What do you guys think of running a specialist economy without the pyramid (i.e. representation)? Is it feasible for higher levels, such as monarch or emperor level? Also, in your food rich cities, is it better to:

(1) build or slave granary first, or library first?

(2) Assign two scientists when you reach the happiness limit or right away?

(3) Let the city governor handle citizen allocation?

On an alternate note, what should you do to ensure maximum city and cottage growth under a cottage economy?

Mutax2003

If your philosophical, I think you can get by without the pyramids because it's all about the great people. If you've got a couple of cities with an abundance of food and philosophical trait, it can be made to work.

As to your points:

1) This is going to depend on level difficulty. On prince and above, I'd say the library is more important. Due to the lower early happiness levels plus whipping infrastructure, your cities will grow back to their happiness level on an even keel without the granary, at least in the early game.

2) You still want your cities to grow, so don't stagnate the city just to get your specialists. Having an unhappy citizen or two is ok because you'll be whipping them away for infrastructure.

3) At your own risk. I don't let the city governor do anything for me.

Regarding the alternate note, if a city is below the happiness level, I try to keep the growth in cottage cities at higher than +2 food/turn while working as many cottages as possible. A grassland farm or two can help with this to increase the growth rate plus they're nice to have available in the event you want to whip in a cottage city. I guess some folks here would never say whip in a cottage city but when your hammers are <5/turn, it takes too long for my liking to build infrastructure. But that's just me.

I guess some folks here would never say whip in a cottage city...
Those folks are crazy.

Humans are the most renewable resource in the game (and in real life too).

ofcourse it can be done.

Try the Philosophy Slingshot going through Codes of Law, Without the Priamids Stragety you generally fund your research by lightbulbing Greatpeople.

yes it can be done and i'm starting to change my mind about going for the pyramids thanks to acidsatyr :D

lol!
The day will come when people will realize that SE is not inferior to CE, rather superior!
Why people want to do something thats less powerfull?

Why people want to do something thats less powerfull?

Because its less micromanagement and seen as easier.

in response 2 ur first question - yes. simple as that. build librarys asap and assign 1-2 scientists when grown 2 happiness cap. most of research will come from lightbulbing so representation is not as important as u might think

in response 2 ur first question - yes. simple as that. build librarys asap and assign 1-2 scientists when grown 2 happiness cap. most of research will come from lightbulbing so representation is not as important as u might think

You are absolutely right, Representation's bonus is greatly exaggerated by some people.

Consider the amount of effort and the benefits from the first 5 GS that are made in the game.

The first GS costs 100 GPP, the second 200 and so on. The first 5 will cost a total of 1500 GPP. If all these 1500 GPPs are from ordinary scientists run from several libraries then it will cost 500 scientist turns and hence 1000 food to get all 5 GS.

Assuming each GS is worth 1500 beakers, whether used as an academy, settled or lightbulbed, we get the following benefits

Beakers from 500 scientist turns = 1500 x 1.25 = 1875 with library bonus
Beakers from 5 GS = 7500
Total = 9375 beakers

That is an effective rate of return of 9.3 beakers per food spent on a specialist. Of course that food can come from a grassland farm and hence you can argue that the farm gives 9.3 beakers per turn over this period, beating the research produced by cottages and hamlets etc by an enormous margin.

A Philosophical leader will get an even better rate of return since he needs to only spend 250 scientist turns and 500 food to get the 5 GS. He therefore gets less beakers from the scientists, only 937. So in total he'll have 937 + 7500 = 8437 from 500 food. That is an astounding rate of 16.9 beakers per food over this period.

Adding Representation for the whole period would give another 1875 beakers (in the non Philosophical case) which is about a 20% increase in total beakers and not the 100% increase that some people assume. This explains why taking the Pyramids gambit can actually slow early research down rather than speed it up. Getting more cities working scientists earlier gives a much faster return at this critical time.

^^Definitely true and nice stats to back the argument up. Actually it's even better, you get the techs (especially philosophy) fast so you can trade them away for other techs and good money. Essentially you get around 70% of the techs between alphabet and education for free (with heavy trading). Typically i find myself researching cheap but valuable techs like literature, Drama , Col, Construction and the not so cheap civil service myself, the rest i get in return for philosophy.

