Catherine Cottage Spam

[Synex]

I let my HQ grow to 2 straight away. I made Fishing a high

priority to research, so i could use the coastal squares to

rush to Pottery asap. As soon as i had built my worker, i

swtiched my production squares over to commerce ones while i

built my Settler (100 turns). Once i had pottery, i

switched back over to my 2 food squares, that my worker had

been improving while i had been research pottery. This

meant i was pumping out settlers every 12 turns.

I did something a bit crazy here. I put cottages on 2x of

the 3 sugar plots. This way, i got the 3 food from the

sugar + commerce from growing cottages... to me (3F + max

commerce) is better than the 4F/1C i'd get from sugar +

plantation. True, i'll probably need the happiness, but at

that point i can replace the cottages with plantations, and

i won't miss the commerce so much.

Once my first settler was built (2480BC) i swapped my HQ

squares back to commerce, this time using one coast and one

cottage. I wanted to get my cottage grow asap, and get

Bronze Working done so i could do a bit of chopping.

Now, there wasn't really any AMAZING 2nd city sites,

everything is all covered in Jungle which is going to take a

lot of chopping to get rid of. I put it to the W of my HQ

however, it should produce a nice CS city later on.

With my first cottage into a hamlet, i swap my coastal

square over to my other cottage. This means i start getting

extra food - which goes towards growing my HQ to size 3 (6

turns) This will allow me to run one of the Food/Prod

squares and pump out another settler double-quick.

Bronze Working hasn't shown up any bronze near me... I was

hoping there would be, cos the barbs will start getting

frisky soon and my warriors won't be able to stand up to

them.

Writing completes on the same turn as my worker builds a

road to my new city. I send it back to chop rush a library

in HQ, which is good cos my warrior will finish building

next turn. I head towards Iron Working.

With all the extra food HQ is pumping out, it has already

reached its happiness limit (4), so i switch to

commerce/production heavy squares to slow down growth while

my library is getting chopped.

My library gets chopped pretty quick, and i now pump out

Settlers in 8 turns, while still pulling in the same

beakers/turn as before! My next settler + Iron Working

should be finished about the same time.

My 2nd settler gets finished. Now, i dont want another

settler yet, as my economy isn't strong enough to handle

lots more cities, so instead i get 2 of my HQ people as

scientist specialists. This helps keep the beakers coming

in, while i have to drop my science because of my 3rd city

being placed. Plus, i get an academy in 16 turns!

Finally some luck! I've found some iron within the fat

cross of my 3rd city. I can chop-rush a library in it to

get some culture. After Iron Working i head for Archery - i

need some protection!!

Here is a good tip - if you have a jungle square that you

want to use, ALWAYS chop the jungle and THEN build the

improvement - it might not make much of a difference, but

it'll give you an extra 4 turns of +1 food etc.

For the next few hundred years i basically spammed cottages around HQ and Head Support and used City A to first build a barracks, and then continue with Archers/Spears and Axemen. I need to kill of Cyrus next to me asap to gain some ground, but will need a solid economy to support his cities.

Grr... turns out he got Longbowmen just as i wandered across his border with my 3 Swords, 3 Spears and 3 Axes. I'll give it another go tomorrow.

 

[icecool]

Well another kick ass game using this stratergy. This time on Prince/Lakes - I got a score of 19593 rated as Augustus Caesar in 1922, beating my best previous score in my last game on Noble by 4,000.

Going to try Monarch next.

Cheers, Ice

 

[Ya_Lun]

Cottage spam is the only way to play this game. It is the only way to consistently beat single player or multiplayer games. It is almost invariant of where you start (unless you have one of those 1 in 100 bad starts) and the resources available (yes having good resources makes everything better). It is hard to cottage spam on small maps with aggressive players, but play it often enough and you can modify cottage spam to fit into almost any game you play. Any map, Any time, Any competition, always cottage spam, I always gamble big and either lose big or win big. The trick with cottage spamming is to not let your civ score get to high to early or it wil attract, hostilities from other players early in the game. I do that by building almost no wonders. By the time people notice me, it is too late, all my cities have longbowmen and liberalism is only a stone's throw away.

Playing multiplayer I can consistently have much worse land and less land than everyone else and still pull off a convincing victory. I only lose when i am ambushed by my opponent with no warning of an attack, now i make sure I have a good reserve of my best troops right when I get gunpowder with liberalism and it seems that I can survive almost anything until I get the kremlin and start to crank out tonnes of units.

