up on getting those cottages going early. This becomes especially unbalanced when there are goodie huts available and a civ pops education (or even worse, popping writing after researching education). For civs that can't research education right off the bat, they first have to get 125 beakers worth of ancient chants and then another 200 beakers for education. This is even worse for the Clan of Embers and Charadon who start with no free techs AND have -10% to research. In vanilla civ, although there are civs that can also research pottery off that bat, because the tech costs are lower around the board, the differences between civs that can and can't get pottery right away isn't as big a deal.
This is similar to the problem that I have with writing giving a free tech because the only requirement to research writing is education. In vanilla civ, liberalism is well balanced because there are a number of high costing techs in order to get to liberalism and the benefits of liberalism (free speech, free religion) aren't so huge. Plus, you usually have to sacrifice getting the free merchant at economics in order to make the run at liberalism (unless you're playing on lower difficulty levels and crushing the AI in research). Writing in FFH2 allows libraries which give a 25% increase in beakers, which is already a huge bonus in addition to the free tech. My recommendation would be to have writing have an additional prerequisite such as philosophy. This would make early popping of writing from huts much more difficult and give most civs a decent chance at getting to writing first rather than only the civs that start with ancient chants.
This is similar to the problem that I have with writing giving a free tech because the only requirement to research writing is education. In vanilla civ, liberalism is well balanced because there are a number of high costing techs in order to get to liberalism and the benefits of liberalism (free speech, free religion) aren't so huge. Plus, you usually have to sacrifice getting the free merchant at economics in order to make the run at liberalism (unless you're playing on lower difficulty levels and crushing the AI in research). Writing in FFH2 allows libraries which give a 25% increase in beakers, which is already a huge bonus in addition to the free tech. My recommendation would be to have writing have an additional prerequisite such as philosophy. This would make early popping of writing from huts much more difficult and give most civs a decent chance at getting to writing first rather than only the civs that start with ancient chants.
drekmonger
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2005
- Messages
- 56
Instead of constraining the building of cottages, technology could contrain their growth.
What if certain techs added +1 to the max size of cottages? So in order to grow a cottage up to a Town, you'd need four techs (one of which might be pretty high up on the tree.)
What if certain techs added +1 to the max size of cottages? So in order to grow a cottage up to a Town, you'd need four techs (one of which might be pretty high up on the tree.)
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
You guys are all too conservative. 
If it were up to me, I'd scrap cottages altogether, or at least combine them with farms.
Think about it: towns represent urbanization. Besides towns the other major terraformation strategy is farming for supporting specialists. But specialitization is also a sign of urbanization and large population centers. And large population centers exist in fertile regions (ie with lots of farms). So towns and farms aren't opposite terraformation as Civ4 would have you think. They're the same thing. So why not something like:
Farm: +1 food
Village: +1 food, +1 commerce (grows from a farm in twenty turns)
Town: +1 food, +2 commerce (grows from a village in fourty turns)
Metropolis: +1 food, +3 commerce (grows from a town in 160 turns, gives a HUGE bonus for pillaging
)
+1 extra food with Sanitation
So farm -> metropolis would represent gradual population growth in FfH, as people repopulate the world after the ice age.
To replace the cottage as an improvement you can build in tiles without fresh water access, I'd make the pasture buidable in all tiles. They could start with +1 hammer, +1 commerce. and with techs (such as Horseback Riding
) produce up to +2 hammers, +2 commerce. Unlike farms they shouldn't grow to anything else though to represent the mobile life of animals herds, and the fact they can return quickly to a pillaged area (what's there to pillage after all?).
Unlike farms <-> towns, farms <-> pastures would actually represent a different lifestyle, one between sedentarism and nomadism.
By letting the farm -> town line end at a lower commerce level (only +2 - I assume metropoles would be rare) specialists would become more important as a means to gain gold and science. This will have the added advantage of a greater distinction between eg gold (merchant) and science (sage) civs depending on civics etc. Currently, due to the absence of a spending cap on science/gold à la Civ2, everyone sets their science spending as high as possible.
