Vel's Strategy Thread

[Velociryx]

You just described the process I go thru when making a commerce city!

I build 1 worker per city (but never one worker IN each city). That's more than enough to do the initial terraforming, chop, road connect everything, and then go back and revisit certain tiles (with time to spare!). I have NO problem with terraforming a tile, and then changing its configuration later, to better suit the changing needs of the game.

Further, I find this "switching out" paradigm VERY handy when dealing with specials I can't make full use of yet (say, "dye" or "grapes" (wine). I got no problem farming them to get a food AND commerce gain until I get the appropriate tech to make even better use of the resource. Sometimes, I'll even cottage them, and then "reclaim" that land later....good stuffs!

-=Vel=-

[Capt Dizle]

(say, "dye" or "grapes" (wine).

Vel, I think you should go:

(say, "dye" or "grapes" (wine)).

[padillah]

Originally posted by Capt Dizle
(say, "dye" or "grapes" (wine).

Vel, I think you should go:

(say, "dye" or "grapes" (wine)).

I think it should be:
(say, "dye" or "grapes" (whine)).

HaHaHa.

I'm funny.


Tom P.

[V3nom]

I agree with everyone here that early on I usually aim for food and then shields at the expense of commerce in the extreme early game. However the key (which I'm sure most of you realise, but I thought I'd point it out anyway), as always, is adapting to your situation.

For instance in my last continents/Emperor game my second city had 6 flood plains and 5 gold hills (that is, hills with the gold special resource on them). Needless to say this city became a commerce centre in the ancient age, with a library and academy there in the first 100 turns of the game and subsequent buildings as I got the technology.

One small thing I will add though is that I'll try and place cottages on any squares that have two citys overlapping on it. My logic here is that while neither city is likely to work the square permenantly it will be worked significantly more often than it would in another location which allows it to grow with just that small bit of extra speed

[khearn]

V3nom,

I agree. Speaking of adapting to your situation, one time when maxing your commerce in the ancient age is important is if you are going for an early religion. If you want Buddhism or Hinduism, you definitely should go for as much commerce as possible so you get there first. But once you (or someone else) found the religion, then you can turn to food/hammers.

Vel, I guess if you're building commerce cities that way, it's viable. Thanks for the confirmation.

Keith

[garetjaxusmc]

Originally posted by khearn
Here's an idea I haven't tried, but that sounds like it might work.

You've got a city site that you know will be a commerce city (say an expanse of grasssland with a river, and maybe on a coast) but not much for production, few hills or forest. Lots of these sort of sites start ... this post has been edited to fit your screen

Excellent post about creating a commerce city. I learned an awful lot from reading this one over and over. I especially get a bigger picture of the cottages and workshops now... I'd wondered if they grew comparable to the city or if a person had to go back and work on them.

How many people here automate their workers? I used to do so, but I think I'm getting a slightly higher degree of satisfaction from doing the work myself.

[Drachasor]

I automate my workers when I get railroads. I just have them build trade routes (they'll rail everywhere). If I have a critical path to the battlefield I need to rail then I'll manually control a few workers to get that done first. It isn't worth the pain to do all the rail yourself.

In larger games when I start taking over mass numbers of cities (averaging 1 every turn or two), I tend to automate workers to get those cities to decent shape. At that point min-maxing an individual city isn't worth the time involved. This usually happens when I have 20-30+ cities in the industrial era (tanks and planes together greatly speed up conquest).



As for cottages, as I said before I usually build them pretty early. They aren't the first improvement I make; first I go for a food surplus then usually getting production up a bit. Sometimes this means that I build a cottage as my 3rd improvement however. So far in my monarch game this strategy (and making heavy science-financial cities early on) has kept me at tech parity with the AI throughout the entire game. Now I am about to get tanks, surpassing the AI in tech. I probably would have gotten ahead a bit sooner, but some enemies pillaged about 3 or 4 towns in my captial down to almost nothing (went through an ally's territory).

