The title really says it all.

Whenever I can get the pyramids I switch to representation, go for CoL and Caste System and pump Scientists like crazy.

But it's the only way I know how to run SE, and I've heard others saying it's possible without the pyramids.

So.... How?

Do everything the same, except you only research half as fast.

Yes you can win, no it isn't much fun.

I agree its still possible albeit - at least on higher difficultlies - in an altered form. In situations with no mids (and I have stopped chopping it out on sans-stone starts the way I sometimes did in my strict SE days) there is still often potential, given enough food and non-cottage commerce, for a strong SE even if it is a bit of a hybrid. I think that without mids (and often even with them) your long term planning should include a transition to a more cottage reliant system, gradually phasing down to your 1-2 best GP farms.

This type of strategy can be formulated in a number of ways, depending on geography, diplo situation, etc.
Just a few ideas:
-I would still consider running two scientists in every city that can support them at some early point to keep tech afloat. These cities can be transitioned to cottage cities or production cities when it is expedient. Using specialists instead of early cottages trades long term gain for a short term leverage, even without Rep.
-Maximize trade routes to give yourself some financial breathing room. Some combination of good scouting, currency, the GLH and/or ToA, good diplo, harbors, etc. (Btw, this stuff can and should be done on CE as well of course, I'm just talking about prioritization.)
-Captured territory often makes great cottage land even if your early core cities are still more SE oriented. Let the AIs work those cottages for you.
- A lot of an SEs strength is not the beakers or gold or whatever they produce, but the extra GPs they produce. It is important to manage their creation a lot more than just "pile as many GPPs into a city from as many different sources and hope I don't get a GArtist."
The extra GPs, especially if micromanaged to produce certain ones, can be employed in a lot of different ways. I won't go into them all here but I suggest you keep your bulb list close at hand. Heres one if you need it.


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I hope this helps but I want to reiterate that I am no longer of the opinion that a super strict SE is optimal without the mids except in some rare cases, though I'm sure Obsolete would have something to say about that.

IMO, with the pyramids you don't have to bulb as much and can settle specialists and tech pretty darn well (actually, I find I can get higher BPT via settling than my CE until liberalism/printing press come into play and the cottages take off). If you don't have them, I'd endorse mostly bulbing (maybe using a bureaucracy capitol with cottages as a boost). Bulbing will only give you a lead for so long and eventually the ability of a bulbing strategy sags in the renaissance. That implies that at some point along the way you'll want to expand via war ;).

I bet great players who manage pacifism + caste can probably do a settling strategy without the mids and keep up, but I doubt that could keep up with the much simpler strategy of just using cottages.

As Dave said, do everything the same you just don't get the boost nearly as early.

I'e found that the 'mids are available awfully late even on higher levels though:)

Hmmm.....

I guess the question is whether a Specialist dominated economy is viable without Representation.

I've personally started leaning towards hybrid recently, but I've always enjoyed that massive tech lead that you can get with the mids.

So, is the best strategy with non-mids SE the bulb-pop beeline, or does it still make more sense to settle a super-science city?

Settling is only really good if aiming for the long game... But why are you aiming for the long game if you are playing primarly a SE??(Hint: CE is usually better in the extreme long game).

Abbie,

It's extremely possible to run a SE without the mids. I've done this effectively in my games through immortal. It just takes a lot of practice.

In response to the bulb vs super science city. I like the super science city. Either way, I usually just bulb once in the game, to knock out most of Liberalism. Obviously without the mids a settled great scientist is only about 70% as effective as with the mids (1h 6b vs 1h 9b), so bulbing is very reasonable without the mids. I would recommend picking out future great science cities and building academies though, over bulbing or settling.

But it's the only way I know how to run SE, and I've heard others saying it's possible without the pyramids.

So.... How?

Play a Philosophical leader. There's no way to guarantee you can get the Pyramids, but there is a way to guarantee what leader traits you have.

I don't really run cottages much anymore. If building the pyramids isn't realistic, warfare with neighbors certainly should be. Gather land, war efficiently, build the Great Wall. The Great Wall will go a long way into seeing what your opposition is researching by settling that initial great spy. After that, use bulbs and effective diplomacy to maximize trading options to stay viable in tech. Keep the top military so you can bully. Free religion is probably your best bet for religious civics to keep trading partners maximized.

Keep cities coastal and possibly pursue the colossus, ToA, or Gr Lt house. While these wonders will pale in comparison to the pyramids, they'll make up some ground.

