Cottage or Farm?

[DangerousMonkey]

Would you say it's best to use your adjacent river squares to build farms or cottages? Later in the game do you replace that farm/cottage with a watermill or leave it be? I've seen the question come up in various forms while lurking here in the forums and i'm not really sure what the best solution is.

You can rake in phat monies from those cottages, especialy if you're financial, but if you don't build farms you're food supply won't be as signifigant. Watermills are nice, but is it worth getting rid of a developed cottage square or a productive farm?

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

 

[KCCrusader]

I rarely build farms unless i can see there are only 2-3 tiles producing 2 food or more. If a city with sufficient grassland, flood plain on a coast or with food increasing resources, farms really arent as beneficial as Cottages.

It really depends on how big the city will grow and how big you need it to be. , and also on the surrounding.

Of course as a financial leader i would lean towards cottages even more.

 

[weimingshi]

I wont build neither cottage or farm on river tiles, watermill is the way, try it with stateproperty civic, it rules. stateproperty civic tips the balance. if you use it definately go for watermill, if not keep the town. its irelevant if you are finacial or not, cause watermill gets you the +1 gold bonus too.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Watermills come SO late, though... You just leave them fallow until that tech comes up, weimingshi?

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I typically build cottages, as I play finacial and need to push the gold up to at least 2 to get my bonus. Assuming I have no shortages of food and can maintain a decent growth rate, cottages are great and towns are amazing especially with universal suffrage and printing press.

 

[weimingshi]

I don't leave it empty before watermill comes, I usually build farms, to jump start pop size of my city. I avoid build cottages, cause the techs that give bonus to towns are about same time as watermill. I destroy whatever there was on the tile to build watermill, yes i even destroy towns. You loose nothing, watermill dont need time to develop.

The added benefit of destroying previous improvement to build watermill is my workers finally have some meaningful job to achieve before railroad comes, I just don't like to see my workers sitting idle or doing some meaningless job like building a road in a square i will never send a unit to in a million years.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Wei:

TBH, I usually DON'T get around to making Watermills, as I'm loathe to tear down a Town that's giving me 6 gold and 2+ food...

For new city sites, yeah watermills are a good choice IF they're on a river...

 

[anton_z1]

I usually build cottages. You cities (especially at the beginning of the game) have way too much population anyway. Thu building a cottage will assure you to have a nice income. Later in the game farms are good to boost your pop. You colonise, build a farm and in something 20 turns have a decent population of 15 . Once you boosted your pop, build other stuff instead.

 

[weimingshi]

towns do not give you +2 food, they only give you +6 gold, +1 hammer with all the tech and civic in place. watermill on other hand gives you +1 food, +2 hammer, +2 gold with all tech civic in place. so the trade off 1 food, 1 hammer against 4 gold, which is better? take your pick. i pick watermill, cause 2 watermill can afford you another specialist, and 1 hammer is worth quite a few gold.

As for the city grow too fast concern, its no longer valid in civ4. overcrowded city will simply stop growing, it doesn't affect production whatsoever. and when you finally got a new resource or a new building, those unhappy citizen will instantly turn into productive citizen, as oppossed to having to take time build up your population later on.

 

[Ranos]

I build both farms and cottages early on. The farm helps the city to grow a little faster early (only played on Noble so far) to get up to a good pop size and the cottages help me to keep my economy going.

 

[quail]

I usually only build farms if the city's surrounded by plains and can't grow. With roads not giving commerce in Civ 4, you have to get it from somewhere.

 

[Mujadaddy]

towns do not give you +2 food, they only give you +6 gold, +1 hammer with all the tech and civic in place.

I didn't mean (or say, if you check) +2 food... I meant 2+ food, meaning two or more food.

 

[merren]

playing as a financial civ I usually build cottages. if I want to go for a cultural victory later on I convert the grassland towns to farms, to afford more specialists

 

[rgiskard]

Would you say that it is better to build farms rather than cottages if you are philosophical? What i mean is, is it an effective strategy to maximise food production ahead of commerce so that you can create loads of specialists that give you both commerce and GPP? I've been toying with the idea of, while playing Arabs, to build farms wherever possible, ignoring most of the other improvements, except when necessary to increase hammers.
Of course, this would only work with a lot of happy people (playing on Noble atm).

 

[walkerjks]

Would you say that it is better to build farms rather than cottages if you are philosophical?

That depends heavily on the land and how early you intend to get Biology. Every specialist requires 2 excess food, so pre-Biology, a farmed grassland only provides half a specialist. A non-farmed flood plain is also half a specialist, and a farmed flood plain gives you another half. I personally don't think 1 specialist is worth losing 2 cottages. Post-biology, the extra food from farms changes the equation significantly since it's 1 farm = 1 specialist.

Personally, as philosophical I like to farm exactly one city, whichever has the best food production. I then leverage this one city with the National Epic. This city is then responsible for 80% of my great person production and I don't have to sacrifice commerce anywhere else.

 

[nevs69]

As with everything else in this game, it depends on your surroundings! With financial trait, it is definitely benefitial to get that extra gold started. But if you don't have much food in the city squares, it may be more imprtant to grow the city with a farm. I also like rgiskard's idea of building farms if philiosphical to get population up and making specialists to benefit from Great Person Boost.

 

[weimingshi]

every leader, ever civ should dedicate one city to produce great person. Be it philosophical or not. This city will have farms everywhere to max out specialist. But other then this city, farms only needed if you lack food to grow. Its a total waste if you have 2 or more city produce great person.

 

[Astax]

You shouldnt have more than 9 people per city before windmills anyway... 9 seems pretty optimal so you can pack the cities tight reduce maintenence and not worry with unhealthiness incase a war disrupts some of your food supplies. Few of my sities go up to maybe 11 or 12 before windies. But usually you dont need that much.

But anywho if I got 1 uber food tile (resource) and a bunch of grassland/ocean, I wont need any farms. If I have no food tiles but I got floodplains, I wont need farms either. I build ton of cottages. I would build farms if I only had plains and stuff. Then the farms keep your town going so you get decent pop and boost once you get biology.

Usually I am able to have in a city with one food resource and no farms just cottages one specialist, 2 with the free specialist civic, and like 3 people working a production tile that only makes one food like a plains forest or grassland mined hill.

So anyway I endup with tons of towns with financial trait and I also try to build the pyramids asap so later I can switch to the +1 hamemr town civic (the name escapes me atm :/)

 

[President_Stone]

I build farms and mines early in the game (obviously) so i can shift around the population - hammer intensive if building a wonder or wartime military; food intensive otherwise. FARMS FARMS EVERYWHERE! Building lots of farms helps you get to specialist territory quicker. Also, I think the AI thinks differently of a high population civ than a low pop. civ; not to mention that you can do more with more ppl than with less ppl. You can always change the tile once you have the population, but you cant buy the population with that town money.

I'll usually throw in a couple towns in the landlocked, non-farmable territory early in the game just to fill up the tile. I usually replace these with farms if there are a lot of hills/lumber mills in the city.

Later in the game, I'll place brand new cottages over a farm if i decide that the city should be $/beaker intensive.

 

[Gufnork]

You can always replace a town with farm, but you can't replace a farm with a town.