Catherine Cottage Spam

[jdotmi]

Lol... Thats a lot of floodplains. Nice set of grasslands on that island as well.

I've had maps generate before that have had 4 lots of gold all within HQ's borders... You take one look and go "CHA-CHING!!!".

I had a game with three hills with gold on it all south of my capital... in the middle of a desert. That was annoying. It could have been a fishing village since it was coastal, but there were no food bonuses in the water.

 

[schekker]

I've looked at the Synex's saved games to improve my implementation of this strategy, but somehow my starting position is never so good as his

The problems I encounter are animals, by the time I get my first or second setler out there are so many of them I always need escorts, greatly slowing them down. Besides, those escort troops also need to be built, slowing down your first wave of workers and settlers.

The second is that I always have at least one close neightbour (unless I'm the only one on the island), and the others are not that far away. In my last game (everything standard default on continents with Catherine of course) I was on an island with 3 other civilizations and room for about 20 reasonable placed cities in total. If I want to have my 8 to 10 cities this strategy calls for, I have to occupy about half the island. The only way I can do that is by choprushing settlers and workers as a mad-man, something which should not be necessary with this strategy.

 

[Doctor Love]

I tried another game on Monarch and once again got beat out in the space race. I guess it depends on the map size, but 8-10 cities doesn't seem enough to keep the tech edge.

 

[goraemon]

I once won the space race on monarch (continents, normal speed, all standard settings, all victory conditions enabled, etc) with elizabeth with only six cities throughout the entire game. Although I didn't follow the strategy outlined here (this game was prior to my learning of this thread), my focus was almost exclusively on cottage-spamming.

 

[Synex]

I've looked at the Synex's saved games to improve my implementation of this strategy, but somehow my starting position is never so good as his

The problems I encounter are animals, by the time I get my first or second setler out there are so many of them I always need escorts, greatly slowing them down. Besides, those escort troops also need to be built, slowing down your first wave of workers and settlers.

The second is that I always have at least one close neightbour (unless I'm the only one on the island), and the others are not that far away. In my last game (everything standard default on continents with Catherine of course) I was on an island with 3 other civilizations and room for about 20 reasonable placed cities in total. If I want to have my 8 to 10 cities this strategy calls for, I have to occupy about half the island. The only way I can do that is by choprushing settlers and workers as a mad-man, something which should not be necessary with this strategy.

I will admit to restarting a couple of times when i got thrown bad start locations, but only because i was in a rush and wanted to demonstrate the strategy without too many problems with the terrain.

As for animals, when you move your settlers do you just right-click them a destination? I tend to move them manually, so i can dodge out the way of animals etc. By the time proper barbs come along, i'll have a city churning out warriors to protect everything.

A few more notes: I replayed this game again and did things slightly differently and it worked out a lot better:

After my first worker, i let the city grow to 2, which only took about 3 turns(?), the extra food pumped out my Settler a lot quicker, i then let it grow to 3 to allow me to work a cottage on a river, which provided extra commerce.

The second city i did the same, built a worker, let the city grow a bit so it could work a cottage, built another worker. Perhaps you could build warriors during the grow-period? The advantage of this was my cottages were growing from the very start onwards, by the time i got to Printing Press, i had a LOT more towns. Also, the extra commerce allowed me to keep my tech rate at 80%, even though i was churning out the same amount of settlers.

Workers: I left one worker for each city, and then grouped up the rest of the workers and moved from city to city improving the terrain. As I was improving a city, i let it grow, even quite early on in the game. Because of my chase after commerce, the maintenance costs weren't too bad.

Hope this all helps, i'll download the patch this afternoon and give it another go.

Happy civ'ing!

 

[schekker]

As for animals, when you move your settlers do you just right-click them a destination? I tend to move them manually, so i can dodge out the way of animals etc. By the time proper barbs come along, i'll have a city churning out warriors to protect everything.

Of course I move them manually, this is after all the micro management strategy But even then, if you move your settler in its second move next to an animal, there is nothing you can do. And if you have one of those 2 move animals in your neighbourhood, you don't even see it coming. And those animals always pick your settlers and workers if they are unprotected. Always.

I also noticed that spamming out warriors in one city is not good enough, you need bowmen or even better, axemen, to protect your tile improvements.