How do you guys fair as far as tech is concerned? And how does it vary depending on which civics you choose? The above tech parity I attained was maintained for 100+ turns while I was using vassalage and theocracy (and monarchy).

-Drachasor

[Blake]

One thing to note is that Trade can be a very significant contribution to your income and actually negates the need for any cottages at all. Generally speaking my top trade cities will produce more commerce than my top cottage cities.

You need harbors to really leverage trade, ofcourse.

In short, you can get away with no cottages at all, and rely on your huge cities for trade commerce. What I do use cottages for, is to make my minor landlocked cities do *something* useful, they are never going to pump out wonders, they wont ever fill the GP bar, they can't even complete units terribly quickly. Spamming their territory with cottages atleast gets them up to a respectable ~70 commerce which helps the empire as a whole. But it's the trade cities that really rake in the commerce.

If you want an example of the power of no-cottages, my latest game, as Victoria (Expansive/Financial), I've only built 2-3 Cottages, because I was expecting to have every inch of my meagre territory completely pillaged (Terra Map, Monarch, Russians next door along with several other civs). As it happened, I havn't been pillage-raped yet. Yet still, without cottages I'm still basically leading in tech, thanks to a couple of nice coastal cities, the Great Lighthouse, Representation, a fast Acadamy and a Great Scientist Specialist. Making a nice coastal capital with the Globe Theatre was a good idea indeed, let it grow like a weed and gather up the best trade routes. I fact I have to seriously consider Globe Theatre+Oxford because my big trade capital is producing just so much of my science.

[Drachasor]

There's no reason why you can't have a large city with trade and cottages. A size 15+ city with 10+ cottages is going to be generating a ton of commerce, especially if it is using river squares and has a special resource or two. A similar city with 30% ocean squares is not going to make up the difference with a harbor.

-Drachasor

[Blake]

Originally posted by Drachasor
There's no reason why you can't have a large city with trade and cottages. A size 15+ city with 10+ cottages is going to be generating a ton of commerce, especially if it is using river squares and has a special resource or two. A similar city with 30% ocean squares is not going to make up the difference with a harbor.

-Drachasor

Well I'm going to put it like this. It's a waste to build something like Oxford in a non-coastal city. The income from harbor trade is considerably more significant than a few cottage tiles.

One of the most significant thing about trade commerce is it's absolutely free, you don't need to feed a worker/specialist to get it. Considering trade routes can be 10-14, those are some BIG "tile outputs" you're getting for free.

What i'm leaning towards at the moment is having 3-4 trade monster coastal cities and after that not really minding whether cities are inland or coastal.

While I do build cottage cities, it's trade that is the backbone of my economy.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Blake


Well I'm going to put it like this. It's a waste to build something like Oxford in a non-coastal city. The income from harbor trade is considerably more significant than a few cottage tiles.

One of the most significant thing about trade commerce is it's absolutely free, you don't need to feed a worker/specialist to get it. Considering trade routes can be 10-14, those are some BIG "tile outputs" you're getting for free.

What i'm leaning towards at the moment is having 3-4 trade monster coastal cities and after that not really minding whether cities are inland or coastal.

While I do build cottage cities, it's trade that is the backbone of my economy.

Well, let's break it down a bit....

Coastal City

Tiles: 2 commerce per coastal tile, 1 commerce per ocean tile, plus special resources and land-based tiles.
Trade: Harbor gives +50% trading bonus.


Cottage City: 8 commerce per town on a river, 7 commerce per town off a river. With universal suffrage they also produce 1 hammer each.
Trade: Normal amount.

I am not exactly sure how trade is done, but I don't think I've seen a route that generate more commerce than the size of the city. We'll assume 4 trade routes in each city. We'll also largely ignore special resources, assuming both cities have roughly equivalent specials on average.


Scenerio 1: Coastal City with all tiles as Coast vs. Cottage City with all tiles as town.

