What does it mean to cottage spam/rush?

[Saharawy]

People in this forum here keep mentioning spamming cottages and I am curious what that means exactly. Do you have workers build cottages in all the workable tiles? Do you do that in all cities you have, or just specific cities? Is this really a good strategy...because I don't think a city can grow fast without at least half of its working tiles being farms. I usually build cottages only in cities which have 2 or 3 good food sources. Also cottages take a long time to become towns so...

 

[frob2900]

People in this forum here keep mentioning spamming cottages and I am curious what that means exactly. Do you have workers build cottages in all the workable tiles? Do you do that in all cities you have, or just specific cities? Is this really a good strategy...because I don't think a city can grow fast without at least half of its working tiles being farms. I usually build cottages only in cities which have 2 or 3 good food sources. Also cottages take a long time to become towns so...

Please! For the love of God, don't ignite this argument again!

Seriously, though, cottages are good because once they have become towns they can give very, very good yields. Example, a grassland town with Printing Press + Free speech+Universal Suffrage is
2 1 7 (EDIT: this is without rivers or financial bonus, with these the is higher)

Pretty good yield in and of itself.

Now people will debate and debate whether its good, but I'd say, yes it is. Just don't let your cottage building stunt other aspects of the game. E.g. if your neighbors are Shaka and Napoleon, do try to keep one or two cities cottage free and filled with farms/mines so you can get a large army.

Also you might like to run specialists in some cities (specifically the one with National Epic) so you can get Great People. They can do nice things such as supply around 1500 to a tech in one fell swoop. This is good for e.g. getting the education, printing press and chemistry techs faster than you usually would.

My best advice is to remember the high yield of fully grown towns and then just mix and match to find the playstyle you prefer.

 

[Saharawy]

Thanks for explaining about the cottages maybe I will try to build more of them in future games even though I always worry about a city not having enough food and cant figure out how computer cities get 20+ population.

About the specialist I just let the city decide if uses any or not...I think it likes using specialists when you have Representation for the +3 . Any way its too tiresome to keep checking on every city.

I just wanted to check though if I understand the cottage spam thing correctly...you just build cottages like crazy or something right?

 

[frob2900]

About the specialist I just let the city decide if uses any or not...I think it likes using specialists when you have Representation for the +3 . Any way its too tiresome to keep checking on every city.

I'd still recommend you check. The city governor sometimes puts the city to work artists, which isn't useful if your not going for a cultural victory. The general opinion is that Great Scientists and Great Engineers are the best Great People, so if you agree with that it can pay off to try and run scientists/engineers specifically rather than letting the city decide.

Also it pays to try and work specialists very heavily in one specific city (like I mentioned). At least in this city you should custom choose specialists to influence to odds of what kind of great person you get.

I just wanted to check though if I understand the cottage spam thing correctly...you just build cottages like crazy or something right?

Yep

 

[Kennigit]

Thats the low down. Farms usually come into play for some food if your city doesn't have enough.

Just about every grassland tile & floodplain will become a cottage. Most river plains will too, but often are farmed.

Cottage spammers still take advantage of a Great Person farm. Usually its not so much a city that has farms, but a city that has very food rich resources, like 2 fish with a rice. After the first 1 or 2 great scientists that might be used to pop philospohy/education, any more usually become academies in your commerce rich cities.

 

[Carnage04]

I highly recommend checking your cities often, especially after you have had a bout of unhappy citizens ravaging your empire. It seems to me that whenever I recover from unhappiness, instead of going back to work my citizens decide to take up painting, leaving my population to plummet because my farms go unworked.

 

[frob2900]

I highly recommend checking your cities often, especially after you have had a bout of unhappy citizens ravaging your empire. It seems to me that whenever I recover from unhappiness, instead of going back to work my citizens decide to take up painting, leaving my population to plummet because my farms go unworked.

Yes! This is true. Painting and Praying seems to be favorite pastimes after unhappiness or famine. I suppose the people are just trying to come to terms with their traumatic experiences

[EDIT] Using the "lock" specialist feature (puts a yellow frame around them) would probably be good here, although I never use it

 

[futurehermit]

Where's DaveMcW???

He made a point which I think is a good one: Any city that can work 10 cottages before biology become commerce cities, the rest become production cities.

I think this is a really good rule of thumb. I never build a city unless it has 1-2 food specials (incl. farmed floodplains if necessary). So, if you are able to work 10 cottages in addition to that and still grow with +3 or greater food surplus then cottage that city up and you can add post-biology farms and windmills to take it to size 20 later. If you can't work 10 cottages, then use post-CS irrigation to farm it completely and add mines. You can add post-state property workshops and watermills to max-out its production later. Of course you want 1 city as your gpfarm, usually your first captured enemy capital.

Alternatively, if you have LOTS of high-food cities and ESPECIALLY if you build/capture the pyramids then you can run a specialist economy. Farms everywhere, use the culture slider for , use caste system, pacificism, and if possible representation, and run many scientists. This is of course during peacetime. During war time whip a lot and regrow quickly working the farms.