Cottages overpowerd?

[Fetch]

How many times have you read on this forum that the answer to someones problem is to build cottages. "Cottage the place up!" and "Cottage spam!" are seen often. I understand, as much as I'm able, that cottages are an important part of the game that provide commerce, hammers, work great on grassland, etc. But I can't help but wonder, are cottages too powerful? Do you think they have too many abilities? Think outside the box and ask, "Is there a better way?"

Please don't beat me up, I just love a good debate.

 

[automator]

I think cottages are nicely balanced:

• You gain them with an opportunity cost. For every two grasslands that you cottage instead of farm, you are losing the ability to have a zero-food miner or specialist. Cottages produce no production (until sufferage, and then only to towns).

• They are one of very few ways to get money reliably.

• They are like candy to an invading force. Destroying a town to nothing nets like 200 gold, and then takes like 50 turns to bring back to town status.

For all that trouble, you get 10 gpt after a long period of development. Seems balanced to me.

 

[Solo4114]

I haven't tried cottage spam yet. I tend to play at lower levels and try to balance between farms and cottages. I usually put cottages on plains and farms on grasslands to leverage the food aspect and grow my civ. I'm sure that's the "wrong" way to play, but at the lower levels it doesn't matter. When I start playing at Prince or higher I'll see where it leaves me and adjust.

I don't think they're overpowered, necessarily, at least in a one on one comparison with farms, mines, sawmills, etc. You DO make a tradeoff for cottages. They give you hammers and coins, but you give up the ability to build whatever else on that same square. IE: maybe that grassland farm might've been able to support your mine that has aluminum on it or somesuch, and would make for serious production.

I suspect others will disagree with me, having done a lot more number crunching than I have, but whatever. I think they're reasonably balanced and I tend to eschew extreme strategies and narrowly focused city design.

 

[Fetch]

I think cottages are nicely balanced:

• You gain them with an opportunity cost. For every two grasslands that you cottage instead of farm, you are losing the ability to have a zero-food miner or specialist. Cottages produce no production (until sufferage, and then only to towns).

• They are one of very few ways to get money reliably.

• They are like candy to an invading force. Destroying a town to nothing nets like 200 gold, and then takes like 50 turns to bring back to town status.

For all that trouble, you get 10 gpt after a long period of development. Seems balanced to me.

You make excellent points, Automator.

 

[Eimon Gnome]

I think cottages are nicely balanced:

• You gain them with an opportunity cost. For every two grasslands that you cottage instead of farm, you are losing the ability to have a zero-food miner or specialist. Cottages produce no production (until sufferage, and then only to towns).

• They are one of very few ways to get money reliably.

• They are like candy to an invading force. Destroying a town to nothing nets like 200 gold, and then takes like 50 turns to bring back to town status.

For all that trouble, you get 10 gpt after a long period of development. Seems balanced to me.

Hear,hear!
One of the things I've noticed recently as I attempt to break into Monarch:

The candy part makes for an interesting strategic choice. It is very, very risky to build cottages on boundaries. When a city's best squares(river,flood plains) are close to enemy lands, it does not pay to try and grow cottages. To do so, is to commit to expanding in that direction. Their loss, either through culture flip or pillaging, is way too big.

I'm beginning to think of geography on a strategic as well as local level. Way more fun and challenging.

 

[Stangler]

They are very powerful compared to other improvements and by late game they are the right choice more often then not. Their power is only magnified with the power of science and money and the Kremlin. They scale far better than other improvements and are available early.

With that said, I think it is ok that they are overpowered, or more powerful, when compared to other options. It is more natural to see the urban sprawl effect of villages than to see farms everywhere like in past games. There should be towns everywhere to represent reality.

The AI rarely attacks my towns effectively if at all.

 

[emills]

cottages are the most realistic part of the game. What major city can survive alone without a surrounding set of smaller cities and suburbs. In the game, this is represented in the maintenance cost of the city/civ and the commerce needed to fund reseach. cotteges are the most reliable way except for water tiles to get money to pay for everything. You cannot count on gold/spices or whatever resource being around.

 

[Crighton]

I'd rather have the AI pillaging my lands than making a concerted effort to take my cities. This way I can whittle him down if I've been caught unawares then push him back and rebuild. In most cases that is.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

why would they be unbalanced? This isnt a roleplaying game. The definition of balanced is NOT "you should be able to choose not to use them and still be ok". If that were the case then roads would be wildly unbalanced! After all if you dont use roads your a dead empire walking!