Coastal City: Trade Commerce is 4*S for the Cottage City and 6*S for the Coastal City.


Cottage City: Tile Commerce is then 7*S for a Cottage City, and 2*S for the coastal city, where S is the size of the city.

Conclusion: 11S > 8S, so the Cottage City wins this scenerio.

Scenerio 2: Coastal City with only coastal tiles and land tiles. Land tiles may have Wind Mills, Water Mills, or the like. Cottage City is is 80% cottages, all along a river.

Coastal City: It is going to be roughly the same as before, 8S altogether. This is because Windmills, Watermills, and the like generate roughly the same amount of commerce as a coast tile.

Cottage City: 8*S*.8 is 6.4S, so the Cottage City's total is 10.4S.

Conclusion: Cottage City wins again.


Scenerio 3: Coastal City has 9 water tiles and 11 land tiles. 6 of its land tiles are towns, the rest produce no commerce. Same Cottage City as in 2.

Coastal City: We'll assume it is using all of its town tiles. We'll assume that 20% of its tiles are used for food (surplus) and production, and that there are 6 town tiles. all the other tiles are Coastal or otherwise generate 2 commerce. That's (7*6+2*(S-9))*.8 = 33.6 + 1.6*(S-9)

Conclusion: The difference in commerce between the two cities is then 10.4S - 42 - 2S + 14.4 = 8.4S - 33.6 + 14.4
=8.4S - 19.2. So they are equal when S = 2.5, roughly. This means that for small cities they are roughly equal (given how production and food tiles would be a higher proportion than we are assuming). Beyond that the Cottage City has more Commerce.


Now, clearly if we give the Coastal City more and more towns, it will eventually match the cottage city. So of course the best city has just a tiny bit of coast (say 3-5 tiles) and the rest is ideal for cottages, with a few tiles for production and food surplus.

Of course, I assumed you have open boarders with a good trading partner. If you don't then trading commerce can be low, around 4 or 5 per route, even in a large city (size 15) city. This would severely cripple an empire based on trade commerce.

Obviously I assumed everyone had Corporation, Printing Press, and Liberalism. Corporation gives the final bonus trade route, and the Printing Press and Liberalism allow a +3 bonus to town income, which requires that you use free speech.

Now, while cottages generate more commerce, they do require cities dedicated to it. A Trade-based city can potentially have its tiles geared for something else, but in this case you are going to want a lot of these cities to compensate for the lower commerce per city. Also, being more trade-focused means you can have a slighter freer choice of civics. Free Speech isn't a big boost for you if you don't have a bunch of cottages.


Well, that's my analysis anyhow.

-Drachasor

[Blake]

I believe you underestimate the value of the best trade routes. Or, the harbor "attraction effect".

A size 20 coastal city can easily have trade routes that look like this:
12
11
10
10
10
[that would be with the Great Lighthouse]

The next best city would probably have a bunch of trade routes like this:
10
8
8
7
6

A landlocked city is going to look like this:
3
3
3

It's to do with how the trade routes are allocated. Basically there are X incoming trade routes (one from every city that you have open borders with), each trade route is of different value (trade route value is determined by the city the trade is coming from, not going to)
Then basically your cities are ranked according to their "Trade Attraction", there are two factors: Population and harbor. The harbor approximately doubles the attractiveness of the city, that is a size 10 harbor city will attract better trade routes than a size 19 landlocked city.

So anyway basically the best 5 (or 4) trade routes go to your best city.
The next best 5 go to your next best city.
And so on.
If you have reasonably large coastal cities, your landlocked cities are only getting scraps.

Thus the best trade is tremendously concentrated in your best trading city. The effect can be huge, 40-60, even 70 trade commerce in the city. The equivilant to working a 3rd, or even a half of the city radius in towns.

Do Not take the "+50%" on harbor at face value, it can have a far more extreme effect.

The number of allys has only a fairly small effect on the trade in your best city, your best city is always going to get great trade routes. Having more open borders really helps your other cities more, as there are more trade routes to go around.

