DaveMcW and I have agreed to another CE vs SE head-to-head show down.

This thread will probably get long and the other one was already long, so I figured a new thread was probably a good idea :p

The rules:

-Both of us will play as Peter on Monarch/Continents/Normal/Patched Warlords

-He will play CE and can only run specialists in a dedicated GPfarm (exception is when running mercantilism or wonders that give free specialists)

-I will play SE and can only build cottages in capital for CS. I have also agreed to farm over mature captured cottages.

-There are three goals:

1) First to liberalism, fastest there gets a cookie

2) Must eliminate a rival civ prior to reaching liberalism

3) Must win by space race, fastest there gets two cookies

-We agreed that stone must be in capital or 2nd city location so I can build the pyramids to have full-fledged SE (he said making space race the victory condition gave him an edge for the CE so he doesn't need financial :p )

We are both going to start from the same save to make it fair (it is attached).

I have posted a starting screenshot as well.

Should be fun :)

crazy good starting position for either opening. good luck to you both!

NaZ

that start is out of this world.

SE with pyramids and philo.... its just a question by how many centuries youll win liberalism race

For the pre-AD years, wont most research be coming out of the first two cities, i.e. probably the capital and the GP farm, hence wont you pretty much be running the same economy for this period of time?

Yeah, it's a great start, and I didn't even mess around with it in worldbuilder or anything like that :P :P :P

It's only the second map I rolled as well. First one didn't have stone.

EDIT: I will play the whole game through before posting anything so that me and McW don't influence each other.

I think you chouse to low dificulty level.
The higher dificulty level = the stronger SE is.

Fair enough, but I'm not a consistent emperor player (I'm just getting back into it after months off). Want to try your hand at a game?

Got it. :)

Godspeed. Looking forward to seeing the results. And I like Peter too. I'll be interested to see with economy gets a benefit from expansive's quicker workers. I also like how you guys are doing one gp farm or one cottage city. Thats the way I do it

Started playing last night.

I've made a few minor mistakes (my biggest weakness is sloppy play at times), but overall I think things are progressing nicely. I've learned a lot already that I'm going to try and transfer to Gandhi after this game (I'm experimenting with early caste system, which I normally don't do).

I have to say that my elimination of a rival civ is going to be delayed a bunch of turns since they built a city a bazillion miles from their capital and I can't convince one of the AI's to turn it into one of their cities :lol:

Liberalism should indeed come in at a respectable time, however.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can come up with in the industrial and modern eras since I rarely play them :lol:

ps, should mention I got masonry from a goody hut :rolleyes:

I completed objective #2 at
175 AD. Rest in peace Wang Kon.
Now I'm building workers to cottage spam the conquered lands. Science it at 50% and I'm still far from Liberalism. I will try to get as close to Democracy as I can with my free tech.

A philosophical leader with stone in the fat cross, running a CE? Sign me up! I couldn't resist. I'm up to about 1100 AD, feeling good. Details in the spoiler, in case y'all don't want to read 'em yet.

REXed early, expanding east to block Ramses. Ended up settling eight(!) admittedly somewhat cramped cities before going to war. The capital just has too much food, so I kept putting down more cities with overlap to poach some of it away. Initial tech sequence: BW (it is a worker tech), Ag, Wheel, Pottery, AH. Went to war with Ramses post-cats, killed him in 400 AD. Captured 2 cities, relocated a third, razed the last two. No early wonders until the Great Library in my capital, though I've since set up Thebes as my GP farm. Capital has HE. Lots of workers (13 I think?), lots of cottages. Not as much whipping as I'm used to, though I did use it some for the war effort. War with Wang Kon in 800 AD, accepting techs when he's down to one small city in ~1040 AD. Liberalism in 900 AD choosing Nationalism, though I could have had it a lot sooner. There was no pressure, so I detoured for MC, Machinery, PP (largely lightbulbed) and Compass (was considering Optics to meet the neighbors, but then I got nervous and finished Liberalism instead. Turns out there was still no rush). I've now got Econ, and Democracy is about 3 turns away, so things should take off soon.

Good fun.

peace,
lilnev

I'm still putting my money on the CE economy to win the space race. If it were cultural then it might get interesting.

The game moves fast when you're at peace. :D

I got liberalism and democracy in the same year,
1030 AD.
I'm up to 60% science, hopefully fast-growing cottages and courthouses can boost that even more.

1030ad for liberalism is very late.
With proper use of GS futurehermit should be able to get to it under 800AD

He did land democracy with it though. I will probably aim to get liberalism asap, meaning I will get it faster, but not as good of a free tech (I will get something on the way to democracy).

Anyways, the speed with which you get liberalism isn't the most important part of the challenge, since as long as you get it first that's all that matters. The other aspect of liberalism is getting something good for it so yeah not a huge issue, just something I wanted to see.

I will try and play further today and post some stuff re: conditions 1 and 2.

ok i tought in this case it was the point to get fastest to liberalism, not what you get with it.

^^^Well, the point was fastest to liberalism, but since he didn't do that, I decided to go for democracy + liberalism as well :rolleyes:

Posting update...Played to the creation of Statue of Liberty

Ok, so here's my first update. I've played a bit past liberalism + democracy (free tech) to get SoL, which I used a stored GE on. I've never done that before and thought I'd get it totally for free, so I was a bit disappointed that I still had to spend a bunch of turns on it :( If I had known that, I would've saved a second GE :( Just one example of a number of small issues that made this a less-than-perfect representation of the SE. However, I make no excuses and still think it's a gg so far!

Pertinent information:

I started the game with great wall + pyramids (built both outright). This gave me some GEs which I used on GL, lightbulbing Machinery, and saved one for SoL later. I ran representation + caste system for most of the game. I avoided pacificism because of the expense plus I wanted to spread missionaries for monasteries to further increase research. Too bad no spiritual or I would've gone in and out of slavery and pacifism :( Oh well. I set research to 0% once I hit alphabet, switched to police state and cranked axes until I was breaking even at 0% research and then attacked Egypt. Those axes were pretty much sufficient to eliminate his empire :) After the axes were pumped out, I switched to representation and started cranking sci infrastructure, and I haven't stopped all game :p

I got liberalism + democracry in 980AD (screen attached). I would've been much faster if 1) I had better trading partners...Korea and the US just wouldn't trade much with me, even when Rameses was still alive, and even when I was pleased with them. So, that kinda sucked. Plus, I wasted turns researching drama for philosophy lightbulb because USA had CoL and I was hoping to trade it from him, but of course he never would trade it :(

I wiped out Rameses 225 AD. Would've been MUCH MUCH sooner, but he built this one city WAY to the south of his empire, deep in the heart of Korea, and I couldn't bribe Korea to wipe him out because he loved Egypt :( So, I had to spend a pile of turns marching my army down to wipe out that last city. Oh well.

I got the SoL in 1120 AD (screen attached). Pretty nice time imo. Now, with mercantilism, I get 2 free specialists per city :) I am now finishing up Oxford and it should come in very soon. Actually...CRAP!...as I'm sitting here writing this I just realized that I'm not building Oxford in my super sci city (capital)...:mad: These are the kinds of little mistakes I'm prone to making :( Oh well, only a few lost turns of production. Next time I play, I'll switch it over to the capital. Like I said, I'm not making excuses, but a more skilled player could probably shave time off some of the things I'm trying to do :p But I digress... :)

I met Monty and Brennus from the other continent. Monty is horribly backwards (screen attached). Brennus is no threat, although he was annoyed with me for trading with Korea. I gave him paper for free (Monty too) in order to get a map of their continent (which I will get next time I play) in the hopes I will win circumnavigation (not a big deal, but why not?). Brennus is now cautious with me and I'm hoping to get relations to the point on that continent that I can start wars if necessary to keep them backwards.

My immediate goals are to get everything I can from Korea and the USA and once I zoom ahead in tech, I will initiate war between them (they dislike each other and I could already bribe them, although they both still have tech I want from them, so I am holding off until I have stripped them of everything I need).

I could leave them alone and try and live in peace with USA and Korea, but I am very low on power and don't want them attacking me (USA probably wouldn't because we are now friendly, but who knows?). Plus, they are both threats to launch if I don't keep them busy.

I'm also going to (re-)build Oxford, which will really help my research asap. And with 2 free scientists/city, I'm going to continue to build more fringe cities around my empire (also to prevent AI from building annoying cities there!)

My long-term goals are to beeline to computers, skipping most of the industrial era and then immediately going for biology (maybe vice versa, we shall see...). Then I will go back and backfill necessary techs to build space parts.

We'll see how it goes :) So far so good, but damn would I trade expansive for spiritual in a heartbeat :p



EDIT: Posting some saves as well in case you want to check out my empire at different points in the game

So far so good, but damn would I trade expansive for spiritual in a heartbeat :p


True. I think the expansive is fantastic during the first 2000 years or so, since it gives so such easy workers with 2.08 patch and allows fast granaries, but after that it's pretty weak IMHO.. The health bonus just isnt super fantastic..

However, I think Peter (Phi/Exp) is still better than Gandhi (Phi/Spi) since you'll get those nice research institutes once you've pulled of the computer beeline (If I remember correctly you should be able to bulb directly Physics->Electricity->Radio->Computers with GS). This should allow easy backfill of techs..

The expansive trait will also kind of make up for the -1 health for the research institutes :)

Yeah, Peter comes back into his own late game. It's just that there is that middle game dip that kinda sucks. And I always feel that I would rather have advantages loaded into the early-to-mid game. I just don't like expansive, even with the faster workers. I just think that it's much weaker than other traits (I usually pop rush workers anyways...)

Still, with Mercantilism+SoL+Research Institutes.. You will be a mega-research powerhouse :)

Another mid-game quibble with Peter is that damn cossack special unit.. I always use riflemen+cannons at that stage of the game and use cannons to wipe out the computers cavalry stacks.. No need for that 50% bonus vs. mounted.