Idea: perhaps workers should be able to build towns directly at a cost of 70 turns after researching some tech. It would represent conscious colonization instead of natural growth, and would give workers something more to do besides idling half their time...
Non-XML ideas that would go well with this:
If it were up to me, I'd scrap cottages altogether, or at least combine them with farms.
Think about it: towns represent urbanization. Besides towns the other major terraformation strategy is farming for supporting specialists. But specialitization is also a sign of urbanization and large population centers. And large population centers exist in fertile regions (ie with lots of farms). So towns and farms aren't opposite terraformation as Civ4 would have you think. They're the same thing. So why not something like:
Farm: +1 food
Village: +1 food, +1 commerce (grows from a farm in twenty turns)
Town: +1 food, +2 commerce (grows from a village in fourty turns)
Metropolis: +1 food, +3 commerce (grows from a town in 160 turns, gives a HUGE bonus for pillaging
)+1 extra food with Sanitation
So farm -> metropolis would represent gradual population growth in FfH, as people repopulate the world after the ice age.
To replace the cottage as an improvement you can build in tiles without fresh water access, I'd make the pasture buidable in all tiles. They could start with +1 hammer, +1 commerce. and with techs (such as Horseback Riding
) produce up to +2 hammers, +2 commerce. Unlike farms they shouldn't grow to anything else though to represent the mobile life of animals herds, and the fact they can return quickly to a pillaged area (what's there to pillage after all?).Unlike farms <-> towns, farms <-> pastures would actually represent a different lifestyle, one between sedentarism and nomadism.
By letting the farm -> town line end at a lower commerce level (only +2 - I assume metropoles would be rare) specialists would become more important as a means to gain gold and science. This will have the added advantage of a greater distinction between eg gold (merchant) and science (sage) civs depending on civics etc. Currently, due to the absence of a spending cap on science/gold à la Civ2, everyone sets their science spending as high as possible.
Idea: perhaps workers should be able to build towns directly at a cost of 70 turns after researching some tech. It would represent conscious colonization instead of natural growth, and would give workers something more to do besides idling half their time...
Non-XML ideas that would go well with this:
- Add spending caps for your commerce à la Civ2, changeable by civics. Eg standard it's maximum 60%. City States would give -10%, other civics could increase it.
- Decrease the increase of GPP. 150->100->50 per GP instead of 150->300->...
Sureshot
Goddess
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2006
- Messages
- 3,771
personally id like to see the resource improvements being buildable when theres no resource there, and working like mines, but instead finding the type of resource they can work.
so pastures built could have a chance of finding horses or sheep whatnot
quarries could find stone or marble
and the windmills and such need a boost in general, lets make bigger not just gimp cottages, theyre already gimped compared to vanilla
so pastures built could have a chance of finding horses or sheep whatnot
quarries could find stone or marble
and the windmills and such need a boost in general, lets make bigger not just gimp cottages, theyre already gimped compared to vanilla
Nero's fire
Warlord
I like the idea of pushing back cottages. I think taxation would be a good place. Requireing X tech to advance a cottage seems like a good idea but it also seems very complicated. There are alternate sources to pick up beakers rather then requireing cottages. Trade routes can be a very important to increase tech and history supports early civs which good trading locations. The Greeks didn't become the center of culture because of villages, they were mostly a few city states. Greece go where they were by access to the Mediteranian sea and located in the center of Western Civilzation, able to trade with Africa and Europe.
Pushing back cottages only delays the problem however, since when civs pick up taxation (or whatever tech) they would then spam cottages. I would recommend making it so that they caused -1 food. This would negate the vitalize spells difference from Vanilla and would require that a city's fat cross not be filled with them in order to get to 20 citizens. To balance Cottages they could actually see an increase in commerece (possibly with some new tech). This also makes sense since cottages grow to be towns by having the cottages population grow. Settlers and workers already take food to be built so I don't see this idea going against flavour.
