It has always somewhat ticked me off that surrounding your cities with cottages (that would ultimately develop into towns) basically meant choosing for the smaller city/country population. You've got an urbanised area, if anything that should mean more people and certainly not fewer. I also get a bit annoyed at constantly having to decide between building one instead of the other. I've thought about removing cottages from the game altogether, but instead I'm trying out just letting farm develop into cottages. They would retain the food bonus of farms, but can no longer be build directly. This should boost economic output quite a lot, so I'm also extending upgrade times. Ideally, you'd only see a map full of towns by the end of the 20th century.
One thing I would like to do but don't know how is to prevent cottages growing on bonus tiles (rice, wheath, corn), to prevent uberproductive tiles and because leaving bonus tiles as farms would be more visually pleasing. Does anyone know how I can do that?
2 downsides to these changes I'm foreseeing:
- The city specialisation strategy gets neutered, since you no longer have to choose between GP or commerce, and specialist production cities may be too weak. I rather somehow keep the benefits of city specialisation while making sure cottages produce as much food as farms, but that's like squaring a circle.
- Extending growth times for the cottage-to-town chain and disallowing direct construction of cottages can make wars economically (even more) devasting to the losing side, to the extend it will never really recover. A solution might be to making pillaging harder somehow.
Thoughts?
One thing I would like to do but don't know how is to prevent cottages growing on bonus tiles (rice, wheath, corn), to prevent uberproductive tiles and because leaving bonus tiles as farms would be more visually pleasing. Does anyone know how I can do that?
2 downsides to these changes I'm foreseeing:
- The city specialisation strategy gets neutered, since you no longer have to choose between GP or commerce, and specialist production cities may be too weak. I rather somehow keep the benefits of city specialisation while making sure cottages produce as much food as farms, but that's like squaring a circle.
- Extending growth times for the cottage-to-town chain and disallowing direct construction of cottages can make wars economically (even more) devasting to the losing side, to the extend it will never really recover. A solution might be to making pillaging harder somehow.
Thoughts?
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