Heriditary Rule can keep happiness high to run lots of farms + scientists, then you can switch to caste system to run even more scientists while starving cities. Research goes up while population goes down -> this will reduce maintenance costs. Without the 'mids, a lot more micro-management is needed but it does provide a lot of flexibility. Cottages are a much easier solution. Build cottages, queue up standard builds (happiness, health, and research) and then leave them on auto-pilot. It's all a matter of preference.

Occasionally, I'm willing to cottage my capital and run a SE without the 'mids. Farm and run specialists everywhere else. But even that is pretty rare these days for me.

I think a SE, run correctly, can go toe to toe with a CE for the duration of the game. Run correctly is the hard part; a lot more needs to go right for you than it does in a CE. Once the cottages are built, they'll just grow and once you hit free speech, universal suffrage, it's pretty tough to match that hammer and research output, but it can be done.

Spend the 500 hammers taking over a few cities.

When going for a cultural victory, a SE and the Sistine Chapel make a potent combination.

SE without the pyramid means you have to get ALOT of farms and monarchy/CoL early. You will need to run more scientists to tech well enough however this will actually get you faster GPs. HR means you have no happy can and can grow vertically pretty high. You will have to make sure you get graneries/harbors/grocers/aqueducts for health.

Doable, but you need a different approach.

Short answer; more whipping and less caste system (alternate).

SE without the pyramid means you have to get ALOT of farms and monarchy/CoL early. You will need to run more scientists to tech well enough however this will actually get you faster GPs. HR means you have no happy can and can grow vertically pretty high. You will have to make sure you get graneries/harbors/grocers/aqueducts for health.

Doable, but you need a different approach.

Absolutely right. Many people think that not only are the Pyramids a waste of time and hammers but that Representation is a lot weaker than HR in the early game. It is easy to research to Monarchy in the time it takes to build the Pyramids. And if you REX while researching to Monarchy instead of building the Pyramids you can have several more cities. From there it is one small step to CoL and you can continue to REX or start turning on your neighbours and expand by conquest.

HR allows any of your good cities to continue to grow until the health caps are reached. That can often mean the difference between having a size 17 city under HR versus a size 11 under Representation. Also HR continues to give a controllable bonus to any and all your cities while the Representation only affects 6 or so (depends on map size) afterwhich they are on their own. Furthermore the Representation bonus skips around to your largest cities so it can be annoying when your 5th through to 10th cities are nearly all the same size and the bonus comes and goes. That means that in the critical period of the game from the late Classical, through the Medieval and into the early Renaissance the HR solution will be working a lot more tiles than the Representation one, and probably running more specialists even if they do not have the +3 beakers bonus.

Let's address another myth. The extra beakers from Representation do not double your research, nothing like that; unless that is, all your research would otherwise come from a few scientists and the Research slider is permanently at 0%. That is not an efficient way to run your empire. It is better to run the slider as high as you can in which case commerce will dilute the effect from the bonus beakers. And anyway as I've shown in other threads the equivalent beakers gained from the 3 GPPs from a scientist are at least 5 times as valuable as the extra 3 from Representation. So a more accurate estimate would be that a scientist with Representation is worth 16% more than one without (true up to the first 5 GPs). Obviously if you can run 16% more scientists under HR (due to larger cities or more cities) then Representation is not better, and it is easy to see that an HR empire can run a lot more depending on how it is played. That is why experienced SE players don't bother with the Pyramids, a) it slows you down and b) HR is the better civic anyway.

Note this situation is no longer true later in the game when there are other sources of happiness and once the GPP cost of GPs rises. Then the beakers from Representation begins to be a major contributor to a SE. At that stage there are more specialists and many cities will not be producing useful GPPs (those that can make a GP). Also there will be more settled GPs and GGs by that time including a few captured from other civs. Strangely enough the time that Representation becomes better than HR for a SE is just about when Constitution is being researched :lol: So ignore the Pyramids and beeline Constitution (by lightbulbing towards Liberalism) and you can have a powerful SE running Representation in the late game, when it really counts.

As madscientist says a different approach is required, but it's the best general approach at that stage of the game anyway. With HR your larger cities can get a lot of beakers from commerce as well as run scientists. Running Slavery as well as HR means most cities and especially the big ones with plenty of food will have a lot of infrastructure (granary, courthouse, library, marketplace, forge maybe multiple temples and monasteries) This infrastructure means that the Research slider is usually at 50% or more and lots of specialists can be run even if they are of different types. To keep the slider high several tricks can be used to raise gold and fund deficit research. These include, building wealth, running merchants, selling techs and trading resources and dummy building wonders.