Pushing back cottages only delays the problem however, since when civs pick up taxation (or whatever tech) they would then spam cottages. I would recommend making it so that they caused -1 food. This would negate the vitalize spells difference from Vanilla and would require that a city's fat cross not be filled with them in order to get to 20 citizens. To balance Cottages they could actually see an increase in commerece (possibly with some new tech). This also makes sense since cottages grow to be towns by having the cottages population grow. Settlers and workers already take food to be built so I don't see this idea going against flavour.
Unser Giftzwerg
UgLe Game Promoter
Unser <3's Pelka. 
When I've talked about rearainging the tech tree, and claim FfH's pacing is too fast, this is the exact sort of thing. It seemed like I was in a severe minority when it came to comments like that, so it is heartening to see you get a good response to your proposals.
For my money I'll salute any idea run up the flagpole at this stage. But I'd rather hear a lot of brainstorming before anything too drastic is done. Pushing Cottages all the way back to Guilds would also drastically increase the time it would take to reach guilds. There are bound to be all sorts of unintended consequences, so a lot of brainstorming would be great.
I've been bouncing Niilo's idea around inside the head recently and I sort of like it. I am not fanatical about any specific proposal yea or nea at this point, but I do sort of like this idea.
Here's some other general concepts thrown out for ponderization.
Moving Leaves or OctoLords to the Argiculture Branch: This would increase the comminttment / risk level for the rush-to-early-religion gambit.
Swap God King and Organized Religion: This simple change has been proposed several times. It would definitely slow down early expansion.
Another Root-Level Tech (or Two): Perhaps the mage/conjurer development lines should be split into an entire branch from the priest development lines? Perhaps spreading out the Agriculture/Crafting/Exploration techs into four branches instead of three might make it easier to distribute things around? I dunno, but I suspect the added flexibility might prove handy.
More when the brain is more awake and teh ISP connection less
When I've talked about rearainging the tech tree, and claim FfH's pacing is too fast, this is the exact sort of thing. It seemed like I was in a severe minority when it came to comments like that, so it is heartening to see you get a good response to your proposals.
For my money I'll salute any idea run up the flagpole at this stage. But I'd rather hear a lot of brainstorming before anything too drastic is done. Pushing Cottages all the way back to Guilds would also drastically increase the time it would take to reach guilds. There are bound to be all sorts of unintended consequences, so a lot of brainstorming would be great.
vorshlumpf said:
I've been bouncing Niilo's idea around inside the head recently and I sort of like it. I am not fanatical about any specific proposal yea or nea at this point, but I do sort of like this idea.
Here's some other general concepts thrown out for ponderization.
Moving Leaves or OctoLords to the Argiculture Branch: This would increase the comminttment / risk level for the rush-to-early-religion gambit.
Swap God King and Organized Religion: This simple change has been proposed several times. It would definitely slow down early expansion.
Another Root-Level Tech (or Two): Perhaps the mage/conjurer development lines should be split into an entire branch from the priest development lines? Perhaps spreading out the Agriculture/Crafting/Exploration techs into four branches instead of three might make it easier to distribute things around? I dunno, but I suspect the added flexibility might prove handy.
More when the brain is more awake and teh ISP connection less
I agree that something has to be done around the whole cottage thing.
But i don't think that the boni cottages give are too much.
The Problem imho are Flood Plains, if i see them around at my starting position i get to cottages asap and start building them on the Flood Plains.
My city still grows very fast and i get a lot of commerce.
when i've reached the happycap i kinda have to work some hills, meaning i get lots of hammers and commerce.
well the problem is that its just plain stupid to build farms on the Flood Plains, at least in the early game, since you reach the happy cap very fast you have no use for all the food anyway, even Flood Plains with cottages are a lot of Food.
summing up, the early Combo of Flood Plains and Cottages is extremly powerful. The unhealth generated was never an issue in my games, if you get some rice and a cow even less.
