When do you NOT spam cottages?

[Iranon]

@pi-r8: Mostly. You could sometimes use specialists to smoothe things out. Example: If running an engineer or even citizen gets you important infrastructure 1 round faster in a productionless city it can be worth giving up the yield of a better tile. This sort of thing is splitting hairs though, I agree in principle.

I disagree with NonPrayingMantis on the same grounds as VoiceOfUnreason... nonrepresentative scientists are so inefficient without the lightbulbs that I'd try to subvert other resources for science. Since research will usually have better multipliers than gold in the early game, building gold (if we have Currency) and raising the slider may be a better interim measure. Better still: Start more world wonders for failure cash (you can pick up +125% on top of building gold with the appropriate resource and Organised Religion).

Specialists also require food tiles to feed them (i'm assuming we'd have other uses for excess food like the whip or food-deficit tiles). On the ever-artificial grassland standard we'd need 2 farms to support one, hence have a yield of 1 beaker per citizen employed in this manner. One citizen has associated civic upkeep of 0.4-0.7 gold alone, there is also city maintenance. Free army upkeep and trade routes may reduce the costs, but until you have multiple trade routes with big bonuses size is going to be a problem.
After you take away associated costs + inflation, you may well make a loss on them.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Have you considered making heavy use of specialists between the "beating up my neighbors and crashing my economy" and the "full-blown cottage economy" phases?

Can't. That is the "cottages still suck but I have to work them anyway or they will never mature" phase.

Though I am intrigued with the idea of running SE and then completely overhauling it after Emancipation. Even with the double growth, isn't that going to be like a second economic crash, though?

 

[r_rolo1]

Specialists also require food tiles to feed them (i'm assuming we'd have other uses for excess food like the whip or food-deficit tiles). On the ever-artificial grassland standard we'd need 2 farms to support one, hence have a yield of 1 beaker per citizen employed in this manner. One citizen has associated civic upkeep of 0.4-0.7 gold alone, there is also city maintenance. Free army upkeep and trade routes may reduce the costs, but until you have multiple trade routes with big bonuses size is going to be a problem.
After you take away associated costs + inflation, you may well make a loss on them.

This paragraph has a BIG rat inside

I base my decisions on using specialists vs cottages city wise ( suposing that i don't want any of the other alternatives, like hammer heavy aproaches ) by the ammount of tiles that can get 3 or more food with a non-Bio farm that the city has acess. If it has a lot of them, cottages 95% of the time , if it has little, specialists. There is no point in spending good food on a tundra cottage IMHO

 

[The Rook]

Can't. That is the "cottages still suck but I have to work them anyway or they will never mature" phase.

Though I am intrigued with the idea of running SE and then completely overhauling it after Emancipation. Even with the double growth, isn't that going to be like a second economic crash, though?

If you are going to do an overhaul, why not consider workshops/watermills instead of cottages? There is a very natural scientist bulb path to Communism via Philosophy-Education-Liberalism-Printing Press-Chemistry-Scientific Method. Now just trade for Guilds, stay in Caste and run HR to combat emancipation unhappiness if necessary. The nice thing about workshops is they take no time to grow.

 

[JammerUno]

Can't. That is the "cottages still suck but I have to work them anyway or they will never mature" phase.

Though I am intrigued with the idea of running SE and then completely overhauling it after Emancipation. Even with the double growth, isn't that going to be like a second economic crash, though?

It only takes 15 turns for the cottages to get from cottage to village, another 20 after than to town. Villages give 4 commerce, towns 7. Can't see your economy crash on that, although your techrate will be miserable for some time.

 

[Iranon]

@ r_rolo1: Did you retain the assumptions of the post you criticised - no Representation, no GP spawned from the city in question?

Tundra cottages and non-Rep specialists are both junk citizens to be whipped as often as possible (which will get me a better deal on the excess food I apparently need to waste). Tundra cottages actually seem slightly less bad because they'll be ok-ish later on with all town-boosting civics.
Also, such sub-standard locations can usually wait for a long time.