I think people are missing some of the obvious issues here.
If you build the pyramids, you may get about 3 GEs to pop. That's 3 other wonders you can RUSH.

So getting 4 wonders in total for the price of 1...

Good ones....

Is certainly worth quite a bit don't you think?

I think people are missing some of the obvious issues here.
If you build the pyramids, you may get about 3 GEs to pop. That's 3 other wonders you can RUSH.

So getting 4 wonders in total for the price of 1...

Good ones....

Is certainly worth quite a bit don't you think?

On the other hand, every GE you get that's one less GSpy (to steal techs), Prophet (Gold from a shrine), Scientist (Academy or vital bulb), or Merchant (GOLD). Sure the GE is valuable for numerous things but the point of the thread is running a SE without early representation from the pyramids.

You can also argue the pyramids are invaluable for a war monger because of early access to police state.

On the other hand, every GE you get that's one less GSpy (to steal techs), Prophet (Gold from a shrine), Scientist (Academy or vital bulb), or Merchant (GOLD). Sure the GE is valuable for numerous things but the point of the thread is running a SE without early representation from the pyramids.

You can also argue the pyramids are invaluable for a war monger because of early access to police state.

Absolutely right again :D

You can't have your cake and eat it. The first GP only costs 100 GP but you can only have one of them, if it's a GE then it can't be a GS and so on... Those early cheap GPs are just as much a resource as forests are for chopping.

For me the Pyramids is just a useful source of 2 GE GPPs, which is not to be sneered at but never worth the 500 hammers.

And then as you say Police State can be invaluable to a warmonger in the middle game with a huge stack of drafted rifles and cannons. The only thing stopping you from a massive war with your neighbours is the crippling WW and at that time you only have jails to give 25% relief and then the very expensive culture slider. Police State gives another 50% relief and that can be worth 8 happiness or more in an intensive war. There is no substitute for actually researching Fascism and building Mt Rushmore to completely remove the spectre of WW but before that time the Pyramids is superb and highly valued.

There's a cost to growing big under HR, and that cost comes in several forms:

1) maintenance of higher city pop

2) maintenance of military units used to bring happiness

3) food allocated to city growth


Under Representation, the saved cost on factor 3) can be used to gain more hammers through whipping (or working higher yield tiles).

The saved cost on factor 2) frees military units for other purposes, which allows a bigger portion of the army to be allocated to active duty.

The saved cost on factor 1) allows city maintenance to be spent instead on small cities rather than large cities. If those small cities can get below the happy cap without extra help, then they can carry the economy instead of larger cities.

*snip*

UncleJJ,

You talk about growing cities large. Under a Rep. SE, I purposfully leave cities small. I've had multiple size 4 cities pumping out nearly 20 beakers per turn with just a Library. This can be achieved with a quick whip and a short-regrowth time. Early in the game, that can be about 1/4 of your entire empire's research. Plop down 3 or 4 cities with the intent of only building a granary and library and running 2 Scientists, and you can double or nearly triple your tech rate without sacrificing a whole lot.

With Representation I can make some smaller cities incredibly useful to my civilization. Also, I can incorporate the starve-the-city-with-specialists-while-I-get-1-hammer-for-no-whipping-hammer-penalty strategy. I feel that the power of Representation is the ability to manage your empire with smaller cities, where as HR is the ability to manage your empire with larger cities.

And lets not forget that Mercantilism can come very early if you focus on it. With a 20 city empire, a simple swap to Mercantilism means 20*3 or 60 extra beakers bare minimum. If you have a library in every city (I usually do) that's 60*1.25, or 75 extra beakers. If you make your specialists work as scientists, then that's 120*1.25, or 150 extra beakers. Without Representation, not so much.

HR is NOT greater than Rep for a SE. First off, it takes very long to grow to a size 17 city. Second, I can probably fit 3-4 size 4 cities in the same area you can fit 2 size 17 cities, and again, they take less time to get up to speed. Third, the pyramids aren't that expensive if you're Industrious, which is quickly becoming my favourite trait.

To be honest, I think Representation is so powerful that it's actually overpowered.

Representation off the Pyramids is a very powerful tool, and should be used for a SE game. That is how I do it.

But there are plenty of times when a SE works best yet you miss the pyramids (such as having to remove a very annoying Zulu neighbor early). No need to restart or give up. Farms and HR/CoL can certainly work very nicely also.