The secret to the cottage spam's versatility is money and research. As long as you have more money to net you more research you can always make the most of whatever army you make. The versatilty in being able to net any war tech in only a few turns, is just unparalleled, if you are in danger of being attacked, switch your research to net you longbowmen quickly and then switch back or use liberalism for gunpowder. Any way you slice it, research and money is the currency of Civ4, it is the only thing that you can have that allows you to taylor your game to consistently achieve victory.

The only problem is playing other cottage spam players.

Of course, avoiding early wars for cottage spamming is almost a must.Early wars are all about the resources you start off with and unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it. Early wars is a totally different dynamic than cottage spamming, it is hard to stitch them both together.

Cottage spam is so powerful that I do think that it is broken, and cottages will be patched later on so they are less powerful. What hut rushing was to Civ2, cottage spam is to civ4.

 

[lawren65]

Cottage spam is the only way to play this game. It is the only way to consistently beat single player or multiplayer games.
....
Of course, avoiding early wars for cottage spamming is almost a must.Early wars are all about the resources you start off with and unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it. Early wars is a totally different dynamic than cottage spamming, it is hard to stitch them both together.

I agree with the power of cottage spamming.

I disagree about the lack of early war. I agree you don't want to be invaded, so I lay low and avoid upseting my neighbors. But the best way to avoid being invaded it to (successfully) invade you most likely opponent first.

I research bronze worker to chop workers and settlers and then I chop a few axeman for an axeman rush on my weakest/most luxurious/most annoyed neighbor while I research potery and then beeline for alphabet.

I find I defer starting the cottage spam while I chop and build axeman a few turns but that the conquest is more than worthwhile. I need the extra luxuries to enable decent size cities for the cottage spamming portion. Just like in civ3 luxuries are king. This is on emporer; the aditional luxuries may not be as important on other difficulties.

Seems like the best counter to cottage spamming is pillaging, but I've never had a real threat from the AI on that front (they'll pillage a few towns as part of an invasion, but they still try to take over the cities and get bogged down)

 

[Ya_Lun]

Well if you can do an early war and still do a good cottage spam then that is awesome. But there is alot to risk, if you fail to succeed the first time around your enemy may just come by once in a blue moon and pillage your towns, which hurts almost as much as losing a city. With cottage spamming not only do you need to defend your cities but also your cottages.

 

[Synex]

Well... here is a little story from my first Emperor game... (Standard Size/Standard Speed/Continents/Catherine etc)

Started out with a an ok position, got everything set up and established. Seeing as it was an Emperor game, i needed some extra happiness so when i got Mysticism from a hut, i went for Hinduism and got it. Turned out i was with 4 other civs on a fairly small continent. The Americans, Persians, Incans, Japanese.

I managed to settle only 5 cities before all the space was taken up, Persia got about 7, Americans 10, Incans 10, Japanese 10. All crammed in really close. I spread Hinduism to the Americans and Persians (my two closest neighbours) and they converted which helped keep them happy with me. I cottage spammed 4 of my cities to the max while i turned one into a production city. I had marble and managed to get the Parthenon before anyone else by leaving my cities unprotected until about 1AD, using my Production city and chop rushing it. This city then just pumped out units for defense. I also managed to get the Great Library just before the Americans.

Tech wise i side-tracked a few times to get techs that were worth trading with the other Civs, or to get units that were good for defense.

I was basically peaceful and tried to keep everyone happy by spamming my religion to them. I was middle of the score range around 1100AD, and slowly slipped to the bottom, because i only have 4 cottage cities, my tech couldn't keep up with the Americans, whereas the Incans and Japanese seemed content to fight each other and small skirmishes with Persia + America.

Here comes the interesting bit. I got to the Kremlin. America already had the techs, but hadn't built it yet. My commerce wasn't anything special - only pulling in 500gold/turn, so took me a few turns before i could rush-buy it. After that, i headed for Cossacks and then gave up on tech.

A couple of turns later the Incans declared war on me and Cyrus (Persia). So i started building Cossacks in my production city whilst upgrading my other cities with buildings to boost my income (markets/grocers/banks). I swapped to one of the +2xp civics and was pumping out Cossacks with 2 promotions, and attacking cities with crossbowmen in. I basically sent one Cossack in every 3 turns and managed to take over 8 of the Incan cities. I didnt care about improving them, i just rush-bought a barracks in each one of them and started rush-buying Cossacks in them every 2 turns. Giving them Combat 1 promotion. (They only got one promotion cos they didnt have my religion in that city). Next i took down Tokogowa, he had Grenadiers which were a bit more challenging for my Cossacks, i probably lost a third of the force i threw at him, but the Cossacks that survived got Pinch promitions (against gunpowder) and so the longer the war went on the easier it became. I got his 10 cities as well.