Pyramids come in handy before alphabet (also for the happiness bonus), when researching civil service and after education.

the problem is in the heavy trading involved.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a convincted whore, planning my trades in advance.

But at some points in the game, you won't have good trading opportunities.
In every single game I had a point where I could only trade to 1 or 2 AIs, and at some points, they have nothing to offer.

It's mostly true at prince and monarch level (below, it's probably worse but I didn't play those levels for a while). At emperor, I wasn't able to get good value for CoL and philosophy, and ended up being very backward after a while (was first there and founded those confucianism and taoism, but just didn't get good techs for those).

My point is it's probably a better high level strat, but not so good at lower levels.

Yes no good tech trading partners make this strat more difficult.I don't see it that often but it's problematic if this happens. You probably have to go to war and beeline for optics in this case or do something smart with religion to get them pleased. Then again if you're rather isolated with uncooperative neighbours on emperor 2.08 you're in for a very difficult game anyway. I've won a few times on emperor (still losing most of them) but never in a situation as bleak as this, have to become a better and more war loving player for that i think.

As for getting bad value for Philosophy, i usually research Drama and literature fast, the combination of phil+drama will get something out of them.
Techs that i get this way are also traded of course. I can usually keep approximate tech parity until liberalism in this way.

^^yep, starting an emperor game with stalin and kublai kahn as neighbours made the game quite difficult. I lost it, so I won't say it's easy :lol:

Indeed, perfectly understandable :lol:. Keep trying, so do i.

The day will come when people will realize that SE is not inferior to CE, rather superior!
Why people want to do something thats less powerfull?

Is an SE always more powerful? How about in the case of the Financial civs? What if you have no trading partners? And what if your games tend to last until the later eras? Is an SE always more powerful at that stage?

Of course it is, look at what financial civ does for you. It forces you to lock all your cities in a low food output state. It stops you from abusing all those wonderful civics like Nationalism and slavery - you need to look a the production as well. How many times did you drafted multiple units from a single heavily cottaged city?
It effectively stops you from using culture slider. Its either culture or you research.
I never, ever build cottages pre Civil Service, if i ever build them. And by that time financial is a waste of trait.

Past republic/biology it is more powerful and flexible than heavily cottage based economy. Personal and other games, as well as theory had proven this many times.

But it is little harder to play it. Cottages you plant and forget about them.

acidsatyr's SE crusade continues apace, I see. Thread by thread, the CE-enslaved masses are liberated from their cruel and inflexible master. ;)

LOL! I really don't care how people choose to play their games, I am just telling the facts! You play whatever you feel is best.

BTW, I used to treat financial as the best next thing after the slice of bread! Then i realized there is far superior way to play this game

LOL! I really don't care how people choose to play their games, I am just telling the facts! You play whatever you feel is best.

BTW, I used to treat financial as the best next thing after the slice of bread! Then i realized there is far superior way to play this game

Keep up the crusade. I don't know if the SE is *always* the best choice, but its certainly good to shake people out of their usual playing style, and the continuing debate helps to keep this forum lively and informative.

The facts are running a mix of specialists and cottages beats either pure CE or SE 90% of the time :P

Go acidsatyr :)

The times when I question the SE is when I get a low-food (i.e., few food resources), but high grasslands (without a lot of rivers/lakes) map. Very hard to farm prior to CS.

The facts are running a mix of specialists and cottages beats either pure CE or SE 90% of the time :P

very true.

adapting to the map, leader, etc. is the best strat 100% of the time :)

The facts are running a mix of specialists and cottages beats either pure CE or SE 90% of the time :P

true only to extend where you end up running cottages from conquered AIs during some portion of mid game :p so in that sense its never pure one or another

for every other time period, the more farms the better

Hey if your not going for the Piramids, for the specialist economy, then has anyone tried for a Constitution beeline/Slingshot? I have a couple of ideas for the Constitution beeline.

A) Tech Quickly to Liberlism and pickup Nationalism as free tech and while your researching pop a couple of Great Merchants to lightbulb Constitution. Remember to Ignore Guilds and Fuedalism Techs to prevent your Great merchant from lightbulbing banking and economics.