I also noticed that a size three city with three farms or hammer bonus resources tends to churn out its settlers about as fast as a size 1 city with chopping. Of course chopping allows you to found your second city earlier, but I don't have the impression that the speed of the second city is that important (unless you can block one of the other civilizations with it). The speed of your 4th, 5th and 6th cities are important, as those are the ones which tend to be placed in the contested areas.

 

[Synex]

Of course I move them manually, this is after all the micro management strategy But even then, if you move your settler in its second move next to an animal, there is nothing you can do. And if you have one of those 2 move animals in your neighbourhood, you don't even see it coming. And those animals always pick your settlers and workers if they are unprotected. Always.

I also noticed that spamming out warriors in one city is not good enough, you need bowmen or even better, axemen, to protect your tile improvements.

I also noticed that a size three city with three farms or hammer bonus resources tends to churn out its settlers about as fast as a size 1 city with chopping. Of course chopping allows you to found your second city earlier, but I don't have the impression that the speed of the second city is that important (unless you can block one of the other civilizations with it). The speed of your 4th, 5th and 6th cities are important, as those are the ones which tend to be placed in the contested areas.

Quite true, however i don't tend to chop-rush my settlers, i like to keep my forests for chop-rushing Great Library / Kremlin later on. I just find that 30 hammers isnt a good enough incentive to lose so many forests to Settlers.

 

[FratBoy]

Synex: how often do you manage to get the Great Library built before the AI on Emperor if you don't have marble?

I almost never seem to be able to make this. However in my current game I had stone at my 3rd city, which also had 3 forests. So I chop rush Stonehenge in 3rd city, and 2nd city has loads of forest so I chop Pyramids there, but those are the only 2 wonders I have gotten so far (next will probably be Kremlin).

Depending on how much forests I have in my first city I generally build 1 worker, who chops a 2nd worker, and these 2 workers together chop a 3rd worker, and then I chop settlers. Basically 2 workers + 1 settler = 7 trees, with 3 more trees per settler. So if I start with 10 trees (some yield only 25 hammers, some even 20) that lets me chop 2 workers and 2 settlers, plus the first worker I build myself. Of the 3 workers I keep one in my capital and send the other 2 with the settler. The first thing they do is chop a new worker (takes only 3 turns if they chop one tile each). Then with 3 workers I can chop the settler in 3 more turns. So basically I can have 1 new worker and 1 new settler in around 8 turns after founding a new city, and this only needs 5 trees to work. On Emperor it's all about the land grab.

This gives me very fast expansion, only limiting factor is how much money I can get. As long as I have pottery I never hesitate to decrease my science slider to 0% so I can make more cities.

Personally I don't see the point in saving trees to chop the Kremlin, since by that time I am usually enough ahead of everybody plus I just switch to 100% cash for a few turns and simply buy Kremlin.

Trees are there for a purpose: to chop rush stuff.

 

[Synex]

Synex: how often do you manage to get the Great Library built before the AI on Emperor if you don't have marble?

I almost never seem to be able to make this. However in my current game I had stone at my 3rd city, which also had 3 forests. So I chop rush Stonehenge in 3rd city, and 2nd city has loads of forest so I chop Pyramids there, but those are the only 2 wonders I have gotten so far (next will probably be Kremlin).

Depending on how much forests I have in my first city I generally build 1 worker, who chops a 2nd worker, and these 2 workers together chop a 3rd worker, and then I chop settlers. Basically 2 workers + 1 settler = 7 trees, with 3 more trees per settler. So if I start with 10 trees (some yield only 25 hammers, some even 20) that lets me chop 2 workers and 2 settlers, plus the first worker I build myself. Of the 3 workers I keep one in my capital and send the other 2 with the settler. The first thing they do is chop a new worker (takes only 3 turns if they chop one tile each). Then with 3 workers I can chop the settler in 3 more turns. So basically I can have 1 new worker and 1 new settler in around 8 turns after founding a new city, and this only needs 5 trees to work. On Emperor it's all about the land grab.

This gives me very fast expansion, only limiting factor is how much money I can get. As long as I have pottery I never hesitate to decrease my science slider to 0% so I can make more cities.

Personally I don't see the point in saving trees to chop the Kremlin, since by that time I am usually enough ahead of everybody plus I just switch to 100% cash for a few turns and simply buy Kremlin.

