The farming way to cottages

[atreas]

I was wondering if there has been any thread that deals with the following problem:

Suppose you have a city with one +3 Food resource and you plan to make it a cottage city. You estimate that the maximum population it will be able to support is about 15-16 for a while (for example, let's say you have 9 grassland/river tiles and the rest plains). Which is the best way to achieve the goal:

-- Go straight for cottages in all tiles (except the food tile)

-- Farm half of the tiles to grow the city fast, preparing in the meanwhile the other half tiles with cottages. When city reaches the correct population switch between the farms and cottages and cottage the rest of the tiles.

-- Some other strategy.

Apart from the practical point of farming in connection with slavery, I was thinking that maybe you get a bigger profit in the long run due to the faster work on MORE cottage tiles. Still, I haven't seen any thread around that deals with this problem. Has anyone though some strategy about it?

 

[jray]

I tend to avoid farms early, due to the negative side effects of increased city maintenance (due to higher population) and higher number of required workers (which are IMHO expensive to make in the early game). Of course there are many exceptions to this... an Organized leader and/or a good Slavery setup (high happiness, granaries, etc.) might lean me towards early farm-spamming.

 

[Zombie69]

In the early game you'll be limitted by happiness anyway, so cottages from the get go are the way to go. For captured cities later on, you usually start with a lot of population and developped tiles anyway, so the question doesn't apply.

The only time i could see your question making sense is if you found a new city on another continent later into the game. Assuming such a city is even worth making, starting with farms then switching to cottages might be the way to go.

 

[atreas]

In the early game you'll be limitted by happiness anyway, so cottages from the get go are the way to go. For captured cities later on, you usually start with a lot of population and developped tiles anyway, so the question doesn't apply.

The only time i could see your question making sense is if you found a new city on another continent later into the game. Assuming such a city is even worth making, starting with farms then switching to cottages might be the way to go.

In the very early game you can't have cottages (you don't have Pottery) and of course you are right that the limit isn't 14-15 population but much lower - plus the options are more or less predetermined (workers, settlers, axemen, etc.).

So I am interested for the cities that you build (or conquer) at about 500 BC that aren't big enough (say they are at population 2, because they are relatively fresh) or the "near jungle" cities that you can't really work until you get IW. That way you have still the time to get resources so as to support population, when the time comes. And, IMO, any city with 9 grasslands and a food resource is worth to have.

 

[JoeBlade]

Funny you should mention this, I've experimented a bit with the precise situation you describe here. Rather than outlining my findings I'd suggest you try the following (admittedly, somewhat tedious and time-consuming) test yourself:
1. Create a custom game, tiny map, no barbs, no victory conditions, no civs other than yourself. Other conditions don't matter all that much.
2. Settle on the spot, then enter the world builder. Change all surrounding tiles to grassland and remove all resources, huts and whatnot.
3. Give your civ techs from a certain age if you like, to see how different techs and buildings can affect your situation. I would advise building all health buildings in your city to compensate for the lack of health resources.
4. Put cottages on all tiles around your city.
5. Leave the world builder and save at this point. Set research and culture sliders to 0% (i.e. 100% gold)

Now keep pressing the end-of-turn button until you reach, say, 1AD (depending on your patience and selected game speed) See how much gold you've acquired, then reload your save game, go back in the world builder and alter your starting situation a bit (add farms, queue up some buildings, try whipping this time around, ...), rinse, repeat.
This expirement can be tweaked for science, production or culture too; I've mentioned gold because it's probably easiest to measure.

Granted, it's a very artificial scenario so you shouldn't draw too many conclusions based on it. Still, I was quite surprised by some of the results.

 

[atreas]

I have done some tests and I have a first opinion on the subject - but I don't know if it is correct or could be improved further. My first results show that:

If you see than you can build x grassland cottages, it is almost always better to start by farming x/2 tiles and then replace the farms with cottages.

For example, if you see than you can have a city with 8 cottages (for example, due to happiness cap), it's better to farm up to city size 4 and then replace everything with cottages. Probably more farming would be even more beneficial, but it's difficult to implement (you can't replace all tiles improvements in a flash).

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.

 

[JoeBlade]

I'm not sure about that x vs. x/2 ratio but yes, the general jist of it is what I've seen in my test as well.

It makes sense when you think about it: after all, by farming just two grasslands instead of cottaging them your city growth will be literally doubled (4 excess food per turn instead of 2f/turn), at least up to the point where you have to start working non-grassland tiles. In essence, your city will be working the grassland tiles in half the number of turns it would've taken without those farms.

Another finding was that it is well worth creating bonus buildings earlier, even at the expense of a few cottages (or their improved versions).
There's logic to that as well when you contemplate it a bit: after all, the total buildings bonus to gold production - not considering Wall Street - is 100%. Hence, when you can construct all the gold improvement buildings in 50 instead of 100 turns by sacrificing 5 cottage tiles (which represent 25% percent of your base commerce output) you'll win in the long run. Hypothetical example there, but you get the idea.

I've found whipping in particular to be surprisingly powerful in that respect. Try the following alternative version to the test scenario: in step 4, replace four of the cottages with farms. Then, first queue up a market, grocer and bank before starting your test run.
See how much gold you end up with when you whip each of those buildings as soon as you can. Compare that to a scenario without farms (but with the buildings still queued up, of course)

 

[Mutineer]

What a relive to see that some people finally undestand that. May be now it would be easier to convice others in succession games.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It makes sense when you think about it: after all, by farming just two grasslands instead of cottaging them your city growth will be literally doubled (4 excess food per turn instead of 2f/turn), at least up to the point where you have to start working non-grassland tiles.

