InvisibleStalke
Emperor
I'd like to collect some of the best practices for running cottage economies on higher levels (Emperor plus). I'm going to start with some of my own - and hopefully I'll either be corrected or get inspiration from others.
To SE players - this isn't the place for a CE/SE debate. The assumption here is that you've decided to play an economy specializing in cottages. So how can you do it effectively.
Heres my thoughts anyway:
Early Game - Start
- You don't need to start with a cottage economy in mind. In fact you still have some fairly important other objectives - expanding and creating a military. Special tiles are still worth a lot more to you than cottages will be. So your early priority will be getting the special tiles of your capital worked.
- My todo list for the early game is to get three cities running quickly - usually the worker from my first city will travel to the second city, chop it a worker and then return so each city has a worker dedicated to it. Cities 2 and 3 I am favouring as production cities to build units, settlers and more workers. That lets my capital do other things - either wonders or cottages.
- Getting writing and putting a library somewhere so you can run 2 scientists for an early academy is a high priority. In fact until you have your GP farm running, any high food site should either be dedicated to production or running specialists for early great people.
- If the capital is high food, then make it your GP farm and don't cottage it. Instead run scientists and build some other cottage cities later. Consider moving your capital during the bureaucracy era.
- If the capital isn't high food then you should be scouting out a GP farm location.
- In general I would put hammer cities by mountains with food. Cottage cities in green areas (including jungle) without heavy food production. Run specialist cities off seafood and off high food tiles surrounded by low value tiles. In the early game I would probably aim to have a fairly equal mix of these three types of cities, but in practice I will work with whatever I get in terrain.
- Tech priority is Writing then Monarchy. Monarchy is king - running HR and getting your population up into double digits quickly is important. There is a huge difference between an empire of 10 cities of size 5 and one of 6 cities of size 15.
- Cottage cities can exist with no food bonuses - but in that case don't whip them for anything other than a granary or an emergency. Once you have civil service make sure you farm a route to these cities so that they can grow quicker. If at all possible make sure you have +4 food by creating two grassland farms first.
- Overlap is good for early cottage cities. If some of your first few cities overlap the capital and can work cottages on land that the capital can take over this is hugely beneficial as the capital has much better multipliers.
- After Monarchy you can either try for wonders up the Aesthetics / Literature line, or go straight for COL and Bureaucracy if you already have good GPP production.
- Don't be afraid to drop the slider. If you have a good number of scientists then you might consider going to zero to support more cities, land and units. Cottage growth will bring you back again. If there are mainly cottage cities then I find 50% a good rule of thumb. If my slider is higher than that I should be pursuing more cities.
Warring in early game
- Lets say you have at least two production cities producing units for defense. One is probably not enough. If you gain a military tech lead then its all about slavery. Your hammer cities build units, your specialist cities whip off their specialists for production and your cottage cities whip too, just slightly less often. No special tricks for cottage economies at this stage.
Mid Game
- By now you should be hitting bureaucracy which is a huge bonus as your capital will have a lot of villages and towns by now. You should also have a GP farm.
- If you want to rush liberalism then once you get bureaucracy you can burn three great people to rush through Philo, Paper and most of Education. If you went the Aesthetics route and build the Great Library before going to Bureaucracy then you should easily have produced four great scientists by this time.
- I would want to be hitting at least 12 cities by this time. A bureaucracy capital can easily support that many and its time to fillin sites that might have been a bit less viable before.
- I would say around half of these cities should be cottage cities. Add a GP farm and the rest mainly production cities or hybrid cities.
- Liberalism and Nationalism are the logical tech paths for a CE, because your target is getting to Democracy. Sometimes you can delay liberalism to take Democracy directly, but I find taking Nationalism and building the Taj Mahal to be just as quick.
- Health will be becoming your major constraint by now since you can generate infinite happy from HR. Consider trading even your last happiness resource for more health.
- I would tend to switch civics around Democracy to Nationalism (once my empire gets large this is preferable to Bureaucracy), Emancipation and stay in HR.
- Sometimes it will be preferable to run straight up to rifling before democracy. Since printing press is a key tech and you are going to want grocers and banks, rifling is a better path than chemistry. Also running nationalism lets you go crazy for war and nothing is more efficient than drafting rifles.
- Pursuing a food corp is definitely worth it. You can produce super hammer cities that run more mines/workshops than they could normally support. Your cottage cities can cottage over plains and hills. Your GP farm gets even more specialists. I will save the first great merchant I produce - and since I didn't run caste system with a CE, thats very likely to happen as my GP farm will have a mix of scientists and merchants early game. So its likely that after democracy and rifling that Medicine will be my next stop.
