Post 1.61 Cottage spamming

[Ingrey]

What are people's thought on Cottage Spamming after the Kremlin Wonder and Financial trait has been nerfed by 1.61. Is it still the most effective strategy?

I find it is still reasonably good and definitely still works, but haven't tried it on MP or higher levels versus AI.

What other strategies are there that pepople use; early aggressiveness etc?

 

[Kalleyao]

Early aggressiveness is useful if you know how to do it. In lower levels it should be a good strategy at anytime.

 

[atreas]

About cottage spamming: the change in Kremlin isn't really affecting the strategy; it's just too few too late. And it's not even a matter of level - at all levels you should better go for cottages in SP games.

About Financial: the change isn't even felt in SP games. "Nerfed" is the biggest exaggeration ever, IMO.

Now about MP games: as I have read (and based on what I understand from the game) cottage spamming never was and most probably will never be a good strategy for MP, because it's extremely vulnerable to pillaging. Probably that's the reason they didn't really change the Financial trait: a stronger change would probably weaken it too much in MP games.

In SP games, early aggression is the way to go especially in high levels - in lower levels you could probably survive with peaceful building strategy, but I can't think a way to win a game with that strategy in (for example) Immortal. Additionally, early aggression isn't opposite to cottage spamming - it's rather complimentary to it.

 

[Ingrey]

That's interesting. How do you manage to achieve cottag spamming and early agg'n? I find this would split my resources and lead to cities not specialising in either commerce or production?

I often devote all my early military to defence against barbs.

Care to elaborate???

 

[atreas]

Think of it the following way: early war means early land grabbing - which means big maintenance cost. The only way to withstand the cost is to have cottages almost everywhere (there is really no other gold source in ancient era - merchants come quite later). That means, in all your starting cities you will need as many cottages as possible, in order to keep as many cities as possible. The only goal is to manage to make it until COL and Currency - then the game is won at leisure, due to the more land you have. You can find a lot of posts about this (it's generally called REX strategy). Note that by early war I mean AXEMEN. Of course, that course means to forget anything about early religion, etc - hopefully you will get that from the unlucky civ next to you.

The general tech discovery path is BW and then head for Pottery and COL asap. If you have stone around, you can make a diversion for Masonry/Pyramids, especially if you fear that you might have unhappiness problem due to the absence of a religion.

Note also that specialization has the meaning to 1) save unnecessary buildings from the cities that won't benefit from them, and 2) maximize your profit based on the National Wonders. Since in ancient era you have neither buildings nor national wonders, there is really nothing to think except a general direction (like "this city will become a good production city 2000 years later). After you grab the land, you can do all the specialization you like - but you first grab the land.

 

[Still_Asleep]

Totally agree with the poster above, but to make it short and simple:

Your chances to win are very little if you are behind in tech. On Emporer+ the only way to keep up with the AIs in the techrace is tohave more land - more cities and more ressources to let them grow.

As they will expand fast early you HAVE TO fight early in order to get the needed land, maybe build 2-4 cities on your own (depending on how close the AIs are), then go for theirs (with axemen usually). BUT: During that early wartime, you will fall behind in tech, in fact your science will eventually even be at 0% - and that is where cottagespam kicks in. You need it rather early to pay your upkeep costs, and a lot more later once you are satisfied landwise and enter the time of peace, economy and forced teching.

Personally, I like organised more than financal because it helps earlier, and the early game is most important. Caesar with Praetorians + organized is the obvious choice for the first high-level games imo.

 

[Ingrey]

Thanks, this is a great help

So how many cities do you think are adequate for the spamming stage: 10-12?

Although I imagine it is the land as much as the no. of cities that is important.

Do you advocate building a GP farm and a couple of production Cities as well and leaving the rest as commerce cities?

 

[Lynxx]

A question to you atreas, or anyone that can give me a good answer.

If I have understood you correctly you are saying that all it needs to win on the highest difficulty levels are an early rush with axemen while building cottages to sustain your army and newly taken cities. So you research bronceworking and pottery and then go for COL and Currency the fastest way possible. Do you research any other technologies on the way, suchs as ironworking? And why will it be a sure win after you have researched currency and col? Currency gives you +1 traderoute and col gives you castle system... is that really enough to help you catch up on the AI? With castle system you can get scientist specialist but you will need an enormous amount of them, plus you wont be producing so much extra food because all your land is full of cottages. And +1 traderoutes will give you some extra money but will it make that much of a difference?

 

[scooter]

A question to you atreas, or anyone that can give me a good answer.

If I have understood you correctly you are saying that all it needs to win on the highest difficulty levels are an early rush with axemen while building cottages to sustain your army and newly taken cities. So you research bronceworking and pottery and then go for COL and Currency the fastest way possible. Do you research any other technologies on the way, suchs as ironworking? And why will it be a sure win after you have researched currency and col? Currency gives you +1 traderoute and col gives you castle system... is that really enough to help you catch up on the AI? With castle system you can get scientist specialist but you will need an enormous amount of them, plus you wont be producing so much extra food because all your land is full of cottages. And +1 traderoutes will give you some extra money but will it make that much of a difference?

To put it short, the bigger your empire means that the +1 trade routes def will help. and CoL gives you courthouses, which after 6 of those gives you the Forbidden Palace, which GREATLY helps you economy. Saved my economy the other night.

