CE, City Specialization, and Growth, Oh My!

DEO3

Chieftain
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Jan 25, 2008
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I've been trying to improve my game somewhat, and have been reading a number of articles in the strategy guide forum and war academy.

1) The specialist economy (SE) seems like it may be too much for me at this point as I'm not very good at micromanaging my empire once I have more than three or four cities, so cottage economy (CE) it is! Unfortunately, while there are many great articles describing the specialist economy in detail, I haven't been able to find any CE guides.

I guess that's beause it seems fairly straight forward - just build cottages everwhere! But surely there's more to it than that, which technologies should one prioritize other than the obvious (pottery/democracy/etc.), and do you start with farms first, only switching to cottages once your city has grown sufficiently? What about building cottages on tiles that can't support growth such as plains, and how do you balance other tile improvements like workshops, watermills, and lumber mills with cottages?

2) Is it effective to specialize cities with a CE? Cities without a cottage in sight, like a production city made up of nothing but mines and farms, or a great people city made up of nothing but farms, and maybe a couple of mines to switch to when infrastructure needs to be built? If so, how do you balance these cities with cottage cities, and what kind of improvements should you (and should you not) be building in your cottage cities?

I've often heard people say you should only build essential buildings in specialized cities, like a forge/factory in production cities or a library/university/observatory in a science city, but then what do you build the rest of the time? Are you just converting hammers to wealth and research?

3) Which brings me to my last question, is city growth always your first priority? I'd imagine in cottage cities it's be your number one priority, as getting more people working more cottages means more villages and towns sooner, but in your specialized cities are improvements like granaries, aquaducts, grocers, markets, colosseums just as important than libraries, forges, banks, etc.?

I often find myself building infrastructure nonstop, which means my specialized cities aren't really able to dedicate themselves to their specialization (i.e. having to build health/happiness structures in a wealth city, and never being able to just focus on generating wealth). How do I balance this?
 
First, I resent the name CE, it is only used as a negative term by SE fanatics. I prefer "hybrid economy" or "specialized cities".

1. Monarchy is an extremely important tech for the cheap happiness.

2. Yes, in fact less than half your cities should be cottaged up in a normal game. Cities without cottages should build units - settlers, workers, military, great people.

3. Growth is good, but military police :))) and food resources :)food: and :health:) are much more important than buildings. Only whip buildings or work hills to speed them up, if the investment will pay off in a reasonable amount of time.
 
Absolutely you should put a cottage on a plains square. It turns a somewhat unproductive tile (relatively speaking) into a very productive tile (with the right civics).

Of course, you need to make sure you have the food to support it... but if you have picked your city site well, you've already accounted for the fact it will be a commerce city and put it close to a food resource right ;)
 
1) The specialist economy (SE) seems like it may be too much for me at this point as I'm not very good at micromanaging my empire once I have more than three or four cities, so cottage economy (CE) it is! Unfortunately, while there are many great articles describing the specialist economy in detail, I haven't been able to find any CE guides.

I guess that's beause it seems fairly straight forward - just build cottages everwhere! But surely there's more to it than that, which technologies should one prioritize other than the obvious (pottery/democracy/etc.), and do you start with farms first, only switching to cottages once your city has grown sufficiently? What about building cottages on tiles that can't support growth such as plains, and how do you balance other tile improvements like workshops, watermills, and lumber mills with cottages?

Pottery (build Cottages and Granaries), Civil Service (boost :commerce: in capital), Printing Press (boost Villages & Towns), Liberalism (boost Towns & :science:), Biology (build cottages over unnecessary Farms) and Democracy (boost Cottage maturation) are top on my list.

As long as you have food to support the tile, build a cottage on it. For example, a city with all Plains would stagnate at population 2 if there were only cottages around it. But if one of those plains had irrigated farmed wheat (+3:food:), then you could grow to population 6 and work the Wheat and 5 cottages.

2) Is it effective to specialize cities with a CE? Cities without a cottage in sight, like a production city made up of nothing but mines and farms, or a great people city made up of nothing but farms, and maybe a couple of mines to switch to when infrastructure needs to be built? If so, how do you balance these cities with cottage cities, and what kind of improvements should you (and should you not) be building in your cottage cities?

I've often heard people say you should only build essential buildings in specialized cities, like a forge/factory in production cities or a library/university/observatory in a science city, but then what do you build the rest of the time? Are you just converting hammers to wealth and research?

Always specialize your cities.

If I run out of stuff to build, I usually start on a Wonder or on defensive units (especially if for :) via HR).

3) Which brings me to my last question, is city growth always your first priority? I'd imagine in cottage cities it's be your number one priority, as getting more people working more cottages means more villages and towns sooner, but in your specialized cities are improvements like granaries, aquaducts, grocers, markets, colosseums just as important than libraries, forges, banks, etc.?

I often find myself building infrastructure nonstop, which means my specialized cities aren't really able to dedicate themselves to their specialization (i.e. having to build health/happiness structures in a wealth city, and never being able to just focus on generating wealth). How do I balance this?

