Power of Farms

[North2]

I've come to realize the use of farms, so I'd like to share it. I've grown away from the cottage spam, and I hope this will show others the way as well. I'll tell you, this game becomes so much more fun when you have to think more than cottages. I play Random Personalities on Monarch/Emperor difficulty.

I'd like to start out by saying that all of this is for non-Financial traits. As sad as it is, financial leaders can play nearly perfectly by spamming cottages.

There's a simplified rule that governs how many farms you should build at any point in the game. It's not how much food you need to reach size 20. It's how much food you need to hit maximum happiness cap. This is as low as 4 in the early stages of Emperor difficulty, so obviously you're not gonna build any farms until your city can reach at least size 8, in which you just might have a production city if you found a really sweet mining area (2 pieces of production tiles like copper or iron on the same city would be a good example).

That's the real short version of it, but this can become complicated in order to achieve maximum benefit. For sake of simplicity, I'll divide it into 3 categories: Early Game, Middle Game, and Late Game.

Early Game

Early game consists of when your city can only reach size 10 due to happiness, and any growth beyond that is completely pointless. There are 4 factors that govern what to build for your starting cities. I used to think that cottage spamming was the way, but I have found a few exceptions that are not that uncommon. The 4 factors are: Forests, Happiness, Resources, and Limited Workers.

Forests

Everyone knows that chopping forests is the way to go. 3 or 4 extra hammers in the early game is very heavily overshadowed by the power of 30 hammers for every forest(in Normal speed). As such, it's fairly rare to have a production city early.

This is the biggest factor in the early game. A city that emphasizes production must be a city that has only 1 or 2 forests to chop, and even then it may still not be worth building farms.


Happiness

I've already said it, but your city is only worth growing for as many happiness as you have. This is worth mentioning in early game though, just to remind people that +1 happiness=+1 size this early in the game, since almost every city can reach at least size 10. This is also key in envisioning the future, as theaters right around the corner can allow one more size and heriditary rule can make a big difference.

Resources

This is where you just may see the first signs of specialized cities. You still have to weigh in your options, of course. Your first three or four cities will almost always be cottage spammed. There is no choice, hammers are just not that valuable this early when all you can do is spam archers, and more importantly you can chop forests. Another reason is that commerce is halved if you don't, which makes a bigger impact than anything.

Also, most resources are worth working on. Gold on a hill is no-brainer, always build 2 farms on grasslands to work that gold. There are some weak resources that you can take a second thought on. Fur in ice is a good example, you might as well have 2 cottages if you're gonna build 2 farms to work an ice fur. At least the 2 cottages will take 1 less population and grow to make even more commerce later on.

Limited Workers

In the early game, the limited number of workers makes it so you have to be aware of what should be prioritized first. You can of course build more workers, but that also impedes growth and spends hammers so that also needs to be weighed in.

What Does All This Mean?

Simply put, Production is worthless and Commerce is king due to forests. So imagine the best way to achieve the most commerce.

Even after all of this, some cities are born to have farms built. As the most extreme example I can think of that people still usually spam cottages on, picture this: Third City, 2 Floodplains, 2 Forest Grasslands, 1 Gold Hill and 1 Copper mine on Hill, 2 Plains/Hills, 1 Horse on Grassland, and the rest Grasslands in which 5 of them are farmable. Happiness allows you to reach size 10. The first instinct for most would be to cottage this place all the way. That is the easy way, I assure you...all you have to do is build cottages and you can forget about the city as it will be a commerce city. But this is your third city, it's worth giving some extra attention this early in the game.

Try this instead: Farm up the 2 Floodplains and work both of them, and then work the horse (the city will automatically do it for you). You got a size 3 city with 4 hammers already, and an excess of 6 food. Work the gold mine next. You now have a size 4 city producing 11 commerce, 6 hammers and 4 excess food. Work the Copper mine. Size 5, 11 Commerce, 11 hammers and 2 excess food. And from here, you can decide to make this city either cottage spammed to commerce or work the hills at least temporarily as a production city.

Think of the difference here. Because I built the 2 farms on the floodplains, it allowed me to have 2 excess food after working all my special resources which allows me to still grow afterwards. Not only that, it allowed me to grow faster and work more tiles.

