Where to build cottage?
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Some are missing the point of having huge food production: Specialists!
If you have extra food like crazy, create a couple specialists and watch those Great People be born quickly. Found a city in floodplains, farm everywhere and create a GP farm.
If you have extra food like crazy, create a couple specialists and watch those Great People be born quickly. Found a city in floodplains, farm everywhere and create a GP farm.
Marquis Mark
Chieftain
As a phiosophical Civ, I do this when possible. Flood Plains (especially ones with/near resources) are amazing for GP farms.
I've been cottaging my Flood Plains because I lack a lot of trade (and therefore, tech) and that nets you some very nice trade quickly. I'm wondering if I should farm them to maximize my GP potential though.
I've been cottaging my Flood Plains because I lack a lot of trade (and therefore, tech) and that nets you some very nice trade quickly. I'm wondering if I should farm them to maximize my GP potential though.
Mr Greenfinch
Chieftain
Khaim said:
You can put cities on desert tile. You will have 2F+1H+1C. This applies for alone-desert tile. Also having desert with river (but not floodplain) you can put watermill there.
Don't forget slavery! If you have a city on fertile land and you're in slavery, go ahead and farm it up. Use the population to make units. It's basically like converting food into hammers.
And the happy hit doesn't make much difference, since you usually decrease unhappiness with the pop drop anyway. You may wind up with 1 more unhappy face for a few turns, but that's it.
And the happy hit doesn't make much difference, since you usually decrease unhappiness with the pop drop anyway. You may wind up with 1 more unhappy face for a few turns, but that's it.
Can a town be pillaged? I keep forgetting to check (since I'm rarely maurauding in enemy territory in the games I've played so far).
Anyway, if a town can be destroyed by the enemy after its been developing all game, that would be an argument against investing in them, wouldn't it? And if the town can't be pillaged, it's an argument for them.
Anybody know whether towns can be pillaged?
Nancy
Anyway, if a town can be destroyed by the enemy after its been developing all game, that would be an argument against investing in them, wouldn't it? And if the town can't be pillaged, it's an argument for them.
Anybody know whether towns can be pillaged?
Nancy
bonscott said:Some are missing the point of having huge food production: Specialists!
If you have extra food like crazy, create a couple specialists and watch those Great People be born quickly. Found a city in floodplains, farm everywhere and create a GP farm.
I disagree. Specialists are good for generating great people points but are not as good as towns at generating gold and hammers in the middle to late game.
Here follow some rough numbers from a modern age game:
In the modern era, a flood plain tile generate 5 food plus 1 gold. A town on that same tile generates 9 gold (w/finanical trait, otherwise 8 gold,) 3 food and a hammer.
The farm (with biology) allows for 5 food for 1.5 specialists (2 food to work the tile leaving 3 food for specialists.) 1.5 merchants = 4.5 gold + 1 gold for the tile = 5.5 gold.
The town tile gives you 3 food for half a specialist (need 2 food to work the tile) for 1.5 gold + 8 (or 9) gold = 9.5 or 10.5 gold, plus the hammer which can be converted to 1 gold[1], gives you a total of 10.5 or 11.5 gold.
10.5 (or 11.5 gold) versus 5.5 gold.
** Therefore, the town tile generates 5 or 6 more gold than the farm tile. **
Great leaders produce a massive amount of research/prod/culture which needs to be take into account. I've seen great engineers add 840 hammers to a project, and great leaders add 1100ish research to a tech.[2]
So to equal a town tile, you need to generate a great engineer every 840/5 = 168 turns (or 140 turns if you have the finance trait), or a great leader every 1100/5 = 220 turns (or 183 turns). The number of turns it takes to create a great leader increases by a 100 each time. (100 for the first, 200 for the second...). 1.5 specialists generate 4.5 leader points: 100 / 4.5 = 22 turns. 44 turns for the 2nd, etc.. So it's better to generate the first 3-5 or so great leaders using farms and specialists, and then switching over to towns. If you consider a hammer to be worth 3 gold[3], then using specialists to create great leaders isn't worth the effort.
Given that there are limits on the # of specialists you can make (unless you use the caste civic,) and that the cost for great people increases quickly, I would say that you're better off putting cottages on flood plains towards the early middle game. In the beginning you're probably better off using the food to rush build things using the slavery civic. I do not think it is wise to optimize a city for great leader production at the expense of gold or production generation.
Plus, unless you're very, very careful, you cannot guarantee what type of great leader you will get. Plus, you cannot choose the tech that the great leader will add points to. And in the case of the great merchant leader, you have to send him far way to increase the amount of gold he produces. I have no information on the amount of gold the great merchant generates, so it could be worthwhile or maybe not.
I'm of the opinion that specialists are better for tweaking your empire, such as getting a little more gold out of a few cities so you can increase your research by another 10%, or for creating culture.
Culture generation is different from research/gold/hammers, so I'm not going to speculate on whether farms or towns are better for culture generation.
All IMHO, of course.
[1] From a game mechanics point of view, 1 gold = 1 hammer = 1 beaker, so they're pretty interchangable.[3]
[2] I haven't verified if the costs of techs/wonders/prod scales at the same rate as the amounts provided by great leaders.
[3] Actually it costs 3 gold to rush 1 hammer of production, so that 1 hammer provided by a town is pretty signficant.
It's not about speeding up growth. It's about allowing the city to grow. Every city has it's max size. If a city only has 1 food tiles all around it then it can only reach size 2 and will never grow beyond that point. So that's what the point of farms is. To allow your city to grow. You want just as many farms as is needed to allow your city to work the <2 food tiles that you want it to work. This could be a mined hill or a plains forest or a plains with a cottage on it, etc. But you couldn't work those tiles without the extra food from the farm.