Plains cottages - which by your words you'd leave idle in favour of specialists - would look FAR better.

 

[JammerUno]

^So you're whipping non-rep specs away in favour of what? Whipping them as often as possible means you optimise hammers, not beakers, where most of the game is actually optimizing beaker output over the mid- to longterm.

 

[Duckweed]

And how do you turn farms into money (e.g. if your units are about to strike after successful REXpansion)? Caste System and Merchants everywhere?

Trade routes, water tiles, riverside tiles, and some commercial tiles if you get some lucky, those are much more than the income from cottages.

BTW, I never overexpand.

 

[Iranon]

@ JammerUno: For whatever I need. If I only have poor sources of gold/science like non-rep scientists/merchants, I'm better off swapping things around: whip what I'd normally build, build gold in the meantime.
And I almost always find production too useful to build gold/science.

 

[r_rolo1]

@ r_rolo1: Did you retain the assumptions of the post you criticised - no Representation, no GP spawned from the city in question?

Your rat has a diferent colour I'm not sure if you have the notion that you are comparing 3 citizens in one side with 2 on the other. Ok, it makes the cottage case look better in one side ( one more cottage worked.... this assuming that you start with the pop needed to work all of the tiles, a thing that is a big if by itself ), but it makes all the argument about trade routes and maintenance somewhat moot

Tundra cottages and non-Rep specialists are both junk citizens to be whipped as often as possible (which will get me a better deal on the excess food I apparently need to waste). Tundra cottages actually seem slightly less bad because they'll be ok-ish later on with all town-boosting civics.
Also, such sub-standard locations can usually wait for a long time.

Plains cottages - which by your words you'd leave idle in favour of specialists - would look FAR better.

First, you are assuming that I want to whip there ( whipped hammers do not convert to beakers in any way , so bringing the whip to discussion is a little off-side ) .Second you are assuming town-boosting civics to tundra cottages and non-Rep specs in the other.... not fair

Well, on plain cottages ... plain cottages suck. Plain hamlets are probably close of break with non-rep specs ( and I'm not talking of sci specs that are pretty underpar without rep ... really don't understand the fixation of people with them ), but i would bet on being below. The rest surely is better than a non-rep spec, but getting there has a quite big sunk cost, both on time working it as in the toll on growth.. In that regard I agree with DaveMcW: forget about working plains until Biology unless you really have to.

 

[Iranon]

Does this rat fixation go anywhere? I'd prefer serious discussion to smug asides.

If you don't want regular production (whip or otherwise) and we have no truly profitable ways of getting gold or science, the city is useless anyway. Why the heck did we found it then? My earlier posts had some assumptions in response to pi-r8's questions.
If you introduce Representation, the relative usefulness of specialists compared to the alternatives changes... that should not need pointing out. If you want me to respond to entirely new claims under different assumptions, please have the courtesy of stating such.

Plains (and grassland hill) cottages are perfectly fine tiles. After all, I can support them with flood plains/food resources since cities working grassland cottages don't need any additional food.
I don't even know how to answer your claim about the respective strenghts of non-Rep specialists and plains hamlets because it seems to patently absurd. I can't think of a non-REP specialist that's worth more than 112 in any but the most contrived circumstances.
If you're drowning in food and can't be bothered to shuffle high-food tiles around maybe but that is just poor play.

 

[shyuhe]

@OP: Try looking at various SG threads. There are many high level games there that were played without cottages. Basically you want to whip more (infra and units) and be more aggressive. Lightbulbing straight up the liberalism line (through SM) will get you nice techs.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323521 (deity with cottages only in one city until game wrapped up)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=309909 (immortal with no cottages)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=315099 (immortal with no cottages/workshops)

 

[r_rolo1]

I don't even know how to answer your claim about the respective strenghts of non-Rep specialists and plains hamlets because it seems to patently absurd. I can't think of a non-REP specialist that's worth more than 112 in any but the most contrived circumstances.