As such, any city with gold or any other workable resource that gives 6 commerce or more should build farms immediately, especially if you have no floodplains. 2 farms in grasslands will allow you to work that gold mine at size 3 producing 1 or 2 hammers and 7 or 8 commerce right there depending on the tile, while 2 cottages will only allow for another cottage due to the lack of food surplus.

There's also one occasion in which it may be wise to build farms for production. It's fairly uncommon in the early game, but sometimes more production means more commerce. The key to this is in how many buildings you can build. Say a city that's just starting out can only go up to size 6 due to happiness, and you must build temples and forges to allow for more population. If you founded a city with iron on a hill with grasslands all over and only 1 forest, the best way to start would be to build 2 farms, work the iron, and then spam cottages. Why? Because a size 7 city with all cottages and maybe a library will have a hard time competing with a a size 9 city with a forge, temple, library, granary and one less cottage.

This is also why I said that forests are the most important factor. If there's 3 or 4 forests, the cottage-spammed city can simply chop those buildings and achieve the same grounds while having a head start on commerce.

Still, there is also a matter of limited worker force to consider. I do encourage building 2 farms and a mine if the city has no production otherwise, but it becomes a little shadier when the city already makes 3 or 4 hammers without it. The reason being that if you build 2 farms and a mine, sure you'll have that city getting all the libraries up faster but you probably won't have the time to change the 2 farms into cottages once everything is built. Typically, your workers will be busy building roads or improving new cities which are both higher on the priority list.

For me, 4 hammers is plenty and 3 hammers is also acceptable in the early game. I do the farm-farm-mine only on cities that have 2 hammers or less with only 1 or 2 forests.

Middle Game

Mid-Game consists of city size 10+ and still plenty of time to consider about the 'long-term'. There's a few differences between here and Early Game. New cities have much more to build. Specialization really begins to shape up. Plenty of workers. New civics, new technologies. The 4 factors that govern what to build in this stage of the game are: Happiness, Resources, Specialization, and Strategy.

Happiness

Same as Early Game. It's never worth it to grow over happiness limit.

Resources

Same as early game, except forests just won't cut it if you have 8 buildings to build. Most resources are still worth working on.

Specialization

Ah yes. This is what makes it so interesting. There's 3 types of specialized cities: Commerce City, Production City, and Great People City.

Commerce City in many other threads describes this as a city that sacrifices anything else for just 1 more commerce point. This is not my definition. Think about it, no 'Pure Commerce' city will ever be effective. You have so many buildings to build that you're going to need at least some hammers. Even if you have all your stuff built, you're still going to have a lot of units to build to support your newer cities.

So, commerce cities are all those cities that have cottages spammed but still have at least 4 hammers to make themselves useful. A lot of threads define this as the 'Commerce/Production hybrid' but to me, there's no such thing as a Commerce specialized city.

This is also the type of city that most or all of your Early Game cities are categorized in.

Production City is a city that focuses on hammers more than anything else. You won't need many of these. A relatively peaceful civ can live by with one. You may even have none if you don't find a particularly good spot for it.

The ideal spot for production cities are cities with a lot of production resources like iron and cows, and also a lot of food with hills. There won't be many places that can only be a production city, so you'll basically have to decide which city to make a production city if you're really blessed with a lot of food everywhere. This is common in Great Plains. Basically, it's the location that you think will not have too much commerce anyways.

That said, I'll give an extreme example of what's going to be a production city no matter what. 6th City, happiness after all buildings allows city to go to size 13. 1 pig on a hill, 1 wheat on a grassland river, 3 farmable grasslands, 5 hills, 1 unfarmable plains, and the rest all desert. A lot of food and not enough land to make good use of it with commerce. Just build farms on all the grasslands and plains, and then mine up the hills. You'll have 4 food from pigs, 6 from the wheat, 9 food from grasslands, and 2 surplus initally = 21 total, which means if you work the plains then you'll have a size 11 city. You can work 5 hills for a total base production of 21. That's a strong production city.

If you notice, production cities are small. There will very rarely be a big production city, because all the excess food will be there only to work the no-food hill or the 1-food hill/plains. Most of my cities that can't grow to a large size anyways will turn out to be production cities. Cities that have 7 or 8 deserts/tundra/peaks makes good candidates. They won't make a good commerce city anyways.

That said, there are limits to this. It is possible to have TOO MANY production cities. There's only so much military that you can use, and if you got too much then these cities will sit there doing nothing. You have to pay 1 gold per military unit, although you can get some for free. Check the Financial advisor for how many free units you can build(Press F2 for the financial advisor).