Warring in mid game
- This is where things get a little scary as the AI can have big stacks. Generally I prefer a big tech advantage such as rifles vs longbows. I am quite prepared to sacrifice population and my tech rate for 20-30 turns in order to rapidly gain land.
- Drafting replaces slavery here for me once I get Nationalism. Smaller cities - size 8 for example - often have happy caps well in excess of what they can use and can be drafted more than once.
- War weariness is a much bigger problem at this stage in the game. Having drama for theatres and construction for colliseums is essential. Generally I just accept that I will be running a lower slider and pumping culture. I will compensate a little by shifting some of my population to work specialists, but I won't farm over towns.
- Because war weariness is such a problem, fighting a brief war is important. And that means preparing with significant troop production before the war. Even if that means drafting citizens off towns or whipping them. Capturing cities early is important too - you want to reach the point that the AI is prepared to sue for peace, so you can stop the war if you need to.
- If I'm running bureaucracy and likely to be warring, then putting the global theatre in the capital can significantly reduce the impact that warring has. Its unlikely that my capital will be the best production or GPP city if its running cottages, so Oxford and Globe Theatre is a pretty good combo in wartime.
Space Race
- Liberalism and Universal Sufferage are the best civics for a CE spacerace in my opinion. As soon as emancipation has done its job and you have towns across your empire then switch to these civics. They make a town produce 7 commerce and 1 hammer. And since that one hammer can produce 1 science or 1 gold, a town is effectively yielding 8 units of commerce.
- You can calculate the effect by comparing the number of specialists you would need to run for representation to compare. If you have 15 cities with 15 towns each for example, thats 225 towns. Or 225 hammers. And with an average of 50% hammer multiplier, thats 337.5 wealth or science. If your average science multiplier was +100% then you will need nearly 60 specialists across your empire before representation will generate more research. No problem for an SE, but your GP farm and settled specialists, plus bonus ones from SoL and other incidental specialists probably won't make this many in a CE.
- The other big US advantage is that you can get the laboratories and hammer multipliers you need much more quickly than a heavily cottaged civ would otherwise be able to do.
- Cottage cities should switch off production and build wealth once they have laboratories. Weaker cities that will never build laboratories should switch to wealth immediately. This allows the science slider to reach 100%.
- Late game great people should be saved for golden ages. With US and all your population out working tiles, the effect of these is a significant boost to finishing the spaceship parts.
- You need around 6-8 good production cities finishing off parts to rush the spaceship through. The late game is a balance between production and research and often a cottage economy that rushed you to this point needs to convert some of the cottage cities to full scale production by workshopping over the cottages.
- I like to beeline Computers and the Internet after Radio. It forces you to get defenses up and it can often sew up the space race. Generally I will build the Internet followed immediately by the Apollo project and then focus on production as techs will be flying in faster than I can build components.
Late Game warring
- If I think I am going to be fighting late game wars then radio is the key tech for me. I will need it for bombers and I need it for a trio of wonders that go together extremely well. Rock and Roll for happiness (I usually skip Broadway because the AI love to beeline physics and I usually don't get electricity first), Eiffel tower for extra culture happy for warring (and +2 happy now from Rock and Roll) and Cristo Redentor that makes every civ a super spiritual one.
- Fascism is the next key tech. And then Industrialism and Flight. With those techs you can wage war with Paratroopers, bombers, tanks, infantry and marines. You need nothing else. Turn off science.
- Universal Sufferage is your civic of choice. Add Liberalism or Nationalism depending on whether you need military for defense (Nationalism) or aggression (Liberalism). Rush buying is your production method - and you "mail" the hammers directly to the city that needs them. Ie rushbuy in cities close to the front line. Watch out for captured AI cities with settled military instructors - these are great to rushbuy in.
- War weariness is a killer here - except you can turn it off completely by using police state, mt rushmore and jails. And if you have Cristo Redentor you can do both Police State and US. Run three turns in police state with gold at 100%, then one turn in US with culture at 100%. (Remember to put culture to 100% before switching civics or you may have to go back and micromanage some of your cities that temporarily went into mass unhappy).
- Building the manhattan project and stockpiling cash while you do so lets you be the first kid on the block with a huge stockpile of nukes. And once they are let fly - two turns after the project is built - then the AI won't have much capacity to build much of anything, let alone ICBMS.
Anyway, I'm hoping there are many more tips for cottage games out there. Please share yours.
