The farming way to cottages

[opensilo]

atreas, I'm looking forward to the results of your investigation. My initial suspicion is that farms will be best for cities that have a sudden big jump in happiness like the 8 -> 16 cap that you cite, rather than the gradual increase due to bringing individual luxuries online or the gradual addition of troops if running hereditary rule.

And the optimal timing of the granary probably depends on many factors. A couple that I can think of are: 1) do I need this city to do something to support the empire *now* (I'm thinking units here), 2) am I far from the pop cap and have many more good tiles for this city to work.

The best use of poprushing probably depends on what you're going to poprush. I suspect it's best to poprush when you can get rid of half your city's population to finish the building (or unit) after putting one turn of work into it. So on normal speed, poprush a 60-hammer granary at size 4 on the turn after you start it. (Unless your leader traits give you cheap granaries, in which case you do it at size 2!)

Unless your happiness limit is way above where you're at while poprushing, you'll probably want some mined hills to work while your citizens get over your cruel oppression. No need to use farms to grow future unhappy people. Unless their unhappiness is about to expire.

 

[Pudd'nhead]

That means, it seems that in early game it is a huge mistake to cottage - you should always first farm up to a point. But I can't believe my eyes.

Maybe I'm not playing right, I've only played 2-3 games, and also I'm playing at Noble & now Prince levels. In these games I seem to have issues with happiness or health not too far into things, so I actually don't want to grow too fast. Also I like to try to put up a granary before I get larger than size 2 or 3 -- my reasoning is that at these levels granaries save you, what, a couple dozen slices of toast with each expansion of size? That makes up for a lot of extra farm production! Also the +1 health often is useful before long. So if I am building a granary already, and am close to growing to the next level, I'll actually CUT my food intake & boost production by working plains or hills w/ mines or similiar, instead of grasslands, and then return to excess food intake right after granary completion, thus putting me alreayd 20, 30, 40, whatever food into the next size increase.

In other words, the slow steady growth with mostly cottages keeps my growth from spiraling out of control & ahead of the city infrastructure, as others have also said.

One place I DO find myself building farms, though, is irrigatable plains. There I get 2 food, which as I said I find good for the general mix for slow, managed growth, and also get the hammer for buildign infrastructure. In short, if you want farms at all I think everyone agrees it's only in the early growth phase -- but if you are in the early growth phase where you also have to build infrastructure buildings wouldn't you really rather get the toast + hammer balance instead of a lot of food making you grow rapidly, but nothing to make the investment in buildings that you have to eventually do anyway & will pay you back more the earlier you get them done?

Finally, in your analysis, did you take at all into account that at the end of your test period, maybe you had a larger city, but you find yourself with hamlets instead of towns? And also the extra workers required to improve a square twice (farm then cottage)?

Just some thoughts, like I said from an admitted newbie still figuring things out myself.

 

[atreas]

First of all, welcome to Civfanatics. To understand this whole post, you must first put it into its proper perspective:

- It can be proven that the optimum strategy for nearly all cities is to have cottages. That means, in the end most of the tiles will be covered with cottages.

- What we are examining is whether it is more beneficial to build first some farms, in order to grow city first, and then replace these farm with cottages. That is affected by parameters as the difficulty level, since in higher difficulties you have a lower "allowed" population limit. Lower population means the need for less food to achieve it, thus less farms.

Maybe I'm not playing right, I've only played 2-3 games, and also I'm playing at Noble & now Prince levels. In these games I seem to have issues with happiness or health not too far into things, so I actually don't want to grow too fast. Also I like to try to put up a granary before I get larger than size 2 or 3 -- my reasoning is that at these levels granaries save you, what, a couple dozen slices of toast with each expansion of size? That makes up for a lot of extra farm production! Also the +1 health often is useful before long. So if I am building a granary already, and am close to growing to the next level, I'll actually CUT my food intake & boost production by working plains or hills w/ mines or similiar, instead of grasslands, and then return to excess food intake right after granary completion, thus putting me alreayd 20, 30, 40, whatever food into the next size increase.