Yeah, Peter comes back into his own late game. It's just that there is that middle game dip that kinda sucks. And I always feel that I would rather have advantages loaded into the early-to-mid game. I just don't like expansive, even with the faster workers. I just think that it's much weaker than other traits (I usually pop rush workers anyways...)

I thought that expansive only gave hammer benefits. So, wouldn't whipping workers be more efficient than normally "building" them?

I thought that expansive only gave hammer benefits. So, wouldn't whipping workers be more efficient than normally "building" them?

Workers are built with both hammers and food, so if you for example have a city on a plains hill you will see an nice increase in speed with expansive when building a worker in "the normal way".. Whipping is still better, though..

I launched in 1760 AD. At the end I was bringing in about 4000 beakers/turn with a positive cash flow, but that was in a Golden Age and with many cities building Wealth/Research. A more sustainable figure, with cities building other things, would be 2500-3000 or about 150-200 per city (I had 16, but mostly maxing out at size 12-15 due to substantial overlap). Can a mature SE match that? Or, can it be far enough ahead from the earlier GSs that it doesn't have to? I'm curious to see how others' games come out.

peace,
lilnev

p.s. to Monty: You cannot invade me with Knights and Grenadiers when I have Tanks. This is especially true if your plan involves transporting them on galleons through sub-infested waters. That guy never learns....

I can't wait to see how Futurehermit's game ends either.

I decided to try my first attempt with an SE off that start and didn't do so hot. Had an easy lead over the AI, but didn't hit liberalism until about 1100 and launch until 1929.
I botched my research bad at a couple points:
1. After my early war I assigned a bunch of scientists and forgot to change from police state to represtentation for a good 15-20 turns.
2. Got most of my GS too late to bulb me to education. Instead settled them.
3. Managed to jump from from 15 to 25 war weariness unhappiness in only a few turns in a late war. Had to run a deficit and 90% culture just to keep from starving until I won. I've neer seen weariness skyrocket that fast before and given how short the war was, I wasn't prepared.

edit: Outside of my Golden Age, my ending research was 2181/turn with positive cashflow.

Still a great learning experience and chance to compare the exact same start vs more skilled players.
I'm eager to hear how far ahead a good SE player can finish with the same start :)

...Not that I could get 1760 with CE either, but mid-late 1800s.

1760 is a nice time.

I'm a complete noob at space race since I pretty much always go for domination, but we'll see how it goes :p

You guys (futurehermit, davemcw) sure know how to fight a war :) I had lots of trouble wiping ramesses, but I got him smashed in 250 AD.. (same as for futurehermit he had a city way south, so I had to send a stack of axes to deal with him). I had start from the beginning twice though, since one time a stack of 14 axes lost against 4 archers :(

Got ramesses crushed but my economy was in the doldrums (thats a nice word I think). Luckily enough specialists were able ot keep me afloat. Bulbed like crazy and got liberalism in 1340 AD, however I got Biology from it! (bulbed education, printing press, chemistry, sci/meth).

Now my cities are growing like crazy :D The reason I dared hold of on liberalism (left it 1 turn from researched) was because everyone on this map is just crazy backward, except for Alexander who has guilds and wants to trade for chemisty. No way I'm giving him that...

BTW. This map is very nice.. I've never seen a city with GP farm written over it like Thebes.. I've popped 7 GS since 250 AD (its now mid 14th century) which is really what allowed me to get the crazy amount of bulbs necessary to get biology from liberalism... I still have scientists left over who shall bulb astronomy and physics.. Then I'm going to bulb all the way to radio/computers (I think radio is very important for SE games since one can get the eiffel tower to keep those multitudes happy with broadcast towers)

My game plan is now to get theatres+colosseums, farm over the 4 cottages in my capital (everything else is SE, just farms) and then swim in scientists with 80-100% culture slider and huge cities...

I take my hat of to daveMCW for smashing Wang Kon so early.. I hate to fight protective civs pre-construction...

I take my hat of to daveMCW for smashing Wang Kon so early.. I hate to fight protective civs pre-construction...

It wasn't pre-construction... half my army was catapults. :D

It wasn't pre-construction... half my army was catapults. :D

Lol, OK, that explains it :) I had this vision of stacks of 20+ axemen suiciding themselves against CGIII archers in cities on hills :D

Did you go to construction before code of laws? I usually take mathematics early and sometimes dont know whether to go the poly->priesthood->code of laws -> bureaucracy first or sidestep to construction since its already available..

lol.

after a lot of thought, i think i should've spent a GE on NE in Thebes. i didn't do it because i didn't want a GA. however, i think that it would've been worth it in the long run...

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted another update, I've been playing around with Gandhi a bit. I still have my save though and will try and finish it this week now that I'm on holidays :)

I launched in 1730 AD.


With the insane amount of food in the capital, I decided it had to be my GP farm. After one settler, I built the Pyramids and Great Wall.

That first settler grabbed the grassland/gold spot from Ramses, which eventually became my Oxford/Wall Street location.

I beelined to Construction for catapults, which I used to capture Wang Kon's 4 cities and eliminate him.

Then I went for Bureaucracy, which didn't help much since I wasn't cottaging my capital. But I was only in it for a few centuries until I switched to Free Speech/Emancipation in 1030 AD.

I stayed in Pacifism from the time I lightbulbed Philosophy until I met the other continent and had to adopt Free Religion for diplomatic purposes.

I coverted Roosevelt to Taoism, and got him up to Friendly. He sold me some nice techs, including Plastics.

Moscow produced 17 great people. I also got 3 from techs.

GPs Used
Great Library (Engineer)
Philosophy (Scientist)
The Dai Miao (Prophet)
Printing Press (Scientist)
Education (Scientist)
Taj Mahal (Engineer)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet)
Golden Age (Scientist, Engineer, Artist)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet, Engineer, Merchant)
Golden Age (Scientist, Prophet, Engineer, Merchant, Artist)

That last golden age was probably a waste (it was still going when the game ended), but this was my first chance to get five GA's in one game. :D

I expect a pre-1700 spaceship launch is possible with minor optimizations to my strategy.

So, you were running SE, as at start, practically untill liberalism capital is more then 50% of you r civ.
You were even running SE civics, like Pacifism.

You can check my 1000AD save.

Empire-wide research is 369:science:
Capital is getting 24:science: from commerce, 45:science: from specialists, +50% from library/university.

So specialists were giving me 18% of my civ beakers.

research from specialists only responcible of 10% sci specialists provided from ligth bulbing. I am sorry, you just used typical SE, with some outside little cottage help.

Well, the thing is, a CE is still allowed to use a dedicated GP farm.

As long as DaveMcW didn't run any specialists outside of the GP farm, this is well within the rules of the competition.

SE = specialists everywhere, except maybe capital for bureaucracy.

CE = cottages everywhere, outside of gpfarm.

1730 is a great launch time, good job :)

Hey Dave, don't you ever build corthouses?? None of your cities at 1000ad has cottages, your bleeding -12 in some cities per move, redicilous!!!!

(cross-posted with futurehermit) He only had specialists in one city, which was a rule they agreed on. Everyone should have a GP farm. Yes, he ran Representation and Pacifism, but you can hardly blame him. He had Stone in the capital and was Philosophical. They chose to set up the challenge using the same leader for both economies.

DaveMcW, what did you use the Golden Ages for? What were you doing when you started them?

acidsatyr, that's not fair. In 1000 AD he had already built *one* whole courthouse, and was building *one* other one, which only had 82 turns to go! :mischief:

this just shows how hard it is to evaluate the two economies imo because there are times when a CE will run an awesome GPfarm and use the "SE" civics (pacifism, rep, even castsys). A SE player like acidsatyr may well choose to keep mature cottages in captured cities.

I just like seeing what we can come up with in these games. Our test won't ultimately prove anything, but it will give us more material for debating.

research from specialists only responcible of 10% sci specialists provided from ligth bulbing. I am sorry, you just used typical SE, with some outside little cottage help.

An interesting claim, that. It almost seems to be saying that you cannot claim to be running a CE if you don't cottage your starting location.

For those interested in the his pace for GP


Turn 75, 1000BC: Henry Ford (Great Engineer) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 85, 750BC: Gottfried Leibniz (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 95, 500BC: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 103, 300BC: Werner Heisenberg (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 113, 50BC: Nichola Tesla (Great Engineer) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 120, 125AD: Heinz Guderian (Great General) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 123, 200AD: Kalidas (Great Artist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 133, 450AD: Merit Ptah (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 142, 640AD: Enrico Fermi (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 149, 780AD: Atisha (Great Prophet) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 155, 900AD: Ernest Rutherford (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 161, 1010AD: Moses (Great Prophet) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 167, 1070AD: Harkuf (Great Merchant) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 171, 1110AD: Joseph Marie Jacquard (Great Engineer) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 179, 1190AD: Jacques Cartier (Great Merchant) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 185, 1250AD: Johannes Kepler (Great Scientist) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 194, 1340AD: Mohammed Shah (Great Prophet) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 208, 1480AD: William T. G. Morton (Great Engineer) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 223, 1565AD: Shah Jahan (Great Merchant) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 242, 1660AD: Louis Daguerre (Great Engineer) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!
Turn 244, 1670AD: Ramakrishna (Great Prophet) has been born in Moscow (Peter)!

research from specialists only responcible of 10% sci specialists provided from ligth bulbing. I am sorry, you just used typical SE, with some outside little cottage help.
What, pray tell, is a "typical SE"?

It's quite conceivable that you could have a city so well-suited to being a GP farm that it becomes pointless to run specialists in any other city (they will never produce a GP). In those cases, what do you do with those other cities? I'd say you run cottages, as running specialists for the beakers alone doesn't make sense long-term. But, then, is that an SE or a CE?

