I was coming up with some ideas for my next game, one I will actually try and finish for once and wanted to get some input on these national wonder combos and strategies.

Elizabeth Phi/Fin
Marathon
Either Continents or Terra (will be considerable water)
Standard (probably a few more opponents than standard setting)
Monarch (first time on monarch)
All Victory
No Tech Trading (make the game slower, realize it will drop the difficulty)

Hoping for a good start location, river, food, and decent prod. Hopefully bw will reveal no bronze as this means iron in radius usually. Goal for this city is Engineer factory Pyramids,HG,HS,Pentagon, 3 Gorges. All the engineer specialist I can afford. National Wonders: Ironworks and National Epic (hate to dilute the GPP engineer with this but need it to match GPP of my science city so numbers are close) (Pyramids is only wonder I may not catch and if I miss it I will forgo the whole engineer city part of my strategy and go with one GPP factory, science city)

Science City: lots of food, hopefully floodplains, cottage spam. Coastal location (trade) with only a couple water tiles and maybe seafood would be prime. National Wonders: Oxford U for sure and perhaps Globe Theater if there is an insane amount of food. If engineer strategy falls through the National Epic will go here instead as this will be the only GPP site making nothing but scientists (hopefully) for acadamies.
Great Library and max science specialists, all science buildings of course.

Military City: probably landlocked with decent production. National Wonders: West Point and Red Cross

Naval City: coastal city with hopefully some production. National Wonder: Heroic Epic (fast naval construction in a typicall poor production coastal city)

Religious City: religion will not be part of the strategy but in the event one is gotten will try for spiral minaret here and national wonder Wall Street

With these 4 or 5 cities as my core I think I will be well set to go for any victory condition except cultural.

There's nothing wrong really with your combos, but it's obviously a silly idea to go into a game with such a detailed gameplan. Make opportunistic decisions on the fly until your empire has its set borders, then decide on a long term strategy.

One conflict is having a Philosophical and Financial leader. The philosophical benefits a specialist strategy (representation, farms) whereas financial benefits a cottage strategy (universal suffrage, cottages). They don't really work against each other, but don't compliment each other either. The fewer cities you have the larger the percentage your Great Person Farm is going to be of your total economy, thus the less you'll be taking advantage of that finacial trait (here I'm presuming that you'll still go a cottage-heavy route rather than a specialist route, since the latter would fail to take advantage of the financial trait).

Puting the Heroic Epic in a costal city is an idea I haven't seen before, but unless you're on Archipelago (and perhaps even if you are) the majority of your armed forces are STILL going to be land units. I think you will be losing too many shields in the trade off, just because you assume a costal city will have poor production. Remember, it only needs to have access to a costal square, meaning in ideal circumstances it can have as few as one in the 24 workable tiles. Plus 3-5 hills make a production city.

There's nothing wrong really with your combos, but it's obviously a silly idea to go into a game with such a detailed gameplan. Make opportunistic decisions on the fly until your empire has its set borders, then decide on a long term strategy.

One conflict is having a Philosophical and Financial leader. The philosophical benefits a specialist strategy (representation, farms) whereas financial benefits a cottage strategy (universal suffrage, cottages). They don't really work against each other, but don't compliment each other either. The fewer cities you have the larger the percentage your Great Person Farm is going to be of your total economy, thus the less you'll be taking advantage of that finacial trait (here I'm presuming that you'll still go a cottage-heavy route rather than a specialist route, since the latter would fail to take advantage of the financial trait).

Puting the Heroic Epic in a costal city is an idea I haven't seen before, but unless you're on Archipelago (and perhaps even if you are) the majority of your armed forces are STILL going to be land units. I think you will be losing too many shields in the trade off, just because you assume a costal city will have poor production. Remember, it only needs to have access to a costal square, meaning in ideal circumstances it can have as few as one in the 24 workable tiles. Plus 3-5 hills make a production city.

I don't quite follow you about the Phi/Fin working against each other that much. As far as I understand it, you want a city producing as much gold as possible to be your big science city and yet at the same time have enough food to run science specialists, further increasing science ouput. Typically in most games, at least with a good land mass, there is a decent floodplain area that can be cottaged and still produce the surplus food to make specialists (assuming there isnt open desert beyond).

If I had a leader that wasn't financial then it might be good to take a look at a lot of farms and running caste system, I don't have any experience with that but FIN + cottage seems a lot stronger. You need a couple farms to support one specialist who only puts out a few gold instead of the 6 or 7? you get from a town.

All the PHI is doing is doubling the GPP per turn and letting me pump out many more scientists over the course of the game (it dosent quite give that many more, as give you a larger number earlier in the game which can be leveraged into a position of domination) which equals more academies in cottage spammed towns.

If I get a nice coastal spot with good production I might swap out Red Cross for Heroic Epic but like you said, depends on the situation when I get into the game.

They don't really work against each other, but don't compliment each other either.
The closest thing to synergy you get with Philosphical and Financial is running the Pacifism civic. Financial might let you pay for your army better.

Compare this to the synergy you get with Agressive and Organized. Agressive begs you to fight, and Organized helps you keep afloat with a larger than average empire.

Yeah, every empire will want a GPF, and Philosophical works toward that. It's not like Elizabeth sucks for having Philosophical and Financial. But imagine you have one city. And you're Elizabeth. You don't get to take advantage of one of your traits. This shows how they don't help each other. The closer your empire is to one city, the less you're taking advantage of Financial.

