Cottage/farms combo vs pure cottages

[Generaldoktor]

Your placement ideas make a lot of sense. (drsparnum, see previous page.) I have been doing some of that, but not religiously. I think I'll start.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by drsparnum
Although not directly related, some other things you may not have considered is the tactical location of these improvements.

If I'm mixing farms and cottages with no other factors to consider, I'll put the inner ring of squares (8 squares) around my city all cottages. Then the outer squares of the fat cross (12 squares) I'll farm, or leave a forest behind for health/lumbermills. I don't like leaving forests next to my cities because of the defensive bonus they grant military units. It makes it easy for the AI to sneak up on you and park there and bombard you. I started taking out the forests around my city right around the same time I started attacking the AI cities only from forested squares. I find that I feel more secure by chopping down the trees and creating this fire ring, double meaning intended.

Secondly, cottages/towns are my least favorite thing to get pillaged, since they take time to regain their former glory, so I want to force the enemy to get right next to my city and risk me popping a mounted unit out to kill the enemy and run back inside my city without retaliation, if they insist on pillaging my cottages.

There's alot of other factors to consider. For example, some cities are just production centers and I don't care about science there and I will always choose a farm there, allowing me to work the maximum mines/windmills/lumbermills possible (unless you're running universal sufferage with gives town production, but I'm not so advanced I've ever planned that far ahead to get production out of a town). In addition, there's of course hills to be reckoned with, rivers/fresh water issues, and variable need to leave forests around for health. Still, for a nice science city you probably want a mix of cottages and farms, and when all else is equal, I'd put the cottage next to the city and the farm on the outskirts.

Er, sorry about double-post. This is what I was referring too. Page break.