Great People City is a city that simply produces a lot of Great People. They do with a lot of specialists. Specialists cost 2 food, basically meaning you sacrifice a tile for a specialist. Each specialist gives 3 points to your Great People Points.

You're looking for places with an extremely large abundance of food. Floodplains, Pigs, Wheat, Grasslands, Etc. with little hills or unworkable tiles. What you build here is simple: Farms and nothing but farms. You want to get as much population as possible. Be sure to start out with a mine or maybe even two.

I strongly encourage starting these cities as production cities. I always build National Epic and Globe Theater here, so there's a considerable amount of hammers needed. Just be sure not to build those first, because they'll produce one or two unwanted Great Artists...unless you're going for a cultural victory.

Strategy

Strategy is what you plan to aim for to achieve victory. Warmongers will make use of more Production Cities. Tech runners will not need as much. Wonder builders will use more also.

What Does All This Mean?

Production becomes much, much more important now that all the forests are gone and a constant supply of hammers are needed.

Specialization is also very important as the empire grows. Ideally, I want 1 Great People City, 3 Major Production Cities(20+ hammers), and the rest smaller Production Cities and Commerce Cities.

Strategy should be taken into account for the long-term. As you may have guessed, I'm a warmonger when possible and feasible. I am still good at other victories when warmonger is not an option, and I found that the differences for me is simply in the number of Major Production Cities. I'll always make cities that can't grow big into Production Cities, cities that can grow big into Commerce Cities, and 1 Great People City. If there's no good site for a Major Production City, then I might just not have one if I have enough small Production Cities.

 

[Cheeze]

*applauds*
Nice to see something other than a total cottage spam - I myself love a good production city. I look forward to the rest of this!

 

[Mutineer]

Well, I am in complite agreement. I am trying to stop cottadge from turn 1 madness in my succession games, but people so entrench in cottages it is extrimelly dificult.

It is all matter of dynamic. It is better to grow city up to happiness limit working best ties or even using specialists at end if not enogth tie were improved yet and then switch to cottagess if decided that this city will be commercial, then just planc cottagess everywhere and dream city grow fast enogth to use them, maybe, eventially.

Every city useally have minimum 2-3 beat ties working which is mach more profitable in term of food, production or commerce then any other tie.

Currently I oftan have 1 worker for 2-3 cities on start, because I do not NEED to improve many ties yet.

 

[ArmoredCavalry]

same here, You have realized the purpose of farms.

 

[Brave Jay]

really good strat. I've sub-consciously known this, but i have become side tracked in expiramenting with early cottages. Many strat articles try to emphasize chopping in the early game and cottages, but i think you have the right idea about growing to happiness level as a priority. there is just a huge power issue when you compare a size 10 city just starting on cottages compared to a size 5 with all cottages. for one thing, the larger your city is, the more flexible it can be. you can be producing good commerce one turn, but if attacked, can switch over to being a production city quickly. a commerce city can hardly pull that off. therefore a good balance is necesary. although it is nice to have 1 or 2 commerce devoted cities at some point, as well as a gp farm.

 

[Zombie69]

One thing you fail to mention is something else in the game that's almost overpowered : pop rushing. In the early game, most or all of your production can be obtained this way, making hammers in science cities useless.

Of course, even a good cottage spammer isn't stupid enough to go without a single production city. But improving hammer yield in science cities is pointless and actually counter-productive as it detracts from their main use which is commerce. Learning to fully optimize cities in Civ 4 can be a tricky thing.

Of course, i wouldn't advocate not improving your bonus resources. In most cases (not all mind you), this is worth doing no matter what the city specializes in. But for everything else, you should look at the city's specialization and aim every improvement towards that single objective (be it commerce, production or GPP).

 

[North2]

Thank you for all the responses.

To me, pop rushing is of very limited use. I've experimented quite a bit with it. My conclusion is that I need at least 2 food resources in one city to use it as the main source of hammers. The reason is that my farm-farm-mine is more effective. I won't have to deal with the recoil time of negative happiness and population(although happiness rarely matters as it'll be gone by the time population comes back to that size). As long as the city takes approximately 7 turns each population on average to grow back to the happiness limit then my farm-farm mine is still better. Not only that but the farm-farm-mine will have all my cottages being worked too, which will cumulate to more commerce which is what I strive for early game.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with using pop rushing for a quick boost if it's warranted, like Pyramids and Settlers. What I'm trying to say is that farm-farm-mine is still going to happen even if I plan on pop rushing, so it's not really a necessary mention on this article.

