Cottages!!

Upgrading also doesn't take up valuable time in the build queue.

No, but since the computer does not slave out new troops nearly as efficiently as a human player can, it is much more productive to quickly research the tech, despite the tech discount, and simply slave the army out rather than building inferior troops and upgrading them while having the tech come later.
 
No, but since the computer does not slave out new troops nearly as efficiently as a human player can, it is much more productive to quickly research the tech, despite the tech discount, and simply slave the army out rather than building inferior troops and upgrading them while having the tech come later.

There are other ways to come by gold...great merchants...selling tech...

You could also continue building new units while upgrading old ones to get a mass of troops quickly.

Hitting with sufficient #'s of your best troop is the priority when you want more land this way...building units in 1-2 specialized cities does not slow research much.
 
Responding to multiple subjects in this thread at once here, sorry. My take on this:

I settle cities primarily to get all visible bonus resources in my BFC, assuming there is food to do it. If there is a non/minimal-resource, yet obvious cottage city site, I will settle it soon if I don't already have some commerce going. I'm thinking of the riverside jungle, FP, etc.

In many games, the confluence of these tendencies means that I am specializing cities based on their tiles, rather than going in with a predetermined game plan. Most of the time, the best use of the city is fairly obvious.

If I am lucky enough to have a cottage city with a good food surplus, my tendency is to grow to the happy cap and run specialists with the surplus. Since I will have built a library and market in that city, theoretically I could run four specialists with all my cottages, assuming enough food and happiness. I'm not sure defining this sort of city as a "cottage city" or "SE city with cottages" really matters. The point is that you need to be using that extra food for something, whether it's specialists, mines, whipping buildings, or letting another city work the food bonus tile if possible.

RE: the obsolete troop problem (and not to threadjack), I've recently embraced JBossch's binary research strategy. This really helps when you're in conquest mode, accumulating war booty at 0%, then can slam it to 100% to get needed techs fast. Then you can whip/draft your new-tech troops.

Last cottage point: I find that in games where I do an early rush or wonderspam, I am unable to get down a good cottage city until after the conquest/spam. I guess I need to get a settler out for cottages no matter what, definitely a weak part of my game. When I am trying to REX early, I find it much easier to get a cottage city down, simply because I'm in land grab mode.
 
Excuse me if this has been answered already, but I'm wondering whether it's better to work riverside plains or non-riverside grassland, assuming I'm not financial.
 
Riverside plains gives +1:commerce:, -1:food:, and +1:hammers:.

Early in the game, if I had a food resource then I definitely prefer the river plains over nonriver grass, unless I was running slavery and whipping.
 
Riverside plains gives +1:commerce:, -1:food:, and +1:hammers:.

Early in the game, if I had a food resource then I definitely prefer the river plains over nonriver grass, unless I was running slavery and whipping.

Shoot, I think I should have specified that this is for my bureaucracy capital. Otherwise, I think I'd whip away the citizen as well. Nevertheless, thanks for the response.
 
For a bureaucracy capitol I would probably work grasslands until at max size, and then switch to plains. That applies whether using slavery or not.
 
Downside of that is that the cottage growth is non-optimal, ie your grass cottage might be up to village and then you switch back to working a plains cottage.

If there is plenty of food (eg >=2 good food sources with <=5 pop to grow) I think it might be best to work the riverside plains...
 
Downside of that is that the cottage growth is non-optimal, ie your grass cottage might be up to village and then you switch back to working a plains cottage.
How does that make it non-optimal? You'll be working more tiles faster (because of the added food means you grow faster), which will more than make up for it. We're only talking about a difference of 1 :commerce: for more than 10 turns.

If there is plenty of food (eg >=2 good food sources with <=5 pop to grow) I think it might be best to work the riverside plains...
Irrelevant; the math is the same.

(Except if the happy cap is that low, probably because playing on high level, and you have that much food, then the transition period may be so short that it may be easiest to simply say fark it and not bother with the management effort in the first place. But that's expediency not because it's better.)

Bottom line it's not like the added :hammers: are bad, especially under Bureaucracy. So there is really no wrong decision here.

(Honestly, it's a bit of an artificial scenario. Because you don't start the game being able to make cottages and with Bureaucracy. A valid question is whether to be working a mine or two.)
 
I disagree, it's not about 1 commerce for 10 turns: after 10 turns your plains cottage might be a village (or whatever a level 2 cottage is called), but 10 turns later the grassland village would have become a level 3 cottage so you miss 1 commerce again for the 10 turns it takes the plains cottage to mature.