In a typical SE you have multiple big cities late game running lots of specialists,mostly scientists. Every scientist produces 6 beakers which is only slightly less than the yield from mature cottages. This is compensated by the fact that you still get lots of GS late game to accelerate research.

Also important, these beakers are independent of the science slider which makes your empire more flexible. For instance,without doing much i'm always high on the culture list because of the culture slider. Quite different in a CE where i had to check that i generated enough culture on the borders.

What, pray tell, is a "typical SE"?

It's quite conceivable that you could have a city so well-suited to being a GP farm that it becomes pointless to run specialists in any other city (they will never produce a GP). In those cases, what do you do with those other cities? I'd say you run cottages, as running specialists for the beakers alone doesn't make sense long-term. But, then, is that an SE or a CE?

I believe it is incorrect to say they will NEVER produce a gp?

In my SE games, even if I have an amazing "gpfarm" city, my other cities still contribute gps...

p.s., dave's gp pace was pretty sweet that game :D

p.p.s., why run cottages in the rest of your empire? as acidsatyr says, cottages = low food = low flexibility. if you're getting enough research in your one city then focus on food + hammers in your other cities and go to war :p

I think we need a new term.

LE = Lightbulb Economy. You get most of your research from lightbulbing techs with great people.

SE as defined in this thread means you get most of your research from the specialists themselves.

I think most people (including myself now) equate the two as SE.

I think probably for this specific game we should have made a rule that you couldn't build the pyramids or else couldn't run representation/pacificism/caste system. It blurs the lines a bit too much imo.

First of all, take a look at his first save.

Yes, he has 2-3 cities with cottages (poorly developed), but those cities don't do more to his economy than his capital alone.

He built pyramids, and ran EARLY representation. He run pacifism. His early economy (BC) is more concentrated of his GP rather than cottages. In that’s sense he is in fact running SE, at least in the first half of the game. The fact that he has more cities running weak cottages doesn’t mean anything, don't look at it that way.

SE is not a correct term, but we use it for the sake of arguments here, the right terms should be FE - farm economy, since it is farms that shape economy, in terms of research as well as production.

Ironically, again, his position would’ve been WAY stronger if he just farmed all his cities.

Mature cottages do bring in more commerce, but they are adjusted with slider. Scientist is always 6 beakers.

If you don’t believe, replace all his cottages with farms, see what you get.

I agree with acidsatyr.. For all intents and purposes the pre-BC economy might be defined as SE. But then again, why not? The only way of running CE pre BC is immediately cottaging heavily. But with Peter it would be crazy not to try and get great persons with a philosophical leader, somewhere, somehow (and why not the capital in this case) and there was stone in the fat cross, so with pyramids, all the better...

Like DaveMcW said, another term like LE should be added to the SE vs CE debate, because its true.. lightbulbing is fantastic early on, but later other methods must be used to advance quickly.. Perhaps that's where the debate should start...

Ironically, again, his position would’ve been WAY stronger if he just farmed all his cities.

I challenge you to play the game and prove it. :p Can you launch before 1730?

^^^I bet he could :p

What, pray tell, is a "typical SE"?

It's quite conceivable that you could have a city so well-suited to being a GP farm that it becomes pointless to run specialists in any other city (they will never produce a GP). In those cases, what do you do with those other cities? I'd say you run cottages, as running specialists for the beakers alone doesn't make sense long-term. But, then, is that an SE or a CE?

Typical CE by definition is economy that rely on cottagess to abtain the most of it commerce = research.
That typically mean you will use civics that enchance that economy.

You can not even talk about using CE before liberalism if you are not runnig and using burocracy in cottaged capital, with Academy in it.
That is allwasy been main staple of CE, claiming that it is better then farming floodpance in capital.

So, by adopting capital as a GP farm you allredy submit that you intent to use SE befor liberalism.

Now is logical progression CE tend to addopt liberalism civics(Free speach, free religion,) as soon as posible and typically adopt democracy civics as soon as they researched, in order to enchance many towns they allredy have at that moment and speed up development of cottages.
Really, why do you need pacifism if most of your research come from cottagess?

By adopting Specialists enchancing civics, like representation/pacifism, castle system, you actially admit that cottages do not play a main role in your research/defelopment in Renesance age. So, you were continue to use specialists economy in renecance age.

I have no idea when is ever you finally swich to cottage enchancing civis, if ever.

So, you simple just choise SE for most of the game.

I think the next showdown should be using a financial leader, maybe Mansa, going for domination victory :) . After that, a leader that is neither philosophical nor financial.

Typical CE by definition is economy that rely on cottagess to abtain the most of it commerce = research.
That typically mean you will use civics that enchance that economy.

You can not even talk about using CE before liberalism if you are not runnig and using burocracy in cottaged capital, with Academy in it.
That is allwasy been main staple of CE, claiming that it is better then farming floodpance in capital.

So, by adopting capital as a GP farm you allredy submit that you intent to use SE befor liberalism.

Now is logical progression CE tend to addopt liberalism civics(Free speach, free religion,) as soon as posible and typically adopt democracy civics as soon as they researched, in order to enchance many towns they allredy have at that moment and speed up development of cottages.
Really, why do you need pacifism if most of your research come from cottagess?

By adopting Specialists enchancing civics, like representation/pacifism, castle system, you actially admit that cottages do not play a main role in your research/defelopment in Renesance age. So, you were continue to use specialists economy in renecance age.

I have no idea when is ever you finally swich to cottage enchancing civis, if ever.

So, you simple just choise SE for most of the game.

And that is exactly why running few cottages doesn't mean you are still not running SE.

If you really want to compare CE with SE(FE) varian condition are very simple.

CE can not use any specialist orientated civics.
(No representation, pacifism, castle system)
SE can not own any cottages.

^^^Yeah, good points, I forgot about civics. I guess I just assumed that we would use SE/CE civics respectively :)

If you really want to compare CE with SE(FE) varian condition are very simple.

CE can not use any specialist orientated civics.
(No representation, pacifism, castle system)
SE can not own any cottages.
Except neither of those conditions would actually be adhered to in practice. Especially during the early game, where such civics are often the best options for any economy, or during the late game, where any economy is likely to have cottages. Or in other words, they will never be adhered to.

It's much more useful for such terms to reflect something that might actually appear in-game. Or is your intent to argue that SE is superior by defining every economic strategy ever used as SE?

Now, that's not saying that I don't like SE - I do, and find that it's often an excellent option in many situations. But this discussion will be a lot more meaningful if some attempt is actually made to mirror what actually happens in-game.

^^ I think for FE the conditions as layed down by Mutineer are correct, of course you may own some cottages but you will never build one. Only exception here is if i can't farm the capital then it gets cottages because i can't waste those tiles. So i actually adhere to these principles 95%.

As for CE, it's less clear, you run universal suffrage instead of representation.
But caste system and pacifism can come in handy here occasionally for the GP farm.

^^ I think for FE the conditions as layed down by Mutineer are correct, of course you may own some cottages but you will never build one. Only exception here is if i can't farm the capital then it gets cottages because i can't waste those tiles. So i actually adhere to these principles 95%.
The thing of it is, from what I hear around here, cottaging the capital is the most common approach to an SE. Virtually every SE I've seen demonstrated did that, so never building a cottage is just not accurate - unless you want to define everything as CE, which is just as pointless as defining everything as SE.

As for CE, it's less clear, you run universal suffrage instead of representation.
But caste system and pacifism can come in handy here occasionally for the GP farm.
I often run Representation for a CE. Not because I think boosting my specialists is important, but because there isn't much else useful to use. Sure, US is the long-term ideal - but until you have mature towns, it's a waste. Which leaves Rep, HR, and PS. Of those three, Rep is often the best option for any civ. And again, from what I hear around here, very many people do it the same way.

It's a CE if your medium- to long-term main source of income is cottages, and an SE if it's specialists. Short-term blips based on which specialized city is more developed at the moment (e.g. GPF in the capital) don't mean anything.

Look at Acidsatyrs games as far as i know he farms everything he can farm, also in the capital, from his posts i assume Mutineer does the same. I haven't experimented with cottaging the capital in a SE economy myself. It seems to me though that if you're not financial cottage towns only give 4 commerce pre printing press somewhat more than i get with my scientists but only with the reseacrh slider close to 100%. At the time that CE players get the cottage boost with printing press/free speech SE players get constitution for their specialist boost.

I probably rather have the specialists but i will experiment with cottages in the capital in due time. Main reason is that researching Civil service, Liberalism and Constitution can be a pain in an Se economy.

I used to play Ce's before i knew of SE economy. By the time i researched Constitution/democracy most of my cottages had matured into towns so i never ran representation.

Look at Acidsatyrs games as far as i know he farms everything he can farm, also in the capital, from his posts i assume Mutineer does the same. I haven't experimented with cottaging the capital in a SE economy myself. It seems to me though that if you're not financial cottage towns only give 4 commerce pre printing press somewhat more than i get with my scientists but only with the reseacrh slider close to 100%. At the time that CE players get the cottage boost with printing press/free speech SE players get constitution for their specialist boost.

I probably rather have the specialists but i will experiment with cottages in the capital in due time. Main reason is that researching Civil service, Liberalism and Constitution can be a pain in an Se economy.

I used to play Ce's before i knew of SE economy. By the time i researched Constitution/democracy most of my cottages had matured into towns so i never ran representation.


In acidsatyr's current deity succession game they got liberalism in 500AD, so I wouldn't say it's a pain to research in a SE (they never built a cottage) :p

Also, I think cottaging the capital can still be a good idea in a SE game so that you can run bureaucracy when you get CS early. That being said, I still ensure enough surplus food to run specialists as well and if that means farms, so be it.

