Cottages!!

[Airefuego]

sure, 15 and 13 sounds ok

 

[morchuflex]

Plains should be ignored until Scientific Method.[/list]

Interesting read. However, I simply don't get this point. What has ScMeth to do with anything? It has no impact whatsoever on cottages...

Another observation: I assume you play on large landmasses. I mostly play archipelago, and I rarely, if ever, have a city site capable of containing 10 cottages. Should I ignore CE and switch to SE?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Interesting read. However, I simply don't get this point. What has ScMeth to do with anything? It has no impact whatsoever on cottages...

Another observation: I assume you play on large landmasses. I mostly play archipelago, and I rarely, if ever, have a city site capable of containing 10 cottages. Should I ignore CE and switch to SE?

You probably apply the same logic to coast as plains (though he did say financial coast=1/2 cottage, non-financial junk so if you're going by that then you'd possibly want to work coast as financial esp with colossus).

Arch land tends to be green. In commerce cities you'd run as many cottages as allows and the rest specs as if the coast were actually plains or whatever (somewhat compensated by more commerce from trade routes, and sooner). Hammer cities suffer from arch too...you'll probably have to whip more in "hammer" cities if you can't get a good hill site, at least until workshops are serviceable.

A lot of maps don't let you get 10 cottage city sites. In that case you do what you can and capture more land if need be.

 

[Tephros]

I don't think plains need to be ignored, it just means you need more food resources to make it work. While you might want one good food resource for all grassland, you might need 2 or 3 for plains. Not as ideal as all grassland for cottages as you have to use population to work the food resources, but you have to work with what you have. Cottage cities are a great answer for poorly irrigated areas where you can't farm anyway, though they're even better on river tiles.

I think the ideal cottage city is on the river and ocean, allowing you to take advantage of levees, harbors, etc., but has only a few ocean tiles and those are seafood resources. It has 2 or 3 production tiles, mostly grassland/floodplains, and 2 or 3 good food resources, esp. fish, pig, or corn. Basically it's a city that's a little production poor (I'd define production-poor as less than 1 hammer per population in the early-mid game), and very production poor like all grassland is still a good place to cottage, but not as good as my ideal example.

Examples of where not to cottage: Majority hills fat cross, near gold that doesn't have a food resource early in the game because in that case you need to build farms to support the gold mine pop while still growing.

One thing I don't get: Why is coast worth half a cottage for financial? I'd think it should be worth at least 1, where your target is 10+.

If you want to do a cottage economy based empire, do tropical climate (more grassland), and have an expansive leader (build more workers to make up for jungle, plus fast granaries for production poor areas).

 

[StuntedAzrael]

Great article, much needed.

I have some questions that comes often in my games.

Assume a future cottage city with grasslands and pigs. That's +6 food without farms. Assume happy cap of 8. City will rise in B.C. era as a third-fourth city in my empire.

- Would you build additional farms (how many?) to increase growth since granary have to be whipped and city can grow to hapiness cap?
- At happiness cap assuming that we have cottages in place, what to do with the pigs?

I have sometimes used my city like this:
1 citizen on pigs, 5 on cittages, 2 on mines or specialists. Specialists or miners would be candidates for 2pop whips in building libraries, barracks, units. 5 cottages would be worked constantly, additional would come as happy cap increases.

 

[StuntedAzrael]

Hereditary rule:

More often that not, I need it badly for my cottage economy. I haven't seen it mentioned in the article. On Emperor/Immortal you have 4 happy cap without modifiers. Happiness resources are sparse, religion adopting is diplomatic suicide, no pyramids. This accounts for 80% of my games surely.

Let's assume that health is not an issue here and that you can grow as much as land allows.

Hereditary rule says that you can invest hammers in building units (archers?) which will serve as police unit for one city allowing to work one more cottage. After certain number of free units you must pay for maintenance of that unit.

For each additional cottage you have one time investment of hammers and maintenance fee in gold/turn.

Is it worth it? Would you build unit for one grassland cottage without being financial or river?

How does unit maintenance scale considering size of your empire and size of city in which they're fortified?

Will large force of defensive archers cripple any attempt at having offensive arsenal given that hammer cities are busy building workers, archers for fast growing cottage cities?

