Farms or Cottages?

[Spearthrower]

I tried to read the rest of the thread, but I can't get this out of my brain.

How does a Farm cause -1 ?

That makes absolutely no sense. Nothing causes - except one of the new Random Events, and I've only seen that on [Clunker] Coal.

What logic are you using to come by that number?

Maybe he is playing FfH with the agricultural civic?

 

[MrTomothy]

I tried to read the rest of the thread, but I can't get this out of my brain.

How does a Farm cause -1 ?

That makes absolutely no sense. Nothing causes - except one of the new Random Events, and I've only seen that on [Clunker] Coal.

What logic are you using to come by that number?

He might be thinking that because chopping a forest gets rid of a hammer, but that is the only way I would know.

 

[Vroeser]

so, i wonder, how often do you check your cities, and adjust the parameters? in just a couple of turns a lot can happen, and i feel i have to check my cities nearly every turn once i get to mid-game.

 

[Martinus]

Simple answer: You should build enough farms to let the city grow enough to work all the tiles. The rest tiles can be cottaged, mined etc.

Complex answer: The farm vs. cottage dilemma is a cornerstone of the Specialist Economy vs. Commerce Economy dilemma which is probably the most discussed and controversial issue in the game, about which hundreds of articles were written.

 

[mnf]

in my opinion your first four citizens should be be working (and workers improving) tiles in this order:

One 3+ food tile (Farm or Pasture or fishing)
One 3+ Prod Tile (Mine, pasture, etc..)
Two grassland or floodplain cottages

Really clear guidelines for beginners like me!

I noticed in BtS the governor often like to ignore production altogether until the city is up to cap and only then work the production tiles. Say we're looking at a size 2 city already working the 5F rice. We get to choose between a 4H mine and a 4F2C crab. Would you still recommend we work hammers here?

Is it just different routes that will end up the same, or is growing first not really a good idea? (Something like leaving the city with say 2 base hammers until it gets to size 4.)

Once windmills are available get rid of your 1-2 mines and work those windmills!

This was for a commerce city. I've always left at least two mines so I still can build the later commerce buildings in a reasonable time. Like universities, labs, banks, etc. What do you do with these later buildings when your city has only 5 base hammers? Do you convert them between mines when a new building is available, then back to windmills when the building is finished? Or do you just leave it doing 30 turns for a bank?

Overall, thanks for the very straight-forward guidelines!

I've got some other specialist economy questions but that can wait.

 

[gregh87]

In civ 4 vanilla, financial civs running state property after electricity and replaceable parts got 3 2 4 from watermills. I don't know about BTS; I think state property or caste system gives you a bonus to watermills and workshops, but in vanilla I liked to build watermills over all my riverside farms after electricity.

 

[mnf]

In civ 4 vanilla, financial civs running state property after electricity and replaceable parts got 3 2 4 from watermills. I don't know about BTS; I think state property or caste system gives you a bonus to watermills and workshops, but in vanilla I liked to build watermills over all my riverside farms after electricity.

Ah, I see.

I looked up BtS stats and after replaceable parts and electricity, under State Property, we get:

Watermill: +1 +2 +2
Windmills: +1 +1 +2 or +4 with Environmentalism

These are without base terrain values.

 

[Bospor]

After looking at all these posts, I can come to only one conlusion: there is no one magic formula of farm vs. cottage!
It all depends on so many factors! It all depends what I want this one particular city to achieve.

 

[Astax]

Cottage economy and Specialist Economy are all fine and dandy for SP. In MP you need to diversify Hardcore production will prevail in MP! If you outnumber the hell out of your enemy, than he can't really do anything!

 

[LedHead]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/city_specialization.php has a nice section for feeding your city for determining the amount of farms for "optimal plot usage" (one population working each and every plot) applies to production or commerce cities. Basically getting the most out of what you already have. Following it you can (happiness and health willing) have multiple 20 pop cities providing steady //.

Build all your needed farms from the get go. = with slavery. After you get biology convert extra farms to other improvements. When you found the city you should know the number of farms needed.

