[Spoilers PB23] Old Harry's attempt at civilizing AdrienIer

[TheHumanHydra]

I wouldn't say there's a consensus. I'd say there are two schools of thought, or two 'modes' you can run. Sort of like how when the game first released there were infinite debates over specialist vs. cottage economies, but you could run either and be successful in single-player. In the long run, of course, the cottage economy came out the clear victor (with Great People playing a supporting role). I don't think we've reached that 'long run' in terms of workshop vs. cottage economies yet, because my impression is that not many people have ever run a full-on workshop economy throughout their empire, so we don't have many examples from which to draw conclusions (or, if we can draw conclusions, with which to impress them on the player base at large). Part of this might be because not many games reach the Modern era, where the two systems can be compared in their end states, and where each of them receive substantial bonuses in the forum of Universal Suffrage and the late-game hammer modifiers from factories and power. But these are only my perceptions, and I don't have time to read most of the games on the site, so I might be wrong.

[Old Harry]

It could be that one of the best exponents of the workshop model is Mackoti who isn't the greatest reporter in the world, and might be able to win without bothering with tile improvements... BGN is doing a pretty good job with workshops in PB18 it seems. I have a feeling that FIN requires cottages but otherwise workshops are more flexible (tech or produce units? You decide!) but as the mod keeps changing anyway it may be a while before a consensus totally emerges.

The cottages I've been bulldozing are in production cities though - the Heroic Epic for instance needs +3 hammers far more than +3 commerce...

[AdrienIer]

Yeah the cottage in Lobambus is a remnant of my pre-CS tile policy, where I couldn't grow it any more. Now a workshop makes sense with the additionnal food from the corn.

[AdrienIer]

It also comes down to the fact that we play on very lush maps, in the long run you can work a lot more grassland cottages as you can work grassland workshops but here you usually have some cities that have enough food to work 6 of those

[GermanJoey]

Farm/workshop vs cottage is a really only a thing in this era in RtR mod, for what it's worth. In base BTS, which has worse workshops and better slavery, cottage economy is definitely the way to go. IIRC, in PB20 (using ToW mod, which is essentially base BTS as far as tile improvements and civics are concerned), Mackoti ran a cottage economy until about the ren era and then paved over everything with uber Pro workshops once he got to Chemistry. He fell behind Seven on tech but not as much as you'd expect because of mass wealth builds. In PB13, he ran lots of cottages in his core (i.e. Plainfood) and then workshopped everything beyond that, running lots of wealth in order to keep his slider at or near 100% almost permanently.

Another example: Gawdzak and I both ran farm/workshop/traderoute economies in PB22; compare our economies to dtay at this era, who in that game ran almost pure Fin cottages. We were able to keep up mostly in tech with him only because of our extra TR bonuses (GLH and the Cothon, respectively) even though we did run a lot of wealth throughout the game. (part of keeping up at all is because the workshop player should have better infrastructure compared to the cottager.) So, you could conclude that cottage-economy is still superior overall to farm/workshop. However, extra production does translate into other kinds of bonuses.... it is less swingy, since you don't need to whip to build stuff quickly, and less vulnerable overall, since even if your tech isn't as advanced you should always be able to field a big standing army.

[AdrienIer]

Yes of course full cottage (or almost) economies on flatland is still the obvious choice in BTS

[Krill]

The question is never all workshops or all cottages. It is how many of each and how you specialise each city. Cottages have higher total yield but less flexibility. They also don't run into health issues late game that workshop spam does trying to build factories and coal plants everywhere. Workshops just give you the ability to get what you need now.

[AdrienIer]

The question is never all workshops or all cottages.

Is there really a situation in BTS in which less cottages is an improvement to your empire ? In RtR of course this is valid

[Old Harry]

CH is massing a force of Catapults two tiles from our border and Johns' border, but it can't really be to attack Johns as he's got a better approach from Aachen, so I think it must be defensive, or he's about to attack us with very few hitters, or he's close to getting Nationalism and he'll draft some hitters, or he's going to get Mil Trad soon and Cavalry will be accompanying them...


I'll move our cat stack to be able to hit the tiles they can get to...

[AdrienIer]

Cavalry would be painful to fight