Sure, none of this trade behaivour is actually advertised anywhere, and the harbor description barely hints at what it really does. But still, that's how it works, and it can be leveraged.

As a good example, in one Industrial Age game. My trade monster is getting 60 raw commerce in trade (5x12), it works no towns or commerce specials, and only 3 water tiles. It is my 2nd strongest commerce city. It's my secondary wonder factory. (this is a mature empire of atleast 2 dozen cities)
The best commerce city is a landlocked city pratically paved over with towns and some Sugar, it's on a river loop. It wins by about 15 commerce.

So bear in mind, a city with no towns is competing with one with all towns. A trade monster which also has a heap of towns is going to utterly dominate.

In future games I'm certainly going to be trying to create such trade/commerce monsters to properly leverage Oxfords.

[Cort Haus]

Of course the Trade Giant is civic-dependent (as, to a smaller extent are Towns) and diplomacy-dependent. Players planning a GP strat with Mercantilism, or those in the diplomatic soup better look to their Towns and Shrines.

Blake's tests on DeepO's theory over on the Harbor thread demonstrated how the Harbors 'Magnet' effect draws trade from inland cities and, more usefully, AI coastal cities without a harbor. All this can lead to a case for a Compass beeline where the environment suits. This would allow maxing on food & hammers, with commerce taken care of through tech and one coastal build.

Quite appropriate really that the 'Harbor Magnet' arrives with Compass.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Of course the Trade Giant is civic-dependent (as, to a smaller extent are Towns) and diplomacy-dependent. Players planning a GP strat with Mercantilism, or those in the diplomatic soup better look to their Towns and Shrines.

Blake's tests on DeepO's theory over on the Harbor thread demonstrated how the Harbors 'Magnet' effect draws trade from inland cities and, more usefully, AI coastal cities without a harbor. All this can lead to a case for a Compass beeline where the environment suits. This would allow maxing on food & hammers, with commerce taken care of through tech and one coastal build.

Quite appropriate really that the 'Harbor Magnet' arrives with Compass.

Looking over that thread it seems as though larger cities gain less and less of a benefit from a harbor. The existance of harbors can undercut the value of trade routes large cities have though.

In my current game on Monarch where I only have two trading partners (both right next to me), trade routes are poor. I get 1-4 commerce in basically all of my cities. However, I can still have no problem getting cities with 70-80 commerce. I can have a lot of cities like this as well. My best city has over 100 commerce and is only size 13 (that's Moscow which had the best starting location, covered in floodplains, a winding river, gold, copper, sheep, several hills...it's a crazy-good place).

I'd note that because of the constant warring my 70-80 commerce cities are geared a bit more for production than is typical. They both have over 30 and 37 hammers per turn (pre factory), and I could easily boost them by another 30 commerce if I didn't need the production. Their border cities on an 18-civ pangea map, so there have been some tight spots (london had some towns sacked just before I got redcoats).

I will say that I'm playing a commercia civ, but that doesn't make too big a difference between the two strategies, so long as most of your commerce squares have 2+ commerce each.

-Drachasor

[Blake]

Looking over that thread it seems as though larger cities gain less and less of a benefit from a harbor. The existance of harbors can undercut the value of trade routes large cities have though.

Not exactly, relatively huge cities gain less benefit from a harbor. However if the AI has huge cities then the harbor is providing a benefit still. In any case even if a city were attracting all the best trade without a harbor, and say the trade routes are like ~10, then a harbor might only bump that up to 12 or 13, but that's still a total 10-15 extra commerce.

Something else about trade, recentely I've been making it something of a priority to open trade routes to a neighbour to get a free +2 trade in my cities. Every bit helps. (the priority is probably after improving specials, and before improving tiles with '+1''s). Ofcourse the expense involved is a factor, but often it's as simple as laying a couple of road tiles or scouting a coastline and gaining +2 commerce in each city.