I'll generally build my cottages on grasslands or flood plains, so the city can work them and continue to grow.
edit: I'm with stoicfaux as well. I'm all into the city specialization. I have some cities that are great science cities (usually lots of grasslands with cottages all over), some that are great for production (good food and lots of hills/forests), some that are great people cities (lots and lots of food, little production), etc. I don't even bother with specialists in my non-great people cities, as I'd rather they have more production/commerce. The specialists are generally weaker than working a tile, the only benefit is the great person points. But I'll let my great person cities handle generating those. It's wasteful in your other cities.
Hee Hee.
I agree with maxxing food no matter what. Nothing like making 10 merchants in a city and having zero debt probs. Plus they create great Merchants whose trade missions get a hefty sum.
I can pretty much guarantee zero money probs with any Civ as long as I have some floodplanes to farm.
I can take a single army through the whole game being max upgraded at all times due to the enormous gold stack I have and never see a red number the entire time.
Farm those Floodplanes!
I agree with maxxing food no matter what. Nothing like making 10 merchants in a city and having zero debt probs. Plus they create great Merchants whose trade missions get a hefty sum.
I can pretty much guarantee zero money probs with any Civ as long as I have some floodplanes to farm.
I can take a single army through the whole game being max upgraded at all times due to the enormous gold stack I have and never see a red number the entire time.
Farm those Floodplanes!
Paradoxus said:
Yeah, but... 10 merchants = 6.67 flood plain tiles. 10 merchants give you 30 gold plus 7 gold for the tiles for 37 total. 6 town tiles will give you 48 gold (54 if you have the financial trait.) Plus those 6 town tiles can support 3 specialists for another 9 gold for 57 (or 63) gold. So unless you're getting huge gobs of money from those trade missions, towns make signficantly more money than farm supported specialists..
Plus towns can eventually produce 1 hammer, and one hammer costs 3 gold to rush produce...
Btw, can you post some rough #s on what you're getting for trade missions?
weimingshi
Prince
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trade mission can go up to 4k+, depends on size of the city and distance to you. But really a good strategy is build farms and food producing improvements on every tiles for your great people producing city only, YOU will only need 1 city to pump out great people, and this city preferably is also where most of your wonder is built, hence most likely your capital.
Other than the great people producer, I find going a more balanced approach is better. I played 3 game on emperor level, huge map epic speed 18 civs. in all 3 games I only really started to build cottages after middle age. The reason is that before middle age, i simply dont have many workers and not many populations to work those tiles too, and cottages really sucks compare to mines, and resource improvements. beside towns villages needs industrial era techs to get the full benefit. So build cottage early in the game is useless.
When industrial age comes,thats when I start to pump out cottages on any tiles that I can't build a watermill (watermill rocks with stateproperty civic, +1 food, +2 hammer, +2 gold). and incidently i switch my civic to emancipation as soon as possible, +100% cottage growth. I only build farms when i want to quickly populate my city. once the city has grown up to size 20+, I destroy all farms change them to watermill and cottages.
Other than the great people producer, I find going a more balanced approach is better. I played 3 game on emperor level, huge map epic speed 18 civs. in all 3 games I only really started to build cottages after middle age. The reason is that before middle age, i simply dont have many workers and not many populations to work those tiles too, and cottages really sucks compare to mines, and resource improvements. beside towns villages needs industrial era techs to get the full benefit. So build cottage early in the game is useless.
When industrial age comes,thats when I start to pump out cottages on any tiles that I can't build a watermill (watermill rocks with stateproperty civic, +1 food, +2 hammer, +2 gold). and incidently i switch my civic to emancipation as soon as possible, +100% cottage growth. I only build farms when i want to quickly populate my city. once the city has grown up to size 20+, I destroy all farms change them to watermill and cottages.
I think Weim provides some really good advice.
Other than that, I think people are overestimating cottages and underestimating great people a bit. You have to consider that a great merchant can reasonably bring you over $2k well before the modern age. If working a few towns instead means you're bringing in 10 more gold per turn (and that' being generous considering how long it takes to develop towns and hwo long it takes for cities to grow to get enough citizens to work towns), that's 200 turns to catch up to what the GP brings you. And the GP merchant can bring it early in the game when that money can give a tech advantage and upgrade everything. Later in the game, 2000 gp isn't nearly as valuable.
Basically what I'm saying is that with how long it takes to build pop and towns, you're going to need 300+ turns from the get go to generate the gold advantage of one GP merchant, and the value of the GP at the earlier point the merchant can get it is a lot higher--and a lot more common than every few hundred turns. And don't you get culture from merchant specialists too? Just an added bonus.
Sometimes, slow and steady doesn't win the race.
Other than that, I think people are overestimating cottages and underestimating great people a bit. You have to consider that a great merchant can reasonably bring you over $2k well before the modern age. If working a few towns instead means you're bringing in 10 more gold per turn (and that' being generous considering how long it takes to develop towns and hwo long it takes for cities to grow to get enough citizens to work towns), that's 200 turns to catch up to what the GP brings you. And the GP merchant can bring it early in the game when that money can give a tech advantage and upgrade everything. Later in the game, 2000 gp isn't nearly as valuable.
Basically what I'm saying is that with how long it takes to build pop and towns, you're going to need 300+ turns from the get go to generate the gold advantage of one GP merchant, and the value of the GP at the earlier point the merchant can get it is a lot higher--and a lot more common than every few hundred turns. And don't you get culture from merchant specialists too? Just an added bonus.
Sometimes, slow and steady doesn't win the race.
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