I have looked a couple of times in the War Academy, but have been unable to find a good explanation of "cottage spamming." The trouble I have is that my cities tend to outgrow their health resources really fast. I am playing on Noble level and only making the same number of farms as I have negative net food for the fat cross area. Can anyone tell me how to spam cottages without growing my cities too fast and ruining my citizens' health? If it's too complicated, could you at least direct me to some good information on it? Thanks!
The first thing to do when you have a shortage of health resources is try to get more. That can be done by settling additional cities close to health resources and connecting them to your trade network or it can be done by trading for them. You can also build buildings that increase the benefits of certain health resources: granaries, harbors and groceries. The aquaduct also provides 2 health. Also forests provide health (1 per 2 forest tiles) and jungles and floodplains reduce your health.
But at a certain point of the game, you might still get in a situation where your cities grow so fast that they outgrow their health cap. The next citizen then adds one unhealthiness. It means that it costs you 3 food and that is a bit inefficient (but not extremely bad). What I usually do in that case is poprush something with the slavery civic. Usually there is something interesting to build and poprushing is a very efficient way of building. So I don't mind a fast growing population because it gives me extra production through poprushing.
There is no definate answer to the question about the ratio of farms and cottages. There is no golden rule. Usually, your cities will get more happiness resources and health resources throughout the game and buildings will enhance the health and happiness situation also, so your health and happiness cap are continuously increasing throughout the game. Thus a completely stable city in food growth is not always desirable because it will need to grow in a few turns when the next food or happiness resource gets connected to your empire.
It is useful if your cities can switch between various high food/low production/low commerce tiles and low food/high production/high commerce tiles. In that way, you can let the cities be fast growing when you need to and let them be stable/slow growing when they have reached the health/happiness cap. But don't forget the power of poprushing, it's especially powerful when you poprush two citizens at once.
For a stable city (no growth), all the tiles combined need to produce a number of food icons equal to two times your population number in the city. Because the center tile already produces 2 food (usually, when not settled on a food resource), the other tiles combined need to produce 2 food less then the number of citizens in the city times 2. So for instance a city of size 3 working 2 cottaged grasland tiles and one mined plains hill would be stable in growth.
Usually I don't purely cottage spam my cities. Even a city that will be an excellent commerce city will need some production. You do want to be able to get some buildings in the city that multiply the effectiveness of the commerce produced in the city (library, marketplace, etc.). And some buildings are needed to get the city healthy and happy (granary, harbor, forge, marketplace, etc.). And you do need hammers to get those buildings.
What is the exact mechanic for "wasted" production if another Civ completes the wonder you have been working on for 15+ turns? Is that production trickled down to the next project you have in the queue? Can it finish multiple projects at once? Is it converted to cash?
Thanks,
milspec
It's converted to cash.
2 gold /hammer invested.
I believe it's 1 gold/hammer invested. But sometimes world wonders do get a good production bonus so it can be a fairly efficient production of gold.