Cottages and Trading Posts

[JonoLith]

There has been a little bit of discussion about Trading Posts in Greg2k's writeup on improvements, but I thought we could use a thread specifically dedicated to the positives and negatives on the change to the gold producing improvement.

In Civilization 5 the gold producing improvement is called the Trading Post. Once built it produces extra gold on the tile that it has improved.

In Civilization 4 the gold producing improvement is called the Cottage. Once built it produces slightly extra gold on the tile it has improved. Once worked, the tile will further improve, up to four extra gold.

I'm a big fan of this change. I like that once improvements are built, they become useful immediately, and operate at their full strength. I like that it allows me to cleanly decide whether or not I should destroy that improvement.

In Civilization 4, I would never destroy a well developed Cottage, even if I did feel that I could get some benefit from having a workshop or windmill in it's place, as the major time investment that I've put into having that cottage grown to full capacity outweighs any other bonus I might receive. It takes so much time to get it there, I don't want to throw that away.

With the new Trading Post, I can build it, but when it comes time to tear it down and build a new improvement in it's place, all I've lost was the initial build time that the worker took to build the improvement, which is a pittance in comparison to how long it took a cottage to fully upgrade in Civilization 4.

In the end, I feel it encourages a more mailable kind of play, and allows people to shift their strategies, and tile improvements, much more cleanly then ever before.

Also, having a fully upgraded cottage pillaged was horrible. Any other improvement could get pillaged and I'd find it quite reasonable, but losing a fully upgraded cottage was just horrendous, and it would take me so long to recover that cities potential, no matter how many workers I had. I could easily rebuild the cottage improvement but it would take an amazing amount of time to get the city fully functional.

I really enjoy the change.

Discuss!

 

[Suho1004]

The fear of having my towns pillaged in Civ4 is one of the things that prevents me from just hunkering down in my cities when attacked. So I guess that's not such a bad thing. It is really annoying, though, when a lone pillager slips through the net and manages to undo in a single turn what it took me many turns to accomplish.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I assume the pillager will be much more active now, with 4-tile moving light cavalry (5-tile for some UU). However this is compensated with pillaged improvements not completely destroyed, so they could be rebuilt in less turns.

 

[AriochIV]

I understand why they eliminated the growth element of cottages (although I personally liked that it rewarded long-term planning and penalized exploitation). Why they felt the need to change the name/identity from cottages/villages/towns to "trading posts" seems less clear.

 

[King Jason]

I understand why they eliminated the growth element of cottages (although I personally liked that it rewarded long-term planning and penalized exploitation). Why they felt the need to change the name/identity from cottages/villages/towns to "trading posts" seems less clear.

Bout sums it up.

 

[frenzyfol]

In the end, I feel it encourages a more mailable kind of play, and allows people to shift their strategies, and tile improvements, much more cleanly then ever before.
Discuss!

Yeah, the Rise of Man mod has gradually improving everything. This made any change extremely prohibitive, and costly, reducing your strategic options.

 

[JonoLith]

Why they felt the need to change the name/identity from cottages/villages/towns to "trading posts" seems less clear.

I can see why, from the new player perspective. When I see "Farm" I think food. When I see "Mine" I think building. When I see "Cottage" I think... population? Summer Home?

It's not immediately apparent that a cottage is tied, in any way, to gold. A trading post, on the other hand, is. The sole purpose of a trading post is to provide wealth, and I can see how a new player, just picking up the game, will be able to connect with that idea much cleaner then if it is simply a Cottage.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

I don't think that's necessarily tied to "new players" so much as a more clear association to gold production across the board.

 

[Auncien]

I don't mind that they're called "trading posts." That does make a lot more sense for a new player. You know right away what the improvement is going to grant. The removal of the growth-over-time mechanic however is harder to like. I thought the old way was more realistic and better for overall gameplay planning. It rewarded forethought and made war a bit more frightening. I've won many conflicts against superior foes because I pillaged their towns and left them bankrupt. Maybe we could have trading posts that grow over time?

 

[PinkHammurabi]

I like the change because it appears (thus far) to eliminate the cottage-spam that was so unbelievably prevalent. Obviously you need a balance of some kind, but it's easy for players to build them en masse due to a much higher output than farms and the like.

 

[AriochIV]

I like the change because it appears (thus far) to eliminate the cottage-spam that was so unbelievably prevalent.

I don't mind the change at all, but if you look at the screenshots, trading post spam is widespread, especially in the later eras.

Granted that these previewers often don't know how the play the game, and are playing on very low difficulty levels. But gold is every bit as valuable as it ever was.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

I don't mind the change at all, but if you look at the screenshots, trading post spam is widespread, especially in the later eras.

Yes but we don't know how valuable this strategy is yet, at all. We're looking at reviewers that also road spam and make comments that show that they clearly aren't all too knowledgeable when it comes to a winning strategy. And we know they play on Settler difficulty and such as well.

 

[Stalker0]

I can live with the new mechanics of trading posts vs cottages, though I will say I do not like the graphical look of the new improvement. The small village to eventual large town surrounding my metropolises seemed a lot more fitting overall.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

Yeah the tent thing is rather ugly.

 

[kurtkage]

I don't mind the change at all, but if you look at the screenshots, trading post spam is widespread, especially in the later eras.

Granted that these previewers often don't know how the play the game, and are playing on very low difficulty levels. But gold is every bit as valuable as it ever was.

Seems to me that many previews we see the players are not specializing cities well enough. Empirewide happiness is something to consider but I would say that farms are more valuable this time around esp in early eras since pop contributes to science directly and there seem to be more? specialist buildings (depending on if you have the resources around the city for some buildings). I really wonder about seeing TP spammed cities and farm spammed and prod spammed just like civ4. Edit, once the pros get ahold of the game

 

[Thormodr]

I like the change because it appears (thus far) to eliminate the cottage-spam that was so unbelievably prevalent. Obviously you need a balance of some kind, but it's easy for players to build them en masse due to a much higher output than farms and the like.

Some of the screen shots appear to confirm that there is indeed trading post spam unfortunately. It looks like bizarro circus world.

However, I believe that trading post graphics eventually change so perhaps they will be more visually appealing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Some of the screen shots appear to confirm that there is indeed trading post spam unfortunately.

I'd rather not take this in account. Screenshots are usually taken by reviewers who were playing the game for the first time without serious background. We've already seen spaghetti roads and improvements outside any city reach, so I'd not bother too much.

 

[Wimsey]

One fix that could end ugly trade post spam and even add somewhat realism, is to disallow having two adjacent trade posts. This way, they would be more spread out with farms/mines/lumbermills between them, and look like each of them actually served their region of trade. Granted, this idea has no gameplay reason at all, merely an aesthetic one, and shouldn't really be taken seriously

I do however think the graphics should go more towards normal buildings and more drab natural tents.

 

[Thormodr]

I'd rather not take this in account. Screenshots are usually taken by reviewers who were playing the game for the first time without serious background. We've already seen spaghetti roads and improvements outside any city reach, so I'd not bother too much.

That's certainly a possibility and I hope you are right.

 

[Ahriman]

On a flatland tile without a bonus resource, there are only two yield-increasing improvements your workers can build: farm or trading post. So of course there is going to be farmspam and TP spam. There's no alternative.