Cottages, Hamlets, Towns- What are they good for?

[Dr Strangelove]

Maybe I'm too traditional, but I just don't see the need for the Cottage - Hamlet - Town tile improvement. All it does is give you is cash, but cities grow on food and production. If you're careful to build money making buildings like banks and markets I don't see the need for the cottage tiles. I've noticed that when I allow auto-development the AI seems to prefer them over otherr tile improvements. Lumbermills are nice, especially when placing a city in an area without hills - they provide much needed hammers. Workshops I rarely bother with. If a tile has good base hammer value I'd rather place a mine on it. Likewise I think that windmills have limited use.


I'd appreciate your views on cottages and the other new tile improvements. How do they fit into your development strategy? When do you build them?

[sovietwaffle]

Well, Cottages and so forth are very nice when it comes to research (especially next to rivers if you're a financial Civ), and I think you do need a few of them if you plan to make a successful commerce city (Unless it's coastal, but all other financial improvments come much later and don't have as much of an affect).
Workshops are best when combined with State Property, it makes it so that any city not surrounded by desert can become a kickass production city (I also don't use windmills too much, though it's good if you need food).

[xxFlukexx]

Common misake that I hoped the 1.52 patch would solve.

Cottages - Hamlet - Towns give you commerce, not cash. You divide your commerce into either science/money/culture through the +/- buttons at the top left of your screen. Different AIs like different tile improvements, I know that Washington loves to put up a lot of cottages while others don't use as many.

You will have insane reserach times if you don't build cottages, how are you supposed to research techs? Cottages are great, especially with a Financial Civ, I use as many cottages as I possibly can without taking too big a hit to production.

Workshops/Windmills/Watermills are all late game improvements, sure you can build them in the early game, but they suck until they get upgraded(by techs like eletricity and guilds and whatnot) I say build those "W" improvements when they are fully upgraded, because fully upgraded they are very nice.

[LDiCesare]

In one word, cottages are good for winning. They provide commerce. They are an improvement, once turned into town and with the proper civics, that provides +6commerce and +1 hammer. Is there any better improvement?
Workshops I don't use, but with communism they may be useful.
Watermills are slightly inferior to towns imo unless you need the extra shield. Windmills are good to get food from hills, and I tend to build many.

[Dominae]

Without Cottages you must rely on the following to pay Maintenance costs and conduct research:

1. Rivers.
2. Coastal tiles.
3. Strategic resources.
4. And the Palace's 8 flat Commerce per turn.

When you add it all up, that's not a lot of Commerce. You need to work every single tile on a stretch of river to equal the Commerce provided by a Town or two.

What this means is that your research rate is probably low because most of your Commerce is tied up in Maintenance (or you rely on Shrine income a lot). Even if you do manage to keep a 100% Science rate going, that's 100% of "not much" without Cottages/Towns.

Marketplaces, Libraries, Banks, etc. are only as good as the base amount of Commerce that is available for them to operate on. Without Cottages, your input will be low and thus so will your output. This hardly justifies the Hammer cost of constructing those improvements in the first place.

A good way of thinking about Cottages is they're like Roads in Civ3. It does not take long to realize in Civ3 that every worked tile should have a Road because of the free +1 to Commerce. In Civ4, Roads no longer produce Commerce, but their old effect is now condensed into a new dedicated tile improvement: the Cottage. Not building Cottages in Civ4 is like not building Roads in Civ3 - a mistake.

The reason the automated Workers are building a lot of Cottages for you is that the AI is looking toward the late-game. Once all your Cottages or Towns, and each city works, say, 6 of them, that city alone is producing 36 Commerce per turn, which is about 4-5 times as much as you get from working Rivers, Coast and resources alone. Such a high amount of Commerce is necessary to pay for the expensive late-game techs. Cottages start small, but they become powerhouses sometime around the Industrial era.

[Dominae]

Re: Cottages, Hamlets, Towns- What are they good for?

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I'd appreciate your views on cottages and the other new tile improvements. How do they fit into your development strategy? When do you build them?

Now that we have told you why you are wrong not to build Cottages, let's proceed to something more constructive!

In a sense you a right that Cottages are not all that great - it's the Towns that you really want. Thus building Cottages in the early-game seems like sub-optimal compared to the other stuff you can build: Farms to support Specialists and Mines, Mines to build troops and improvements.

The problem is you want Towns, but they start out as Cottages. The short answer is that you have to suck it up, build Cottages and use them.

The long answer is that you should prioritize Farms and Mines (and Windmills, etc.) to do "the basics". By this I mean:

1. Expand to 4-5 cities (on a Standard size map).
2. Build up a military.
3. Get some critical improvements down (maybe a Wonder or two).

If you try to skimp on any of these for an extended period of time you will start falling behind.

As you mention, you do not really need Cottages to do any of these. But once the basics are taken care of, you need to think about something else: research! That's where Cottages must become a priority.

What I am suggesting then, is that in the very early-game Cottages are probably not the best tile improvement. You do not want to be using Cottage tiles when producing Settlers/Workers, for instance. You might use one or two in your capital to build a nice research city, but in your expansions you want to work other tiles first (namely, ones that produce a lot of Food and Hammers). However at a certain point (once the basics are in place), you need to invest a little and work those Cottages.