 

[Juardis]

When you say happiness, is the limit when you reach the point where you get the same number of happy people as unhappy people? Or when your city is stagnant because of the unhappiness. I don't usually pay happiness any attention unless my city is stagnant or starving (or about to do either). But then again, I'm not that good either.

 

[North2]

Yes, it's when your happy face number=unhappy face number. Any growth beyond that does nothing. Your city usually automatically assign specialists when this happens, and that's why you see your city become stagnant once it becomes unhappy However, ideally you want your city's size to equal exactly the number of unhappy faces, and the best way to achieve it on a non-gp farm is the farm-farm-mine. Sometimes the AI may automate to starve a city down a size, which happens when your city is unhappy and they decide to counter that by adding 2 specialists.

I plan to cover specialists in the Mid Game section.

 

[futurehermit]

so when you hit the unhappy = happy limit, in order to grow again do you need to increase the happiness of your city (by adding resources, buildings, etc.)?

is growth impossible if your city's borders are touching a neighbours' borders?

also, i usually build an improvement on every single space around all my cities. as a result i make many workers and stuff. i am new to this game, so please go easy on me i only play on level 3 difficulty! am i shooting myself in the foot by building too many workers and too many improvements?

thanks!

 

[Oggums]

My opinion on farms is simple: If you need food, build a farm.

The reason you'll see suggestions for using more cottages than farms at the very beginning of the game is because on higher levels, you'll reach your happiness limit at size 3 or 4. You don't need faster growth, and you will very quickly fall behind in techs without the extra commerce from mature cottages.

 

[North2]

I've added Mid-Game. Late Game will come...later.

futurehermit, in the early game you should be able to get by with 3 workers, maybe 4 if you expand really fast.

If the city is at unhappy = happy limit, any more population is just a waste of space because unhappy citizens will not work. You can see on the bottom right the number of unhappy citizens, they just sit there and eat food but they don't work a tile or anything.

As for borders...cities have what everyone here calls the 'fat cross'. The fat cross is basically the 20-tile plus sign that the cultural border creates when your first city grows in culture for the first time. These 20 tiles are the only tiles that the city can work.

Oggums, there's nothing different about what I write in easier difficulties. Perhaps my Mid-Game guide that I added will show you why.

 

[n0xie]

Unhappy people make for great whip material. I always let my cities grow 1+ my happyness and just whip the extra unhappiness away. Pop rushing is one of the most valuable tools for early survival on higher levels.

 

[InFlux5]

"My opinion on farms is simple: If you need food, build a farm.

The reason you'll see suggestions for using more cottages than farms at the very beginning of the game is because on higher levels, you'll reach your happiness limit at size 3 or 4. [...]"

I only play on Monarch, but I think you may miss the point. Yes you'll reach the happiness limit quickly, but you also "reach" the mined plains-hills/gold/etc. quickly. In other words, when you get your next pop. you don't turn around and have them farm some more. You parlay the extra pop. from the early farms into something else. This is all assuming a lot, but North made that clear in his post.

Also, once you reach your happiness limit you can let the farms lie fallow, waiting to be used again whenever you need them.

"Unhappy people make for great whip material. I always let my cities grow 1+ my happyness and just whip the extra unhappiness away. Pop rushing is one of the most valuable tools for early survival on higher levels."

Farms work in tandem with pop rushing, especially when used the way North is saying. If you're at your happiness limit, put everyone on a production tile for one build, then pop rush the next. Now you will replace that pop faster thanks to your farms, and put them right back to work on that mine.

I think a big reason farms are overlooked in favor of cottages is that a good farming strategy takes more micromanagement of your cities' laborers to really be effective.

 

[Malus]

A really good post and very similar to my own stratagy, you've just cleaned it up a little, i hope, taught me one or two things and made me look towards the mirco-management (or mircro-mismanagment on some particularly bad days) alot more.

 

[North2]

I also need to fix Early Game later on, due to the new patch making chopping much less powerful. Don't get me wrong though...you still should chop every forest, it's just gonna be a few differences in numbers. Now farms are even more powerful, which is really nice for me. I'll have to play a few games to be accurate about my changes though, so I'll probably have Late Game completed before I fix Early Game.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm forced to admit that I still don't grok how the extra farm is helping the commerce city.