To SE players - this isn't the place for a CE/SE debate. The assumption here is that you've decided to play an economy specializing in cottages. So how can you do it effectively.
Heres my thoughts anyway:
Early Game - Start
- You don't need to start with a cottage economy in mind. In fact you still have some fairly important other objectives - expanding and creating a military. Special tiles are still worth a lot more to you than cottages will be. So your early priority will be getting the special tiles of your capital worked.
- My todo list for the early game is to get three cities running quickly - usually the worker from my first city will travel to the second city, chop it a worker and then return so each city has a worker dedicated to it. Cities 2 and 3 I am favouring as production cities to build units, settlers and more workers. That lets my capital do other things - either wonders or cottages.
- Getting writing and putting a library somewhere so you can run 2 scientists for an early academy is a high priority. In fact until you have your GP farm running, any high food site should either be dedicated to production or running specialists for early great people.
- If the capital is high food, then make it your GP farm and don't cottage it. Instead run scientists and build some other cottage cities later. Consider moving your capital during the bureaucracy era.
- If the capital isn't high food then you should be scouting out a GP farm location.
- In general I would put hammer cities by mountains with food. Cottage cities in green areas (including jungle) without heavy food production. Run specialist cities off seafood and off high food tiles surrounded by low value tiles. In the early game I would probably aim to have a fairly equal mix of these three types of cities, but in practice I will work with whatever I get in terrain.
- Tech priority is Writing then Monarchy. Monarchy is king - running HR and getting your population up into double digits quickly is important. There is a huge difference between an empire of 10 cities of size 5 and one of 6 cities of size 15.
- Cottage cities can exist with no food bonuses - but in that case don't whip them for anything other than a granary or an emergency. Once you have civil service make sure you farm a route to these cities so that they can grow quicker. If at all possible make sure you have +4 food by creating two grassland farms first.
- Overlap is good for early cottage cities. If some of your first few cities overlap the capital and can work cottages on land that the capital can take over this is hugely beneficial as the capital has much better multipliers.
- After Monarchy you can either try for wonders up the Aesthetics / Literature line, or go straight for COL and Bureaucracy if you already have good GPP production.
- Don't be afraid to drop the slider. If you have a good number of scientists then you might consider going to zero to support more cities, land and units. Cottage growth will bring you back again. If there are mainly cottage cities then I find 50% a good rule of thumb. If my slider is higher than that I should be pursuing more cities.
Warring in early game
- Lets say you have at least two production cities producing units for defense. One is probably not enough. If you gain a military tech lead then its all about slavery. Your hammer cities build units, your specialist cities whip off their specialists for production and your cottage cities whip too, just slightly less often. No special tricks for cottage economies at this stage.
Mid Game
- By now you should be hitting bureaucracy which is a huge bonus as your capital will have a lot of villages and towns by now. You should also have a GP farm.
- If you want to rush liberalism then once you get bureaucracy you can burn three great people to rush through Philo, Paper and most of Education. If you went the Aesthetics route and build the Great Library before going to Bureaucracy then you should easily have produced four great scientists by this time.
- I would want to be hitting at least 12 cities by this time. A bureaucracy capital can easily support that many and its time to fillin sites that might have been a bit less viable before.
- I would say around half of these cities should be cottage cities. Add a GP farm and the rest mainly production cities or hybrid cities.
- Liberalism and Nationalism are the logical tech paths for a CE, because your target is getting to Democracy. Sometimes you can delay liberalism to take Democracy directly, but I find taking Nationalism and building the Taj Mahal to be just as quick.
- Health will be becoming your major constraint by now since you can generate infinite happy from HR. Consider trading even your last happiness resource for more health.
- I would tend to switch civics around Democracy to Nationalism (once my empire gets large this is preferable to Bureaucracy), Emancipation and stay in HR.
- Sometimes it will be preferable to run straight up to rifling before democracy. Since printing press is a key tech and you are going to want grocers and banks, rifling is a better path than chemistry. Also running nationalism lets you go crazy for war and nothing is more efficient than drafting rifles.
- Pursuing a food corp is definitely worth it. You can produce super hammer cities that run more mines/workshops than they could normally support. Your cottage cities can cottage over plains and hills. Your GP farm gets even more specialists. I will save the first great merchant I produce - and since I didn't run caste system with a CE, thats very likely to happen as my GP farm will have a mix of scientists and merchants early game. So its likely that after democracy and rifling that Medicine will be my next stop.