So now i was sat there with 25 cities. America was still way ahead score wise + technology. They had just invented tanks. I had Cossacks. Meh

So what i did was every 2 turns, i rush bough 25 Cossacks with Combat 1 promotion. I was loosing them left right and center, but i won. I must have gone through 30 Cossacks taking down one city, but i completely plowed through the Americans even tho they were vastly ahead of me in tech. It was incredible. Even with the tanks, they had no defense against the massive number of units i threw at them. By the end of the game i had probably 180 Cossacks.

Won the game by domination in 1914AD... not bad.

 

[mutax2003]

Good job, Synex. Cossack domination victory, that's an interesting play that I will have to try. I guess you can afford to lose so many due to all the gold you have from stopped research. The fight would certainly be tough if one is playing another civilization, cavalry rush versus tanks wouldn't work out as well. This just goes to show the lack of strategy and foresight on AI's part (i.e. AI doesn't know how to fight an effective war), if a human player sees that he is about to be overrun by waves of cossacks, he would most likely slow down research, and start cash rushing tanks (no defensive bonus) and infantry (defensive bonus).

 

[icecool]

Interesting. I'm now going to try actually building Cossacks - I've had 2 big wins with this stratergy without building a single Cossack - go figure.

So with Cossacks I should really kick ass.

Cheers, Ice

 

[petertr2000]

Synex - no seige weapons? You could have really hurt those cities before you moved the cossacks in.

 

[Synex]

Synex - no seige weapons? You could have really hurt those cities before you moved the cossacks in.

That is quite true, but seige weapons would have slowed the whole thing down, they are very slow to move, and then you had to wait while they bombard the city defenses down, and then to collateral damage them... I found it way more effective to just throw about a million troops down their throat and watch them choke. One tip tho, a fairly obvious one really, make sure you have enough cossacks around to completely take down a city, or the units inside will get insane amount of XP for defeating so many cossacks in one turn.

 

[Aleksadr]

Hi Synex and many kudos. Your "Catherine cottage Spam" thread is one of my favorites. The stategy is a great 'hook to hang your hat on'. I posted a save using this strategy on Noble setting. http://rapidshare.de/files/13713651/Scott_AD-1956.Civ4SavedGame.html

I like that the strategy makes all the victory conditions available to the player. It also allows the player to use all the different toys and weapons. Follow the link to the saved game. There is a pretty good invasion force standing off the coasts. There are also troops waiting deployment to port cities via air drop and troops awaiting deployment to transports already located near stategic port cities. If you feel the need for more battleships to support an invasion there are some mothballed here and there. On the east coast I believe.
Have fun and remember: Nukes should only be used to intimidate your neighbors or in cases of extreme emergencies. Only a madman would launch pre-emptive strikes. Press the turn button and watch 'em build.

I had to go to war with Rome very early. He was walled into a pretty small space so he needed to expand. I wasn't sorry to see him go. China was to the north west of me and I let him develope his cities until I had cossaks then I eliminated him as well. Chalk another one up for Cathy.

 

[Synex]

Hi Synex and many kudos. Your "Catherine cottage Spam" thread is one of my favorites. The stategy is a great 'hook to hang your hat on'. I posted a save using this strategy on Noble setting. http://rapidshare.de/files/13713651/Scott_AD-1956.Civ4SavedGame.html

I like that the strategy makes all the victory conditions available to the player. It also allows the player to use all the different toys and weapons. Follow the link to the saved game. There is a pretty good invasion force standing off the coasts. There are also troops waiting deployment to port cities via air drop and troops awaiting deployment to transports already located near stategic port cities. If you feel the need for more battleships to support an invasion there are some mothballed here and there. On the east coast I believe.
Have fun and remember: Nukes should only be used to intimidate your neighbors or in cases of extreme emergencies. Only a madman would launch pre-emptive strikes. Press the turn button and watch 'em build.

I had to go to war with Rome very early. He was walled into a pretty small space so he needed to expand. I wasn't sorry to see him go. China was to the north west of me and I let him develope his cities until I had cossaks then I eliminated him as well. Chalk another one up for Cathy.

Thanks for your support of my strat. I haven't had huge success with it on the higher difficulty levels at the moment, usually because of neglecting the military at the start, and therefore being weak. Other nations attack me a lot.

But as for multi-player, and anything below Emperor, it seems to be pretty good.