 

[atreas]

In this strategy Caste System doesn't play any role - the whole point is to recover your economy from the "shock" of the conquests. The more important classical/ancient era techs for this purpose are:

- COL, for the courthouses/Forbidden palace (as cds0528 pointed out)
- Currency, for the trade route, the ability to trade some resources for cash (remember, you now have a big area so you most probably have many resources) and, of course, Markets. Remember that you have a low science percentage, which in its turn means you have a high Gold percentage - that means Markets are awesome in this scenario (even more profitable than the libraries).
- Calendar, in many cases, to work on the (extremely profitable) Plantations.
- Sailing, in some cases, to open up better trade routes.

Of course you also go for whatever tech seems fit to your terrain, according to the circumstances. But in many cases it is much better to head for COL than, for example, going first for IW if there is no specific reason (i.e., some jungle cities). There are many variations, and each game is different; I just tried to pinpoint some general guidelines without implying that you never do anything different.

Remember that AI sucks both in specialization and city improvements. If you manage to have double the empire than the AI, there is nothing that can possibly save them (that's what I mean by "win at leisure"). After a short "catch-up period" with tech trading, you will get ahead and never look back.

 

[Lynxx]

Thank you for the answers. Think it is time I tried a game on immortal now, then onwards to deity .

 

[atreas]

Thank you for the answers. Think it is time I tried a game on immortal now, then onwards to deity .

Deity is too tough for me (I have won it only with very specific and suitable settings, like Pangea map, aggressive civ, and a map packed with more than the standard number of civs). I hope you manage to find a way to win it in more cases, so as to tell me also the trick .

 

[Ingrey]

how big, on average, do your cottage cities get?

Does it make a significant difference if you can build past 20 and stick merchants/scientists to boost the income/research or is this not worthwhile.

I assume if one had to trade off between a farm with two extra food and one specialist and a town with the extra commerce (7 or 8) the town would win?

has anyone done the math on this?

thanks

 

[HookEmHorns]

Ingrey,

You should check out the city specialization thread at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158482

 

[godotnut]

In SP games, early aggression is the way to go especially in high levels - in lower levels you could probably survive with peaceful building strategy, but I can't think a way to win a game with that strategy in (for example) Immortal.

All three of my Deity-level cultural wins currently listed in the Beta Hall of Fame were totally peaceful, builder wins, so from my experience, it's not only possible, but highly effective.

 

[scooter]

@godotnut

That's gotta be tough though I would think, the AI expands so much faster because of its bonuses. How do you expand like that at that level.

 

[godotnut]

How do you expand like that at that level.

Good question. That, indeed, is the real challenge. However to win culturally, you really only need 6 cities on all levels up to large (I haven't tried my strat out above standard map size). On small maps, you only need six cities to build three upper-level religious buildings (cathedrals, academies, etc.) per religion. On standard maps, six cities allows you to build two upper-level religious buildings per religion, but a peaceful win is still quite possible with only six cities on a standard map.

I build no military, except one warrior per city. This saves a lot of production. I chop a lot--which is harder but still works with 1.61--and I think very hard about how my city placement can block off and limit the expansion of my rival civs. Playing on maps with low sea level helps too, so that there's a little more land for that marginal sixth city.

I played a very streamlined, minimalist stategy in these games. It can be boiled down to: a) build the pyramids at all cost (and quit if you fail). This is necessary so that you can quit researching altogether sometime between liberalism and the printing press--and still have access to Representation, so that you can buy all of your religious buildings. You need stone in either your capital, or your very next city. b) establish the requisite six cities for the win. c) know right away which three cities will be your cultural cities, and focus everything you've got into constantly maximizing commerce in these cities.

 

[scooter]

I build no military, except one warrior per city. This saves a lot of production.

Do you play all-peace, or do you just kiss up to the AI constantly to keep up? The AI tends to whack you if your power ranking doesn't at least compare to theirs.

 

[JoeBlade]

Do you play all-peace, or do you just kiss up to the AI constantly to keep up? The AI tends to whack you if your power ranking doesn't at least compare to theirs.

Also, how do you fend off barbarians?

I've tried a few peaceful starts while not necessarily intending to keep it that way; e.g. when I discover I'm on an island by myself and see an opportunity to build a few interesting wonders.
However, whenever I did barb archers or even axemen usually started to appear, often in great numbers and typically with less than pleasant results. Them barbarians seem to be quite on edge since the latest patch, I must say.

And no, these weren't raging barbs either and I've experienced this scenario on levels as low as Prince as well.

 

[atreas]

All three of my Deity-level cultural wins currently listed in the Beta Hall of Fame were totally peaceful, builder wins, so from my experience, it's not only possible, but highly effective.

I don't disagree with you on the general possibility, but I happen to have totally different experiences from Deity level. You say something about having 6 cities - in all my peaceful attempts at Deity I was totally surounded by the time of the 2nd city, a 3rd could sometimes be built on a so-so spot, and for more than 3 cities there wasn't even a discussion.

Could you describe in more details the map settings that you use? I have the feeling that you must lower the number of civ opponents to achieve room for so many cities in Deity. Note that I certainly don't want to devalue your achievement (exactly the opposite); I just want to know in what settings your method works, because I still can't see it working for the normal settings of 9-10 civs in Large maps (that I use most of the time).

Edit. PS: I hope this isn't just another case of these well known HOF games with precise settings. I had a look at your posted games and there was an immediate alarm - all the peacelovers of the game against you, never a trace of Monty/Alex/Chans etc. That explains a lot about the warrior defence.