You have to use cottages to some extent to be at your top game but that doesnt imply unbalanced. That would only be true if every empire didnt have access to them. Redcoats can be unbalanced. Cottages cant be unbalanced.

And for comparisons compare roads of civ3 against cottages of civ4. Both are coin earners. Roads were way more unbalanced then cottages. Its true roads gave you less per a square but you could use them on every square with 0 downside and you still got the movement bonus! Compared to that cottages are a huge step forward in trade offs.

 

[n0xie]

You have to use cottages to some extent to be at your top game but that doesnt imply unbalanced. That would only be true if every empire didnt have access to them. Redcoats can be unbalanced. Cottages cant be unbalanced.

I agree.

Compare it to Civ3. You didn't need cottages in Civ3. You could just mine/irrigate everything as much as you wanted, and use other ways to keep your economy afloat.

In Civ4 you don't have that luxery. You have to sacrifice workable tiles for commerce. Yes I said sacrifice. That grassland could have had a farm on it, so your next citizen could work that mine, giving your city a nice production boost. Instead in order to keep competing against the AI, people sacrifice tile-improvements for cottages. I've seen plenty of people cottaging a luxery source, just to get that little bit more commerce. Most hills are unworked in favour of working cottages. Overall, most people sacrifice production in favour of cottages.

Therefor I do not think they're unbalanced at all. Most players have 2 or 3 production powerhouses, and the rest of their cities are there only for the cottages, paying for the entire economy, where as in Civ3, all of those cities would be production cities...

 

[ownedbyakorat]

The cottage could be unbalanced if in a large majority of situations it was better to build one than any of the other available improvements. If there's only a point in making one type of improvement, then I would call that unbalanced.

However...

Cottages can't produce food. Thus they require either a specific terrain type (flood plain or grassland) or support from another type of improvement (e.g. something to give you the food to actually work them).

Cottages produce no hammers. Without a healthy hammer source you can't make the buildings you need to really capitalize on the cottages... so you will be wanting to build those mines, sometimes even in places where you could build a cottage.

Cottages take a good deal of time to develop. When first built, they are no better than an unimproved coastal square.

Cottages can feed your enemies and make it profitable for them to war against you, because they yield so disproportionately much in pillage. You having a cottage could mean the difference between an enemy's assault being profitable or unprofitable.

 

[atreas]

I also don't think they are unbalanced - and recently I have begun to seriously question their power at all. To judge whether something is overpowered at all, you must consider the alternatives; in CIV4 the alternative is the "farms + specialists" approach.

If we compare the two approaches, we see that the one (cottages) has a bigger final commerce yield (more commerce per citizen, eventually) but has some serious disadvantages in the process: it is much slower in development (both the cottages, and the city develops slower), it is much more vulnerable in attacks, it has many difficulties in production (practically forces pop-rush) and also it lacks the GP points - remember also that until Printing Press and Free Speech even Towns are worse than specialists. The other side has also bigger flexibility (cottages remain cottages forever) but has the disadvantage of the difficulty to get really big cities working, due to happiness/healthiness problems. But for a long time, especially with Pyramids and Philosophical civs, you get better results this way than with underdeveloped cottages. For me this is an indication of a very well balanced system: there are two roads, and you choose according to the situation. You can also target yourself for better results in the end or in the middle of the game - that's excellent balance.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Cottages produce no hammers. Without a healthy hammer source you can't make the buildings you need

You can once you get to Universal Suffrage. At that point it's pretty pointless to have anything but towns. Admittedly, that's fairly late in the game (unless you have the Pyramids).

 

[atreas]

You can once you get to Universal Suffrage. At that point it's pretty pointless to have anything but towns. Admittedly, that's fairly late in the game (unless you have the Pyramids).

Even with the Pyramids, the problem is that you will not have enough towns to be worth the change. I have never found in my games to need to apply Universal Suffrage BEFORE I had discovered Democracy (which provides the civic either way).

 

[Mutineer]

Towns are very well balanced by long maturing and easy pillaging.
Yes, shield from town come very later. ONly creasy or person with very small amount of towns will go to Universal Suffrage, as useally only around my capital towns matured early. Well one more posible reason to go is if you want to buy stuff from Mechamant money and you spiritual civ so you do not waster to mach time and can switch back.

