Importance of Farms

[Mattimus20]

I have found recently that building cottages in lieu of farms in every square at the beginning of the game is the best strategy . Then after a few hundred turns when the city is gathering enough gold from other sources, other than what have now become towns, I can change them to farms to allow the city to grow.

Does anyone feel this is the best strategy, or am I missing something?

[Dis]

I am by no means the best at this game. But it seems wasteful to get rid of towns after you spent the entire game growing them.

What other sources of gold are better than from towns? Especially if you are a financial civ. If I make something a cottage (and eventually town) I leave it the entire game. Unless that happens to be my only source of oil or something.

Growth is important even in the early game. Obvious resources get farmed of course such as wheat and corn. But I try to also put farms in some squares next to rivers. Not every square, but enough to allow the city to grow to a decent size. All the other grassland/flood plains squares get cottages.

[rah]

Early in the game if I'm financial I may even build a cottage on a trade rich resource that I don't have the tech for yet. (especially if I have multiples which usually is the case) By the time I get the tech the cottage is usually worth more than the the special improvement would give it. It does eventually get switched when railroads are buildable since I'll automate my workers at that point and they don't care that it's worth more as a town.

[zeace]

If you're building cottages in every single flat square before mid-game, I think you have too many workers. I find that about 2 workers per 3 cities just barely lets me keep up terrain improvments with the growing cities. By mid-game, my cities are only around size 8, so I only have 8 squares improved. Typically this would be 3 specials, 4 cottages and a farm or so... Then, as you note, I'll usually start making more farms from then on (Civil Service helps). But I almost never have to remove a cottage for it. Make sure you don't put in cottages in spots that will prevent you from spreading irrigation.

[Nikolai]

Ever thought of the possibility that it's you who have too few of them?

[Will9]

Have cities grow at the highest speed possible, with the highest production possible. Gold is almost always second to food and production. Unless the city's unhappiness or unhappiness grows to high then food will take second.

[Mattimus20]

Well... first of all I typically shoot for the same worker ratio you do, which is two workers for every 2-3 cities. I don't want to waste precious time early in the game building workers, so I start out slow. It's not every square that I inhabit with a cottage. It's just as many as I can before moving onto another location.... Usually 4-6 cottages.

Also, I find that the cities still grow with having cottages. Just not an astronomical rate. I like to limit the size of my cities at first just to decrease the amount of maintenance I have and, especially, the number of upset citizens that I have. When I want the city to grow faster, later in the game, I'll replace 1, maybe 2 cottages with farms. Larger cities will have A LOT of upset citizens if you don't have buildings available to keep them all happy.

So I guess my strategy for building cottages is that it limits/maintains your cities growth but also gives you the ability to bring in a lot of gold.

[Prussia]

Priorities are good.

1) special improvement
2) mines
3) farms
4) cottages

This changes, obviously.

[Nubianmercenary]

: Farms are probably my best strategy when building around cities as well, because a city without the proper growth cannot build as quick as those cities with food.
:
:
:You may have the most productive city in the game, but unless you properly feed your people, starvation could slow down production alot, meaning less wonders, units and buildings.



NubianMercenary

[Blaupanzer]

Mattimus20, the AI very much follows your strategy, building cottages early, building farms as the city reaches its population limit later in the game. Late game, more citizens, especially specialists are usually better than the raw cash from cottages/towns. This varies, obviously depending on your leader traits with financial reversing this and philosophical favoring specialists from the start. Generally, the AI reflects the consensus view of the designers, developers, and testers -- good advice to follow until you develop your own strategies.

[fed1943]

To change cottages into farms? I just do the opposite.

Do you overlap the radii of your cities?

Best regards,

[MasterDave]

I generally try to maintain a food surplus of 3 or more in most cities. If that surplus falls below that, I will try to make more farms on grasslands, otherwise cottages.

I try not to overlap fat crosses, but if one or two tiles overlap and the second city is in an otherwise prime loaction, I will build there,

[rah]

I'll do the same unless I'm pimping a specialist early in the game for a GP or later when city growth isn't desirable.

[Zahathustra]

in the early game when i have just put one or two cities on the ground , i focus on growth at least until i get to Pottery. How can a city take advantage of cottages while it is still too small? when i have one or two floodplains near the city i never sacrifice this precious food resource to build a cottage on them except when there are food resources like cows or sheep... after making sure of the growth i quickly build cottages now i have more workers to build them cz i did not sacrifice growth on the early game..... aany ideas regarding this?

[ColdPhoenix]

I may change the way I play for a game or two to see how it works out. I build loads more cottages than farms. I tend only to build farms on specials, plains and sometimes grasslands (If there are a lot of mills in the city radius). I would never build them on floodplains for the sole reason that they're already producing more than the food consumed by the citizen working them so I may as well get a lot of commerce from them. I never automate my workers until I have at least cottaged all my floodplans as the workers will invariably farm them. I guess the problem with this is that I limit the number of specialists that I can have in a city but as I tend to run mercantalism for most of the game (once I have the required tech) and usually get the Statue of Liberty I don't see this as too much of a problem.

Next game I'm going to farm like crazy though! Just to see how it turns out.