Granaries are always #1 priority for any city. Period.

Specializing a city doesn't necessarily mean it needs to build :science:/:gold:. It simply means it has the elements in place to maximize its :science:/:gold: generation (typically via :commerce: or specialists).

Most of the time, you'll be building infrastructure, so you want to afford your non-production cities at least 8-12 :hammers:. Remember, you can always cottage over the mines later in the game after you've built your structures.

I typically don't build :health: structures until I have 2 or 3 :yuck:. I always prioritize :) and so try to increase the limit as soon as I reach it. (During the early game, this is most easily done by the military production city via an Archer under HR).


-- my 2 :commerce:
 

I like most of that answer, but my take on the presentation would differ....

The key tech to focus on in a cottage driven economy is Civil Service, as it is that tech which most strongly shapes the imbalances of a cottage driven economy (the civic Bureaucracy provides bonus hammers and commerce, but not GP points, in the capital only).

From this, it follows that your early play will focus on maximizing the return you get in the capital. The easiest way to exploit high commerce in the early game is to pour it through the early research multipliers: libraries, monasteries, and an Academy. So turning your cottaged capital into a research monster is a natural fit.

Editor's comment: I say easiest, but perhaps fairer would be "best understood", as this is a mechanic that has worked, relatively unchanged, since Vanilla.

The formula looks something like "raise the population as high as you can, concentrating on cottages" and "build research infrastructure". The first part tells you that you want the city to be large, quickly; the second tells you that you don't have a lot of hammers to spare (because you really want those research multipliers). Growing the city requires a high happy cap, and the easiest way to achieve that is to import happy into your city - ie, Military Police - and there's where Monarchy comes in. Unlike Representation (which evenly distributes happy over a core of cities), Hereditary Rule allows you to distribute happy in an unbalanced way.

Since the capital is being selfish, you'll want to generate sufficient military support elsewhere. So there, you are looking at your military pumps: Barracks, unit unit unit.... These cities tend not to invest a lot in their own infrastructure - they are fighting to some degree against the law of diminishing returns; once you run out of mines to work, getting bigger isn't so important. Happy and health caps in these cities can therefore be limited to what you get from resources alone.... Put in a slightly different way, these cities deal with their population limits by building the military units necessary to capture additional resources (akin to using Axemen to rush the Pyramids).

At a guess, you are probably talking about one military pump for out of every three or four cities, depending on how aggressive your game plan is.


My general assumption is that if your (smaller) commerce cities run out of things to build, you are probably running too many hammers and not enough commerce. But disposapults are always a nice gift....
 
Well hammers in your science/commerce cities aren't really a bad thing. I tend to settle great scientists, engineers and prophets in my main science city and run representation as much as possible. The super science city will need those hammers for building Libraries and eventually Universities and Oxford, etc. But in the downtime when there isn't anything to build, for sure you can just tell it to build research. 20 hammers->20 beakers multiplied by your libraries and whatnot. And whenever you need to get the next building or wonder done, you have the hammers to get it quickly. I guess if you're not running representation though this may not be as efficient, but you can sure get one hell of a science city going by settling all manner of great people there. The only one that wouldn't really benefit it that much would be the great artists, but if you're under representation and don't have another use for the artist, it's still some gold and 3 beakers (multiplied by your research buildings!) to add to the city. My current game I had my science city up to 150 beakers a turn by 1000 AD, and it had so many hammers from the settled great people (2 scientists, 2 prophets, a merchant and an engineer had been settled there already) that I was easily able to blast out the new infrastructure as it became available, then go right back to converting the hammers to research. Also I'm spreading as many religions to that city as possible, so I can get a monastery of each type in there which is another 10% science per monastery. I'm curious how many beakers this city will be pumping out by the 1900s, it's going to be INSANE, cause it's already multiplying its beakers by like 210% thanks to the monasteries and other science buildings.
 
@VoU:

Your presentations are always better ... very well written. :goodjob:

20 hammers->20 beakers multiplied by your libraries and whatnot.

That's how it was in Warlords. In BtS, the :hammers: get their production bonus and are then converted directly to :science: (no +science% modifiers), so building Wealth/Research is actually better in a production city.
 
usually most cities need to hybrid at the beginning of the game. I tried to super-specialize my cities at one time and it just didn't work, especially the commerce cities - they would have great potential, but no hammers to actually build things like banks and libraries. Now, once you get to US that's no problem as towns give hammers and you can rush buy anyway, but that's about half way through the game. I used to put cottages on grassland hills, but now in the early game I mine them. You will need hammers in your commerce cities at the start, so that they can build up their infrastructure. Also, in the early game you will probably be fighting for borders and may wind up building a library in mostly hammer city. If you need military you will have to pick a city and make it pump out nothing but units and focus on hammer production. Don't worry about generalizing cities at first, you can make them more specialized as the game progresses. So I guess what I'm saying is, hammer and GP farms don't need commerce, but commerce cities need hammers and food to grow. Later on, after you have US, you can go in your commerce cities and turn some mines into cottages, etc.
 
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