What you are doing by working the plains cottage *during the growth phase*, (as pointed out correctly by wodan) is sacrificing food for hammers plus the riverside commerce. Food is good, of course, but the value of that food depends on how food rich the city is. If you have 3 wet corns, it won't matter so much if you lose 1 food by working a plains - you probably will hit the happy cap one turn earlier at best. If you only have a plains cow, working the grassland will shave considerable time off the growth phase.
 
I agree that your food surplus matters. If you're working all cottages, choosing between +2 surplus :food: and 2 surplus :food: cuts the time to next pop in half. A third surplus food cuts the time by 1/6. Not nearly as good.
Spoiler :
we can represent this mathematically:
Let N be the food required to grow to the next population point
At a food surplus of one, the city requires N turns to grow. At food surplus of two, the city requires N/2 turns, rounded up. At a food surplus of three, the city will grow in N/3 turns, rounded up. And so on. Ignoring the rounding part, we find that the value of one additional unit of food is:
N/f - N/(f+1) where f is the food surplus. For example, let's say up to now you've been growing on nothing but grassland cottages at this point and you're considering between a plains cottage and a grassland cottage like in the problem above. That means you're choosing between +1 and +2 :food: surplus. The grassland option saves you N/[1] - N/([1]+1) = N - N/2=N/2 turns over the plains option. In other words, you grow twice as fast.

Now, same scenario, but you also have a single floodplain cottage. Now you're choosing between +2 and +3 surplus. N/2 - N/3 = (3N - 2N)/6N = 1/6. You've only sped up your growth by 18%. There's a definitely a diminishing marginal return to having an additional food surplus. Notice that my answer isn't strictly true because we're dealing with discrete numbers, so there will be "jump points" where an additional unit of food doesn't help you grow the next pop point any faster.

If you have a food resource(s), any additional farms will have a really small affect until you stop working the food resource(s).


At some point, the chance to get things built should overcome the extra speed that you get the next pop at. If it's true at one pop, it should be true at the next pop, too. That extra commerce probably won't be enough to matter though.
 
Re: 1 commerce for 10 turns
Situation: grass village (A) and plains river cottage (B)
Alternative scenarios follow.

Turn X+1 : (A) 3 :commerce: (B) 2 :commerce: (difference: -1 :food: +1 :hammers: -1 :commerce:)
Turn X+11: (A) 3 :commerce: (B) 3 :commerce: (difference: -1 :food: +1 :hammers: 0 :commerce:)
Turn X+26: (A) 3 :commerce: (B) 4 :commerce: (difference: -1 :food: +1 :hammers: +1 :commerce:)

Aside: I don't remember the progression and am using 10 turns to grow to hamlet, 25 turns to grow to village, 50 turns to grow to town. I also don't remember if it varies depending on skill/game speed.

Anyway, as the game goes along, you'll get more happy soon enough and will be able to work an already-grown village.
 
??? I don't understand your progression there. Why are comparing a grassland village to the cottage progression on the plains river tile?

Btw, the progression on normal speed is 10 turns for a cottage--> hamlet and then doubles after that. Taken from this very guide.

The progression is scaled to game speed but not to map (whatever that would mean) or skill level.
 
@Wodan: you should compare the two scenarios:

A) Work graslland cottage until happy cap, switch to riverside plains cottage
B) Work riverside plains cottage until and after happy cap

Edit: and that is why food surplus matters: "until happy cap" takes X turns, where X is determined by scenario (A has +1 food compared to B) and general surplus.

If I get bored I'll run the numbers later...
 
I don't think it's possible for a 100% clean comparison. Maybe you could do "how much slower is a city with tundra cottages compred to non-riverside grassland cottages" but one can argue that both :hammers: and :food: snowball.

Since you're working one cottage earlier, it develops earlier. The opportunity cost should be measured in town turns, not cottage turns. But if that extra hammer is what lets you build something without whipping or working a mine at an acceptable speed, then it could overcome the food advantage.

My gut feeling is that which is stronger depends on the size of the city.
 
Right, but that post didn't say anything about a village. Grassland nonriverside versus plains riverside cottage.

The question is basically, "at what point (if ever) does +1 :food: allow you to overcome the +1 :hammers: and +1 :commerce:". So, why look at the value of a village? Obviously, +1 :food: and +2 :commerce: is stronger than +1 :hammers:. At least, I think it is.
 
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