Cottages

[slammer]

I have a question about cottages. It might be hard to understand.
So I don't really build cottages in squares where my city can get stuff from it like food, production, and culture. But I usually build is built it in the squares where no cities can get anything from it, but does that still contribute to my culture and wealth or do the squares that no cities control do nothing for you?

 

[Frank327]

I think you mean putting it in places where cities can't work them. If cities can't work them, they're useless. The only improvements outside BFC's should be roads and resource improvements. And maybe a fort if it's a bottleneck (hardly happens though).

 

[pxpdoo]

Yes, cottages have to be in the BFC or they're useless, as he says. (Notice how automated workers never build them? )

 

[Mesodius]

OP-
I usually spam cottages in cities with a lot of grassland or flood plains. You still have enough food to make the city grow, while making mad profit.

 

[shulec]

(Pardon me if this is too basic.)

Note that you must "work" any cottages in your big fat cross (BFC). This means on the city view there must be a circle around the cottage. The number circles correlates to your population.

There is no IMMEDIATE benefit to having a cottage on every square in your big fat cross. There is only immediate benefit if you "work" the cottage. The only benefit of building a cottage outside you BFC is if you will add a city that will include that cottage in its BFC and you want to be able to work that cottage immediately. This not be beneficial in most circumstances. Once you found a city, you should always work food tiles first to increase your population so you can in turn work more tiles (including cottages or production tiles).

There are no worker improvements that add culture to your city or to a square. Culture is added to cities and tiles by buildings, great artists, converting hammers to culture via the culture slider. With espionage missions, you can add culture to tiles.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think you mean putting it in places where cities can't work them. If cities can't work them, they're useless. The only improvements outside BFC's should be roads and resource improvements. And maybe a fort if it's a bottleneck (hardly happens though).

Forts are good to make canal passes for ships and to mass air units along the border of a target civ also. This is air superiority I've never seen out of the AI...although it is much harder to keep once you push past the fort range, you can still win battles you wouldn't otherwise this way late in the game...although usually just owning the AI with siege will do.

 

[Joshua368]

If you want bottlenecks try a global highlands map with clustered peaks. Very interesting map set up there for military games, features "bubbles" of habitual land surrounded by mountains/oceans and connected by tiny one or two tile choke points, where forts can actually be effective as defensive positions.