Well i try some cottages in the capital next game i play, i can't really tell if it works better or not without trying. In a game on epic Emperor i played yesterday i got liberalism 1100AD just beating the AI. I made a huge mistake in this game (Not realizing that i had Hereditary rule for happiness, have gotten to much used to representation from pyramids apparently and relying on the culture slider). Due to unhappiness i didn't grow enough and i couldn't use the culture slider this time because i also was completely out of money. In this situation after lightbulbing paper and education liberalism took 95 turns to resarch (!!). I could get this down to 35 turns by assigning specialists at a food decifit in most cities.

500 AD is very early, almost not of this world.

I had a great position 100 BC with 6 good cities and tech parity with the other AI's. If i had realized that i could have used units for happiness i think i could have gotten liberalism 800-900. My position now is not bad either but it could have been much better.

Besides the mistake from not realizing HR for happiness i made some others which i list below because they might be instructive.

- Going with 8 barbarian axes for an unrelevant barbarian city, capturing it at a loss of 5 axes and subsequently having to pay for this useless city it had potential but not at this time.

- Neglecting to make enough workers, making workers always feels like a pain because it stagnates the city for a while. They are essential though, i still have forests in my capital FC where there should have been farms.

- Building more units then is needed(running pacifism), i was planning to take out 2 nice american cities, built loads of cats and swords only to find that i needed only half of them. I think here is where experience comes in, i haven't played too much games where i actually attacked my neighbours. Of course the axes i lost with the barbarian city would have come in handy here.

- Forgetting to get granaries and lighthouses and harbors in some cities, they are cheap and every city that can have them should have them asap. I should have whipped more and farmed more 0 to 500 AD then i could have run caste system with a good supporting infra structure after 500 AD. Also more courthouses would have helped.

I played Hybrid econ, cottaged the floodplains in Moscow, had to self-research every tech in the game higher than Banking because my AIs couldn't research worth a damn, and launched in 1750 anyway.

I did not lightbulb anything. No point when you have tons of trade material anyway. I still took the Lib -> Dem slingshot aiming for the early SoL in 1020, then used a research order of Steel, Biology, Computers, Assembly Line, Rocketry, Industrialism, Railroad, Fusion, Robotics, Genetics, Ecology.

I built an academy and settled 6 other early GP in Moscow (should have built an outside academy in St Pete - small mistake here), used 9 more for golden ages, and had a late merchant to cash and spare scientist.

I conquered Korea with ele/cats and later America with gren/cat/cannon.


Final civics:

Representation
Free Speech
Emancipation
Mercantilism (because everyone else was running it too until very near the end)
Free Religion

^^^ nice job. Did you run many cottages outside of the capital?

Scores so far:

CE
1730 AD
1760 AD

Hybrid
1750 AD

SE
1929 AD

I'm still hoping for a better showing for SE. :(

Heh, that doesnt reflect well on SE at all :)

How's your game coming along Futurehermit?

It's delayed due to a preoccupation with Gandhi. I'll still finish it though :P Like I said before though, I think direct comparisons are a bit compromised because of civics usage, etc. but I still like the discussion.

I guess I'd better post my saves so that people can argue over whether I was in fact running a CE. I did build a lot of cottages but would often run scientists from a library when a city was near population cap or by taking citizens off a mine when high production wasn't needed.

I also made minimal use of whipping in favour of just growing cities large and producing a steady high output of production and science.

Looks like CE has the advantage for space race. We now need to start one with the goal of domination victory. Check out my other thread regarding the setup.

How can you base your conclusion on total of 4 reports, and monarch level?

^^^agreed. it's also debatable whether the CEs were actually running primarily a CE after all...

Running just one GP farm sounds like a CE to me

Similarly if a player ran cottages and Bureaucracy in her capital, and mainly specialists elsewhere I would call that a SE.

^^^the problem is threefold: 1) The gpfarm was the *capital* thus negating cottages in the most powerful city of the CE (using bureaucracy); 2) Many lightbulbed beakers early on similar to SE; 3) Running traditional SE civics

It's not that a CE can't do these things I suppose (although 1 seems problematic), it's just that the lines become blurred and to say that this is a pure CE and look how great it did seems a bit premature...

Civics can be tricky to define, both will be running heriditary rule. If representation is possible, then both will be running that just for the extra happiness and research. As for caste system, it can be useful in both situations during war to fund your expense (merchant specialist) and expand border. Most games if the pacifism become available, both would be switch to that for the extra GP points. However, CE player is more likely to switch free religion sooner to get the extra research bonus. Maybe we need to simplify the definitions. How about: If the majority of the tiles are cottages, then it is a CE economy. But if the majority of the tiles are farms, then it is a SE economy. If it is nearly half and half, then it is a hybrid economy.

How can you base your conclusion on total of 4 reports, and monarch level?

Difficulty level is a good point. But some level has to be chosen, and to be honest the highest difficulty levels are a very different game since the AI has so many bonuses..

For the purpose of fast space wins, isnt Monarch a good choice since not so much will depend on wars/trades? (The only times I've won on immortal have involved war, war, war... Though I was actually running a CE then :) )

How can you base your conclusion on total of 4 reports, and monarch level?

I'm still waiting for yours. :D

How about: If the majority of the tiles are cottages, then it is a CE economy. But if the majority of the tiles are farms, then it is a SE economy. If it is nearly half and half, then it is a hybrid economy.

Its not that simple. If somebody has 80 % tiles with cottages and 20% farms and specialists, yet 80% of toal research comes from those specialists, this is more SE than it is CE, thats the point.

I agree that whether it's an SE or a CE should be decided by how much of the research is done by either specialists (including lightbulbing) or cottages. A GP farm capital and running SE-friendly civics would almost certainly result in an SE, even if the many of the other cities work cottages. The question is when the cottages gradually take over most of the work (as usually happens, since conquered territories would feature cottages), do you still consider it as having played with an SE?

How about a 'no cottages' vs. 'no caste system/pacifism' .
No other rules. Choose any leader on the same map. Earliest victory wins.

The early game could be very similar, but late game would show up the difference between cottage spam and farm econ.

Both can do a fast space race or a fast domination so it would be a good head to head.

I agree that whether it's an SE or a CE should be decided by how much of the research is done by either specialists (including lightbulbing) or cottages. A GP farm capital and running SE-friendly civics would almost certainly result in an SE, even if the many of the other cities work cottages. The question is when the cottages gradually take over most of the work (as usually happens, since conquered territories would feature cottages), do you still consider it as having played with an SE?

As long as most of your research comes from specialists, be it from specialists/representation directly, or lightbulbing, you admit your economy is se; later in the game IF you start concentrating on cottages and run civics that support cottages, then your either running a sort of inbetween se and ce, or your fully ce by now (i.e. all specialists fired, no se civics, etc etc). So your civ can be fully se say pre-liberalism, then its mostly ce. At the end of the day, you'll see where did most of research come from so you can say you played one way or another. I said in other thread, you know you wont ever play ce, simply by not building any cottages, but you dont know for sure if youll end up playing se. And yes if you start your game by farming capital, refusing buearocracy, generating +80 gpt and running pacifim, then yes you are in fact running se.

After looking at Daves save games I would have to disagree with you guys. He is running a CE with an awesome GP Farm, not a SE.

Granted most CE players cottage the capital, but Moscow was an awesome GP Farm. And it would only be a so-so cottage city. I think he could only place 8 cottages in the city. Compare that to the food resources - 5 Flood Plains, 2 Pigs, 1 Rice. Plus the commerce bonus specials - 1 gem & 1 silver.

At the 25 AD save he was running 2 Merchants in his entire Civ. Plus he was getting 2 Scientists from the Great Library. Even counting the 2 Scientists from the GL, only 18 base science was coming from specialists. Counting the library he was getting 22.5 from specialists out of his total science of 124. That is only 18% of his science rate. That does not seem like a SE economy.

Even at the 1000 AD save, specialists only count for 65 Science out of a empire total of 352.

I think you guys are getting distracted about civics & lightbulbing. To say a CE can not run pacifism or lightbulb is like saying a SE must set the research rate at 0% and can not tech trade.

The civics do not matter. In the early game the best builder civics are rep and pacifism. Plus, Peter is a Philo civ. Why would you not play to his strength and build an awsome GP farm? The question is Farm/Specialists in every city vs Cottage/and a single GP Farm. Daves game, in my opinion is clearly a CE. Forget civics and lightbulbing because either economy can and should do both.

Maybe Dave could have moved capital to a high commerce city to take advantage of the bureaucracy civic, and just let Moscow be the GP farm.

After looking at Daves save games I would have to disagree with you guys. He is running a CE with an awesome GP Farm, not a SE.

Granted most CE players cottage the capital, but Moscow was an awesome GP Farm. And it would only be a so-so cottage city. I think he could only place 8 cottages in the city. Compare that to the food resources - 5 Flood Plains, 2 Pigs, 1 Rice. Plus the commerce bonus specials - 1 gem & 1 silver.

At the 25 AD save he was running 2 Merchants in his entire Civ. Plus he was getting 2 Scientists from the Great Library. Even counting the 2 Scientists from the GL, only 18 base science was coming from specialists. Counting the library he was getting 22.5 from specialists out of his total science of 124. That is only 18% of his science rate. That does not seem like a SE economy.

Even at the 1000 AD save, specialists only count for 65 Science out of a empire total of 352.

I think you guys are getting distracted about civics & lightbulbing. To say a CE can not run pacifism or lightbulb is like saying a SE must set the research rate at 0% and can not tech trade.

The civics do not matter. In the early game the best builder civics are rep and pacifism. Plus, Peter is a Philo civ. Why would you not play to his strength and build an awsome GP farm? The question is Farm/Specialists in every city vs Cottage/and a single GP Farm. Daves game, in my opinion is clearly a CE. Forget civics and lightbulbing because either economy can and should do both.

Welcome to Civfanatics! :king:

Of course the civics matter. In practice, it's quite pointless to try and define rules for SE and CE, but for the sake of argument we have to differentiate between the two here. To me, having a capital that is a GP farm and running Pacifism counts as an SE. At most, it's a hybrid economy. It can't be a CE.