Trees are there for a purpose: to chop rush stuff.

I've only played one game on Emperor so far so i'm not really talking from experience here:

The Great Library is usually quite high up on my list of priorities. Why? Because of the Great Scientist points it produces. Lots of GSP = Lots of Great Scientists = Lots of academys = +50% more science in ALL your major tech cities.

Therefore, i ALWAYS chop the Great Library. Often, i move all my workers to my target city a couple of turns before i finish the tech, get them chop rushing the turn before it completes, switch to the Great Library the next turn, complete the Great Library the following turn. I tend to avoid chop-rushing Settlers/Workers because i find it:

a/ uses up all my forests which i tend to use to chop for librarys, courthouses and universities.
b/ expansion is too quick, and so i have to drop my tech slider too much, which cripples my empire early on making me miss a few important things
c/ the chop doesn't add enough to my settler/worker.

My cities tend to be low on production, but fairly high on food. Therefore, most of my construction that goes towards settlers/workers comes from the food. However, food doesn't count towards librarys etc, so i feel the hammers from chopping are better spent there. It might take my 12 - 15 turns to churn out a settler from a city, but anything up to 90 turns to churn out a library (10 shields less!). So therefore, the forests are much more worthwhile chopping buildings (and the Great Library) that settlers/workers.

Just my 10 cents... Give it a try.

 

[mutax2003]

I tried the cottage spamming strategy as a non-financial civ, namely the Greeks, when I found myself isolated on an island. Basically I didn't find a religion until I got islam, built cities until I got to 30%, researched worker techs, then beelined for literature and chop rushed the Great Library. However, now it is 1345, and other civs have discovered me, I am dead last behind Genghis Khan . I don't know what I could've done differently for a better outcome, attached is a save, any tips would be appreciated.

 

[Synex]

I tried the cottage spamming strategy as a non-financial civ, namely the Greeks, when I found myself isolated on an island. Basically I didn't find a religion until I got islam, built cities until I got to 30%, researched worker techs, then beelined for literature and chop rushed the Great Library. However, now it is 1345, and other civs have discovered me, I am dead last behind Genghis Khan . I don't know what I could've done differently for a better outcome, attached is a save, any tips would be appreciated.

Ok... here goes.

Techs : You have a lot of techs that are completely useless to you. Horseback Riding? What are you ever going to use THAT for? If you researched it, thats a waste of ~600 beakers that could have been put to better use somewhere else.

Civ Traits : The Cottage Spam strategy is designed for Financial civs as it accentuates their strengths. If you want to play with a Philosophical/Aggressive leader like Alexander, i'd go for a different strategy. I'd go for getting the Parthenon as a high priority, pop the Heroic Epic in a city with a lot of farms/flood plains and start rolling in Great People.

Your definatly not playing to your strengths, as Philosophical, you should be really pushing hard for Great People, but the highest GPP a city of yours is churning out is ~16.

Civics: Your running Hereditary Rule. Fill up your cities with military units and make your cities massive with all that hapiness, otherwise, ditch that Civic cos it's expensive. Scratch Slavery, and run Caste System instead, which will improve your Great People situation even more - (see what i mean about playing for your strengths?)

City Placement - You've put a lot of cities on the coast. Seeing as your not Financial, coastal sqaures are a bit crap in comparison with a decent cottage, so place your cities inland a bit more.

City Terrain - there are a lot of squares in cities that you aren't using, and never will be able to because you'll never have enough food to support the population to run them. Instead of so many mines, think about maybe some windmills.

Lots of jungle everywhere! Cut it down!

I'll give this map a go and post my saves, though to be honest, i've never played an Epic game on Monarch before, using a cottage-spam-strategy, with a non financial civ, but an aggressive civ with no chance of attack. Should be interesting!

QUICK UPDATE:

I've just loaded up your 3000BC save.

Your HQ is at 2, and going to take 10 turns to grow to 3. Your researching Bronze Working (20 turns), you don't have a worker yet. Always always build a worker first. Leave Bronze Working for a bit. You've got Stone near your city - you should have already got Masonry, and your by some fresh water, so Agriculture is a high-priority too. Here goes nothing...

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Wait a sec... you turned on Raging Barbs AND Aggressive AI to try out a new strategy? Personally, if i were you i'd head back to Noble for the time being taking a look at your save game.

