Cottages, financial and OCC

[Berul]

Yes, of course. I was trying to figure out a situation where "avoid growth" would be useful.
NE = National Epic ? That's one of the big mistakes of my playstyle: I've almost never had a GP farm in my games. Certainly not a good move (not having one, I mean).

 

[AcaMetis]

It's actually possible to exploit the Avoid Growth mechanic to effectively gain food, though I don't recall exactly how to do it. It had to do with granaries and filling the food bin, I remember that. There's a topic describing that somewhere, but I don't recall where.

 

[Berul]

Hmm, maybe it's related to that:

I timed granaries, now this is a small point but makes diff all game due to the "ripple affect"; i.e 1 extra pop most of the game. I managed this and got around 12 extra food prior to granaries, this is a really cool hidden feature.

One thing I've noted in my games, is that the next time a city grows after building a granary, it's food bin is set to 0 (while it should be half full). At first, I thought that the reason was that I was building the granary on the same turn that the city would have grown but this happens even when the city growns only a few turns after granary completion.

 

[drewisfat]

Avoid growth isn't a huge tip, it was more just shocking to find out after years how it worked. It's better to not grow into unhappiness usually, as maintenance costs still rise with the extra unusable pop. But I mean you want to use that extra food ideally, it's much better to plan on whipping surplus food growth or using it for workers/settlers. But sometimes stuff happens and by the time I notice it, I only have a one pop whip option available.

 

[gavenkoa]

Or destroyed the mine S of the city, which I almost never worked after t50.

Does forest grow on earlier improved tiles? Or this is the trick of forest preserve?

 

[Tobiyogi]

The "avoid growth" and stuff discussion is in the thread "Where is my granary bonus?" in the S&T section

 

[gavenkoa]

Where is my granary bonus

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/where-is-my-granary-bonus.646692/

 

[Tobiyogi]

I've been reading along here and it seems I have similar problems like @Berul . My recent OCC's have been surprisingly succesful and now I know that's probably because I can play my best cards here: Advanced diplo, research order, GP generation, use of fail gold...
On the other hand, when a player is unsure of what to do with other cities, then he has nothing to gain from OCC. For example, I am really weak at settling promising spots. Sometimes, my 2. or 3. city do not contribute enough, and then in other situations, I was surprised how good a city became later that I had estimated very weak in the first place. I don't have the eye for a city's potential, when the tiles are still unimproved. I really admire the pros on YT who have a look at a piece of jungle and claim: That will be a killer spot later on!
Another important point is what to build in all the non-capitol cities, where to whip, where to generate workers/settlers. I rather do that by intuition and it was enough for several Immortal wins. But I am not really skilled at that. I love to swap tiles between cities though, that's why my games take up to 20 hours.
I guess OCC has mainly one learning effect: It can tell you the maximum about advanced GP management. All the yield differences between settled and hired guys, what wonder generates what kind of points, which GPs to get and which to avoid, how to use civics and how to get quicker to the relevant techs. That's why everyone recommands Philo.

Yeah, we lack a IND/PHI leader in that game, same for CRE/CHA. The second one should definitely be Obama