The OP's scenario supposes that you have a +3 food resource. So your city is running at +5 food/turn, with no farms. Building 2 more farms only takes you to +7 food/turn, which isn't nearly double.

I still think it's generally worth having a couple of farms, both to get up to size more quickly, and to generate more citizens for pop-rushing. If you aren't in Slavery, for some reason, then the case for farms is much weaker.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I've found whipping in particular to be surprisingly powerful in that respect. Try the following alternative version to the test scenario: in step 4, replace four of the cottages with farms. Then, first queue up a market, grocer and bank before starting your test run.
See how much gold you end up with when you whip each of those buildings as soon as you can. Compare that to a scenario without farms (but with the buildings still queued up, of course)

Of course, you're certainly going to rush the Granary before any of those, right?

 

[Bezhukov]

The controlling factor is the presence of food bonus tiles. If there is sufficient extra food from these to grow quickly when the happiness/health limit is raised, then no farms should be necessary, and plains cottages will be necessary to soak up the extra food when the limit is reached. Lacking food bonuses (say +4), it's smart to have several farms to quickly gain the extra citizen.

This does require a significant investment in worker turns, but the payoff is not neglible, and demand for workers fluctuates significantly, so having lower priority tasks for them to accomplish in between peak demand times can be useful.

 

[Bezhukov]

"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."

Three citizens working three hamlets beats one working a village. Not sure why this is so difficult to intuitively grasp.

 

[voek]

In the early game you'll be limitted by happiness anyway, so cottages from the get go are the way to go. For captured cities later on, you usually start with a lot of population and developped tiles anyway, so the question doesn't apply.

The only time i could see your question making sense is if you found a new city on another continent later into the game. Assuming such a city is even worth making, starting with farms then switching to cottages might be the way to go.

Although i usually agree with you, i think there is a situation when you can grow fast while hapiness isn't a big problem. When you reach Calender (and Monarchy) you can have a big boost in hapiness resources (esp. with trading). Although it isn't that early, it still could be a good choise to feed and grow, before working all cotages.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

I find that farms don't produce enough gold. You need the gold to keep your science from bottoming out when you most need to keep your tech on par with opponents that aren't stuck going to war...

 

[maltz]

Farm half of the tiles to grow the city fast...

Yeah, for me it is usually a combination of farm, mines and cottages. If my pop goes to max. (due to happiness cap or health cap), I switch the harvest citizens from the farms to cottages.

If you can maintain a +3 food even with mines being worked, your number of farms should be adequate. You can also slowly convert farms to watermills, if applicable. They are the same +1 food effect after State Property. I have never had Biology in my game, so I can't say too much about that...

 

[DaviddesJ]

I find that farms don't produce enough gold.

No one is suggesting that farms produce gold. What the farms do is: (1) produce more population, so that you can end up working more cottages (even with one citizen on the farm) than if you had no farm; and (2) produce more population, so that you can pop-rush improvements that do produce gold or beakers, as well as a Granary to make more people.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well, as suggested this will depend on difficulty level (happiness) at a high difficulty level food has less value because of stronger hapiness limits (so fewer farms before conversion.) At Low difficulty levels, you can grow a lot bigger (which needs more farms) before needing to switch.

 

[nealhunt]

I think this thread and the "Power of Farms" thread both illustrate the advantages of specializing not just whole cities, but individual tiles.

Put in a few farms to grow pop as fast as possible.
Mine hills for production.
Cottage a bunch of stuff for commerce.

When the city hits the happiness ceiling, switch from high-food to production/commerce tiles, allowing you to get the max out of your city without wasting food. As soon as you hook up happiness resources, go switch to food to grow to the limit as fast as possible, then switch back to more productive tiles. You can still pick your mix of non-food tiles based on how you wish to specialize the city as a whole.

It makes your cities more flexible and therefore more efficient because it you can always pick exactly what you need at that moment. By the time you reach the point where you want to uber-specialize the cities, you generally have workers lying around doing nothing so they can just go replace tile improvements as needed.

 

[Zombie69]

In the very early game you can't have cottages (you don't have Pottery) and of course you are right that the limit isn't 14-15 population but much lower - plus the options are more or less predetermined (workers, settlers, axemen, etc.).

Well, in the very early game you'll be improving the bonus ressources first anyway. Besides, you may not have Agriculture either (for farms). It's not rare for me to get Pottery before Agriculture.

So I am interested for the cities that you build (or conquer) at about 500 BC that aren't big enough (say they are at population 2, because they are relatively fresh) or the "near jungle" cities that you can't really work until you get IW. That way you have still the time to get resources so as to support population, when the time comes. And, IMO, any city with 9 grasslands and a food resource is worth to have.

Happiness resources are very rare even by 500 BC. At Emperor and above, those cities will still be limited to about size 3-5, unless you have the Pyramids for Representation.

 

[Zombie69]

Although i usually agree with you, i think there is a situation when you can grow fast while hapiness isn't a big problem. When you reach Calender (and Monarchy) you can have a big boost in hapiness resources (esp. with trading). Although it isn't that early, it still could be a good choise to feed and grow, before working all cotages.

The problem is that by the time i hit Calendar, my cities are already well established, and any more cities i'll add to my empire will be from conquest and will start with an already high enough population that they won't need farms.