 

[jerry247]

I like pigs a lot, since they give 6 food and it doesn't need any water to work (like corn or wheat).

?? really? I swear my corn is giving me 5 food without water.

 

[KingKai]

I tried this strategy today, playing with Queen Victoria on a large pangea map, standard settings, prince difficulty, marathon speed.

I did not care much about my economy and expanded fast to grab as many land as possible. It worked well, despite the barbarians attacking every 2 rounds. Then I did the cottage spam, first I was behind in research and economy suffering from the many cities but when the cottages grew and the financial trait boost kicked in I managed to get the tech lead without adjusting my research to above 60%.

At the end I won the game by domination in the year 1296. I had crushed my opponents easily with redcoats and infantry while they still had longbowmen and musketeers.
All the time during the war I had the expensive pacifism civic because I refused to wait the 5 turns of anarchy for changing.

So this strategy is very strong, at least if you can avoid wars since large empires are hard to defend.

Here a screenshot of my capital city, which luckily had 5 flood plains and a gold ressource, that produced ~400 gold or 500+ beakers (without oxford) in 1214.
(http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~martk/c/Civ4ScreenShot0001.JPG)

And this is my last savegame from 1288. (http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~martk/c/Kai X n. Chr.-1288.zip)

 

[Wlauzon]

I tried this on the new marathon option, and can't recommend it. But, I can't really recommend any for that...

The game is super slow, and barbarians seem to be much worse than epic or other options - I suspect that barbs were not slowed down as much (if any) as all the other factors were.

What I found trying to use Cottage Spam on marathon is that by the time you get your 3rd or 4th city done, you are forced to start spamming archers etc just to stay alive.

 

[Wodan]

I'm in a Marathon game right now where I'm spamming. It's working fine. 'course, I started with 3 scouts and as many warriors. Barbs haven't been an issue at all for me this game.

Wodan

 

[Elhoim]

I didn´t have any barbarian problems with marathon...

 

[Fragment]

Thanks Synex,

I'm ususally playing on noble and have a hard time in the early game but tonight I totally dominated the late game due to your strategy. I didn't really know what to do in the late game, I was rather bored due to my total dominance with 4K+ score, next AI score was 2K something. Buy another wonder? Spend a few turns to update my huge army? Roll over Toku? Options, options ...

Regards from Germany, happy new year

Frag

 

[Doctor Love]

Eeeked out another space race win over the weekend using Catherine on standard settings, Monarch, temperate continents. As I play more and more games I'm discovering some things:

1. You have to find someone to beat up on early along. This does two things:

- it allows you to expand further obviously, because in a continents game the open land disappears very fast

- if you cripple them enough, it gives the AI one less partner to do their "group research" project that kicks your ass over the long term.

- the times where I've thought I could go the distance without war, I've gotten killed by lack of space and the AI 'group research'

2. Beware of ever-expanding AI! Everyone likes to have a perfect city location, especially for cottage spamming. So we get our 6-10 cities in decent spots and it is easy to say "I'm done" and stop expanding. Well the AI never stops expanding, and while you think a few extra crappy cities won't make a difference, in the long run they wind up having another half dozen cities at 5-6 population that combined do have an impact. I try to get myself to keep slowly expanding even if it seems like I have a tech lead in the short-term.

3. Every time I have won, at least a couple AI civs have been completely eliminated. This once again goes back to hindering the AI group-research and gives you fewer possible enemies who decide to attack you at the worst possible moment. When aggressive civs are down in the ratings, they become rather unpredictable in who they attack, and even if they are not able to take a city, they are often willing to sacrifice large stacks of units just to kill a town or two.

4. AI produces spaceship parts very fast. Each time I've gotten a SS victory, I've done it with the Space Elevator (which is easy to rush with Kremlin) - just make sure to get it before you get Fiber Optics (which obsoletes Kremlin).

5. It's definitely effective to bribe aggressive civs to attack the spaceship leader. Even if you think you have an edge, get someone to attack your closest rival if possible.

 

[rpoquinn]

Anyone think this might be worth a try on the GOTM?

 

[Spiral]

Works against AI... AI is predictable

Terrible against Human Players.

What's your Nick on Gamespy, Synex?

Basically, Synex, your strat totally fails on Small, Tiny, Duel maps.

Flex your E-Peen more please.....