Example: We have a commerce city that's happycapped at size n, so we are running at exactly 2n food... to make it simple, lets suppose that the two extra food from the city is feeding two plains tiles, and everything else is balanced.

Now another happy comes on line, so we want the city to grow one more size. So we switch from working the 1F plains to working a 3F farm(s) until we grow, then put two pop back on the plains, and the new guy on some 2F tile we have lying around somewhere (restoring the city to stagnant "growth"). The alternative being to move somebody from the plains to the 2F tile immediately.

Now, if we were stagnant at 2n food, then we need 20+2n = 2 * (10+n) = 2* T surplus to grow. If we move directly to the 2F tile, we have a 1F surplus, so it will take 2T turns to grow. If instead we move to a 3F tile, we need T turns to grow.

In short, by jumping to the farm, we pay T turns of working the new tile (to be specific, the second T turns), and in doing so buy T turns of working the original plains tile.

If you are dealing with cottages, that means that you've traded T turns on the more developed cottage, in addition to T hammers. The opportunity cost is that the commerce comes later, and whatever you have given up on the tile that you've farmed (some worker turns - rah).

OK, now suppose we have two farms. when we want to grow, we move both guys off the plains, and are now bringing in +4F. So growth time is T/2. The net cost on the plains tiles is the same ( 1*T = 2* (T/2), to first order, but now we are working the new tile for an extra T/2 turns).

Hypothetically, this just keeps getting better the more people you move, but if the 1F tiles aren't all generating the same revenue, I think it gets tricker.

Have I got the idea now, or am I still missing it?

 

[dalessi12]

My opinion on farms is simple: If you need food, build a farm.

The reason you'll see suggestions for using more cottages than farms at the very beginning of the game is because on higher levels, you'll reach your happiness limit at size 3 or 4. You don't need faster growth, and you will very quickly fall behind in techs without the extra commerce from mature cottages.

This post is right on. While this (thread starter) strategy certainly is wise when size 10 cities are available, it loses value when you are playing at higher difficulties, Immortal and Diety especially (and without expansive even worse). Emporer also.

The key word in Oggums response was MATURE. If a "cottage" didn't have to grow, then one could switch tiles (improvements) back and forth between cottages and farms. As they do have to grow, you need to "put in the time" for them to become worthwhile. On the higher difficulties, the sooner you "put in the time" the better; in fact, it can pretty much be said that if you don't start the "clock" as early as you possibly can, you will find yourself left in the dust.

Another point, maintenance penalties increase with increased size of cities. So while growing to size 10 as soon as possible would be beneficial, it is not quite as beneficial as you suggest (as your costs will also increase faster than they otherwise would).

On the higher levels, I cottage floodplains almost exclusively, and I still believe it is the smart thing to do. You can always throw a farm on it later, but switching the other way (from farm to cottage) will only mean that you have finally "started the clock" on its gold making abilities, that much later.

In essence, to reiterate Oggums point: On higher difficulties the limiting factor to growth is not food (usually) so emphasizing food serves little purpose; city sizes are much much smaller early to mid game; and most importantly, you need hamlets, villages and towns (not cottages) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to keep up.

 

[malekithe]

I was intrigued by VoiceOfUnreason's questions and was motivated to do a little testing with my city simulator. Specifically, I decided to look at the following case (on Epic speed and simulated for 100 turns):

Your city is at 2 population with the happiness to grow to 3. You're currently working two plains with cottages (actually, in my final analysis I decided to make one a hamlet and the other a village). To grow to the next point of population, you have a number of options available to you:

Method 1: Switch one of the plains tiles to work a grassland with a new cottage (+1 food)

Method 2: Switch one of the plains tiles to work a grassland farm (+2 food)

Method 3: Switch one plains tile to the grassland farm and one to a new grassland cottage (+3 food)

Method 4: Switch both plains tiles to grassland farms (+4 food)

Regardless of which growth method you choose, once reaching 3 population, you're going to be working both of the plains again and the grassland with the new cottage. (+0 food)

Note that this doesn't neccessarily have to represent a city at pop 2. It could just as easily represent a city that has lots of other tiles being worked, but it's only these 2-3 citizens/tiles that matter in the analysis. They're the most "marginal" tiles of those being worked.