Spy specialist

 

[Groogaroo]

This threads proving to be an interesting read with some really good links...

pre-monarch I always ran a specialist heavy powered game with the mids and all of that but moving up the difficulty ladder I too ended up playing a more and more cottage based game. I don't think my specialist game is good enough at higher levels, plus I'm just plain lazy

It's good to see some interesting alternatives, still havn't tried the espionage stuff, now I'm at Emporer I think it's definatley an option.

 

[Iranon]

Spy specialist

Ridiculous.

 

[pi-r8]

I don't even know how to answer your claim about the respective strenghts of non-Rep specialists and plains hamlets because it seems to patently absurd. I can't think of a non-REP specialist that's worth more than 112 in any but the most contrived circumstances.
If you're drowning in food and can't be bothered to shuffle high-food tiles around maybe but that is just poor play.

To be fair, the assumption of "no GPP" is a little strange, because in the early game, any city that works 2 specialists for long enough will EVENTUALLY produce a great person, even if its competing against another city with the national epic and 5 specialists.

Here's my assessment of the overall picture: if you don't have representation, then the main point of specialists is to produce great people (especially for bulbing). So, make enough specialists, somewhere, to make all the great people you'll need. Farms and mines give production, so make enough of those to give the production you'll need- more if you're going to war soon, less if you'll be peaceful for a while. Put the rest into cottages, for long term commerce. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[r_rolo1]

@Iranon

If you think it is ridiculous, tell me why. In my book 1 4 beats easily 112 in every possible scenario ( even with 100% slider on , that it is a very arbitrary assumption BTW )

 

[pi-r8]

First of all that 2 will keep growing to more, whereas the 4 stays flat. Second, the will probably go through multipliers like library and university, maybe oxford, and unless you have scotland yard the won't get any multipliers. Third- what are you gonna spend the on? If you want to use it to steal techs, you'll probably need about twice the beaker cost, in , and you'll piss of the AIs in the process, and you might fail at stealing it. And 4th, if food is the limiting factor, you can run two plains cottages vs. that one spy specialist.

 

[Gocho]

@Izmir Stinger

I think we both need to do the same thing as it sounds like we have the same troubles. We should run a game in the forum as a help us game and post saves every so often so the high level players can directly point to the issues.

I've played a few games this week on Monarch and they've been very easy, basically winning however I want and I've played some games on Emp and just been stomped, obviously I'm doing something wrong, it can't all be the map for this big a change.

 

[r_rolo1]

First of all that 2 will keep growing to more, whereas the 4 stays flat.

I never said otherwise. Read above... I was comparing specialists with hamlets and said clearly that above hamlets things do not favour specialists ( if using a 50-60% science slider or bigger, that is ...)

Second, the will probably go through multipliers like library and university, maybe oxford, and unless you have scotland yard the won't get any multipliers.

Irrelevant. We were comparing raw output. If you want to bring modifiers in , you need to also bring the espionage spending modifier ( basically if you generate a lot of espionage, the missions get cheaper) that can go up to -50%, and to be honest all the others.

Third- what are you gonna spend the on? If you want to use it to steal techs, you'll probably need about twice the beaker cost, in , and you'll piss of the AIs in the process, and you might fail at stealing it.

True about the piss off, but again not relevant for the discussion. And I really don't see where you got the double of espionage ... my missions normally get a discount of 20-30% when all the modifiers are summed and I've seen people taking techs at half the price in terms of beakers

And 4th, if food is the limiting factor, you can run two plains cottages vs. that one spy specialist.

True, but it wasn't me that brought the 1 F 1 H 2 C . Anyway 2 H 4 C is only competitive with 1 4 if you have really low espionage modifiers on the city you're using to steal and you're running a very high slider ( and this is suposing that those hammers are going to research ... if they aren't things look even more shaky )