I've got to agree that where the research is coming from is the only thing that defines whether you're running CE or SE, and in Dave's case, this was CE, not SE.

But only after 1st 4000 years.
And civics do matter ofcourse they do. To run ealry representatino is to admit the power of ealry scientists. So what if theres nothing lese better at the time thats not the point. He run representation and pacifism way before cottages had a chance to develop. His capital was bringing in as much research (and more) than his other cities with undeveloped cottages + the fact that he was getting out great people like crazy.
A trademark of early CE is buearocracy which Moscow didn't need.
Therefore his BC economy was leaning toward SE but was in no way CE. =

I run early representation with CE everytime i can, not because of scientists, but to get the +2 happiness. Representation is great no matter which way you're going.

I often run pacifism with CE just so that my GPF can produce GP quicker, which means Great Scientists sooner, which means having academies sooner in my cottage cities. Again, this means nothing.

"At the 25 AD save he was running 2 Merchants in his entire Civ. Plus he was getting 2 Scientists from the Great Library. Even counting the 2 Scientists from the GL, only 18 base science was coming from specialists. Counting the library he was getting 22.5 from specialists out of his total science of 124. That is only 18% of his science rate. That does not seem like a SE economy.

Even at the 1000 AD save, specialists only count for 65 Science out of a empire total of 352."

How do you see that as "the capital produces more science than the lowly cottages".

I sometimes run CE without Bureaucracy because my capital is a GPF and/or i having more urgent needs and/or ma capital isn't producing a great proportion of my commerce anyway. Again, this doesn't mean it's not CE.

Please. If the only reason why you are running ealry representation is for +2 then you should realize that running HR is in fact cheaper and step up level or two.
So, for the sake of this conversation, lets assume that the reason why you waste ealry expansion to build pyramids is to run maximum number of scientists you can to benefit from raw +6 beakers. Assuming you know what you are doing of course.
Following up on that, any civ that is using ealry representation for research cannot be CE, and only in few cases can be hybrid (like having financial trait, so the research your getting from cottages is considerably larger that amount of research you could get from any other non financial civ), because your ealry cottages are no mach for raw + from single scientist. If you are "running CE" as you say, with financial civ, yet your capital is incredible GP farm AND you run representation/pacifism i would be very careful defining that as CE. Even if your capital GPF is responsible for say 1/3 of total research, and cottages for 2/3, how can you call this pure CE?

btw please read carefuly what i say before commenting. Your talking about 1000AD, when I said that Dave's economy from 4000BC - 0AD (or 4000 years) was SE. That changed but it was NEVER pure CE.

Scores so far:

CE
1730 AD
1760 AD

Hybrid
1750 AD

SE
1929 AD

I'm still hoping for a better showing for SE. :(


I can download and play it, whether you choose to accept it is upto you.

Got to admit these days i normally only play MP but anything to prove that an SE is better than a CE :)

Welcome to Civfanatics! :king:

Of course the civics matter. In practice, it's quite pointless to try and define rules for SE and CE, but for the sake of argument we have to differentiate between the two here. To me, having a capital that is a GP farm and running Pacifism counts as an SE. At most, it's a hybrid economy. It can't be a CE.

Thanks for the welcome!

The problem with excluding certain civics to the CE is you nerf the GP Farm. If the CE can not use either pacifism or caste system then it will be very difficult to set up a good GP Farm early. Representation is still useful to the CE economy to help boost the research form the GP Farm, or if you have the GL and for the happiness boost. Just like Buracracy is useful to the SE.

Besides lets focus on what we are trying to test. Which is better: farm every city and using specialists or running cottages in every city with a single GP Farm. Which civics you use, how you use a great person or which city you made the GP Farm are really irrevlant to that question. I am not interested in knowing that the SE is better then a CE as long as the CE does not run certain civics. I am interested in which strategy can out research the other.

Please. If the only reason why you are running ealry representation is for +2 then you should realize that running HR is in fact cheaper and step up level or two.
So, for the sake of this conversation, lets assume that the reason why you waste ealry expansion to build pyramids is to run maximum number of scientists you can to benefit from raw +6 beakers. Assuming you know what you are doing of course.
Following up on that, any civ that is using ealry representation for research cannot be CE, and only in few cases can be hybrid (like having financial trait, so the research your getting from cottages is considerably larger that amount of research you could get from any other non financial civ), because your ealry cottages are no mach for raw + from single scientist. If you are "running CE" as you say, with financial civ, yet your capital is incredible GP farm AND you run representation/pacifism i would be very careful defining that as CE. Even if your capital GPF is responsible for say 1/3 of total research, and cottages for 2/3, how can you call this pure CE?

btw please read carefuly what i say before commenting. Your talking about 1000AD, when I said that Dave's economy from 4000BC - 0AD (or 4000 years) was SE. That changed but it was NEVER pure CE.


The problem with that argument is at 25 AD he is only running 2 merchants. Those two merchants are only providing 6 science a turn. His total science rate is 124 at 25 AD. The GL is providing another 12 science a turn. It is a nice chunk, but certainitly not the majority.

To be honest, in the 4000BC to 0 AD time frame the majority of your research for both economies is coming from the terrain(rivers - gems - gold), your palace and any trade routes you set up.

Please. If the only reason why you are running ealry representation is for +2 then you should realize that running HR is in fact cheaper and step up level or two.

It's not cheaper. First, you need to make those units, which costs you hammers. Then you need to pay for their maintenance, which costs you gold. Finally, even a CE usually has one GPF, and the extra science provided by the specialists there (who don't have to be scientists) is some kind of a negative cost of representation that HR doesn't have. All in all, i'll always go for representation over HR if given the chance.

Even if your capital GPF is responsible for say 1/3 of total research, and cottages for 2/3, how can you call this pure CE?

If more than 50% of your commerce is comming from outside of specialists, you're running CE. Otherwise, it's SE. If you want to be technical, you could say that between 33% and 67%, it's hybrid. Anyway, in the case above, it was well above 50% and clearly above 67% as well. There's no way this even comes close to being SE.

btw please read carefuly what i say before commenting. Your talking about 1000AD, when I said that Dave's economy from 4000BC - 0AD (or 4000 years) was SE. That changed but it was NEVER pure CE.

Please carefully read what i say before commenting. "At 25 AD (i.e. at the end of the first 4000 years), the science provided by specialists was only 18% of the total science." At that point, it was already nowhere near a SE.

Well my game, only a few turns slower, was definitely a CE. I didn't run a single specialist in the BC years, only used one GS towards Liberalism (though I put a second into PP, which I got before Lib), never used Caste System or Pacifism, didn't build Pyramids. I don't remember if I spent a few turns in Representation or not (the event log from my save would tell) on the way to the Democracy civics, but if so it wasn't many. Heck, I've got cottages around my GP farm (Thebes), and only a few farms by other cities that otherwise would have had their growth stalled. I'm not claiming that keeping a CE this pure is the best strategy (my hunch is that a hybrid or mid-game conversion is probably best, especially with this much food), but I did it deliberately for the test, and it does seem to be competitive.

peace,
lilnev

Welcome to Civfanatics! :king:

Of course the civics matter. In practice, it's quite pointless to try and define rules for SE and CE, but for the sake of argument we have to differentiate between the two here. To me, having a capital that is a GP farm and running Pacifism counts as an SE. At most, it's a hybrid economy. It can't be a CE.

Okay, then let me impose a few rules. People wishing to run specialist economies cannot:

- Build any cottages.
- Trade techs.
- Run bureaucracy.
- Run a science rate above 0% at any point in the game.

Now, obviously these are cripling, unreasonable restrictions that make any serious attempt at winning a came impossible. But they do demonstrate that arbitrarily disallowing entire portions of the game is ridiculous.

A cottage economy is one where the brunt of research comes from cottages. A specialist economy is where it comes from specialists. I don't see why using great people to lightbuild techs should be the exclusive domain of specialist economies.

Specialist economies advocates can win every contest if they disallow certain neutral facets of the game, particularly if they disallow the use of one of the leader's traits. Of course, if you're going to use great people, you have to first generate them, which is exactly what Dave was doing.

Okay, then let me impose a few rules. People wishing to run specialist economies cannot:

- Build any cottages.
- Trade techs.
- Run bureaucracy.
- Run a science rate above 0% at any point in the game.

Now, obviously these are cripling, unreasonable restrictions that make any serious attempt at winning a came impossible. But they do demonstrate that arbitrarily disallowing entire portions of the game is ridiculous.

That is taking things way out of context. Mere rhetoric.

What I'm saying is I suspect a lot of the research in the early part of that game came from specialists and lightbulbing, since the capital was a GP farm and Pacifism was run, hence involving the use of specialists early (when their bpt output is most significant) and generating a lot of great people. I did say we should try and differentiate between the two methods (SE and CE), but on how to do so I had suggested earlier that we should look at how much research is done by either specialists or cottages.

Perhaps I was wrong in assuming that the majority of the early game research was done by specialists/lightbulbing, but that's because I'm unfamiliar with the exact numbers. Still, I maintain that a GP farm capital and running Pacifism will most probably result in a hybrid economy in the early part of the game, not a pure CE. While that is perfectly alright in a normal game, for the sake of this test, we should avoid that. Sure, you can have a GP farm and maybe even run Pacifism. Just don't do that in the capital.

That is taking things way out of context. Mere rhetoric.

What I'm saying is I suspect a lot of the research in the early part of that game came from specialists and lightbulbing, since the capital was a GP farm and Pacifism was run, hence involving the use of specialists early (when their bpt output is most significant) and generating a lot of great people. I did say we should try and differentiate between the two methods (SE and CE), but on how to do so I had suggested earlier that we should look at how much research is done by either specialists or cottages.

The question is whether primarily specialist- or cottage-based research is more powerful. Either take great people out of it or let both contestants use them.

