Nerf Cottages?

[Woebearer]

It may not be a popular opinion, but I think cottages are drastically decreasing the importance of the other improvements. Workshops and Watermills are virtually nonexistant because of the massive commerce of a Town with Printing Press and Free Speech, and the nice extra hammer from Universal Sufferage.

Not only that, you more or less HAVE to use US and FS as civics in the late game to take full advantage of these towns. So not only are they limiting your terrain improvements, but they are also limiting your choice of civics as well.

A more palitable alternative would be allowing other improvements to grow when worked the same way. This would encourage the player to build and work a variety of improvements much the same way they are encouraged to build and work cottages now. It also might give the AI some incentive to build a bit more variety of improvements as well, making them less predictable.

 

[synthboy]

Great idea. I agree that most improvements have been made redundant with the arrival of cottages. My terrority usually ends up as a mass of towns and farms with the odd mine to boost production and provide resources. If workshops (for example) developed with technological advances (not an unlikely scenario) I'd be much more likely to build them. However, it might be necessary to increase production for later improvemnets and units to maintain balance.

Another alternative to this would be to make certain improvements necessary to either unlock resources or wonders. For example, a city needs to have a number of workshops in its vicinity before you can build the ironworks.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the only real problem is that workshops and watermills are completely crap until you have late game technology when they become somewhat worthwhile. But by then you've already laid down a lot of cottages, and why would you erase those towns?

I think workshops and watermills should be improved instead of cottages nerfed. For example, instead of workshops subtracting a food how about applying a health penalty to them.

 

[Dyvim Tvar]

I would agree with improving the later improvements.
It takes quite some time til you get watermills, windmills and workshops,
but I mostly build farms, cottages and mines, because that seems to be more productive to me.
Only exceptions are sawmills on forest areas, because they supply health later on and end as 2 food + 2 hammers or 1 food + 3 hammers which is all okay although not really great.

 

[eric_]

I agree the dynamic aspect of cottages should be applied to other terrain improvements. For instance, when windmills upgrade to the modern windmills, there should be an increase in production. Likewise, workshops should, as someone says above, probably have health indications rather than health indications (say starting with -2 health). Then, as time progresses, that health penalty could decrease to -1 to reflect the fact that emissions improve over time.

 

[Brighteye]

If wind and watermills provided, say, an extra 5% increase in production in a city with a factory then a city with a number of them could be quite productive before coal plants come along and provide power anyway. This would reflect life, when industrial towns absolutely had to be on a river for water.