Cottage or Farm?

[wise man]

But:
when changing from farm to town you don't loose much, when changing from town to farm you do lose much

This thread could use a poll

 

[Astax]

All farm players play on Chieftain really. You get your city to 10 pop in ancient on Monarch+ you got a big crisis buddy, everything becomes unhealthy and your people start going nuts pretty fast due to overcrowding. It's not pretty and it aint fun. Your cities on that level dont really grow past 10 untill biology. Sure if I plaeyd a game on settler I can build nothing more than farms and I would be ok.

 

[fxer]

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

An EXCELLENT piece of advice, I hope people were reading that As with everything it seems in Civ IV, it depends on your situation

If playing financial I go with the cottages, since then I generally found cities on the coast to get that 3 gold boost. With a lighthouse you get 2 food on all those tiles, plus often a clam/crab/fish resource in the radius for up to a loaf.

If playing philosophical or going for a diplo win, putting in farms to increase specialist capacity, maybe combined with caste system, is also good advice someone offered.

Ultimately my early cities always run into health/happiness problems well before I get the advanced techs to really fight that. Early I'd rather churn out good amounts of gold and have population grow at a moderate pace than just explode into my happiness/health cap

 

[CivCorpse]

I wont build neither cottage or farm on river tiles, watermill is the way, .

What do you build in the tile opposite the watermill? They are only good on one side. And you can't say you build cottages or farms because you just said you built neither. And as for waiting too long for the techs that boost towns, Communism is WAY down the line

 

[Ravellion]

Enough farms to use all mined hills in the city radius. Beyond that, rip down forests and spam cottages.

Rav

 

[ranathari]

Funnily enough, I don't make that much use of cottages in my games. I'd rather use lots of food producing tiles to massively increase the size of my city so that I can start specialist-spamming. Several specialists can produce gold equivalent to a cottage/village/town and they come with hammer/beaker bonuses as well.

Watermills are an important part of my game - I'll happily tear down a few farms to introduce watermills coupled with the state property civic because that can really give a boost to my smaller cities, whereas my bigger ones are doing fine as they are by that stage.

What I'd like to know is what kind of use people make of lumbermills? I rarely see the AI building them because automated workers just hack all the forests down but I like to preserve some to build lumbermills on and then (at the very end of the game, when all my cities are max-pop) switch to environmentalism for the health bonuses.

 

[Dog of Justice]

I generally look at the city terrain, count out the resulting food balance when I'm working all decent tiles and have made "productive" improvements to them, and then build just enough farms to swing the theoretical balance to zero. I'll make an exception for 1-2 squares not earmarked for eventual townhood if that's necessary to get me a decent early growth rate, but that's about it.

I'm not really sold on the all-farm GP factory concept. I find that my first Great Scientist is disproportionately valuable because of its synergy with Bureaucracy, but beyond that, I'd rather get my GPs at the "natural" rate that National Epic + bunch of other Wonders in same city + 1-2 specialists delivers, and try to get all the GPs that trigger from discovering a tech first. I still get a reasonable number of GPs this way, without raising their cost too much.

 

[Amenhotep IV]

Cottage. Only few farms on grasslands to help the city reach 20.

 

[Draetor24]

Wouldn't it be safe to say that a high population city (via farms) would be a ton more productive than a small population with cottages-towns. The only problem lies in maintaining happiness and health, and since at the beginning of the game there are limitations here, it would seem cottages-towns are good up to a certain point, but once you can hold a big population, I think it's more productive. If you can get a population of at least 15-20 with no farms and all cottages though, even better, as you can commit the town to commerce.

 

[anton_z1]

On Higher Diffiiculty levels (Emperor and UP), i would advise in the early game to build cottages first, then mines and finally farms( only if you have sparte workers.) Later, if you found a new city, building tons of farms is a good idea, then changing the farms to watermills (and put cottages for the rest).

The only use of farms, is when you haev just founded a new city, there is pelnty of food sources and you need to get the library done quickly. PUMP farms then use slavery .

 

[Thalassicus]

It doesn't do much good to have a fast-growing city early on if it can't grow past population 6-8 due to unhealthiness.

 

[R3dKnight]

i usually just tear down the towns near end game for workship / mill for hammers to crank out the military units. but otherwise cottages are really great stuff to soak up the deficit when in tech race

 

[R3dKnight]

Added in, for border cities I wouldn't risk developing cottages. they get pillaged so easily.

 

[GenericKen]

One thing to remember about cottages is that you can't really build them in the late game. Even w/ emancipation, they'll take 15 turns to turn into villiage and another 20 to turn into a town. That's 35 turns of maybe 2-3 resources from that improvement, which sucks if there's only 50 or so turns left in the game.

Watermills give resources immediately. To a degree, so do farms. Remember that 2 food = specialist, which generally = 3 commerce.

It does all depend on what the city needs, though.

 

[ranathari]

I've just found the value of workshops instead of cottages: if you have a grasslands tile producing one hammer and one food, then it's worth building the workshop because it will give you two hammers initially, rising to four hammers later (with the appropriate techs). If you then set your city to produce wealth then you can get a substantial amount of income.

 

[rabottens]

I usually play with a financial leader so I prefer cottages. But I do reserve one or two prime spots for watermills when they arrive in the game. I only farm farming tiles corn wheat and rice. I never seem to have food shortages nor cash flow problems.

 

[Astax]

I've just found the value of workshops instead of cottages: if you have a grasslands tile producing one hammer and one food, then it's worth building the workshop because it will give you two hammers initially, rising to four hammers later (with the appropriate techs). If you then set your city to produce wealth then you can get a substantial amount of income.

FYI grassland produces 2 food, I think you meant plains tile.