 

[Crimso]

If we compare the two approaches, we see that the one (cottages) has a bigger final commerce yield (more commerce per citizen, eventually) but has some serious disadvantages in the process: it is much slower in development (both the cottages, and the city develops slower), it is much more vulnerable in attacks, it has many difficulties in production (practically forces pop-rush) and also it lacks the GP points - remember also that until Printing Press and Free Speech even Towns are worse than specialists. The other side has also bigger flexibility (cottages remain cottages forever) but has the disadvantage of the difficulty to get really big cities working, due to happiness/healthiness problems. But for a long time, especially with Pyramids and Philosophical civs, you get better results this way than with underdeveloped cottages. For me this is an indication of a very well balanced system: there are two roads, and you choose according to the situation. You can also target yourself for better results in the end or in the middle of the game - that's excellent balance.

I think this is an interesting way to think of the game. I usually play financial civs, so I'm naturally a cottage spammer. I'm also in the vast minority of players here who are disgusted by any strategy that even mentions a wonder. For me, most of my Great People are for academies and trade missions (mass upgrades... yes, Redcoats), so I get Caste System early to engineer these results.

I wonder if I've become unbalanced in my pursuit of commerce, and I'd like to round out my game. Perhaps you could elaborate on this "other road?" I hope it doesn't rely to heavily on grabbing wonders, because I don't want to move up to Emperor and have everything turn to ****.

 

[DaviddesJ]

remember also that until Printing Press and Free Speech even Towns are worse than specialists.

Huh? Even a plains town, without a river, by a non-financial civ, without Printing Press, generates 1 food, 1 production, and 4 gold. That's way more than any specialist (which don't generate any food at all). Grasslands, rivers, and/or the financial trait all make it considerably better still.

 

[atreas]

Huh? Even a plains town, without a river, by a non-financial civ, without Printing Press, generates 1 food, 1 production, and 4 gold. That's way more than any specialist (which don't generate any food at all). Grasslands, rivers, and/or the financial trait all make it considerably better still.

Sure, I can even give you the extra river commerce, but still 6 beakers or 3 Gold + 3 beakers (Representation) + the extra great person I will get will make you run very hard (and never catch-up). Plus, if you start to cottage the plains the city will almost never grow - unless you are in the 6 floods + 2 gold city I saw in another forum. Don't underestimate things you haven't tried. In SP cottages are extremely good, but they aren't one way road (especially with Philosophical civs and Pyramids).

@crimso: None has managed to calculate exactly the pros and cons: the general belief seems to be that cottages give their full profit only in late game, plus that they are extremely vulnerable (especially in MP). I tried to find a good reference, but the best I could find was http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=160260. After the 2nd page it becomes somewhat more specific.

PS. I also usually use cottages, but it is really useful to know a different path.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Don't underestimate things you haven't tried.

How on Earth do you claim to know what I've tried?

The GPP system makes specialists in more than one, or maybe two, cities much less useful. 6 commerce (from a specialist) is worth a whole lot less than 1 food + 1 production + 4-5 commerce. If plains cottages, producing 1 food, make it hard for the city to grow, then specialists, producing 0 food, will make it even harder. You can (and should) work farms to grow and then cottages when you reach a sufficient size.

 

[atreas]

If I was wrong, I have no problem to apologize. I was intending either way to try to calculate it out myself, but probably it is a good opportunity to share with others my idea, so that we can do the calculations together. My ideas are the following:

I don't examine the "almost all grassland cities" or "extremely rich in food cities" - it is clear to me that there must be cottages in them, or create the either way necessary GP farm in them.

My main though is on the "mixed cities", something like +3-4 food with about 6-8 grasslands and 6-8 plains, half of them being near a river. Obviously you can't have more cottages than the number of grassland tiles + the excess food. The parameters I consider are the following:

- The city improvements you need to build in each case, hence the number of pop-rushes. Each pop-rush leaves some cottages undeveloped. But it's even worse than that; to reach a point to pop-rush you have to gother first a fair amount of hammers (and the city isn't giving much of them). I exclude the possibility of money rush until quite late, since realistically I have never enough money at that stage.
- The number of forests around (each forest helps avoiding pop-rushes, or speeds them up).
- The effect of other cities on GPs, if you follow the farms approach - the more cities you have that follow this approach, the more difficult it becomes to create new GPs.
- As a final touch: the effect of Universal Suffrage to "non cottage cities", like coastal cities with mostly water tiles - these cities only LOSE when you don't have Representation. As an example, in one of my last games I noticed a 30% decrease in science from the switch (quite a lot).
- The effect of Biology in both of these approaches.

The examination variable is the total commerce (or Gold+Beakers) as the game proceed.

If you are interested (or anybody else who is interested) we can create a separate thread and discuss our observations.