Perhaps I was wrong in assuming that the majority of the early game research was done by specialists/lightbulbing, but that's because I'm unfamiliar with the exact numbers. Still, I maintain that a GP farm capital and running Pacifism will most probably result in a hybrid economy in the early part of the game, not a pure CE. While that is perfectly alright in a normal game, for the sake of this test, we should avoid that. Sure, you can have a GP farm and maybe even run Pacifism. Just don't do that in the capital.

Why does running your great person farm in your capital make it any less valid?

If my capital's surroundings make for a superb GFP but only a so-so science city, i'll make it a GPF. This doesn't mean i'm not playing CE. I'll just build a palace elsewhere to move my capital as soon as convenient (which in some cases is never).

^^^The point is that when COMPARING the two economies there is a BLURRING when SE civics are used and a lot of GP lightbulbing is done.

I think part of the problem was the map. It's true that Moscow made a great gpfarm. Plus with the stone there it catered to building the pyramids even for the CE player.

I don't think that makes a "normal" CE game. A normal CE game would cottage the capital and run bureaucracy.

So, at the end of the day, I just think it is hard to definitively say: "Look everybody, CE > SE"

I can definitely say, 1700's CE beats 1929 SE.

More SE games please. :)

^^^The point is that when COMPARING the two economies there is a BLURRING when SE civics are used and a lot of GP lightbulbing is done.
You seem to be suggesting that a CE shouldn't be relying upon lightbulbs through the inital stages of the game. I'm curious why. If you have a strong great person farm, there's going to be virtually no difference in number of great people produced by either style of economy. If the whole of the value of an SE is in its GP, then it doesn't actually have much of an advantage over a CE. If, on the other hand, you're arguing that this map was not a good one to accentuate the differences between the two economies, well... I think we all know who is at fault there. :mischief:

I just think it is hard to definitively say: "Look everybody, CE > SE"
No, but, based on the data collected so far, we can probably say, "When you start near stone with an excellent great person farm, CE > SE."

You seem to be suggesting that a CE shouldn't be relying upon lightbulbs through the inital stages of the game. I'm curious why. If you have a strong great person farm, there's going to be virtually no difference in number of great people produced by either style of economy. If the whole of the value of an SE is in its GP, then it doesn't actually have much of an advantage over a CE. If, on the other hand, you're arguing that this map was not a good one to accentuate the differences between the two economies, well... I think we all know who is at fault there. :mischief:


No, but, based on the data collected so far, we can probably say, "When you start near stone with an excellent great person farm, CE > SE."

yes, i probably didn't pick the best map, fair enough. i just assumed the CE player wouldn't go for pyramids and wouldn't pick their capital to be their gpfarm since I assumed they would want to run early representation. that was a faulty assumption I suppose...

you can't make the conclusion you are making because 1) not enough SE games played yet; and 2) there is too much conflation between the two economies.

as acidsatyr is saying, at least in Dave's game, it was SE pretty much until 1AD. sure he switched after that, but it is this early period where the SE really shows its strength. I'M NOT SAYING A CE CAN'T HAVE A GOOD GP FARM AND LIGHTBULB TECHS. what i'm saying is that it blurs the lines between the two when trying to compare them when the capital is used as a gpfarm and a lot of lightbulbing is done early on. of course a CE can do this, but it just blurs the lines too much imo, especially when we start adding in representation, pacificism, maybe caste system.

just because a CE player switchs to CE at some point in the game doesn't make it a pure CE. just because a CE player runs essentially a SE early in the game doesn't make it a pure SE. i would say dave's game was a hybrid economy (which i would say is most powerful anyways). hybrid doesn't have to mean both at the same time imo it can also mean switching from one to another over the course of a game.

Got space launch at 1888 AD with SE, no cottages... Could probably shave 20-30 turns off this by micromanagement but with the general strategy I pursued that would be as good as it gets..

I'm guessing that with no cottages a pre 1800 launch is diffucult.. 1730 almost impossible (super-skillful trading might make it possible but this would also work for CE, giving an earlier date than 1730..)

Ramesses dead ca 400 AD
Liberalism 1100 AD
Biology ca 1400 AD
Thats when it starts to stagnate.. Maybe it would be an idea to conquer the entire roosevelt/wang kon continent, however Roosevelt was a useful trading partner.. got industrialism, assembly line and some other nice stuff from him..

I'm beginning to think that for space launches CE >> SE at least on lower levels, however in the early game (pre 1000 AD) I still think SE >> CE. It still doesnt give the mega research necessary towards the end though..

When did you get computers and Peter's UBs up and running in your cities?

Ok, I checked -> Computers at 1660 AD, pretty late.. that could definately be fixed.. I seem to remember trying to set up a bulb beeline ->Physics->Electricity->Radio->Computers but chose to make a few golden ages instead (since I think Fission jumps in and distrubs the beeline)

One major fault was that I popped A LOT of engineers in the beginning.. I think the first 6 Great People were engineers... Thats good of course but 3 GS, 3 GE would be much nicer :)

BTW, I had and idea for a good SE vs CE challenge that would really illustrate the economy types strengths and weaknesses:

Multiplayer, 1 player SE/Philo, 1 player CE/Financial, last person with any cities left has the best economy type :D

Yeah that's pretty late for computers imo. I'm planning on beelining and hopefully will get it sooner than that. :)

Just try to avoid getting Fission in the way of the bulb beeline (I'm too tired to find out what the prereqs are), I'm pretty sure one can bulb directly from Sci Meth to Computers if one is careful.

Computers COULD be online realistically ca 1500 with labs 1530-1550, earlier than that would be pretty amazing (Because I dont think there will be any trading opportunities above Sci Meth at that time).

Still, then you'd need a rocketry beeline but industrialism is also nice since I think there is Aluminium inside the empire...

Yeah, I'll see what I can come up with and post back here.

The problem with this contest is that the SE really cannot compete in the space race. Getting enough tech to win is another story, especially at higher levels where the player has to lightbulb in order to trade.

Well, this is what we're trying to see ;) Intuitively I feel that SE is better for domination whereas CE is better for spacerace, but we shall see...

I really wish acidsatyr would play this one as well, but he's pretty busy with a lot of games :p

Its Difficult, ive played a couple of practise games and i generally hit a bump between about 500-1000AD, this leaves me not launching till about 1800 or so.

Its also a bit of a challenge getting used to warlords and not vanilla which im normally on :)

ill probably end up playing this either in the next day or after new year :)

Hehe, don't use my cruddy 1929 finish as a comparison for SE vs CE :P I don't even win more than 75% on Monarch to begin with.

As to the whole SE vs CE debate, since everyone seems to be in relative agreement that SE-ish gives the best early game power and CE-ish gives the best late game research, maybe instead of debating which "pure" form is best and what even consititutes a pure form, debate the best point and method to transition or hybrid?

Using this challenge scenario, we know we want the earliest possible space race win and domination is out. So when would you switch to cottages?

(Ok, so this still leaves 'never switch' as a valid conversion point, but I think many would be more interested in what scientist/cottage mix gives the best economy, regardless of semantics and if it is considered a pure CE, pure SE, or hybrid.)

Wrong Thread

Hybrid style:

I generally start off building neither cottages nor farms. My first priority is to work resources, build mines, getting a couple of production cities up and running. The capital will generally fall into one of two roles - Heavy production + part time GP farm (in which case it gets farms+mines) or super commerce city (in which case it gets cottages.) In either case it runs specialists when it has nothing important to build.

Outside the capital I tend to run specialists at fp farms and food specials, and generally tend towards cottaging grasslands.

Tibbles is right that the discussion about the transition is more interesting than a basic SE/CE debate, but compare Lilnev's game to DavemcW's. Lilnev uses no SE features, no transition. To compare these game would be interesting (no save from lilnev)

On the other hand the final frontier crew got Education at 500AD on diety.

It seems that to make any useful comparison you have to limit the paramaters, for example, Immortal level domination, can cottages compete with food based econ ?
Monarch space race, can a food based econ compete with cottages?

It seems the econ you need depends on the level and victory condition you have in mind.

A set of head to heads would be good, but they would need tight parameters to make them useful.

SE does not necessarily suck at space race... My poor result in this example game (1888 AD) made me consider what circumstances are pro-SE / pro-CE.

The strength of an SE is the ability to build infrastructure while under slavery. The strength of a CE is, well, cottages. They are really good, as eveyone has probably noticed :)

So, not to seem off topic (since this test is about Monarch with this specific map), I ran a test game as Gandhi / Prince / Marathon so I could get these points clear:


1. Territory. An SE should be able to "tame" territory much more effectively and later in the game (up to 1000 AD) since by growth/whipping new cities can be setup fast. Later than 1000 AD wars are iffy for an early space race.

2. Trading disabled since it depends on diplomacy/luck (the AI doesnt always research well enough to catch up with a space race player). On prince the AI research is next to useless.

3. Effective switching between research/infrastructure building. For a CE this is done by the research slider with Universal Suffrage, but with a SE one switches slavery / caste system. Hence Gandhi, allowing quick switching.

4. Micromanagement. An SE is much more micro-heavy (at least for me) than a CE. Hence marathon speed (yes this also allows quicker conquest, I know..)



With this setup and intensive micromanagement I got a space launch at 1556 AD, my personal best. So at least as far as I'm concerned I consider SE viable for space race.

Taking these observations to the map in question I would assume the best strategy is to use the military power of SE to capture as much territory as possible before ca 1000 AD.

This is of course hard at normal speed but since I think it is clear that the beaker increase in time per city of the CE is more greater, an SE player must leverage their early military potential to even the score.

Get biology as soon as possible (in my test game I got it ca 1120 AD, same turn as Taj Mahal). Use golden ages to grow and increase infrastructure and in between run caste system with aggressive allocation of specialists.

Bulbing is very powerful up to ca Biology/Physics. After that it only augments a strategy already in place and wont "save" ones game..