Personally I'd be more inclined to go for Creative/Financial to focus solely on expansion early on, that way I'll have a large empire to cottage up. Or maybe Expansive/Financial to have scouts early on and 2 more peeps in every city. But that's me. I feel both of those will be a bigger help to a Financial empire than having my great people pop out earlier, which is basically all philosophical boils down to.

i dont know i thought that the philosphical and financial would work against each other but i had one of my best games playing as Elizabeth. however i do see your point lord chambers.

Maybe I am just being dense but still can't see how 2 cities max with a few specialists are going to nullify in anyway the benefits of financial. Example, city with floodplains, those cottages are going to get worked regardless, the specialists are only going to be there from surplus food, and only the number that my buildings will allow. I am not going to run some civic to have unlimited specialists. The other city will have a few engineer specialists, so we might be losing a mere handful of tiles between both cities, that might be worked (cottages) if I wasn't running specialists. The GPP produced from these specialists far and away outweigh the loss of a few cottages.

There is still a world full of land to be conquered and cottaged. Late game GPP are next to worthless at least compared to what you can do early on with them and staying ahead of the AI in tech and thus military is what this strategy is all about.

I agree Agg/Org is a powerful combo for a certain gamestyle. Notice a lot of people like Creative, I will have to try that sometime but seems like chopping Stonehenge, though not quite the same, would be better than wasting a trait.

Heres a more clear explanation of what I am saying. I am not running specialist scientists for their beakers, yes it would be better to use that person to work a cottage, they are being run for GPP's. GPP's, GPP's, GPP's, the great scientists they make will go to my other cities (filled with cottages) and build acadamies. Viewed that way Phi/Fin has perhaps the best synergy there is.

Your idea for a Great Engineer spam is a great ploy. I use it most games early on as IMHO great engineers are the bestest innit.

Maybe I am just being dense but still can't see how 2 cities max with a few specialists are going to nullify in anyway the benefits of financial. Example, city with floodplains, those cottages are going to get worked regardless, the specialists are only going to be there from surplus food, and only the number that my buildings will allow.

To fully utilize financial you need many cities with lots of cottages. With specialists you will not use financial to its full potential, but you will still get some extra money from the trait.

There's nothing wrong really with your combos, but it's obviously a silly idea to go into a game with such a detailed gameplan. Make opportunistic decisions on the fly until your empire has its set borders, then decide on a long term strategy.

One conflict is having a Philosophical and Financial leader. The philosophical benefits a specialist strategy (representation, farms) whereas financial benefits a cottage strategy (universal suffrage, cottages). They don't really work against each other, but don't compliment each other either. The fewer cities you have the larger the percentage your Great Person Farm is going to be of your total economy, thus the less you'll be taking advantage of that finacial trait (here I'm presuming that you'll still go a cottage-heavy route rather than a specialist route, since the latter would fail to take advantage of the financial trait).

Puting the Heroic Epic in a costal city is an idea I haven't seen before, but unless you're on Archipelago (and perhaps even if you are) the majority of your armed forces are STILL going to be land units. I think you will be losing too many shields in the trade off, just because you assume a costal city will have poor production. Remember, it only needs to have access to a costal square, meaning in ideal circumstances it can have as few as one in the 24 workable tiles. Plus 3-5 hills make a production city.

When I see Elizabeth come up as a random leader at the start of the game, I smile. I know that I am virtually guaranteed an early spaceship victory unless I am in a dismal starting position or make an early fatal mistake of one kind or another.

She seems to work best with a Catherine cottage spam and the Great Library. You then rush to the Kremlin and buy your Libraries and Universities. After that, it's Assembly Line and Industrialization followed by the Spaceship techs. The GPs you get are mostly Scientists, of course, rather than engineers. Early on, Academies, later piling onto the main Science city to get more Scientists and maxxing out beakers. It's quite possible to get total beaker production of over 250/turn quite early in the main science city with Liz. The thing is that the money you make from your cottages allows you to run your science percentage of budget at close to 100% the entire game.

I generally will avoid getting Fiber Optics until well after Robotics in this strategy, since you are so far ahead of the other civs, you really don't get much benefit from the 'Net.

You need to keep yourself in the top 40% as far as power goes, but if you're attacked, you're far enough ahead in tech that you can bribe virtually everyone into attacking your aggressor. (This, of course, won't work in the OP's case, since you've got no tech trading. I'd recommend staying in the top 25% in that case.)

I'd say that the Philosophical and Financial Traits combine quite well, rather than work against each other.

The engineer spam is an interesting idea, though. I might try it sometime if I start the game with a stone resource in the initial fat cross. I'd be willing to bet that it would be virtually impossible to pull off on Monarch without having an early stone hookup.

Tom

Puting the Heroic Epic in a costal city is an idea I haven't seen before, but unless you're on Archipelago (and perhaps even if you are) the majority of your armed forces are STILL going to be land units. I think you will be losing too many shields in the trade off, just because you assume a costal city will have poor production. Remember, it only needs to have access to a costal square, meaning in ideal circumstances it can have as few as one in the 24 workable tiles. Plus 3-5 hills make a production city.

I always put my Heroic Epic into a coastal city if possible. Unless you're on a totally landlocked map, naval units are important. Heroic Epic helps me to build my naval strength much more quickly. However, you're absolutely right about still wanting to have good production in your Heroic Epic city.

To the OP: Why not put West Point & Heroic Epic in the same city? That gives you lots of highly-promoted units. You don't really need that many Medics anyway, so you can put Red Cross somewhere else....

West Point + Heroic Epic + Pentagon (or Vassalage/Theocracy) = 10xp right away, for three promotions. On a naval unit, that's enough for Flanking & both of the movement-point promotions.... :cool: