Windmill, watermill, workshop, lumbermill

[mboettcher]

I'm tired of this arguement


YOu don't lose anything switching from US to PS EXCEPT THE ABILITY TO RUSHBUY which is the only reason to be running that economy at all. So again you have to be in crisis to do so.


CE is not a versatile economy at all though it can be very powerful but with all the new additions in BTS its no longer the 'strongest,' period. Myt point is there is no 'strongest' economy but HE is far and away the strongest scaler and it isn't even close. CE works best ONLY in small empires. Yes it still can WORK WELL in large empires but in almost every situation it would be better to focus on (plan for) HE in such situations. The reason being is that you can maximize every type of city in your empire be it old or new, good plots or bad. So unless you gained that large empire early (which on higher difficulties is highly unlikely to have the opportunity to settle 20-25 cities early) then you are not running the most efficient system.

Or if you are somebody who only plays small maps then it can be a good economy. Great for culture runs and maybe rushbuy game ending wars where you don;t plan on using your new cities but other than that its just not the best anymore. Its not that I don;t use CE its just another trick in the bag thats a lot more situational than it used to be. And I do build lots of cottages in every game but I also (try at least) to use every economic aspect available to my advantage when its available.

Technically its called Hammer Economy but in reality it should be called everything economy b/c rushbuys and everything else can come into play. The reason its called 'hammer economy' is b/c nobody cared much about hammers mid to late game in vanilla (which was lame) and now they can be powerful.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm tired of this arguement


YOu don't lose anything switching from US to PS EXCEPT THE ABILITY TO RUSHBUY which is the only reason to be running that economy at all. So again you have to be in crisis to do so.


CE is not a versatile economy at all though it can be very powerful but with all the new additions in BTS its no longer the 'strongest,' period. Myt point is there is no 'strongest' economy but HE is far and away the strongest scaler and it isn't even close. CE works best ONLY in small empires. Yes it still can WORK WELL in large empires but in almost every situation it would be better to focus on (plan for) HE in such situations. The reason being is that you can maximize every type of city in your empire be it old or new, good plots or bad. So unless you gained that large empire early (which on higher difficulties is highly unlikely to have the opportunity to settle 20-25 cities early) then you are not running the most efficient system.

Or if you are somebody who only plays small maps then it can be a good economy. Great for culture runs and maybe rushbuy game ending wars where you don;t plan on using your new cities but other than that its just not the best anymore. Its not that I don;t use CE its just another trick in the bag thats a lot more situational than it used to be. And I do build lots of cottages in every game but I also (try at least) to use every economic aspect available to my advantage when its available.

Technically its called Hammer Economy but in reality it should be called everything economy b/c rushbuys and everything else can come into play. The reason its called 'hammer economy' is b/c nobody cared much about hammers mid to late game in vanilla (which was lame) and now they can be powerful.

- You also lose the hammer/town improvement. Depending on just how cottage heavy you were, this can put you behind in production despite PS.

- I'll spare you the argument as to why CE is garbage as a term. But, if we're talking about total cottage spam (vast majority of tiles in a decent sized empire), then yes, it IS versatile, once you unlock the gold multipliers and US. You can convert commerce into virtually anything at that point, other than hammers toward projects (but seriously, it's OK to put iron works in one city and build those that way...) Gold, research, or espionage, anywhere. Also US allows to focus empire-wide output into production in one target city or set of target cities. It is the only means to do that in the game.

- Mid-late game improvements with FM or environmentalism vs state property hinges on corps. It's not to hard to get a useful corp or two, so your argument on hammer econ. doesn't make sense. Note that you need something to get you to the point where workshops are actually viable ---> that's going to be cottages, specialists, or a very unusual map that allows for pure trade route commerce or building wealth etc.

- Even in a cottage empire, it's not like you have to put them absolutely everywhere...

- Captured cities can be converted into more gold generation if they have towns, and just build hammer improvements and crank traditionally or build wealth if they do not.

- But your last point holds. Rare is the setup in a game where you are building only 1 kind of tile improvement.

Now, as for whether switching out of rep or US hurts more, I actually do believe switching out of US hurts more, but that's because of the way I use US when I opt for war. Relying heavily on gold multipliers and $$$ rush, switching to police state loses both the inherent hammer and the ability to produce units rapidly. Yes, it does have less impact on research (I had research turned off anyway, but if I were to bump the slider up the hit would be a lot less than in rep), but at that stage in the game I'd prefer hammer output to research.

Saying cottages only make sense in small empires doesn't make sense. If you can expand to 12-15 cities, they're powerful already, but you also capture cities that have at least 1/2 the cottage turns cleared already, and emancipation brings those up to speed quickly. Specialists and GPP abuse is the only output that doesn't scale as much with empire size.

 

[Iranon]

I strongly disagree with the claim that heavy cottages favour small empires, quite the contrary really. If we rely on cottages, we probably have only 1 strong GP farm, so with increasing size losing Representation beakers affects a smaller percentage of our empire.
Increasing size also makes Free Speech more attractive compared to Bureaucracy, again benefiting additional cottage cities.

*

I find it quite beneficial to lock myself into a total cottage spam with heavy emphasis on rushbuy in generic cities (national wonder cities will do their own thing... say, an Ironworks city for projects, probably also 1-2 military cities making use of the appropriate national wonders/military academies which will also take care of the lesser spaceship parts if the need arises).

The hammers from US are often not enough to make production modifiers attractive, especially not if those mean I have to bother with health infrastructure I could ignore without them. As such, this type of economy does not require many of the later techs. Windmills only need Replaceable parts to shine (although Electricity is nice especially for FIN leaders) and since I'll avoid farms in favour of cottages, I won't have many mines.
So while I'll have banks everywhere from an early time, industrialisation is no priority outside 1-3 cities which leverage national wonders rather than conform to the empire-wide plan to spam cottages. By the time later economy types reach their peak, I will already be comfortable with what I have and changing requires an investment for a dubious gain.

If I change to Police State with this economy setup, I will probably lose raw hammers and also a great deal of flexibility. As such, I shold be careful about accumulating crippling amounts of war weariness and play to my strengths instead.

*

Representation on the other hand does nothing for production; if I want to finish my endgame with a world war resulting in a Domination victory I might cease to care about science regardless how bad the trade-off between Police State and Representation looks on paper.
As such, I am more likely to do the change and replace food with production impovements in my final push.

 

[mirthadir]

I'm tired of this arguement


YOu don't lose anything switching from US to PS EXCEPT THE ABILITY TO RUSHBUY which is the only reason to be running that economy at all. So again you have to be in crisis to do so.


CE is not a versatile economy at all though it can be very powerful but with all the new additions in BTS its no longer the 'strongest,' period. Myt point is there is no 'strongest' economy but HE is far and away the strongest scaler and it isn't even close. CE works best ONLY in small empires. Yes it still can WORK WELL in large empires but in almost every situation it would be better to focus on (plan for) HE in such situations. The reason being is that you can maximize every type of city in your empire be it old or new, good plots or bad. So unless you gained that large empire early (which on higher difficulties is highly unlikely to have the opportunity to settle 20-25 cities early) then you are not running the most efficient system.

Or if you are somebody who only plays small maps then it can be a good economy. Great for culture runs and maybe rushbuy game ending wars where you don;t plan on using your new cities but other than that its just not the best anymore. Its not that I don;t use CE its just another trick in the bag thats a lot more situational than it used to be. And I do build lots of cottages in every game but I also (try at least) to use every economic aspect available to my advantage when its available.

Technically its called Hammer Economy but in reality it should be called everything economy b/c rushbuys and everything else can come into play. The reason its called 'hammer economy' is b/c nobody cared much about hammers mid to late game in vanilla (which was lame) and now they can be powerful.

lol.

You lose the on the towns when you drop out of US to PS, roughly equivalent in loss rates to 40% culture slider (30% for FIN and Kremlin). Losing Rushbuy is harsh, unless you build or take CR, at which point you can fill queues in multiple cities and cash out once every ten turns or so.

CE is the most versatile economy in the game, once you get it running. Without having to dick with civic changes you can flop from production (via rushbuy, and note with the Kremlin it is superior to Toko running Caste/SP WS) to science with a click of the slider to EP to culture.

Yes you have to build multipliers, however, multipliers are easy to come by once you can start rushbuying. With the Kremlin, a Town is superior to all other improvements for all desired outputs (with the sole exception of low pop Kremlin bio farms for whipping). This means that towns are the fastest improvement to bring new locations online, particularly as you can now distribute "production" from your core to your periphery. Late game, the best CE will out hammer a HE, ceteris parabis.

As far as the "small empire" garbage, please. The smaller your empire the greater percentage of your outputs are going to be coming from national wonder cities. GP from the farm, from IW, and from Oxford. The more cottages you have, the more those marginal differences add up (i.e. a caste/SP ws is 4.4 while a Kremlin FS/US town is 4.5 ; if 1/3rd of your WS are in the IW then the net yield is 5.87 ).

There are only two cases where swapping rep -> PS costs less than swapping US -> PS:
1. You've reached a terminal tech point, where you no longer care about research. If this is the case, you handily get more out of cottages due to the ability to rushbuy reinforcements anywhere.
2. You've built your war machine solely around rushbuy, have not nabbed the CR, and are unable to war efficiently for minimal WW.

If you still care about science, Rep is much more necessary than US.

 

[futurehermit]

One thing to keep in mind is that US and FS only affect towns. Workshops and other hammer improvements do not need any time to develop. That is definitely something to consider.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

With regards to "Specialist Economies do not scale as much with empire size" doesn't make much sense at all. The benefits of cottages continue to grow by opening up civics and techs (Printing Press) that benefit them. And post biology, you can really kick it into overdrive by putting new cottages down on old farms that are no longer necessary. Add in the Emancipation double growth speed for those new cottages and you see where I'm going with this. Also, around Biology is when most of the AI will have adopted Emanc (if they do at all), so making the switch sort of nerfs the small empire SE (since your specialist #s are now limited by building allowances).

The Specialist economy is food/happy cap and to a lesser extent, health limited. Specialists do not increase their output over time. And you will rarely have 3+ cities that can support 7+ specialists. My point is that there are many more stringent limits on specialists making horizontal expansion more beneficial. More cities = more specialists that can be fed = more output via Representation + more cities receiving free specialists from Mercantilism which is further exaggerated by Rep. Add in the Statue of Liberty and a larger (horizontal) empire is much more efficient than a small empire for a specialist based economy.

I'm not saying that a large empire doesn't benefit a cottage economy. Of course it does! A larger empire benefits ANY kind of economy. Land = power, right? I was just saying that a smaller empire is less beneficial to a specialist based economy and that a cottage based economy will do better as a smaller empire. Plus, it's more tempting to remain in Free Market and found a corp. or 2. Smaller empire = lower maintenance = higher slider values (especially with corps).

 

[noto2]

who are you people that manage to build a massive empire with a cottage spammed economy? What, do you play on settler? Yes I play cottage spam games and yes I play conquest games, I do both, I know what both look like, and I usually play on emperor. If I'm playing the Dutch, I'll grab decent land early on with the CRE trait and cottage spam everything to exploit the FIN trait and rush to a US/FS economy. From there I might war using my tech lead or just go for another victory, like space. If I'm playing someone like Shaka I'll war early and build myself a large empire which I'll probably use for a conquest win. The two strategies look very different. If you cottage spam, you have no hammers, thus no army, and thus I don't know how you would get a massive empire unless you do it in the industrial age. Before then how are you conquering land? Alternatively, if you're conquering land right away and continually throughout the game, you need hammers/whipping food to do so, thus you aren't cottage spamming. You're probably using many hammer heavy cities. And what's with all this talk of corps? Basing your strategy around corps is like basing it around the pyramids. Yes, I'd say in maybe 15-20% of my games corps make a big difference, what about the other 80%? You don't always get them, they're not always the best option, or the game might be decided before they show up. And for a LARGE empire, especially one on more than one continent, SP beats FM in terms of per city gold benefit - not to mention hammers. FM actually becomes relatively less powerful if you are the largest civ around - there are less foreign trade routes for you.

 

[Fluxx]

In general I think running SP is superior unless you go for a corporation.

the extra food for workshops is fantastic, the production increase is sexy and the moment you are in war in the late stages of the game this can sometimes make the difference of 100 gold a turn.

Windmils are simply superior then mines, especially if you got financial they kick butt before electricity.

Watermills are good when you are running SP f.e.
I tend to run watermills when I am not running slavery anymore and I want a tad of production somewhere. watermilled plains with steam are a 3 commerce, 2 food, 4 hammer producing monster.
Also I end up making groceries/universities in my prod cities (uni's to reach Oxford, Groceries to reach a higher healthcap).

In general people are not fond of hybrid cities, but I tend to make use of them since the hammer deficit is not huge, your military cities will produce Units already at 1-2turn builds, and the general bonus you get from the extra commerce is more then worth it.

 

[Feyaria]

cottage spam and low on production? whip axes (slavery), draft rifles (nationalism) or buy infantry (univeral suffrage).... every age has its ways to get a good military fast.

 

[robbyextreme]

cottage spam and low on production? whip axes (slavery), draft rifles (nationalism) or buy infantry (univeral suffrage).... every age has its ways to get a good military fast.

The most classic way of winning. but I myself am only a prince player and barely yet monarch, but when I read these immortal/deity player posts they seem to have some sort of insight into city specialization that completely baffles me, basically everything is hybrid to an extent.. weather it's just 1 tile or 10 tiles.

Even though every player needs to master whipping, not every strategy is focused around drafting/rushing units through technology.

 

[Gorey]

i use alot of workshops even without SP.

i like to think in terms of conversion to Grassland hills.
after obtaining the necassary techs:

A grassland workshop is the equivalent of a grassland hill.
A plains watermill, is the equivalent of a grassland hill.
A plains hill windmill is the equivalent of a grassland hll.
A plains forest lumbermill is the equivalent of a grassland hill.

etc.

etc.

any extra commerce is just icing on the cake.

instead of a grassland mine with a supporting farm. put a windmill and a watermill. you'll get roughly the same food/production.. but with some added commerce.

i'll always add workshop or two in cities that need some production but lack hills, or in production cities that have excess food and could gain from more production. in my commerce cities i like to see atleast 3 sources of hammers by mid-game in all of them so i could build stuff. either via mines, or combination of mines and workshops (sometimes it's just through workshops alone). later on, when my towns get the Hammer bonus and i get a levee.. i replace the workshops with cottages. and use the extra food i get back for specialists.

i dont use any "mills" until much much later. and only as final tweaks to my cities, and usually just on the "brown" tiles.

for example:
that riverside "brown" tile i've been avoiding working, could recieve a watermill.. freeing up a grassland hill mine to become a windmill.

So yeah, cottages, mines, farms, and workshops (even without State Property), will be your bread and butter improvements. Mills are for tweaking, or making use of any brown tiles.

 

[SteveNick]

Lumbermills are nice because you get extra health from the forest(as opposed to cutting it down to use a different improvement).

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

If you cottage spam, you have no hammers, thus no army, and thus I don't know how you would get a massive empire unless you do it in the industrial age. Before then how are you conquering land?

I think you're confusing a cottage economy with a cottage empire! Cottage spam doesn't mean you forgo settling production sites and mining hills... it just means that the land you have is less suitable for specialist heavy econs (less food). Usually, a pseudo-specialist economy + hammer + trade economy does most of the early game teching while the cottages start to mature. Once a large amount of early cottages mature to towns (as well as courthouses are laid down), the next marker is Printing Press. Once villages/towns get that extra 1 boost, the CE really starts to take off.

But, really, this has no effect on your production cities.

 

[Vulcans]

for me the game is already long over by the time i get to comunism(state property). I look for what gives the edge in the early game, as that's when times are tough and you need to make the edge. by the time that you get to comunism i normally already have a massive tec lead, and i'm just marching over the world, and bonuses that late in the game have little meaning for me.

 

[Fluxx]

for me the game is already long over by the time i get to comunism(state property). I look for what gives the edge in the early game, as that's when times are tough and you need to make the edge. by the time that you get to comunism i normally already have a massive tec lead, and i'm just marching over the world, and bonuses that late in the game have little meaning for me.

Up your diificulty level, then look for advice again

 

[Dirk1302]

Watermills are great when you're financial already after rp. I don't build that many windmills but in a recent game i saw these things shine too when financial. I use workshops in almost every game and i use a lot. It's the main reason not to cottage everything. I want to have ~+6 food surplus for more whipping early and to work >=3 workshops / city later. Ideally in a good game you have all the brown tiles shopped when guilds comes in and stopped whipping your cities for some time so they can work the shops. Strictly a town is probably the best overall improvement on a tile, it's very inflexible though and it doesn't do that much for you early game. if you build things like farms and mills you're flexible. I often begin with farms to grow to caps then change farmed tiles to workshops and maybe later to mills halting the city's growth working good production tiles now. If you have a good workforce and don't mind the MM (this sort of MM is fun imo) you can constantly adapt your surroundings to your needs, you can't do that with cottages as you can't change back.

In connection to workshops but slightly off topic, Guilds is really a very important tech.I used to bulb lib in the past, only then trade for machinery/guilds. Don't do that anymore, early machinery is important. I sometimes even self research guilds if the ais are slow getting there trading it for engineering.

Advantages of guilds,

Workshops are good production now 4H
Opens up banking economics for a free gm and a significant boost in traderoute commerce
Opens up RP on the way to rifling.
Can build Knights early, good for rather cheap upgrades to curi/cav.

 

[shyuhe]

Guilds + caste system makes flat grassland tiles the equivalent to a grassland hill. That means you don't need the whip any more in any of your cities with green tiles. With chemistry (not far from guilds), they become 1/4 tiles. The reason I like non-cottage improvements is that you can change them as you see fit and don't need to worry about growing towns.

@Dirk - do you find yourself lacking in trade opportunities if you go towards guilds and skip the liberalism bulb? Or do you just use the GS on education and printing press instead?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Plains riverside(obviously) watermills post-Electricity are my favorite (non-town) tiles.

143
the is from the innate tile status
the breakdown: 1 innate tile, +1 watermill, +1 replaceable parts, +1 levee
the breakdown: 1 from riverside +2 electricity

However, even only after Steam Power gives these tiles the same yield as a riverside grassland hill railroaded mined. Love 'em. Awesome for hybrid and production heavy cities. Really, they only have no place in a pure economic city (want a town there). Combined with grassland workshops, production and combo cities are super powered.

 

[Dirk1302]

Guilds + caste system makes flat grassland tiles the equivalent to a grassland hill. That means you don't need the whip any more in any of your cities with green tiles. With chemistry (not far from guilds), they become 1/4 tiles. The reason I like non-cottage improvements is that you can change them as you see fit and don't need to worry about growing towns.

@Dirk - do you find yourself lacking in trade opportunities if you go towards guilds and skip the liberalism bulb? Or do you just use the GS on education and printing press instead?

I usually don't bulb that much. GL and and NE are often build in the capital but i often prefer to let the capital grow working cottages or other useful tiles just waiting for the occasional great person to show up.Building oxford asap also conflicts with running scientists in capital. Bulbing to lib in itself is not enough if you can't leverage this advantage. So i watch how the other ais are doing, if there is a chance that i may miss lib i may reconsider.

Often however it's possible to have good enough research so you don't need to bulb lib to get there in time. Chances are that you'll be a bit pressed in this case so you may need to take a more mundane tech than steel or rifling. Putting more emphasis on guilds is a rather recent thing for me too, i used to wait until i could trade for it. I found lately that i really couldn't move forward the way i'd like in some games without this tech, ideally you want to leave slavery behind growing your cities big and powerful but you have to wait for guilds since without slavery you just lack production. Now in those capital central games where you delay your renaissance war somewhat to get up oxford asap you don't need guilds that early as you will whip the unis and it'll take your cities some time to recover, In games where you'd like to strike early especially with curis or cavs however you want to have good steady production and knight prebuilds and in those games having guilds in time is crucial.

If you're going towards guilds fast you can often trade it around profitably. The route to early edu/guilds almost ensures you'll win the economics race. If i don't go for guilds early i'm often stuck researching things like gunpowder or nationalism after researching/bulbing lib to 1 turn, not all bad but not nearly as interesting as the beelines to economics/rifling.

Typical bulbs for me are,

philo sometimes, it's often possible to trade for it on deity, if that seems to be the case i don't bulb this. If no one has it it's worth it more for the monopoly than for tao btw.

Paper never, just a waste imo
1/2 education, almost always
~ 2/3 lib only if i think i'll lose it.
~ 2/3 PP very often.
1/2 of chem, situational. especially when i can get to steel/steampower from lib this way or i have so much shops worked already that i need chem asap.

 

[Gorey]

for me (in general):

if its green.. it gets a mine, cottage, or workshop.
if its brown .. it gets a lumbermill, watermill, or windmill.

if its my national park, or GP farm.. i'll have forest preserves.