I don't recall ever losing working population during a war, and I have no idea how such a situation would come about. I suppose you could say war weariness, but WW isn't a considerable problem in the early game, and it should stay that way during the mid to late game provided you have been diligently raising your happy cap with resources and the like.
You would have to whip a lot if happiness never becomes an issue. I find that counterproductive once past the earliest turns.
Bingo! If half or more of my cities are cottage-heavy commerce cities, then they're probably never going to exceed the low 20s population-wise, and that usually places them well within the happy cap. For my larger cities running specialists, I'll find much more efficient localized solutions.
Point. My wars tend to happen before my cities hit 20, but i see what you mean.
And I don't buy the argument that on any given game, every single city will always be at their respective happy caps.
Thats how it is for me. I have no idea what kind of plans other people use for city growth, but even a few food/turn in the old cities will keep them within 1 of the cap, and newly settled cities can grow to it very fast.
Otherwise, I could see the use of using the Culture slider as a happy slider. But as it stands, I consider such a use as an ad hoc solution to 1) an offensive war gone poorly, 2) an inconvenient defensive war, or 3) just poor empire management. I've had to use the slider in all three situations, and I don't find it particularly good.
I like workshops, so i run caste system. This means i will eventually have about 10 frownie faces from emancipation. This makes the happy slider a part of my overall strategy. I usually dont need to raise it much (or at all), but that will probably change as i play higher levels.
The thing is, you will always be able to produce more raw commerce than raw hammers, even when you don't have any towns yet.
Yah, but all the commerce in the world wont help if you dont have time to build up for war, or even worse if you are unexpectedly attacked, and it wont yield more beakers if you have no buildings.
A hammer city also has more flexibility in rapid population growth, should that be needed for whatever reason.
Not to mention, it's far easier to find a good commerce city location than a prime production city one.
This is false. Grassland and floodplains are the best things a hammer city can have. Mines are only useful early to mid game, when state property rolls around its all about workshops.
Even settled scientists will produce more raw beakers/gold than engineers do hammers. Throw in beaker multipliers, and there is no way a production city has enough hammers to rival a dedicated science city (even one without an academy) through conversion.
I dont use engineers (unless i dont have angkor wat, in which case it only happens once i run out of workshops).
State property on its own makes specialists worthless for beakers and gold. A grassland workshop gives 2 food and 3-4 hammers, a plains workshop gives 1 food and 4-5 hammers. Even with multipliers specialists cant beat that, and when you get factories the multipliers are exactly the same (unless your hammer poor cottage city somehow managed to build a lot of monasteries, and not counting academy).
Cottage cities will outtech hammer cities, and i have already said this. But they will still have less infrastructure and less production capacity. Its a tradeoff i find worthwhile.
Not to mention that cottaged commerce-cities scale well; cottages grow, while production capacity remains largely static. Bonuses from civics, technologies, and railroads don't amount to much.
You have never tried it, have you? Workshops keep growing through the game. They are pretty worthless early on, but much better than railroaded hills lategame. This applies to watermills and windmills too, but they are mostly suited for food-poor cities (i try to avoid those).
In a game a few days ago my capital was producing 500+ hammers on some wonders. 700+ during golden age. And it had quite a few coast tiles so it was not even an optimal production city.
I actually rarely drop my science slider during wars; the last time I did it was a few games back, when a Diety-level conflict was getting pretty hot, and I dropped bottomed science at 0% for two turns to raise some ~5000 gold for unit upgrades. Then I cranked the slider back up. It's that type of flexibility I'm talking about.
We have been over the happy issue so i wont comment on that again. But as far as flexibility, hammer cities have that too. They get exactly as much gold per hammer as they do beakers per hammer. Same method, different source.
Generally however, i get gold from the slider. Simpler than changing production, and for part of the game i get better commerce to gold ratio than commerce to beaker ratio.
Just because an empire has a lot of cottages doesn't mean it's weak, defenseless, or full of peace-loving hippies. Even just one military production city cranking out units non-stop will amass a very respectable army, one that make most offensives fairly trivial matters. Throw in a few more dedicated production cities, and conquer the world. Then if you find a very food rich city location, plop down the farms and plantations and get some specialists rolling.
Again, its about infrastructure. The earlier it comes up the earlier you benefit from it. I always have some cities that just cant build all the things it needs in a timely manner whenever i try CE.
Also, a cottager is more or less forced to run emancipation. When my entire empire runs on hammers i need caste system. This is where being able to use the happy slider comes in. Since im getting beakers from hammers, it also means that getting happy faces always more than makes up for whatever i lose on commerce during peaceful times.
Oh and i also run a GP farm. 2 actually. My first city is a wonder spammer and my next makes a bunch of merchants. I get about half from each.
. My hunch is that such a plan would work optimally with a large empire, on a huge map, with slower settings to maximize the length of the GA. It might help if the game doesn't finish too early too. Obviously MoM would be hugely important for such a strategy. But as you say US is a great civic to take advantage of the commerce and hammer benefits of a GA. One area a CE beats an SE from a GP perspective.
% and +
% buildings come considerably earlier than +
% buildings do, so relying on production for research or wealth means running less-than-optimal bonuses for quite some time.
, which seems silly to spread around to every city.