 

[DaveMcW]

Is it worth it? Would you build unit for one grassland cottage without being financial or river?

No I wouldn't. Unless it was in a bureaucracy capital.

But if you happen to have units lying around for invasion prep or defensive buildup, you might as well station them in cottage cities. When the units have to move out and fight, whip away the unhappy cottages to build some catapults.

 

[Iranon]

Great article, much needed.

I have some questions that comes often in my games.

Assume a future cottage city with grasslands and pigs. That's +6 food without farms. Assume happy cap of 8. City will rise in B.C. era as a third-fourth city in my empire.

- Would you build additional farms (how many?) to increase growth since granary have to be whipped and city can grow to hapiness cap?
- At happiness cap assuming that we have cottages in place, what to do with the pigs?

I have sometimes used my city like this:
1 citizen on pigs, 5 on cittages, 2 on mines or specialists. Specialists or miners would be candidates for 2pop whips in building libraries, barracks, units. 5 cottages would be worked constantly, additional would come as happy cap increases.

Found an overlapping city as soon as the city is at its happy cap and done with whipping infrastructure, at which time it can work n-1 cottages and 1 specialist.

Get the new city online with mines, pigs and whipping. Use it for production or a mix of production and specialists as the situation demands.

Swap tiles if applicable - such as when the cottage city needs expensive new infrastructure.

 

[slobberinbear]

Great article. I'm not sure what was more impressive, the content of the article or the fact that Dave's post was longer than one sentence. ;p

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Found an overlapping city as soon as the city is at its happy cap and done with whipping infrastructure, at which time it can work n-1 cottages and 1 specialist.

Are we aiming to actually make this a useful city, or is it strictly there to mature more cottages for when the original city's cap raises? I only ask because I'm trying to figure out how much to overlap the city.

 

[Iranon]

Pretty much every city can be useful; either would work. I envisioned the new one as a production/specialist city because this makes micromanagement easier (the cottage city remains stable for most of the time, no need to swap tiles around unless the cottage city needs new infrastructure - the only thing I need to do myself regularily is whip in the new one).

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear: The n-1 cottages referred to the original city; the new one will work everything that isn't cottaged grassland.
If it's just the pig, it can support a 2-point whip every 10 turns and still grow to 3 specialists when it's over for a decent mix of specialists and production; not bad for taking up only 2 tiles. If there are even 2 mines around, it can become a solid production city if we also consider the whipping.

 

[Bibor]

This is a very helpful guide.

I'd like to add some points which I find important to a proper cottage build up. After all, cottages and farms prefer same terrain types. And since irrigation doesn't spread outside cultural borders (even if a farm is seemingly "connecting" two other farms), I find irrigation planning to be the cornerstone for a good cottaing plan.

1. Random events that benefit tiles. Less important.
Although happening rarely, these events add food, commerce or shield bonuses to existing tiles. These events (if within a fat cross) can change an otherwise uninteresting tile into an average one, or an average one into a good one. These tiles should be considered for taking into the "cottage at least 10", since those plots produce +1 of something anyway, and are more valuable than all other non-resource plots and should be "worked" all the time.

2. Deliberate choice of cottage placing. More important.
As can be seen on the following screenshot I took, it's not so easy to plan cottaging. Because, more often than not, rivers or irrigation sources aren't at hand. The whole area on this screenshot is a chopped jungle (hill mines are going to be replaced with whindmills soon), and the only good site to draw irrigation for two other cities is from my SSC, even if it means sacrificing a riverside cottage tile.

Spoiler :

That said, I find it extremely important not only to decide when and what tile type to cottage, but also plan it's exact placement in the fat cross, with irrigation of farms (sometimes for more cities) in mind.

***

I designed a decision-making strategy for my own cottage placement, maybe it can help the cause

1. Are there any others cities requiring irrigation from this city's fat square? If yes, reserve those plots for spreading irrigation.
2. Are there any extra food resources within the city fat square? If yes, be more liberal with cottaging.
3. If there's a river present, try to plant as few farms on the river as possible, possibly using only one tile on each side to later spread irrigation to non-riverside tiles.
4. Always try to cottage up riverside tiles first.
5. When possible, use fresh water lakes for farms spreading irrigation, sparing riverside plots for cottages.