Maybe make Flood Plains not workable until sanitation.
I don't like the idea of moving cottages too far in the tech tree very much, as cottages on Gras and plains are just fine and it would slow the early game down a lot tech wise.
and another thing, regarding Flood Plains, i don't think you should be able to upgrade them via "vitalize the land" or Genesis.
Maybe Genesis because its a Ritual, but VtL is just to easy to get.
Imagine a Kurioates Town with more than 20 FP and you just finished Genesis.
I had that in one of my games.
I think we all agree that having 25 ressources around your city is way too powerful, those turned FP had better yields than most ressources, so how is that any different?
But i don't think that the boni cottages give are too much.
The Problem imho are Flood Plains, if i see them around at my starting position i get to cottages asap and start building them on the Flood Plains.
My city still grows very fast and i get a lot of commerce.
when i've reached the happycap i kinda have to work some hills, meaning i get lots of hammers and commerce.
well the problem is that its just plain stupid to build farms on the Flood Plains, at least in the early game, since you reach the happy cap very fast you have no use for all the food anyway, even Flood Plains with cottages are a lot of Food.
summing up, the early Combo of Flood Plains and Cottages is extremly powerful. The unhealth generated was never an issue in my games, if you get some rice and a cow even less.
Maybe make Flood Plains not workable until sanitation.
I don't like the idea of moving cottages too far in the tech tree very much, as cottages on Gras and plains are just fine and it would slow the early game down a lot tech wise.
and another thing, regarding Flood Plains, i don't think you should be able to upgrade them via "vitalize the land" or Genesis.
Maybe Genesis because its a Ritual, but VtL is just to easy to get.
Imagine a Kurioates Town with more than 20 FP and you just finished Genesis.
I had that in one of my games.
I think we all agree that having 25 ressources around your city is way too powerful, those turned FP had better yields than most ressources, so how is that any different?
Quetz
The Tallest Lilliputian
i like the OP's idea a lot, although maybe, as someone said, not quite as far back as Guilds.
Why couldn't lumbermills and such give a small bit of commerce? Its not like mills aren't run for profit.. Not sure how I would balance it out but hey
Why couldn't lumbermills and such give a small bit of commerce? Its not like mills aren't run for profit.. Not sure how I would balance it out but hey
Nikis-Knight
Deity
I'll throw a couple ideas into the brain storm.
-Quadruple the time needed to grow cottages. Add to republic and guild civics a double speed on hamlet & village growth.
This would not prevent early cottages from being useful, but make specialists and aristocracy much more useful, as well as those civics, allowing cottage line growth to return to current levels eventually.
-Flood plains have a small random chance of, well, flooding every so many turns. This would knock cottage improvements down one level. It shouldn't happen so much that they don't have time to grow back, but would limit the power of floodplains + cottages. When one FP floods, an adjacent on might have a small chance to flooding as well.
-Quadruple the time needed to grow cottages. Add to republic and guild civics a double speed on hamlet & village growth.
This would not prevent early cottages from being useful, but make specialists and aristocracy much more useful, as well as those civics, allowing cottage line growth to return to current levels eventually.
-Flood plains have a small random chance of, well, flooding every so many turns. This would knock cottage improvements down one level. It shouldn't happen so much that they don't have time to grow back, but would limit the power of floodplains + cottages. When one FP floods, an adjacent on might have a small chance to flooding as well.
Silverkiss
NekoChan
Then you create a chain reaction and the whole river floods ! W00T !!!
Chandrasekhar
Determined
Hm... it would make sense for flood plains to flood, wouldn't it? I think that might be a nice way to balance flood plains, though on the higher difficulty levels, their unhealthiness can be a balancing factor in itself.
QES
Court Jester
I think that specialists need more love in general. Food/farm/aristocracy/and specialist..er..speciailzation should be a cool tactic.
I want 3-4 specialits per size 8 city, that'd rock.
-Qes
I want 3-4 specialits per size 8 city, that'd rock.
-Qes
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