CE, SE, Hybrid... I'm so confused, Please Help!

[Dirk1302]

^Your critic is the same, as mine and TMIT's, only TMIT argued a bit beyond the fundamental criticism here.There's no definition and nowadays there's isn't even that much discussion about the terms. These terms just got incorporated in civfanatics language making some discussions unreadable and frankly laughable.

About the fp's as long as you will stay under the health and happy cap and you have the workforce to farm them there's nothing wrong with that. I understand Rusten's comment why not farm fps? I had the same thought somewhere at the back of my mind and tried to list the reasons why you wouldn't farm those fp's. Here are some other considerations,

In my own games i need food surplus but i'm usually not a heavy spec runner, usually don't have Mids either. So i often focus on the capital for commerce and often farm other cities if possible so they're flexible. But farmed fp's just give me too much food for comfort, i don't need that much food for whipping infra etc. So i guess i tend to cottage for that reason. The 7 turns for farming in the early game for 1 extra food is imo a good reason not to farm fp's in the early game, better grow on unimproved fp's focusing on mining the hills (or so i always thought).

It may just be an automatism on my part though and maybe there's much more to be said for farming fp's than i always thought (especially with Mids and high health/happy caps).

 

[City Raider]

I generally play with a mixture, which I guess would be a hybid, which means I run specialists and cottages.

I've found no matter what the start looks like (early rush or peaceful expansion), I need at least one dedicate early cottage city. If it is flood plains all the better. Usually my second city. As soon as I get pottery (right before or after writing) I cottage enough to get up to the happy cap. My Capital usually has a couple secondary cottages that can be worked after working its resource tiles. During and after that it is expand expand expand until economy crashes or run out of room.

1. If the early expansion comes via war and a rush, you get some gold from taking cities and can usually back fill at a peaceful pace, but you can easily turn 1-2 of the captured cities into secondary cottage cities and a second Capital is an immeidate plus given they always have good resources.

2. If you are REXing peacefully or have to settle far away to block and backfill then once I have a city with Copper or Horse (worst case 3rd city), I settle a site that can be another cottage power house.

My Capital usually gets scientists right after the Library for the science boost as well as the early Acedemy, then it is just a matter of mixing in some scientists in the higher food cities as needed.

I don't fully decide on my super science city/gp farm until Aes/Lit because it isn't until then where I have to decide where to build the GL which becomes my ssc and GP farm. 90% of the time that just is my capital.

I'm good at being able to afford 8 cities (Emperor/Standard/Epic) by 1 ad, I try for 10, but that starts to push it some games.

The earlier I can set up my core (10 cities) the more likely I am have more cottage cities. Assuming they aren't all border cities or something. But I still run some specialist heavy cities, my main GP farm (usually Capital), secondary GP farm, and then the NP city. So I'll always have at least 2-3 specialist heavy cities as well.

 

[yanner39]

What Dirk said:
and having green tiles is just good since rushing universities is quite important. The faster Oxford you get the better you take off.
I generally prefer farms over cottages for being more flexible. Capital is usually a cottage deal but over-cottaging the rest and not being able to get infrastructure exactly falls into: "Other cities should have +6 or more food so infra can be whipped in".

How so? Is it because farms give you more food, and with that food, you can then decide if you build cottages or workshops or run specialists?

 

[DaveMcW]

Feeding specialists with grassland farms is about the worst move possible.

Whipping, feeding mines, and growth are very good uses for farms.

 

[yanner39]

You can do a couple of things according to your needs,

1. Farm them and stay in slavery, these cities'll have production like no tomorrow, great for renaissance wars

2. Cottage them anyway, tech to demo and run US for production, try to build Kremlin great for industrial wars

3. Shop them 2 food, 4H with all the modifiers, great for wars somewhere in between 1 and 2.

Frankly i'd be happy to have all green tiles, i end up with quite a lot of brown tiles usually. I tend to shop them, don't work them before guilds. If you must work them build farms on them. Capital is an exception i tend to cottage brown tiles there.

Thanks for this. Actually, in this current game, I have a lot of green tiles, but lately, all my games have had a lot of brown tiles.

My games so far have all had the same strategy: only build cottages. I rarely, rarely build farms. Reason: I haven't really seen a reason to build farms. If I have 2 or 3 food resources in the BFC, that's my food to grow. Farming plains is pointless because the +1 food goes to work the tile.

Can someone point out the errors of my ways.

I usually have no problems getting commerce/science cities going. What I have problems with is getting good production cities, mostly because it seems I never get alot of hills or I place my cities so that the hills are shared between my commerce cities have hills for production. Some posters have mentioned 1 production city for 3 commerce cities. I've never been able to achieve that.

I'm wondering if I should get more cities with farms and workshops. Mix in a couple of hills and Guilds and Chemistry, I could get nice production cities in the absence of a lot of hills.

Comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tibbles]

I've recently been working on placing production cities, and at least in my case, I found my whole prior problem was trying too hard to get perfect tiles, failing, and just cottaging at the cost of military power. My last 2 games due to tile availability I just picked a site with like 4 hills and 2 food resource tiles as best-I-can-do unit pump and was rather surprised to notice that heroic epiced they still managed to keep around a 2units/3turns rate midgame. And later game farms+workshops is a huge boost. Cities I never though could possibly be a viable production site by just looking at the grassland and coastal tiles still had like 250hammers to units/turn.


A question to one of the posts above, why do you have food to grow to happy cap+1 if the cap is even/odd? Why does even/odd affect it?

 

[Dirk1302]

As Dave said i usually don't run much specs on those farms. Food is production, i can use it for a quick uni (and other infra) to complete the 6 unis for oxford, i can use it to work mines/shops, i can use it to whip extensively. I'd only run loads of specs sometimes if i had mids because then feeding specs with farms suddenly becomes a sensible idea.

@Yanner, to explain more you'd have to ask the question in a more specific way. All cottages just isn't ok since you can't whip in the infra.And as you say you don't have production. So you shouldn't go all cottages, it's really as simple as that. Cottages without emancipation usually just take too long to mature outside the capital. Indeed prioritize guilds/chemistry preferably in a trading scheme and build shops or rely more on whipping than you did before. The +6 food rule which i really borrowed from Dave is very valid for cities that don't have good production theirselves. It's not written in stone, a +5 city isn't that bad at all. A +1 city that doesn't have production of itself won't generally do that much for you however.

In the end it's important to have a plan, by 1 AD i usually have a pretty good idea what i will be doing 1000 AD, 1500 AD. I hear a lot about economies here but there are not that much threads that focus on planning ahead on a specific map and imo that's what civ's all about.

 

[yanner39]

@Yanner, to explain more you'd have to ask the question in a more specific way. All cottages just isn't ok since you can't whip in the infra.And as you say you don't have production. So you shouldn't go all cottages, it's really as simple as that. Cottages without emancipation usually just take too long to mature outside the capital. Indeed prioritize guilds/chemistry preferably in a trading scheme and build shops or rely more on whipping than you did before. The +6 food rule which i really borrowed from Dave is very valid for cities that don't have good production theirselves. It's not written in stone, a +5 city isn't that bad at all. A +1 city that doesn't have production of itself won't generally do that much for you however.

In the end it's important to have a plan, by 1 AD i usually have a pretty good idea what i will be doing 1000 AD, 1500 AD. I hear a lot about economies here but there are not that much threads that focus on planning ahead on a specific map and imo that's what civ's all about.

Thanks again Dirk. Yeah, I starting to see that cottages are not the be-all, end-all. I always figure that a strong economy would allow me to get the techs first, and build up my treasury and switch to US.

In terms of the +6 food, this is to give me options in terms of production. At +6 food, I can whip 2 or 3 population points, get great production in terms of and the population will grow back quicker. Also, +6 food gives me the option to build workshops and nice modifiers.

Sorry if I'm repeating what you wrote. Makes it easier to understand.

Thanks again.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Often working a few FP cottages is all the growing power you need.

I think the problem is often to not having the health and happy cap desired. There is no such thing as needed growing power... more is better (well if you can grow one pop every other turn OK).

Working more tiles sooner isn't necessarily an absolute value by itself if it yields less benefits.

How can that be if you have the worker turns?

Farm-first-cottage-later on FPs also takes more worker turns than on grass.

Cottaging on fps is also more worker turns than on grasslands. And it's not about farming then cottaging, but what would you do with your first few tiles?

This is an endless source of debates

Cheers,
Ras

 

[troytheface]

of course your confused

"SE" and "CE" are made up nonsensical terms created by message boarders on a message board.
Somewhat akin to "a worker and a half for each city"

If one reads the game manual you will note that these terms do not exsist and you cannot build a half of a worker

confused about something that is unreal is to be expected-

jargon is crap a few will come up with in order to confuse- don't be suckered in by terms of the self proclaimed civ4 experts of ideas i liken to santa claus.

 

[Silu]

There is no such thing as needed growing power... more is better (well if you can grow one pop every other turn OK).

Of course there is... because having a very high food surplus is a tradeoff for something else. You don't need +12 food surplus, whip anger doesn't have time to dissipate, happy cap comes sooner etc... Rather get less food and more production and commerce. Many of the big guys here keep +6 as a good baseline to aim for in every city.

How can that be if you have the worker turns?

Quite simple - if you'd rather want more than . Or do you claim there's never a situation where you'd rather be working 4 cottaged FPs than 4 farmed FPs + 1 mine?

Cottaging on fps is also more worker turns than on grasslands. And it's not about farming then cottaging, but what would you do with your first few tiles?

This is an endless source of debates

Kind of why I said "I don't claim what I do is the best, but here's why I do it". Often the first one or two are farmed before I get Pottery, but after that I almost never do it unless I need to feed Gold mines or something.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Initial food excess translates sooner in more commerce usually... I don't really get your point witht farmed FPs and the mine blush.

My point is there are far more cities with one, two, perhaps 3 fps than 19 fps/cow cities. That's why it can make a lot sense to farm fps.

Cheers

 

[Dirk1302]

+6 food is a minimum requirement, +10 food or more is great as it converts to lots of production either with slavery or with caste/shops. Depends on the situation if +10 food is better or +6 with 4 cottages.

 

[tibbles]

@ dirk and Rusten

My thumb rule on that would be "farm enough FP to get fast to cap ( or cap + 1, depending of the hap cap being even or odd ),...

I'd still like someone to explain this thought please. Why is even/odd better?

 

[shyuhe]

Because whipping rounds down. A 2 pop city whips 1 citizen, and a 3 pop city whips 1 citizen. You need 4 pop to whip 2 citizens.

 

[yanner39]

+6 food is a minimum requirement, +10 food or more is great as it converts to lots of production either with slavery or with caste/shops. Depends on the situation if +10 food is better or +6 with 4 cottages.

What's the best way to calculate the +6 food? Do you consider the tiles improved? For example, food resources have farms, coast get a +1 food from lighthouses. Do you also assume that plains will have workshops, hence -1 food?

So before you settle a new city and you dotmap, how do you go about it? I wasn't too sure what to consider as I was playing last night.

Thanks

 

[Dirk1302]

It should have +6 food before workshops are considered. For simplicity we assume < 3 mines because production cities don't have to conform to the +6 food rule. Let's say we have a grassland cow as food resource for +4 food. I would farm at least 2 tiles now to get to + 6 food, after that i'd consider what to do with the other tiles maybe i'd farm more, maybe i'd build cottages on them or workshops if i'm close to guilds and running caste system.

If you'd have a fish (+5) then lighthouse we get food surplus to +6 which is enough. To make a long answer short, just look at the foodbar, it should read +6 or more. Before you settle a city you just look to see if you get it to +6 after improving the tiles.

Be flexible in this, if a city has obvious other gains just go for it. I have settled wealth of cities that have 1 food resource, 2 goldmines and only desert. Long term such a city is just useless but it's an enormous help in the early stages of the game. Same for a stone-marble-fur-foodresource city. It's neither a real commerce nor a production city. Resource city maybe a reasonable name, i typically build a library in such cities to enhance the early game gold output somewhat, grow them to cap then slow build workers/settlers non stop.

 

[yanner39]

It should have +6 food before workshops are considered. For simplicity we assume < 3 mines because production cities don't have to conform to the +6 food rule. Let's say we have a grassland cow as food resource for +4 food. I would farm at least 2 tiles now to get to + 6 food, after that i'd consider what to do with the other tiles maybe i'd farm more, maybe i'd build cottages on them or workshops if i'm close to guilds and running caste system.

If you'd have a fish (+5) then lighthouse we get food surplus to +6 which is enough. To make a long answer short, just look at the foodbar, it should read +6 or more. Before you settle a city you just look to see if you get it to +6 after improving the tiles.

Be flexible in this, if a city has obvious other gains just go for it. I have settled wealth of cities that have 1 food resource, 2 goldmines and only desert. Long term such a city is just useless but it's an enormous help in the early stages of the game. Same for a stone-marble-fur-foodresource city. It's neither a real commerce nor a production city. Resource city maybe a reasonable name, i typically build a library in such cities to enhance the early game gold output somewhat, grow them to cap then slow build workers/settlers non stop.

Thanks for this. So when looking at Food bar, the +6 has to be there when the city is first settled? Overtime as the city grows, this amount shrinks, correct? So once I send out my 1st worker or first workboat(s), the bar has to read +6 ot more.

 

[Dirk1302]

No it has to be there when you have improved your tiles. And it may shrink over time once you have an alternate source of production (rushbuy US for instance). So before chemistry/guilds under slavery you had +6 food to take care of your production needs. After chemistry/guilds you can work 3 plain tile workshops for +15 H so you don't need the +6 H anymore. Think of the +6 food as your production in a city that doesn't have enough natural production.

 

[yanner39]

No it has to be there when you have improved your tiles. And it may shrink over time once you have an alternate source of production (rushbuy US for instance). So before chemistry/guilds under slavery you had +6 food to take care of your production needs. After chemistry/guilds you can work 3 plain tile workshops for +15 H so you don't need the +6 H anymore. Think of the +6 food as your production in a city that doesn't have enough natural production.

Yeah, sorry that's what I meant. I always improved my food tiles first. So after I send out workers and/or workboats and start working these tiles, the food bar should read +6 or more? I can then whip.

I so settle a city, improve my food tiles with workers, work the tiles and only after this should it read +6 in the food bar.