I used Method 1 as the baseline against which I will measure each of the other methods.

Method 2 - Hammer output stays constant for the first 18 turns but you will start to build a lead after that, culminating in a net 18 hammer gain. Commerce output drops off slowly for the first 18 turns, capping at -20, before climbing back up to even in about 35 turns and staying that way for the long run.

Method 3 - Hammer output suffers slightly for the first 12 turns but starts to make a comeback after that, topping out at +12, and staying there longterm, after 36 turns. Commerce suffers considerably for the first 12 turns, dropping all the way to -36 but starts to rebound and eventually breaks even after 30 turns. It continues to climb after that, reaching +30 in about 60 turns, before settling at about +24 longterm.

Method 4 - Hammer output drop to -9 after 9 turns but then steadily rises back up to +18 after 36 turns, and staying there longterm. Commerce output falls off sharply, reaching-36 after 9 turns. It then rises back up to break-even after 32 turns and continues up to +21 after 60 turns. It settles on +18 longterm.

To summarize:

+1 Food - Slight benefit to short term hammers (for the first 20 turns or so); longer term hit to Commerce (-20 or so)

+2 Food - Bigger benefit to short term (in the first 36 turns) and long term hammers . Poor commerce performance. Only use if you really need the hammers.

+3 Food - Medium penalty to short-term hammers, with moderate gain longterm. Big short-term penalty to commerce, but the biggest longterm gain. Use if your time preference for hammers and commerce is greater than 30 turns.

+4 Food - Small penalty to short term hammers with sizable long term gains. Big short term penalty to commerce, rising to a medium longterm gain. Use if your desire for longterm hammers is higher, and you can take a short-term commerce hit.

Overall, I would choose +1 Food for biggest short-term advantage or +3 if I favored long-term benefits.

Adding a granary to the equation basically brings everything closer to option 1. It reduces comparitive short term losses, but also reduces longterm gains. It also makes +2 and +4 food look much more attractive, to the point where I would recommend them in place of +1 or +3. The primary difference is, you're spending a lot less time growing, hence you're spending a lot less time working lower-output tiles. The growth-oriented plans get the citizens back on the high-output tiles sooner, hence reducing short term losses. But, at the same time, the lower-growth options take fewer turns, not allowing the growth options to work extra tiles for as long.

Basically, my take aways are as follows:

In the absence of a granary, getting the new cottage growing as soon as possible is ideal, you want to be working it while growing your population. Add a farm into the mix if you favor longterm results. If a granary is present, working the new cottage isn't as important. You don't loose nearly as much by waiting to grow before working it, which can result in larger long-term gains. Adding a second farm seems to really only be beneficial in this scenario. Also, this assumed the cottages you were working are already somewhat developed. If they're not, farms are even more desirable, as the short-term losses of working the farms are considerably smaller.

I've attached the graph I drew most of these results from. It's comparing the results of Methods 2, 3, and 4 to those obtained with Method 1 over 100 turns. The plains tiles contained a hamlet and a village, and the game speed was set to epic.

 

[Nanzook]

For thoughs of you that think that cottage spam is better way perhaps you should read it again.

First of all it is really amatter of what techs you have and what recources you have availiable,as well as what civ you start with. I find often that I have agriculture before I have pottery. In that case it cannot hurt build a few farms.

Second North2 never knocked the cottage spam he is simply adding some numbers to the eqation. As a matter of fact it seems to me to some point he still advocates the the cottage spam. Plus seems to be quite aware of the building of the early cottages to reach village/town sizes.

Third it is far more micro-managment to watch the happiness of your cities. I personlly feel the more micro managment the better off your civ is going to be period. Even a good cottage spammer will micro manage there cottages. So haveing the food and happiness seems to me all adds up in the fast pace of the growth of your cottages.

I still play on monarch. North stated he plays on monarch and emperor. I find it difficult to see how at higher levels cottages could be so much more important then keeping your people happy. Of course you can whip them in to
order but then you need BW. In then end all im trying to say is its all situational there is a time to go for the early cottage spam and there is a time to go for the balance factor. I also like to play random leaders and go for diffrent strats otherwise I would still be playing Civ2... I guess I still do play Civ2

Malekithe nice addition to this thread voice of unreasons post was very confusing to me and that clears it up alot. Mainly because I was not understanding the T variable