Warring in mid game
- This is where things get a little scary as the AI can have big stacks. Generally I prefer a big tech advantage such as rifles vs longbows. I am quite prepared to sacrifice population and my tech rate for 20-30 turns in order to rapidly gain land.
- Drafting replaces slavery here for me once I get Nationalism. Smaller cities - size 8 for example - often have happy caps well in excess of what they can use and can be drafted more than once.
- War weariness is a much bigger problem at this stage in the game. Having drama for theatres and construction for colliseums is essential. Generally I just accept that I will be running a lower slider and pumping culture. I will compensate a little by shifting some of my population to work specialists, but I won't farm over towns.
- Because war weariness is such a problem, fighting a brief war is important. And that means preparing with significant troop production before the war. Even if that means drafting citizens off towns or whipping them. Capturing cities early is important too - you want to reach the point that the AI is prepared to sue for peace, so you can stop the war if you need to.
- If I'm running bureaucracy and likely to be warring, then putting the global theatre in the capital can significantly reduce the impact that warring has. Its unlikely that my capital will be the best production or GPP city if its running cottages, so Oxford and Globe Theatre is a pretty good combo in wartime.
Space Race
- Liberalism and Universal Sufferage are the best civics for a CE spacerace in my opinion. As soon as emancipation has done its job and you have towns across your empire then switch to these civics. They make a town produce 7 commerce and 1 hammer. And since that one hammer can produce 1 science or 1 gold, a town is effectively yielding 8 units of commerce.
- You can calculate the effect by comparing the number of specialists you would need to run for representation to compare. If you have 15 cities with 15 towns each for example, thats 225 towns. Or 225 hammers. And with an average of 50% hammer multiplier, thats 337.5 wealth or science. If your average science multiplier was +100% then you will need nearly 60 specialists across your empire before representation will generate more research. No problem for an SE, but your GP farm and settled specialists, plus bonus ones from SoL and other incidental specialists probably won't make this many in a CE.
- The other big US advantage is that you can get the laboratories and hammer multipliers you need much more quickly than a heavily cottaged civ would otherwise be able to do.
- Cottage cities should switch off production and build wealth once they have laboratories. Weaker cities that will never build laboratories should switch to wealth immediately. This allows the science slider to reach 100%.
- Late game great people should be saved for golden ages. With US and all your population out working tiles, the effect of these is a significant boost to finishing the spaceship parts.
- You need around 6-8 good production cities finishing off parts to rush the spaceship through. The late game is a balance between production and research and often a cottage economy that rushed you to this point needs to convert some of the cottage cities to full scale production by workshopping over the cottages.
- I like to beeline Computers and the Internet after Radio. It forces you to get defenses up and it can often sew up the space race. Generally I will build the Internet followed immediately by the Apollo project and then focus on production as techs will be flying in faster than I can build components.
Late Game warring
- If I think I am going to be fighting late game wars then radio is the key tech for me. I will need it for bombers and I need it for a trio of wonders that go together extremely well. Rock and Roll for happiness (I usually skip Broadway because the AI love to beeline physics and I usually don't get electricity first), Eiffel tower for extra culture happy for warring (and +2 happy now from Rock and Roll) and Cristo Redentor that makes every civ a super spiritual one.
- Fascism is the next key tech. And then Industrialism and Flight. With those techs you can wage war with Paratroopers, bombers, tanks, infantry and marines. You need nothing else. Turn off science.
- Universal Sufferage is your civic of choice. Add Liberalism or Nationalism depending on whether you need military for defense (Nationalism) or aggression (Liberalism). Rush buying is your production method - and you "mail" the hammers directly to the city that needs them. Ie rushbuy in cities close to the front line. Watch out for captured AI cities with settled military instructors - these are great to rushbuy in.
- War weariness is a killer here - except you can turn it off completely by using police state, mt rushmore and jails. And if you have Cristo Redentor you can do both Police State and US. Run three turns in police state with gold at 100%, then one turn in US with culture at 100%. (Remember to put culture to 100% before switching civics or you may have to go back and micromanage some of your cities that temporarily went into mass unhappy).
- Building the manhattan project and stockpiling cash while you do so lets you be the first kid on the block with a huge stockpile of nukes. And once they are let fly - two turns after the project is built - then the AI won't have much capacity to build much of anything, let alone ICBMS.
Anyway, I'm hoping there are many more tips for cottage games out there. Please share yours.
deprived enviroment ( or in one where it is difficult to trade your excess resources for them ) HR is a much better choice IMHO...... Otherwise you may be capped in size 12-15 and some extra tiles worked surely beat a handful of "free" hammers and some extra coins in military maintenance