Things that can change from one game to another.
lots of food resources = whip for regularly.
lots of food resources + happiness resources = whip for like you click end turn
limited happiness resources = smaller pop to start so whip the unhappiness away just not as often as with abundant food.
financial + lighthouse = sea squares worth 3 each (hello Vikings)
rivers = +1 for all but forests (lumber mill recaptures this)
farmed plain = forested grassland = 2 1 If the plain touches river (not on corner) it will also get +1.
farmed grassland = flood plain w/o improvement


The hardest thing to get used to... it is better to whip for hammers then turn off growth and just wait for happiness or health bonuses to fix it.

Best way to see this is run a settler game with a non financial leader (no bonus) India is good choice for fast workers. At that low of level no one will war against you. You can mostly focus on the improvements. Try a couple times to see what difference bonuses and terrain types make. If you can't max out your pop on settler your doing something wrong. Also a good test for GP farms.

 

[greggbert]

This was for a commerce city. I've always left at least two mines so I still can build the later commerce buildings in a reasonable time. Like universities, labs, banks, etc. What do you do with these later buildings when your city has only 5 base hammers? (

It's not just 5 base hammers. You will get more hammers when you cottage your plains, and you will want to windmill ALL your hills so that provides quite a bit of hammers. Also I build forges, levees and factories in my commerce cities to make up for my lack of base hammers. And don't forget slavery and chopping in the early game. That at least gets me to forge. Also if you have a hills/plains that you're not going to use until your city gets really big, there's not harm in mining it so you can temporarily switch/starve if you REALLY need a hammer boost, but most of the time the forge, levees, and slavery will get you where you need to be. but those two grassland hills that you mined in the early game should really be converted to windmills ASAP.

 

[Yzman]

I consider myself decent at these games and this is one of the concepts of it I have never been able to do well. I usually end up getting sick of it and automate the workers half way through.

 

[GoodGame]

Bwahahaaha! So I guess we'll soon see a flood of threads on the SE vs. CE again to replace the "!!#!@8 HRE" posts?


My fave answer is It Depends.

If you want a great person farm, then farm and windmill all green at the least. If you want a multi-purpose city, farm and windmill what you can, and cottage the rest, excepting some mines and a perhaps a few workshops. If you just want commerce, plantations first, cottage what's left, and farm only if the pop won't climb high enough to run all of the cottages, though some merchants won't hurt. Any city that will be part of your military complex should be production first, with just enough farms to work all the tiles. Pretty much don't expect your FE and CE cities to help much with the military production, since that hurts their specialization, and they won't be very effective at making military units anyway.

The big debate is whether any specialization method is the best, though pretty much a farm economy will be minimally useful for a conquest victory, except to grab key military techs through GP popping.

 

[Silence101]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/city_specialization.php has a nice section for feeding your city for determining the amount of farms for "optimal plot usage" (one population working each and every plot) applies to production or commerce cities. Basically getting the most out of what you already have. Following it you can (happiness and health willing) have multiple 20 pop cities providing steady //.

Build all your needed farms from the get go. = with slavery. After you get biology convert extra farms to other improvements. When you found the city you should know the number of farms needed.

Things that can change from one game to another.
lots of food resources = whip for regularly.
lots of food resources + happiness resources = whip for like you click end turn
limited happiness resources = smaller pop to start so whip the unhappiness away just not as often as with abundant food.
financial + lighthouse = sea squares worth 3 each (hello Vikings)
rivers = +1 for all but forests (lumber mill recaptures this)
farmed plain = forested grassland = 2 1 If the plain touches river (not on corner) it will also get +1.
farmed grassland = flood plain w/o improvement


The hardest thing to get used to... it is better to whip for hammers then turn off growth and just wait for happiness or health bonuses to fix it.

Best way to see this is run a settler game with a non financial leader (no bonus) India is good choice for fast workers. At that low of level no one will war against you. You can mostly focus on the improvements. Try a couple times to see what difference bonuses and terrain types make. If you can't max out your pop on settler your doing something wrong. Also a good test for GP farms.

This is really good info