 

[Aleksadr]

I was very pleased with the game I posted. It will be fun for people to play that have yet to experience spies, nukes, U.N. resolutions, ect. I hope you will make some break through adaptations for emperor difficulty and post them. Thanks man yor the

 

[crocodiledundee]

Your strat doesn't work against other Human Players on Small and Tiny sized maps.

You are really depending on your luck.

If your neighbours don't rush you, they deserve to lose.

Bah! Sounds like someone's been bitten by the jealousy bug.

 

[emills]

This strategy is very effective on large archipelago maps with George Washington. In this case, you use the Kremlin to buy tons and tons of destroyers, transports, artillery and SEALS.

While GW does not have the creative trait to help land area, he does have the ocean as a barrier and the organized trait to have a spread out empire.

I have just finished a game at the monarch level where I crushed everyone in order of the space race leads. First up was Catherine, performing her own cottage spamming, then cyrus, izzy and alexander.

It was nice to see an AI Catherine performing her own named tactic

 

[WaxonWaxov]

It's been a while since I visited this forum and thread. This has been a very long discussion.

Anyhow, the Catherine Cottage Spam strategy has become one of my favorites.

I especially like using it on the "terra" map. I follow the strategy until I have Literature and Music. Then I go straight for Astronomy.

By then my worker army is done developing the original group of cities.

I always beat my opponents to the New World. I then SPAM the hell out of that continent. If I plan ahead and have the settlers in the stand by just waiting for the Galleons, I can usually DOUBLE my count of cities in a couple turns!

That way I've monopolized the New World before my opponents can cross the Ocean! ha ha ha ha !

By then I just pick what type of victory I want and go for it, Using the New World cities as cash cows.

 

[Synex]

I had a game the other day, Mansu Mansa had managed to keep up in tech with me, as i'd been busy waging wars. He built the Apollo Project way before i had the tech for it, so i needed a win quickly.

I switched all my tech over to Culture, my 3 big science cities suddenly turned into culture cities and cathedrals (?) were rush-bought in all of them.

2 turns later they were each pumping out ~1300 culture/turn.

20 turns later i won. Thats what i enjoy about this strat is it is so easy to suddenly turn your entire empire around to whatever you want it to do.

Hooyah!

 

[WaxonWaxov]

....culture cities and cathedrals (?) were rush-bought in all of them.

Does it help to have multiple cathedrals (for multiple religions) in the same city?

I'm guessing it does.

(sorry if it's a stupid question)

 

[TCGTRF]

Does it help to have multiple cathedrals (for multiple religions) in the same city?

I'm guessing it does.

(sorry if it's a stupid question)

Well, if you've got enough cities and religions it would be wonderful for a cultural win. Your leading city 9 out of 10 times will be going to go over the culture limit without one, but the earlier you can build the prerequisite temples for the other religions and make sure you've got the religion in your second and third cities, the sooner you're going to be able to get them over, too.

Tom

 

[johnny_rico]

This seems pretty solid. 500 AD in my first run of an iteration of this, playing on prince. Seems counter intuitive to inhibit growth from turn 1 but the results speak for themselves. Don't grow your cities early and you'll avoid happiness, healthiness, and economic struggles.

I think I got off to a bit of slow start because I started in the jungle. Still, it wasn't that bad. Since my cities weren't growing, the dense jungle didn't cause any real problems. It was hilarious once I was able to trade for iron working. Picture a city engulfed by jungle tiles. Move in a dozen workers and four turns later you have endless lush grasslands all screaming, "Pick me! Pick me!"

The only real downer to this and it has nothing to do with the strategy itself is the fact that now I see no other way to play the game. This tech path makes perfect sense. Relgion techs are overrated, if not useless and if the AI is on a different tech path it makes sense to stay with this because it yields consistent tech trading.

I was wondering if anyone out there had incorporated the hanging gardens into this strategy. I believe you'll make it available on the path to music via mathematics via aqueduct. It's about that time I start looking to grow my cities and the +1 boost seems like it would be a huge push in the right direction exactly when you need it. Or, would it be a bit of an economic burden to experience a growth spurt like that before your finances are well enough in place. I never dropped below 60% tech and was still making money. I did, however, only have enough room for seven cities. I started out on a nice peninsula right on the coast and built my first two cities pretty far inland, started to back fill and by the time I looked to expand further out geographically, washington, cyrus, and huayna had already filled in the empty space. One benefit of this was that barbarians were no problems. Literally, I fought one barb warrior. I have had to suck up to all three of them however, or they'd come in and crush me. I had to focus a little extra on workers due to all the jungle. I probably built too many workers.

Thanks for the template synex, there's a lot of experimenting to be had with this.