cottage spamming strategy?

[Madhatter4]

So what exactly is cottage spamming? It sounds like just building primarily cottages around your cities but im not sure about the finer parts of this technique. Also how does cottage spamming apply to playing as Calabim?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, basically it is filling the world with cottages and waiting for them to upgrade. In FfH cottage economies are more useful in the early to mid game, whereas specialist economies become more useful latter on.

It works best with Financial leaders, since the Trait boosts the trade (or is it gold? I always get those confused) of the tiles. Flauros happens to be one of these leaders, so he uses this well to make sure the economy is strong enough to sustain you until your vampires can conquer the world. Don;y forget about food though.


This probably isn't the best idea if you have rivals with the raiders trait, especially the Hippus. I've heard it is less useful in Multiplayer, because rivals can wreck your empire by pillaging, and it takes time for them to redevelop. Of course, I only play single player, so I can't say for sure. I tend to use lots of cottages (especially as an elf), but not quite to the point of spamming. I tend to think a mixed economy is best.

 

[Roghar]

Its pretty much just as you said, getting as many cottages up and running so that they start moving towards towns, and reaping a lot of commerce out of it. Particularly useful in teh early game before you are able to assign many specialists.

As calabim I tend not to go for many cottages, the Feast ability means you really want high pop cities able to rebuild lost pop as quickly as possible. Food, food and more food

Edit: As a general rule I tend to build cottages on plains and farms on grasslands, so as not to lose my plains hammer under the Agriculture civic

 

[Mailbox]

Financial + Farms + Aristocracy is much better than cottage spam later on, especially after Sanitation or with Agriculture.

 

[Roghar]

Financial + Farms + Aristocracy is much better than cottage spam later on, especially after Sanitation or with Agriculture.

You have to take into account the use of an extra civic(s) though - you are essentially going with Agriculture and Aristocracy to run that strat, a cottage economy runs neither. Even a typical mixed economy utilising Agriculture let you run City States or an alternate instead of Aristrocracy

 

[Mailbox]

Even without Agriculture, each farm is adding + 1 food and + 3 commerce per tile after Sanitation. This is far better than the town's + 5 (+ 6 commerce with taxation), considering a financial leader. The more happiness you get in each city makes it progressively more and more powerful, letting you work more tiles and add specialists. Below the happiness cap, cottaging is good, but as your cities grow larger the extra food really helps. While city states is a very powerful civic (too powerful in my opinion), I still believe that Aristocracy has its place for certain leaders and strategies.

 

[Slvynn]

the only civs that should rely on real SPAMMING is Bannor (worldspell) and Elves (ancient forest cottages)

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

The Grigori too. You don't want to pollute your GPP pool too much and miss out on juicy adventurers.

 

[Sarisin]

Nothing makes me happier than venturing into a cottage-spammed civ with my HN Three Stooges. Having the Raider trait does make it a real infusion of Gold. Usually, the cottages have matured into cities and the poor ai civs have only Scout, Warrior and maybe Archer defenders and cannot challenge Moe, Larry, and Curly.

With that much Gold coming in from pillaging you don't have to worry much about your economy.

 

[EverNoob]

Even without Agriculture, each farm is adding + 1 food and + 3 commerce per tile after Sanitation. This is far better than the town's + 5 (+ 6 commerce with taxation), considering a financial leader. The more happiness you get in each city makes it progressively more and more powerful, letting you work more tiles and add specialists. Below the happiness cap, cottaging is good, but as your cities grow larger the extra food really helps. While city states is a very powerful civic (too powerful in my opinion), I still believe that Aristocracy has its place for certain leaders and strategies.

This also implies that cottage spamming doesnt' have to be a fixed strategy. You can always start out with cottage spamming, then later convert cottages progressively to farms for aristocracy. Going from cottages to farms is easy, going from farms to cottages is a different story though.

 

[Grey Fox]

Cottages are extremely good early on, especially as a financial civ since it means an immediate +2 Commerce on the tile. Which can be huge early on. (I mean on river tiles where it already is +1 Commerce)

And you don't have the happiness to grow too large anyways that early.

 

[Slvynn]

Real cottage SPAMMING should be done for Bannor only, they need cottages in every hole.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Aristocracy + Farms is a viable alternative, especially in certain situations. Consider this:

A Farm with Aristocracy will outproduce an equivalent cottaged plot for 40 turns. If you have a financial leader, it does so for 50 turns (If not adjacent to a river). Also, IF you have agriculture or Sanitation, you will also reap 40 to 50 additional food in the city, which is probably going to get you a population point or so.

Obviously, there are many many exterior reasons to go or not go this route. For instance, if your cities are going to max out in size due to happiness, than the extra food isn't horribly valuable. If you have a very large empire and poor use of Law Nodes/Courthouses/SubPalaces, than you may NEED to be in City States, and aristocracy is just not an option. Factions that benefit from large amounts of food (Flauros, I'm looking at you!) will do very well with farm/aristocracy builds. (Sidar turning the additional food into specialists isn't bad either).

 

[Ecofarm]

I think 5-6 cottages are minimum. Absolute minimum. I don't care how many plantations you have. I prefer spam.

If you want a tier 4 unit, there's not much choice. Lightbulb is not going to get you there. It is different than bts. There is a shelf from 3-4 that is not overcome without serious teching. You cannot lightbulb sorcery, let alone str of will. SE why? Bulb theo? Engineering/GE rush slums? Maybe. I cannot imagine an SE ever getting a late tech.

Tier 5 units (immortals/dragons/vampire lords) I've never managed. Perhaps an advanced medieval start with 20k points will make that possible in just a few hours.

ps. No stooging my ancient forest cottages for a treant might kill them all and not even mighty Curly can hit an elven archer in an ancient forest.

 

[Demus]

5-6 cottages? unless you're playing the elves (which i assume you are ) 5-6 cottages in 1 city can't be done early game. You'd be running those cottages, but not a single food/production tile. Tier 5 with SE is perfectly managable, even with OCC: go sidar, rush writing (great library), then found OO (ToC). After worker techs go engineering, then any civic which allows unlimited scientists. 20+ scientists pushing out 5 breakers each (and 3 scientist GPPs) can get you there rather quickly imho.

 

[Ecofarm]

I meant 5-6 end product. At 5 pop I often run 1 food/specialist (grow/starve) and 4 cottages.