You are right to head for granary, but you mustn't be so afraid to grow as fast as possible. Growth means more population, and more population means more cottages worked. Think of it the following way: if you delayed growth for 5 turns and gained 10 hammers and an earlier granary, this is equivalent with losing some commerce from the cottage you didn't work, plus some commerce from the cottage you COULD HAVE worked (if you have grown) for those 5 turns, in exchange for 10 hammers. You must decide if this is beneficial or not (usually it isn't).

One place I DO find myself building farms, though, is irrigatable plains. There I get 2 food, which as I said I find good for the general mix for slow, managed growth, and also get the hammer for buildign infrastructure. In short, if you want farms at all I think everyone agrees it's only in the early growth phase -- but if you are in the early growth phase where you also have to build infrastructure buildings wouldn't you really rather get the toast + hammer balance instead of a lot of food making you grow rapidly, but nothing to make the investment in buildings that you have to eventually do anyway & will pay you back more the earlier you get them done?

Generally, plains are the last tiles you will work in your city - you wait first to exhaust all grassland tiles. Also note that usually a player that follows the cottages strategy doesn't expect real production from his cottage cities - thus he takes advantage of the Slavery civic (pop-rush) or he chops some trees (chop-rush) to build whatever he needs. The goal is to create towns and switch to Universal Suffrage - then your production problems are over.

Finally, in your analysis, did you take at all into account that at the end of your test period, maybe you had a larger city, but you find yourself with hamlets instead of towns? And also the extra workers required to improve a square twice (farm then cottage)?

Of course - one of the more vital parameter is that. Other important parameters are whether you gain the money very early or very late (early is always better) and also the workers needed. That's why I don't even consider the case "farm everything and then cottage everything at once" - it would be almost impossible to achieve in a large scale.

 

[Gumbolt]

Its interesting building granaries because of health issue and not expanding. Expanding in most cases will capture new resources that perhaps increase health in your cities. Also building settlers slow down city growth while you make best use of new resources and research the technology to use them and expand your empire.

I think perhaps if you have high food resources like wheat or flood plains that can produce 4+ food and excess production to speed up settler production irrigation over cottages is really an option. If a city reaches 6-7 quickly you can use slavery to build improvements or have the option to change irrigation to cottages later. I find if i reach the happiness peak slavery works well. Tip is to make sure you have cottages in your empire and not just irrigation/mining/camps esp if not financial.

On the flip side. If a city had real growth potential why is it not a GP farm and not a commerce city to start with? Irrigation has to fit in with your game plan to have production cities, commerce cities and a GP farm.

I think there is more a case for irrigation at start of game to expand empire when still building settlers and workers and beyond this point if a GP city.

Maybe also a case to develop agriculture first if a resource provides 6 food and require irrigation. Same for the fish resource argument but that requires a boat and not a worker. (Not having mining might kick this idea to touch.


Hmmm i hope that made sense.

 

[atreas]

atreas, I'm looking forward to the results of your investigation. My initial suspicion is that farms will be best for cities that have a sudden big jump in happiness like the 8 -> 16 cap that you cite, rather than the gradual increase due to bringing individual luxuries online or the gradual addition of troops if running hereditary rule.

I am considering this, and haven't yet decided the hypothesis I will make. The fact (from my experience) is that in a very few turns you hook up many resources, you trade some other resources with other civs, and also it's almost certain that your city will have by that time a religion (we are talking about ~100 AD, after all). The way I see it, in the turns needed to grow from pop size 8 to 9 you usually have already acquired something that allows size (at least) 10, 11, etc. It doesn't really matter that these events aren't exactly simultaneous - as long as they happen in the meantime before the next pop growth. But I don't think much about Hereditary Rule - I haven't found a big use for it in my games so far (usually Representation is enough).

 

[Zombie69]

Boy, you sure are. It's pretty obvious that leaders with the financial trait will emphasize certain aspects of the game, and de-emphasize others.