The reasoning behind such a strategy is that, when switching from commerce to production or food, riverside cottage tiles are the least beneficial to switch from, ergo they should be the most advanced ones as well. To profit more... from not switching from them. I hope it makes sense.
It's also worth mentioning that Oil and Uranium often spawn on grassland tiles, but 19 times out of 20, they don't spawn on riverside tiles (oil almost never, uranium more often). One more reason to place "core" cottages on riverside tiles. Nothing more painful than building the your sole Oil well on top of a mature town.

Picture describing my strategy in the spoiler:

Spoiler :

 

[Bibor]

Why not to cottage hills. Two reasons:

1. 50-75% of my mines during the course of the game decide to get a random resource of sorts. Maybe I'm lucky... I'm playing on marathon if it counts.
2. Coal spawns on both grassland and plains hills, Aluminum on plains hills only (at least from what I've seen).

In both cases, it's a waste of a mature town when such resources might become available. At least in my opinion...

 

[Supr49er]

Why not to cottage hills. Two reasons:

1. 50-75% of my mines during the course of the game decide to get a random resource of sorts. Maybe I'm lucky... I'm playing on marathon if it counts.
2. Coal spawns on both grassland and plains hills, Aluminum on plains hills only (at least from what I've seen).

In both cases, it's a waste of a mature town when such resources might become available. At least in my opinion...

You are lucky to get that many added resources.

Welcome to the Forums (CYBA)KirbyTron.

 

[Tinkerbell]

Thanks for the work to make this article. I do have a question about the 6 city setup:

A 6-city empire might look like this:

* 1 military city (hammers)
* 2 general production cities (hammers)
* 1 GP farm (commerce)
* 2 cottage cities (commerce)

What are the 2 general production cities producting, since it isn't GP's,military or commerce?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

What are the 2 general production cities producting, since it isn't GP's,military or commerce?

I guess workers, additional settlers, missionaries, spy, wonders, gold in extreme situation... and more military of course

Cheers

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Pretty much every city can be useful; either would work. I envisioned the new one as a production/specialist city because this makes micromanagement easier (the cottage city remains stable for most of the time, no need to swap tiles around unless the cottage city needs new infrastructure - the only thing I need to do myself regularily is whip in the new one).

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear: The n-1 cottages referred to the original city; the new one will work everything that isn't cottaged grassland.
If it's just the pig, it can support a 2-point whip every 10 turns and still grow to 3 specialists when it's over for a decent mix of specialists and production; not bad for taking up only 2 tiles. If there are even 2 mines around, it can become a solid production city if we also consider the whipping.

I've read enough of your posts now that I'm pretty interested in your style of play. Got any good screenshots showing some of your city placement, both early and late game? I'm way too addicted to trying to make every city a 20 tile megalopolis!

 

[Bibor]

I've read enough of your posts now that I'm pretty interested in your style of play. Got any good screenshots showing some of your city placement, both early and late game? I'm way too addicted to trying to make every city a 20 tile megalopolis!

I have yet to become successful in mastering SE, but from what I've seen it's imperative to have a lot of food-rich tiles and some mines for building the stuff that enables specialists. I guess any tile with - for example - access to 3 fish and 2 hills (5 tiles total) is good.

 

[Iranon]

@ FlyinJohnnyL: I recently lost all my saves, so no good screenshots for now. So here one where I messed up royally:

I abandoned those principles with Chicago. At the time I simply wanted to claim that expanse of flood plains in a way that gave fast returns... I did regret it though because it cost me the space for 2 more cities:
1 city 3e from Boston, another ne of where Chicago is now and one right in the middle.

I did found a city every 3 coastal tiles from then on though, then backfilled the rest.

 

[vicawoo]

One contradiction I see. We say it's better to use extra food to run specialists (as opposed to plains), yet in the examples of say pig + lots of grasslands, 15 happiness cap, would you in the end have 14-15 cottages, 1 pig, or would you have 12 cottages, 1 pig, 2 scientists?