cottage/farm ratio?

[Brave Jay]

I was wandering if anyone can tell me what the optimum number of cottages you can build within a city radius barring sea and mountain tiles. in other words, how much food does it take to support the max number of cottages. i could take the time and experiment and break out a calculator and do it myself, but why bother when i know all of you have that knowledge right in your heads. thanx

 

[mutax2003]

Depends on the terrains. Grassland is food neutral, while floodplain has one surplus food so you can cottage them. However, grassland hill, plain hill has a food deficit of -1 and -2, respectively, so you need to farm enough surplus food if you intend to work those tiles as mines. Now if you intend the city to be a GP farm, then you need to farm and windmill all the surrounding tiles. Now if I am running a specialist economy under representation, then I would tend to build all farms, and minimize the number of cottages.

 

[Brave Jay]

i'm talking mainly about a commerce farm rather than a gp farm. just kind of looking for a typical farm or food surplus number to be able to work as many cottages as possible. Not worried about growth beyond 20 i guess, since that would be working every tile. Now I'm assuming that there is no city overlap and no mountain/desert/water tiles. i just wandered if anyone had a general rule of thumb about how many farms they make when doing this. I know there are always going to be exceptions reguarding terrain but i can always adjust for that

 

[bluedevil99]

Just look at all tiles in the city's fat cross and count. You can do this quickly: all tiles with 2 food are zeros while all others count as #breads - 2. Add em up and if the result is negative you will need to build that many farms in order to work all the city's tiles. Actually when I do this, I only count tiles as negatives if they're tiles I want to work eventually (there's no point building 2 farms so a city can work an ice tile).

 

[JavalTigar]

terrain is the ultimate factor. If you had a city with nothing but grassland then you could have 20 cottages.

if it was all plains, then you could only run 2 cottages until you got biology.

General rule of thumb is farm plains cottage grass.

 

[DaveMcW]

As a general rule, zero farms. If it won't grow without farms, it shouldn't be a commerce city!

But there are some special cases where you should add farms:
- All bonus food resources for the health.
- River/plains for the +1 river commerce.
- Some temporary farms to allow fast growth.
- If you need to chain irrigation for another city.
- After biology, use grassland farms to work all available cottage sites.

 

[pholkhero]

You would need 40 food to reach city pop 20 and work all cottages, assuming you can put one on each tile

 

[SPQR300]

I usually farm grasslands, and build cottages on plains. So when it's needed I can use my extremely food making tiles(farmed grassland=3food), and if the happiness/health lets it I can grow my cities much much faster. If I farmed plains and buildt cottages on grasslands then I would have the same amount of everything, but would lose the ability and the flexibilty to increase food output drastically when I want. I would have 2 tiles with 2food each, one with +1production and one with gold. But one tile with 1food+gold+production and 1tile with 3food is better. Even at times when you don't need to increase population very fast and can only use one of the mentioned tiles you will use the tile with the cottage. And +1production from the plain is worth more then +1food from the grassland. The only thing you have to care that you should not overcottage as I always do.

 

[dalessi12]

I usually farm grasslands, and build cottages on plains. So when it's needed I can use my extremely food making tiles(farmed grassland=3food), and if the happiness/health lets it I can grow my cities much much faster. If I farmed plains and buildt cottages on grasslands then I would have the same amount of everything, but would lose the ability and the flexibilty to increase food output drastically when I want. I would have 2 tiles with 2food each, one with +1production and one with gold. But one tile with 1food+gold+production and 1tile with 3food is better. Even at times when you don't need to increase population very fast and can only use one of the mentioned tiles you will use the tile with the cottage. And +1production from the plain is worth more then +1food from the grassland. The only thing you have to care that you should not overcottage as I always do.

I have tried this. The only problem with it, is at higher difficulties, I find that I NEED to work many cottages EARLY to get them up and running (into villages and towns) quickly. It is harder to do this using your technique and grow at the same time (very early game that is). Maintenance, civic upkeep, and early war that comes with Emporer and above, almost requires me to work only grassland cottages very early on. Clearly, I may be wrong in thinking this is a necessity for all, but for me, and my current skill level, I find I need to do it that way.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

I usually farm grasslands, and build cottages on plains. So when it's needed I can use my extremely food making tiles(farmed grassland=3food), and if the happiness/health lets it I can grow my cities much much faster. If I farmed plains and buildt cottages on grasslands then I would have the same amount of everything, but would lose the ability and the flexibilty to increase food output drastically when I want. I would have 2 tiles with 2food each, one with +1production and one with gold. But one tile with 1food+gold+production and 1tile with 3food is better. Even at times when you don't need to increase population very fast and can only use one of the mentioned tiles you will use the tile with the cottage. And +1production from the plain is worth more then +1food from the grassland. The only thing you have to care that you should not overcottage as I always do.