If financial + any other trait = play the financial way, this shows right there that financial is too strong compared to any other trait. If that wasn't the case, then one would be compelled to play to the strengths of the other trait, and more or less ignore financial, rather than the opposite. Someone who always plays with financial and tries every other trait in combination with it is in fact the person in the best position to evaluate the strength of financial compared to the other traits. If, for instance, philosophical was stronger or at least as good, than when playing with philosophical + financial, you'd want to maximize the strengths of philosophical and get lots of specialists. I tried the combo, and it soon became clear to me that it was better to focus mostly on financial. Your statement above clearly agrees with this. Therefore financial is overpowered.

 

[DaviddesJ]

If financial + any other trait = play the financial way, this shows right there that financial is too strong compared to any other trait.

I don't think this reasoning is valid, but I agree that Financial is clearly the strongest trait, in v1.52. So what? Why would you always choose a particular trait just because it's the best? This is munchkinism at its worst.

Suppose there were a 9th trait that makes your units uber-powerful, so they all have 1,000,000 hit points instead of 100. Call it the Omnipotence trait. If you take it, you can't possibly lose. Does that mean you would insist on always playing only Omnipotent leaders? Don't you think that you'd miss out on most of the fun in the game?

 

[malekithe]

Suppose there were a 9th trait that makes your units uber-powerful, so they all have 1,000,000 hit points instead of 100. Call it the Omnipotence trait. If you take it, you can't possibly lose. Does that mean you would insist on always playing only Omnipotent leaders? Don't you think that you'd miss out on most of the fun in the game?

Not that Zombie needs any defense, but... The difference between your omnipotence trait and the financial is a matter of fun. There are a couple of forces within oneself at work when playing a strategy game. On the one hand I want to best the game, absorbing all the punches the game can throw. On the other, I also want to play as optimally as I can and strive for perfection. When faced with imbalances in the game, those two sides are put at odds. Do I purposefully handicap my play in an attempt to make the game more challenging? At the end of the day it boils down to, "Am I having fun?" With your omnipotence trait, the answer is, most-likely, no. With financial, on higher difficulies, the answer for many is yes.

Some are willing to take more "handicaps" and play with other traits, even though they may be reducing their potency in the game. I may be presumptuous, but I would imagine people like Zombie just don't have as much fun playing like that. Possibly, the side of their brain that strives for optimization is winning the tug-of-war.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I understand optimizing the way you play the game. I don't understand "optimizing" your choice of what game to play. If you discovered that the Highlands map consistently gives you the highest scores, does that mean that you would only ever play on that map? Or, if you discover that games where you start with Stone and Wheat are the easiest, would you reject any starting position that doesn't have those? It just doesn't make any sense at all, to me, to limit the variety of games that you will consider playing based on your fear that some of them are harder than others.

 

[Gumbolt]

Part of the fun of playing a game is to try everything. If every game was always a cultural win you might soon get bored.

Its like only playing with civs that have mining cause you want the bronze working to chop.

Strong pair of traits probably organised and financial of the Americans. Thats just silly commerce. Thankfully the game didnt give the Americans mining too or that would be an overkill. Although i love philosophical trait for great leaders.

If anyone falls behind on techs playing Americans on Monarchy or below shame on you!!!!

 

[atreas]

In the start, the results of the test were (more or less) as expected. There is a gain in many circumstances for the "second expansion phase" - for example, to go from pop 6 to pop 14 or to go from pop 8 to pop 16. Of course, the benefit is bigger in the cases where the city has less food (for example, a city with +3F benefits more than a city with +5F). If we also count the pop-rush advantage, we could say that it definitely is worth the trouble.