As an example, at some point it makes sense to stop working Grassland Forest tiles (2 Food, 1 Hammer), and start working Grassland Cottage tiles (2 Food, 1 Commerce) - perhaps involving a Forest chop to transform one into the other. In general, 1 Hammer is better than 1 Commerce, but the difference is that the Cottage matures into additional Commerce while the Forest stays pretty much the same until Replaceable Parts (a long way off). Perhaps a better comparision is the 3 Food Grassland Farm tile, which does not getter better until Biology (a really long way off).

It feels like you're taking a step back while working those Cottages, but that's what investment is all about: losses today for gains tomorrow. Yes, your military and infrastructure will take longer to build when using Cottages, but 100 turns down the road it will be well worth it.

City specialization helps a little here. Go ahead and put Farms and Mines exclusively in the countryside around your military cities, but make sure to have some Cottage-intensive cities too. Even the Cottage cities need some infrastructure though, so working Cottages tiles right away is not necessarily the best idea. I'll usually work Forest tiles until my Library and Forge are set up before switching over to Cottages.

I hope that's a more practical answer than my previous post. As with many things in Civ4, there is no right answer as to which tile improvements you should use. But Cottages are definitely worth it. Knowing when to start using them takes practice.

[joncnunn]

Myself, I regard a cottage that's not being worked as a crime, why waste time planting a structure your not going to work soon while delaying the construction of the structure you are going to be working as soon as it's built.

So accordingly, flood plains tiles are much higher cottage priorities than grassland tiles.

I'd sugest right after the resources and assuming that those resources resulted in a good food production:

First build cottages on flood plains.
Next build farms in plains-river.
Then build cottages in grassland-river.
The next priority would naturally be farms outside of rivers, athough pre-civil service this isn't an option.
Then grassland cottage no rivers.

As to when Windmills come into play, once they do, I place them above the farming plains in both categories.

On workshops & watermills & mines [no resource underneath], that city really needs to be suffering production problems to make those worth while. Especally considering that "citizen" and "priest", and "enginner" also produce shields and they are multipled by the city improvements just like the others.

Many people seem to think that any mine in your cultural boundary increases your chance of discovering resources, and that's wrong. The mine must be actively worked to get a chance to discovering resources.

[Odin]

Unless a city has lots of comerce-rich resources (like the 5 tile gold deposit(!) I built my 2nd city by in my last game, cottages are a must to keep from falling behind in tech. A rule of thumb I use is that the more food-rich the city radius is, the more cottages you should build, and build your cottages on floodplains.

[gmsh1964]

Dr. Strangeglove

Hello Doctor. I agree with you somewhat. It is like every aspect of this game, you need balance. BUT, I also stress FOOD and PRODUCTION. You need the FOOD for the Specialists, and Production/Mines. If you go full bore-cottage, no food for mines or specialists.

And until you get Markets and Banks, your production is king.., you can get forges and Organized Religion and Industrial Civilization and Wonders..., And Food is improved via Granary. And a lot of times, by the time Markets are available and built, the game might already be decided.

Cottages are for a long term game (takes time for them to grow, hinders your production and growth while they are growing, and you have to wait for markets to make improvements to commerce) -- how many long term games you have?

So everything in balance, but as you stated, take it light on the cottages and heavy on farms and mines.

[LDiCesare]

Why wait for markets to improve commerce? The all-mighty library does that early on and is one of the best buildings in the game: cheap, +25% science, +culture and allows specialists. The library is as good for commerce as the forge is for hammers. It depends on one's style, but I tend to favor cottages over production in most cities. One city for production, one for GPPs (more is a waste in the long run), the rest for cottages.

[Diadem]

banks do not improve commerce. Banks improve money.

The only building in the game that increases commerce directly is The Colossus. All other buildings work over either science (libraries, monasteries, etc) or money (market, bank, etc) or culture (broadcast tower, etc).

If your slider is 100%, a library will effectively give a 25% commerce bonus though. Since all commerce becomes science. Same story for monasteries.

So, even very early in the game buildings that improve the effectiveness of commerce are already available.

[Stageon]

What are they good for? ...Absolutely nothing!

Sorry, dumb war weariness joke.

[Blake]

Cottages introduce an interesting tradeoff/delima in Civ4.

If you wish to conquer a large empire, you need farms and mines to crank out units.
If you wish to support an empire, you need cottages.

You must find balance.

In practise it often seems best to go with the absolute minimum of cottages and almost crash your economy with a powerful early expansion/conquest, while doing so you need to get the critical economic recovery techs - pottery, writing, code of laws at a minimum. Alphabet if applicable. Once you have the empire you can go nuts with the cottages. This strategy is most good for Organized civs, like it's THE Roman strategy.

Alternatives to cottages to keep research momentum up include Great Scientists, if you're Philo generating 3 Great Scientists (1 Acadamy, 2x Specialist) is pretty much a free ride out of the early game, great for Alexander (Philo/Agg) and Mao (Philo/Org) who both benefit greatly from a round of early conquests. You can expand to the very limits (ie 0-10% research) and still be cruising through the important techs like Code of Laws and Currency.

Another alternative is the Great Lighthouse and a harbor focus (ie going to compass after Iron Working), good for exp civs.

[DrSpike]

Cottages are awesome. They will be rubbish if you don't plan them correctly. A good element for a strategy game I'd say.