Commerce Improvement Question

[gilfan]

A priest with angkor wat is 2 hammers and 1 commerce. So you're gaining 1 hammer, but giving up 6 commerce? Not a good trade-off. If you ignore the GP points, no specialist is worth the 1h 7c you give up by having a farm there to support them instead of building a town.

Now, if you're setting up one or two towns as Great Person factories, of course it's a totally different matter for those two towns, but for all other towns, it makes no sense at all to have any specialists.

[Enigma_Nova]

He speaks wisely ... for all that time before you can rushbuy much.
Must be an Early Pyramids/Univ Suffrage fan.

[Last Conformist]

The good thing with farms is they allow your city to grow quickly.

[gilfan]

Yeah, I do try to get Pyramids, they're awesome, but missing the pyramids doesn't invalidate the strategy. If fact, I'm in the middle of a large/prince game right now where I missed the pyramids.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
The good thing with farms is they allow your city to grow quickly.

And you can work the cottages when your city is at one of its various ceilings?
I tried that, but I just ended up with a lot of hamlets since I had to go through alternate periods of growth.

[Jamski]

Originally posted by gilfan
A priest with angkor wat is 2 hammers and 1 commerce. So you're gaining 1 hammer, but giving up 6 commerce? Not a good trade-off. If you ignore the GP points, no specialist is worth the 1h 7c you give up by having a farm there to support them instead of building a town.

Now, if you're setting up one or two towns as Great Person factories, of course it's a totally different matter for those two towns, but for all other towns, it makes no sense at all to have any specialists.

I tend to run Representation and nab the Sistine Chapel, so that's 2 hammers, 1 commerce, 3 science, 2 culture and 3 GPP. That's a NICE trade-off. The hammer gain is epecially nice for those floodplains cities with little or no hammer output. Y'know, I like my cities to build stuff occassionally.

If that city has Wall Street, then the specialists all become Merchants.

If that city is one of my "big three" for a culture win, then the specialists all become Artists.

If that city has an Academy and Oxford University, then HELLO Scientists!

Another nice thing is that you can practically control what kind of GP you get too, which is always a bonus.

A commerce city with cottage spam is good for filling in the less valuable areas of the empire.

[gilfan]

If you're running representation, then those three beakers are equivalent to 3 commerce. Then it's a matter of 1 hammer vs 3 commerce, which I agree is an even trade either way.

As for your other points, the 7 commerce of a town is multiplied by wall street, acadamies, can be diverted into culture, etc, so specialists are no advantage there. In fact, at first glance, I think in most examples you cite, a town would be better than the specialist. Why build a farm to get three gold from a merchant, when you can get 7 gold from a town? The one exception being in using artists for the culture win, but you could put that in your Great Person factory cities.


The only way in which a specialist supported by a farm is better than building a town instead is in the creation of GPP. You're best off by having 1 or 2 towns that have lots of specialists for GP, and have no specialists at all in your other cities.

[Enigma_Nova]

Towns take a while to build, 75 turns, right?
It's not like we can just "build a town" like we build farms and such.
To get the towns, you have to work them as your city grows - which lowers production and food in the early game, something that isn't usually good.

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Towns take a while to build, 75 turns, right?
It's not like we can just "build a town" like we build farms and such.

That's only a valid argument late in the game. It take hundreds of turns to get the techs to max out other tile improvement. You can max out towns long before that.

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
To get the towns, you have to work them as your city grows - which lowers production and food in the early game, something that isn't usually good.

And if you work them as your city grows, you get far more commerce, which means far more technology and money, which supports much faster expansion. It's a fair trade-off

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by gilfan
That's only a valid argument late in the game. It take hundreds of turns to get the techs to max out other tile improvement. You can max out towns long before that.

Yes and no. You can reap those benefits immediately for these other improvements. While for towns, you still need to wait 75 turns.

Towns are good if you build them early. Otherwise you are better off making more food.

[Falconne]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
To get the towns, you have to work them as your city grows - which lowers production and food in the early game, something that isn't usually good.

Well, you only need so much food output in the early game; it would be counterproductive if your city grows too fast and you have to deal with unhappiness and unhealthiness.

I find I only need maybe 2 farms per city early on.

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Yes and no. You can reap those benefits immediately for these other improvements. While for towns, you still need to wait 75 turns.

Towns are good if you build them early. Otherwise you are better off making more food.

Umm... that's exactly what I said. Late in the game, when you have replaceable parts, railroads, biology, etc, you can build the other tile improvements and get their full advantage immediately. Late in the game, they have an immediate full payoff, but you have to wait 38 turns for towns (not 75, one civic doubles town growth)

Yes, once I have railroads/biology etc, I tend to not build towns anymore, but that usually only affects Terra maps for me. I typically have several dozen fully grown towns by then.

[Blake]

The thing about farms is in some cases they are the only improvement that allows the city to grow.

Take a pure-plains city on Great Plains for example. Without farms it'll be stuck at size 3 for all time.

Well, the rule of thumb would be to only use farms if you have to. Windmills are better for a food starved city. Watermills are better along river.
But in some cases... farms are the only thing you can build. That is why they are "weak".

Farms also allow cities to grow larger or faster to make use of more tiles when advancements make them usable. This would be like having farms at a city until State Property, then replacing all the farms with watermills and workshops, so the moment State Property comes along it's at maximum size and efficiency.

One thing... is I think some special resources are a bit weak...
Vineyards are a bit weak except for Financial civs.
Sugar is especially weak, it's basically better to biology-farm it.

I think some of the luxury goods need a +1 boost at some point, by tech or civics (maybe Merchantalism could give +1 Commerce to plantations?)

[gilfan]

Did anyone say never build any farms? No. You build just enough farms to get your city to use every tile without any surplus, typically size 18-20. The rest of the tiles should be as many towns/windmills as possible. The one exception being cities designed to produce great people, which should have as many population as healthiness allows.

[Urban Ranger]

Farms can also "chain" water. The is very desirable for special food sources such as rice.