But - there is a big "but". The problem is that some things depend on the exact tiles you are going to work to - especially the point at which your grassland tiles are exhausted and have to switch to plains tiles. As is obvious, this affects dramatically the gain, and in some cases it may even negate it. As an example:

Let's suppose we have a city with pop 8 that can now go to pop 14. Let's also suppose that the city has a +4 Food surplus (1 +2F Resource) and has 9 grasslands and the rest plains. In this case it isn't beneficial to farm up to size 10 because you will then have to work on the plains tiles (bad thing for your growth), so it is better to go after your cottages from the start. If the grassland tiles were more (for example, 11-12) then it would be beneficial to farm first.

Since this parameter makes the problem too difficult for my abilities, I can't say I saw a general rule. The "conclusion" for me was that in the cases with low food it's usually better to farm first - but you must be careful not to enter the "plains" zone.

 

[Bezhukov]

Unless you've got a real crunch on worker turns, I don't see the downside of keeping a couple farms around to work while growing so you can spend most of your turns at break-even food to maximze commerce/hammer output. When you reach 20 pop, you can switch those farms to cottages, but until then it makes sense to have both.

 

[atreas]

Unless you've got a real crunch on worker turns, I don't see the downside of keeping a couple farms around to work while growing so you can spend most of your turns at break-even food to maximze commerce/hammer output. When you reach 20 pop, you can switch those farms to cottages, but until then it makes sense to have both.

I can't understand your proposal (it can have two interpretations, I think). Is it to always keep and work on some farmed tiles in the city, or just to have some "spare" farms that can be used for switching when necessary?

Can you please explain which of the two you mean?

 

[DaviddesJ]

I can't understand your proposal (it can have two interpretations, I think). Is it to always keep and work on some farmed tiles in the city, or just to have some "spare" farms that can be used for switching when necessary?

I think he's suggesting you have more improved tiles (farms plus cottages) than citizens, and work all of the farms when your city is under its population limit, and when your city reaches the (current) population limit then switch enough citizens to cottages to break even.

But it doesn't really make sense to me, because: (1) you're likely to have some more desirable tiles and some less desirable tiles (e.g., river vs non-river) and there's a cost to sometimes working the less desirable tiles instead of the moer desirable ones; (2) with a food resource and lots of grasslands, you're running at positive food even with zero farms; and (3) worker capacity is a pretty significant constraint.

 

[DementedAvenger]

I always try to have more improved tiles than citizens. How else can you micromanage your cities? You could use specialists, I guess, but if you're not philosophical or running representation, specialists are less optimal on a mass scale than shifting food tiles to commerce / production tiles at happiness limits.

 

[atreas]

I think he's suggesting you have more improved tiles (farms plus cottages) than citizens, and work all of the farms when your city is under its population limit, and when your city reaches the (current) population limit then switch enough citizens to cottages to break even.

But it doesn't really make sense to me, because: (1) you're likely to have some more desirable tiles and some less desirable tiles (e.g., river vs non-river) and there's a cost to sometimes working the less desirable tiles instead of the moer desirable ones; (2) with a food resource and lots of grasslands, you're running at positive food even with zero farms; and (3) worker capacity is a pretty significant constraint.

You are right. Even if we ignore reason #3 (say you have captured tons of workers from wars) the other 2 reasons are sufficient to overule such a strategy. First of all about #2: it can be proved that it's suboptimal to work on farms when your city already has a big suplus in food (say +6F). But the really important reason in #1 - there is a clear preference on what you want to work on: floods, then river grasslands, then simple grasslands, then river plains, then plains. You simply can't afford to have a farmed river grassland when you could have done otherwise. The only exception I can imagine are the "ex-jungle" cities where you have tons of very similar tiles.

In general, when farming, you should have in mind the following: farming loses money at the start (since cottages get more commerce) in exchange for a possible profit in the future. Since ALWAYS it's better to have the cash earlier than later, it's very important to weight very well the alternatives. If you farm for too long, it's going to be A LOT of lost income that you will never recover. In all my previous posts I have given as profitable farming cases where 1) the early loss wasn't big, 2) the recovery was quick, and 3) there was a profit after that point. If either of the three isn't true, then it's very doubtful to farm in the first place - the only profit is the pop-rush, but this is very difficult to count exactly.