Would you mind posting your Ghandi / Prince / Marathon starting save? ;)

I can definitely say, 1700's CE beats 1929 SE.

More SE games please. :)

Well, I tend to agree with acidsatyr; your 1700s win is basically a demonstration of SE, whatever you call it. So we already have the 1700s SE as well as the 1700s CE.

Do you really think that if you had avoided cottages you would have done significantly worse?

Didnt have the 4000 BC one, but I had a 3265 BC one where I had taken the Celtic capital (took it with 3 warriors, lol @ the power of prince/marathon :D ).

Hope its alright, no decisions have been made yet regarding economy.. (I did go for polytheism and got hinduism, which is the only right thing to with india :) )

Do you really think that if you had avoided cottages you would have done significantly worse?

Yes. You are welcome to take my 25AD save and try to prove me wrong.

A question to DaveMcW:

I'm tending toward agreeing that cottages are a more flexible late game powerhouse than specialists (at least one is never short of cash then.. I hate the cash shortage of SE), however if I take your 1730 AD save and go into worldbuilder and fix up the city of Minoan (162 per turn beakers out of golden age) to size 21, add harbor/supermarket/theatre/colosseum (for health/happiness) then set caste system /representation i get 176 beakers per turn.

This would point to the fact that both economies are at this stage least equal in an "ideal laboratory environment", so the answer to why CE space race > SE space race must lie in the details, not on a tile per tile comparison for some given city under ideal conditions..

So the question would be, what is it about a CE empire that makes it pull in more beakers in the long run, even though an ideal world-builder comparison points to at least some kind of parity?

Minoan was one of the few cases where the no-specialist variant hurt me. I halted growth at +7 food because I ran out of tiles to work, and specialists weren't allowed. The intense cultural pressure didn't help either.

If you push back the borders and build 10 towns, Minoan easily beats your specialist city.


So the question would be, what is it about a CE empire that makes it pull in more beakers in the long run, even though an ideal world-builder comparison points to at least some kind of parity?

I should know better than to talk theory with specialist-fanatics around. :lol: But here's a couple hints:
1. CE needs less health and happiness investment in the early game.
2. Towns get better civic bonuses in the late game.

Ok, yeah I agree with that. It is hard work to build all the health+happiness buildings in SE cities and yes, the civic bonuses for cottages are very nice..

I get the impression that for a successful CE, cottage growth takes precedence over everything else, i.e. in the early years ignore everything else but getting more and more worked cottages in a city, pushing them toward towns. THEN get universities etc..

Also, I'm not a specialist fanatic, I'm an early space race fanatic (which made me very disappointed when I did so miserably at the Peter/Monarch game) and any technique that would get me faster wins is one I'll use :)

Reason I got stuck with SE is actually a fluke, since I started playing in earnest post 2.08 and I loved Peters cheap expansive workers. SE just naturally followed.

I think I have done worse at CE because I get greedy for city buildings and therefore work a lot of mines/farms to get hammers. I never used to achieve a massive town spam...

May I ask a question of DaveMcW. Using the general strat that you used in this challenge,would you expect to get an earlier victory with space race or with domination? I mean if you made a decision about victory type mid game.

Have you yet come up with a definition for these different economies?


How about that one, if you have only one GP Farm, its CE?

And then again, this game is all about being versatile and making the decisions as the situation calls. In some games it might be that I have no good food site to set up a single GP farm. So its more reasonable to run gp points from multiple cities, and still get very few GP's (If there is very few food resources/rivers). So i'm stuck with cottage economy anyway.

IMO, there is no way to tell what kind of economy will best suit your empire... at least not before you can see what kind of land you're granted in the beginning.

So there is really no point in debating over this topic, since its all situational, and neither economy will triumph over the other in every possible scenario.

SE can use the culture slider for happiness. Even at 20% with theatre/coliseum, that is a good chunk of happiness.

Health is usually easily taken care of with resources. Since a SE player can sustain a larger empire they usually have more resources and can trade for any health resources they don't acquire in their empire.

Yes. You are welcome to take my 25AD save and try to prove me wrong.

Well, that's not a great comparison, because you've already invested significantly in cottages. Plus, I'm not excited about the idea of playing out the tedious part of the game after you've done the interesting part.

But I do see, from looking at the save, why it would be hard to do as well without the cottages. In the late game, you're certainly getting more research, and that's what the space race in this type of game comes down to.

Other victory types are more interesting to me, though.

Tibbles is right that the discussion about the transition is more interesting than a basic SE/CE debate, but compare Lilnev's game to DavemcW's. Lilnev uses no SE features, no transition. To compare these game would be interesting (no save from lilnev).

My saves are in post #24, from 1760 (launch date) and 920 AD (just after Liberalism).

Minoan was one of the few cases where the no-specialist variant hurt me. I halted growth at +7 food because I ran out of tiles to work, and specialists weren't allowed.

OK, I didn't take it quite that far. In fact I let myself run specialists over basic ocean tiles in a couple of cities, generally engineers. I didn't feel like that detracted significantly from its CE-ness.

When I get home this weekend, I'm going to try this game again as a SE. My cottaging skills are better than my specializing, so I may not post the best SE time, but it'll be interesting (at least to me).

A question to everyone who's posted a result: Did you fight one or two wars? I took out both the Egyptians (first) and the Koreans (second), giving me quite a bit of land to work with.

peace,
lilnev

Also Snatty in his 'Never give up 2' thread advocates no cottages *and* no speacialists! using population for the advantage.

It would be interesting to see his take on this map.

No cottages *and* no speacialists, hmm, where is the research going to come from? farms?

Ok guys, I "finished" my SE game. I thought the game was going pretty well around 1000AD, but it turns out it wasn't :( I managed to bring in computers at 1430AD and start getting research institutes up, but it still wasn't enough :(

I really need practice at the late game and going for space race :(

Ok, here are some problems I ran into:

1) Happiness problems due to emancipation. Picking emancipation would have forced me out of caste system, thus crippling my research. However, I was getting 6-8 unhappiness in some of my cities!!! This was really problematic.

2) Problems with research. I realize now that I needed to do 1 of 2 things: 1) Conquer more territory early (preferably taking out Wang as well as Rameses) or growing my cities to a higher pop much earlier. If I had done either of these things I think I would've been better off. I had planned on booming my pop once I got biology. This was a mistake and I ended up growing too late to beat the CE times posted thusfar.

Anyways, here is where I stand:

1) I believe that in order to compete, a SE player is going to need a larger empire than a CE player. By compete I mean get an early space race victory. Better players may disagree, but I would like to see a game as proof. I admit that I'm not the greatest player. I currently win about 40-60on emperor.

2) After fighting against emancipation, I just feel that if going for space race, a player is better off switching over to cottages post democracy. It's just too much of a pain and I really do sense now that cottages are better for early space race anyways. I'm not sure how other players handle emancipation penalties. Again, I admit I'm not the best player and maybe there are other things I could've done.

3) I think when using a SE, a player is better off going for domination from the beginning. Then, after wiping out 2 rivals (or ideally controlling most/all of their continent), can consider going space. With a much larger empire, perhaps it is possible to use mass specialists to bring home a space race victory earlier. Lightbulbing really does lose power late in the game. I used three GSs on computers and I still had to research it for some turns :( :( :(

Anyways, this was a fun game and I learned a lot. I think a better player like acidsatyr could've made a better showing. I just don't have enough practice with the late game :)

Futurehermit:
What was your projected finish date?

I agree on your points, the large empire thing is the saving grace of a SE. The emancipation penalty isnt completely crippling for a large empire because

1. The AI has less territory and hopefully will emancipate later :P
2. More happiness resources
3. No need to make cities uber-huge.. size 19-20 with 6-7 specialists is enough if you have plenty of cities..

I did very poorly on this particular game, but I managed a very early launch with Gandhi using pure SE (I cottaged over everything I conquered) using a deliberately aggressive strategy. I had about 50-55% land at the end.

That game was on prince, however, so it was easier to conquer a lot than it would be on Monarch... At the end of that game I was on 60% culture but was still bringing home ca 150-200 beakers per city (I had ca 12 cities). Capital was at 400-500 and GP farm at perhaps 350 before I watermilled and workshopped it to get the space elevator :)

Also, for a SE late game broadcast towers are important.. Broadway and similar wonders if you can get them, but I think broadcast towers are pretty much the best bet.

Has anyone noticed that broadcast towers require Mass Media, but you can get them without it through the eiffel tower? Rather convenient :)

This thread is absolutely ridiculous,
First of all most of you still don’t get what SE, CE, FE is,
Second there’s 5 players here who can barely get their shi.t together on monarch/emperor yet they are arguing and basing their conclusions on a monarch lvl game that economy one is better than the other
Please !!

SE/FE: More farms, more production. Smart lightbulbing, smart trading. Post constitution can rely on specialists to produce beakers.

Thats how you defined SE/FE, and I'm sure everyone here agrees with that defintion. As far as I am can see there is nothing unclear with the definitions.

This thread is absolutely ridiculous,
First of all most of you still don’t get what SE, CE, FE is,
Second there’s 5 players here who can barely get their shi.t together on monarch/emperor yet they are arguing and basing their conclusions on a monarch lvl game that economy one is better than the other
Please !!

Offering a polite reply when clearly none is called for....

1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.

2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.


As one drops in difficulty, there's a bit more... call it opportunity... for the human player. With sufficient opportunity available, the human player can establish a commerce driven economy which will out perform the alternative based on the metrics agreed on here.

At higher difficulties, there may not be sufficient opportunity to establish the commerce driven economy. Essentially, the commerce driven economy starves, where the alternative gives you playing chances.

That would be pretty disappointing if it is the case - I would hope that the game would continue to reward refinements all the way up the ladder. The different approaches might end up looking very different at the highest level (in other words, is the commerce driven economy being dismissed because it is being shoe horned into the wrong grand strategy? Obviously, I've got no evidence to offer).