Nice, I was hoping I wasnt the only one that does this. I almost always stick to this formula except when chaining farms to cities that have no interior water source.

 

[Bezhukov]

1/0, long term. Before the city is full size, you should have farms available to grow quickly, and cottages/mills to work when constrained by happiness.

 

[culdeus]

I'm trying to give you the ratio as a percent, but my calculator won't divide by 0.

 

[Bezhukov]

"Maintenance, civic upkeep, and early war that comes with Emporer and above, almost requires me to work only grassland cottages very early on. Clearly, I may be wrong in thinking this is a necessity for all, but for me, and my current skill level, I find I need to do it that way."

When managed well, the extra citizens that come from working some farms, and more importantly, food bonuses, early can then be put to work on (more) cottages and further growth/production. You need to take a little tech hit for the team in order to generate sufficient citizens to hang.

 

[dalessi12]

"Maintenance, civic upkeep, and early war that comes with Emporer and above, almost requires me to work only grassland cottages very early on. Clearly, I may be wrong in thinking this is a necessity for all, but for me, and my current skill level, I find I need to do it that way."

When managed well, the extra citizens that come from working some farms, and more importantly, food bonuses, early can then be put to work on (more) cottages and further growth/production. You need to take a little tech hit for the team in order to generate sufficient citizens to hang.

I think my biggest problem lies in the fact that I do not/cannot trade for happiness and health resources efficiently enough or early enough for me to grow cities to more than around 6-8 pop, before I run into some constraint. Also, to clarify, I always work a good food resource, and I do build farms, but I still tend to cottage most of the grasslands, probably 3 to every grassland farm. I end up farming any plains I can (next to water) early. I guess I will give the farm grass, cottage plains strategy another shot. My normal 5-6 pop. city early, would have probably 1 food resource being worked (4-6 food), 3 grassland cottages, and 1 or 2 mines (either grass or plains hill mines). If I grow any faster, I end up hitting my happiness/health limits way before I have costs under control (i.e. before CoL and currency). I do whip whenever possible but the unhappiness adds up there. I also rarely play civs that can discover religion on those higher levels. Oh well, I will give it another shot. Basically if you work 3 tiles, I would prefer 2 grassland cottages and one grassland mine (5 food, 3 hammers, 2 cottages total) vs. 1 grassland farm and 2 plains cottages (5 food, 2 hammers, 2 cottages total). If I add a plains farm as my 4th tile then 7 food, 4 hammers, 2 cottages total) vs adding a plains mine to other way which gives 6 food, 5 hammers, 2 cottages total. I guess for me my decision is based on my choices for small size 4-7 size cities, when really I should slow tech spending to have better 10-12 size cities when I get there.

 

[Andrei_V]

Ideally, a city of size 5 must work on 3 grassland and 2 plains cottages. That is, 5 cottages 0 farms. It should have a few farms around for faster growth when the happiness limit increases. Also a few mines to build some city improvements, like granaries/libraries.

 

[Bezhukov]

Wow, 6-8? Sometimes I'll top out at 4, at least temporarily (and this does hurt). I make sure my cities have at least one food bonus native, and more often than not, they'll have two (including seafood). I try to keep all bonus tiles worked at all times, so that means I'm usually working plains cottages before grass to keep from going unhappy. This assumes I've already focused on pure growth to get up to the happiness limit, usually working forest grass over mines to do so (mines are still useful for building settlers/workers). If food happens to be tight, I'll cottage grass early, but this is unusal, as is having spare worker turns that early to farm much grass unless desperate.

A city founded or captured midgame might build more farms just to get up to pop quicker, and I use a lot of windmills for such cities as well to boost growth.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

For max cottages the number of farms you need is
Number plains-Number Floodplains-any Bonus food resources that you get ... divide by 2 once you have biology
We are going to assume all Hills have Windmills

Now if you have less than 20 population (most of the game) then the maximum cottages is best done by making sure those cottages are on your best food terrain and the farms are on the poor terrain (plains) if possible, so you only need the farms when your population grows.

This of course only applies if you are happiness/health limited. If you can get a full population, then working farms first is good.

 

[Ball Lightning]

if ive got enough food to use every square then COTTAGE

They are the best. a farm gives you 1 food, a cottage gives you 4 (after some time) commerce, Later the farm gives you 1 more if it is on a river (connected) but the cottage gets 8.

Of course a production city should get Workshop, Workshop, Workshop!

If you need food them get farms



Ball Lightning