B) Go through the Religious Path all the way to Divine right, make sure to research Literature, Drama and Music, Lightbulb Nationalism with a couple of Great Artist and Lightbulb Constitution with Great Merchants.

Or you can Ignore Mansonry all together and beeline to Nationalism through Philosophy and lightbulb Nationalism with Your Great Artist, the bad side about ignoring Mansonry is that you can't build any Seige weapons.

^^^The things is though, imo SE lends itself best to domination wins and in that case you will generally want to be wrapping up the game around the time where constitution would be coming into effect :D

^^^The things is though, imo SE lends itself best to domination wins and in that case you will generally want to be wrapping up the game around the time where constitution would be coming into effect :DI think the SE is also good for space races once you have constitution and biology just switch between heavy production with mines/slavery and research with caste system/scientists. So the constituton slingshot would be nice. I learned the same today from an Acidsatyr post he sometimes saves a great merchant to do it. Problem i see is
that making a GM is a trade off, you would rather run scientists, also when the GL is build somewhere else it is possible that the city with the merchant specialists never gets to build a GM. Still when really focusing on this it can be powerful i think.

For sure, I'm not disagreeing :) I just don't play space race as often. I'm going to have to give that a try more often :lol:

I've always been too lazy for the domination thing. Seems that it might be easiest on high levels though since you have to go to war anyway :lol:.

Yeah, sometimes I get lazy and fall back on spacerace. I just find domination more exciting though :)

Instead using one strategy, I use them all. One city runing SE, all farms and what not to pump out GP, build national epic and shaspear theater. One city cottage everywhere to get money and science, build wall street and oxford univeristy. Two cities with mines and workshops to pump out units, one with iron works and red cross, the other with heroic epic and west point. Why pigeon hole yourself in only 1 strategy when you can use them all.

^^city specialization of course everyone should do in every game. no one is debating that.

however, SE = research primarily comes from lightbulbed great people, usually scientists and CE = research primarily comes from commerce and the science slider.

Instead using one strategy, I use them all. One city runing SE, all farms and what not to pump out GP, build national epic and shaspear theater. One city cottage everywhere to get money and science, build wall street and oxford univeristy. Two cities with mines and workshops to pump out units, one with iron works and red cross, the other with heroic epic and west point. Why pigeon hole yourself in only 1 strategy when you can use them all.
What you've just described is the standard minimum base for any CE, SE, or hybrid. The question is what you do with the rest of your cities.

What you've just described is the standard minimum base for any CE, SE, or hybrid. The question is what you do with the rest of your cities.

Thats what I want ask you guys that runing SE. My Great person comes from at most 2 other cities other than GP farm city. And thats very early in game. Once national epic is built, The only city thats ever gonna produce Great person is the GP farm city. even if I put all other cities to specialists, they still can't catch up to GP farm city. So those GP points other cities accumulated is all wasted. So what you guys do with those cities that can never produce great person?

Thats what I want ask you guys that runing SE. My Great person comes from at most 2 other cities other than GP farm city. And thats very early in game. Once national epic is built, The only city thats ever gonna produce Great person is the GP farm city. even if I put all other cities to specialists, they still can't catch up to GP farm city. So those GP points other cities accumulated is all wasted. So what you guys do with those cities that can never produce great person?

This effect is only true if you have a GP farm that is much stronger than your other cities and then you build the NE (+100% GPP) there effectively doubling its effect. That GP fram will then dominate the production of GP. If however your leader is Philosophical (+100 GPP) or you run the Pacificism civic (+100% GPP) for a long time then the other cities can still produce some of the GPs since the relative advantage of the NE is significantly reduced.

If you have several cities that are nearly equal then the one with the NE will produce roughly double the GPs that the other cities do (assuming we are considering GPs after the easy to get first 5). Later in the game running Mercantilism and building the Statue of Liberty can make other cities more competative with the GP farm. In my games with a SE or Hybrid economy the GP farm typically produces 30% of my GPs with 5 or 6 other cities contributing at least 1 GPs and some making 2 or 3.