The other possibility, of course, is that the farm driven economy is better at all levels, and everybody who hasn't discovered that by now is an idiot, and a marginally competant farm economist would destroy everybody elses games, if only it wasn't so boring. So please stop wasting his bandwidth.

The way I defined it, is because that’s how I see it; SE is just a research part of Farm Economy. Farm Economy is economy which relies on farms for MAJORITY of production, be it from whipping and/or drafting (where farms = units), and as such is destined to run SE.
HOWEVER, if you run SE, it does not mean you are running FE. For example Dave was running SE in majority of first part of game (research standpoint), no matter what other say here, BUT he never run FE. He never relied on farms to help him do production. And I bet he never used slavery in fact, he whipped 10 times, IF that, never used drafting, ETC, ETC. SO, again, FE means you’ll end up with SE , as specialists are natural research booster for FE (how else you’d run research with farms only?). However, SE doesn’t necessarily mean you are running FE in your empire. Therefore when you see FE/SE it doesn’t really mean the same thing.
ALSO, if you are starting your game by cottaging the hell out of your capital, and try to run buearocracy asap, then you are NOT running SE.
If you are doing what I said above to your capital, yet are farming every other city and NOT running any specialists in those cities, then your economy is FE yet you’r using cottages to fuel your research. IF you are running specialists it stops to be CE. PERIOD.

So you see FE is not really SE is not really CE.

Now, why do I think that FE/SE combination is best? Because it allows you to run GREATEST potential production possible in all of your cities. I strongly believe that production >>>>>>>> research. I would gladly give some research power for production. On highest levels you WILL be behind AI’s most of the time, so the question is how many units can you make in smallest amount of time?? Because of the way FE runs, SE comes as only natural solution. Lightbulbing is the name of game. You work in small bursts. You jump ahead of AI for a sec, then you stagnate, then jump again, etc etc. That’s the only way to win most of the games. You are arguing over whether pure CE can build space ship 34 years before SE can on monarch level. damn.

There is no clear cut where “pure” one begins and “pure” other stops , if you were to follow the logic some ppl follow here, everything would fall into hybrid economy, which I think is really stupid.

You could also run FE with almost pure trade route based economy which is what Snaaty is doing, or it seems so, and no matter what he says i don’t agree that that is how you win games on deity (among other crazy things he’s saying)…

Offering a polite reply when clearly none is called for....


Oh im sorry are my words so offensive? Dont cry



1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.


then stop acting like your talking about universal solution. Say, THIS is how this works on Noble/Monarch. Thats it. Thats where story ends.


2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.


And that is a OK too. Then state that it is clear that FE/SE is hard for majority of plp to run, and that most mediocre players should run CE if they want to win. Thats FINE!



As one drops in difficulty, there's a bit more... call it opportunity... for the human player. With sufficient opportunity available, the human player can establish a commerce driven economy which will out perform the alternative based on the metrics agreed on here.

At higher difficulties, there may not be sufficient opportunity to establish the commerce driven economy. Essentially, the commerce driven economy starves, where the alternative gives you playing chances.

That would be pretty disappointing if it is the case - I would hope that the game would continue to reward refinements all the way up the ladder. The different approaches might end up looking very different at the highest level (in other words, is the commerce driven economy being dismissed because it is being shoe horned into the wrong grand strategy? Obviously, I've got no evidence to offer).


The reason why cottage research doesnt work on highest lvls is because it is LINEAR. You will never beat AI under normal conditions.



The other possibility, of course, is that the farm driven economy is better at all levels, and everybody who hasn't discovered that by now is an idiot, and a marginally competant farm economist would destroy everybody elses games, if only it wasn't so boring. So please stop wasting his bandwidth.

spoken like a true genius, now you get it

A large component of success with early space race, which depends on advanced technologies coming into play is trading. Lightbulbing becomes much more powerful on higher levels (Monarch and above) because the AI can research competently.

However, as difficulty drops, value of lightbulbing drops. Therefore the trend that CE is better on lower levels. I myself have won a few emperor/immortal games but the tech never got higher than riflemen/trebs by the time it was over. This tech level is easily achievable by pretty much only bulbing/trading.

Acidsatyr: At least I agree with your SE/FE/CE definition, and I was operating under the assumption that everyone else agreed with that definition too. No need to get worked up.

Re: difficulty level. For early space race victories the lower levels (prince/monarch) are much more interesting for me, because the key element is not waging war (of course its always a factor, but not the main one). For higher levels warfare becomes important, and lets face it, warfare is more random than empire building. All the various AI leaders and their personalities. Bad dicerolls. Stupid mistakes such as moving a stack one tile wrong etc.

One can hone ones skills to get pretty consistent space wins at a certain date on prince/monarch, but on emperor/immortal I'd say the winning date pretty much depends by 200-300 years on who your neighbors are..

A large component of success with early space race, which depends on advanced technologies coming into play is trading. Lightbulbing becomes much more powerful on higher levels (Monarch and above) because the AI can research competently.

The implications being that you (almost) never use a GP for any purpose other than lightbulbing, at least until the point where parity has been achieved? And likewise that GP had better be a scientist, or your winning chances take a serious hit?

Also that if you are in Always War, or No Tech Trading, or err such that your trading opportunities are inadequate, then you are just toast?

Does the AI have Alphabet by the time you need it for trading, or is that a beeline tech (it may be any way, if early war is an essential component)?


I'm getting the impression that, despite the intents of the designers, if you play at a high enough level of difficulty, all winning games use essentially the same strategy (especially flow up the tech tree). Is that impression accurate, a consequence of a limited audience of advanced players contributing to this discussion, the focus of the discussion (on best, or fastest, or whatever), or just that I've completely overlooked the variety possible within the discussed constraints?

Well, I meant that for an early space race you can shave maybe 30+ turns off by trading. Getting techs such as Plastics, Assembly line etc. through trades is good, and if you have high enough production capacity /aluminium monopoly you can trade the AI up to a high tech level without getting beat to the spaceship.

For always war games I'd be guessing an early space race would be impossible, but with no tech trading I'm sure a pre 1750 launch could be doable with a large enough empire.

When I play at higher levels my number one rule is pretty much to avoid extensive infrastructure building until I'm sure my empire is robust enough to deal with the AI. In the beginning, especially on a crowded map, one has to fight a heavily at the start.

I suppose the rule (which i've seen stated by a few expert players) is get 1-2 opponents with swords/axes, 1 (luckily 2) with catapults and then if necessary continue with trebs etc. After that ones empire should be robust enough to dig down and concentrate on the space race. Now I've found that when I'm building an army large enough to actually do this, research tanks, and the best, by far, way around this is to get a few GS and lightbulb..

These techs can be traded for useful techs and even sold (to pay for upkeep etc.). But, yeah, as far I can see, on higher levels one better concentrate on military tech (and of course the philosophy /education/liberalism path were applicable) and just beat the living daylights out of everyone. If one doesnt like war one shouldnt play emperor and above.

I know some people have pulled of peaceful deity wins, but I think my nerves would hold trying to play deity without attacking the AI. Left alone their power can easily be 5-10 times higher than ones own.

I'm sure some people have a different opinion but I think trying out a non-militaristic strategy on immortal/deity will get you stomped.. I find it fun on lower levels (mainly prince) to muck around with different gambits/strategies, since on doesnt have to keep on ones toes there..

1) If the bulk of the community is playing Noble/Prince/Monarch, then "which economy is better on Emperor?" is a question of no practical value.

then stop acting like your talking about universal solution. Say, THIS is how this works on Noble/Monarch. Thats it. Thats where story ends.


But isn't part of the question if whatever turns out to be the optimal space race economy is the optimal space race economy for all difficulty levels? So it would get tweaked by map and settings somewhat, but it'd still be a basline to work from.

Let's just say someone comes up with some dynamite nonFE economy on Prince that gives a space race win 100 turns earlier than any prior method. Sure, higher levels you'll need more production and that would likely lessen your 100 turn lead. But if you knew this particular economy worked so well, wouldn't you try to work around it first rather than dump it as Prince only?

Also, you dismiss much of this because it's discussion about a Monarch level game. But since you can rocket ahead on Emperor, shouldnt the lead be even wider on Monarch?
Since none of us who tried the SE approach managed to do so, we wished to discuss it. You've shown it's 100% doable for domination. It's the space race bit that seems to be sticking.


2) If CE's survive clumsy play better than the alternatives, then that alone is a useful piece of information.

And that is a OK too. Then state that it is clear that FE/SE is hard for majority of plp to run, and that most mediocre players should run CE if they want to win. Thats FINE!


I freely admit I'm a mediocre player. And it does appear a FE/SE is harder to run, fine. But as a mediocre player, I do wish to improve my game, so I don't want to just stick with CE because it's easier. I want to practice with whichever economy will improve my game in the long run whever it be CE, SE, or hybrid. And that's why I read threads by better than mediocre players who are discussing what works best.

As far as I can see, acidsatyr is very good at utilizing great people to get valuable techs, trading them to achieve parity, while at the same time managing to keep up military production so as to keep expanding his empire, making it large and thus offsetting the AI production bonus by gaining more land..

I am not convinced fully of his claims that a FE/SE is universally "better", at least for faster space races and other non conquest/domination wins on ALL levels. On higher levels sure, I agree that FE/SE offers a lot of advantages. I dont know how he translates that into assuming that CE is inferior for space wins on Monarch or even Prince. Perhaps he has played a lot of space race games on Monarch and gets consistent 1400 AD launches... I have no idea...

Since it seems he dismisses anything below immortal, I'd say he is in a sense correct though, since military prowess is paramount on these levels. Techniques which are good at lower levels wont necessarily do well at all on immortal/deity, since the player wont survive to implement them, thats the point, I suppose.

(e.g. any kind of early Wonder based technique, apart from perhaps getting 1 key wonder such as great library, is often doomed to fail since