The calculation whether your GP farm or some other city will produce a given GP is:

R1/R2 < (N+2)/2

This can be rewritten as

N > 2*R1/R2 - 2

Where:
R1 = the rate of GPP in your GP farm
R2 = the rate in the other city
N = the number of GP already produced

Math Alert:

Let
N = the number of GP already produced
R1 = the rate of GPP in your GP farm (city 1)
R2 = the rate in the other city
T1 = the time spent by city 1 producing N GP
L1 = the time left for producing the next GP in city 1 immediately after the Nth GP is produced
L2 = the time left for city 2

Note: City 2 will produce the next GP if and only if
Eqation #1: L2 < L1

T1 = the total number of GPP that city 1 has produced divided by the rate:

T1 = (100 + 200 + 300 + ... N * 100) / R1

this is a standard arithmetic series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_sequence) and can be rewritten

Eqation #2: T1 = 100*(N)(N+1)/2*R1

Now lets calculate L1 & L2:

L1 = the cost of the next GP divided by the rate for city 1, so:

Eqation #3: L1 = 100*(N+1)/R1

L2 = the cost of the next GP minus the accumulated GPP that it hasn't spent while city 1 was producing the first N GPs (i.e. R2 * T1) all divided by the rate for city 2:

Eqation #4: L2 = (100*(N+1) - R2 * T1)/R2

So, substituting the results from equations 1 - 4:

(100*(N+1) - R2 * (100*(N)(N+1)/2*R1))/R2 < 100*(N+1)/R1

Ugly :cry:

But note that each term has a factor of 100 and also each term has a factor of (N+1) so we can pull them out:

(1 - R2*N/2*R1)/R2 < 1/R1

Much nicer :cool:

Now we can multiply by both denominators giving

R1(1 - R2*N/2*R1) < R2

Multiplying through on the term on the left:

R1 - R2*N/2 < R2

Solve for R1:

R1 < R2 + R2*N/2

R1 < R2(N+2)/2

This could be useful as is, but I prefer to get the R terms on the same side:

R1/R2 < (N+2)/2

Or, as noted above, we can solve for N:

2 * R1/R2 < N+2

2 * R1/R2 -2 < N

Or

N > 2 * R1/R2 -2

QED :king:


For example, if your GP farm produces 46 GPP and your other city produces 12 then

N > 2*46/12 - 2 = 92/12 - 2 = 5.66

so the other city will produce the 6th GP rather than your GP farm.

Note that this assumes that you both cities started production of GP on the same turn (not very likely) but it still works as a decent estimate due to rounding.

Also, this only works for the first 10 GP since after that the cost goes up by 200 per GP rather than the earlier 100. If you want to know the calculation for GP 11-20 it looks like this:

R1/R2 < 1 + (N^2 + N - 55)/(2N - 8) :eek:

Solving for N in this case isn't pretty. (And it only gets uglier for GP 21 - 30.) I will leave that as homework.

*Looks around* Hey, where did everybody go?

:rofl: !!!!!

R1/R2 < 1 + (N^2 + N - 55)/(2N - 8) :eek:

i don't get why your formula for 11 to 20 GP looks this ugly. since you pull out the 100 in your proof after you substituted. the same must happen with the 200, the 300, etc. because the cap is the same for all cities and therefore your formula for T1 must be T1 = 200*N*(N+1)/(2*R1). Same for L1 = 200*(N+1)/R1 and L2 = (200*(N+1) - R2 * T1)/R2. In conclusion you cann pull out the 200 out of the formula.

The 200 only applies to the GPs produced after the 10th one. The formula for T1 takes the 100 as a factor because that is the difference between each of the the first 10 terms. But after 10 the factor is 200. So, if you consider T2 as the new time, that would be expressed as

200(N)(N+1)/2*R1

only if the 200 were the constant difference between all terms. Since it is different for the first 10 terms, this formula essentially doubles the time for those GPs, so we need to subtract that time from the total:

T2 = 200(N)(N+1)/2*R1 - 5500/R1

(You can calculate manually that 100 + 200 + 300 + ... + 1000 = 5500.)

You are correct that the 200 will factor out of this, but the problem is that the (N+1) no longer does.

EDIT: Crap, I just realized that this formula doesn't work. It gives the 11th term as 2200 where it is actually 1200. Hmm. I will have to look at that again, but I think it still winds up pretty ugly.