Justinian's university shows a good SE example without pyramids. I don't think he USun built a single cottage in that game. Unfortunately all the screenshots were gone from that thread, as well as the saved games.
In short, what he did was focusing on high commerce tiles (gold mines) to fund rapid REX, utilizing a spiritual leader to alternate caste and slavery, and bulb technologies with GS and trade around to keep up with tech rate of Deity AIs.
My experience it that the higher you go in the levels, the more important bulbing and trading is. Spiritual or philosophical leaders are great for SE regardless of the pyramids, but even financial leaders will do well to run some specialists in one city.

BTW, on emperor and above I rarely self research Monarchy. I research code of laws and trade for Monarchy. I think most AIs prioritize Monarchy and code of laws is usually easy to trade around.

Unfortunately all the screenshots were gone from that thread, as well as the saved games.


The saves must still be there. The screenshots were deleted when civfanatics image database was hacked. I really have to use the saves and fix the missing pics, but I always seem to have too much on my hands...

Thanks everybody.

So let me see if I grok...

Instead of going for pyramids and early representation, go for HR, and run MORE specialists instead of more powerful specialists.

If this is right, I have a couple of questions.

1) What about the versatility that comes with representation? ie: it's not just your scientist that get the +3 beakers, so you can run priests and merchants and engineers and still get a nice amount of beakers.

2) Isn't it harder to get the surplus food required to make HR SE truly effective?

Both 1 and 2 are mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can put those pyramid hammers into additional cities. DaveMCW called it the "3 settlers wonder" :lol:. It's not a bad trade-off in many cases. More cities = more specialists, and more potential early sites with strong food.

The saves must still be there. The screenshots were deleted when civfanatics image database was hacked. I really have to use the saves and fix the missing pics, but I always seem to have too much on my hands...

Well... poor AI if you have enough on your hands right now. I hope you don't fear we are becoming too advanced ;)

I didn't realize the saves are still there. That is great, I wanted to take a look at that game again and examine it more closely. If I have time, maybe I will capture some screenshot and upload to photobucket so you can link them back.

Thanks everybody.

So let me see if I grok...

Instead of going for pyramids and early representation, go for HR, and run MORE specialists instead of more powerful specialists.

Not exactly. Sometimes in SE early game stage you will only run specialists in 1 or 2 out of your 4~6 cities. The real advantage of SE is not from the science generated by the specialists, it's from the early great people and more of them.
Other cities will enjoy the extra food from farms (compared to cottages) for extra whipping and therefor better production.


If this is right, I have a couple of questions.

1) What about the versatility that comes with representation? ie: it's not just your scientist that get the +3 beakers, so you can run priests and merchants and engineers and still get a nice amount of beakers.

It is balanced by the versatility of having more cities,either because you expanded more quickly, or used the hammers for a big army and war.



2) Isn't it harder to get the surplus food required to make HR SE truly effective?

You will probably have a lower beaker per turn value, but the real strength of SE is better whipping and more great people (usually you will want GS in early game). Sometimes you will choose to put some cottages in your capital for good bureaucracy and farm everything else.

You don't need more food just because you run HR and not representation. You just need to use the extra hammers for better things.
I prefer the term "Farm economy" over specialists economy, because in much of the game the farms are just used for production (whipping).

HR (used properly) is quite as good as rep (although in a different way) until rep becomes naturally available with constitution.

HR gives you a potentially unlimited happy cap. Meaning you can grow your cities to higher pop than with rep (especially in early game where other sources of happiness are limited) which means more specialists (albiet less beaker productive ones) which equals more GPP (and better trade route yield) + a big military!

Artichoker, you seem to be arguing in favour of small cities when they could be grown bigger (assuming food and health allows). Surely you agree that large cities are better as long as they have good tiles to work? Working more tiles is nearly always better as long as they are good tiles and outweigh the extra costs.

If we compare a basic city with Representation (and no other happiness in the early game) it will be limited to size 7 with the same city under HR it can often be grown to size 14 (limited by health perhaps), working more cottages, grassland farms and mines while still running the same number of specialists, if not more. Typically the size 7 city might work 4 tiles and have 3 specialists, meanwhile the size 14 will be working 11 tiles and 3 specialists. The extra cost of the HR would be the upkeep of 9 more units and the loss of 9 beakers from Representation but the 7 extra tiles worked will easily compensate for that if they are at least grassland or plains that can be farmed, mined or cottaged. The extra costs of civics is partially offset by discounts on troops and bigger trade routes.

But the extra population and troops invested in the HR case are not wasted and help enormously with the power rating that deters sneak attacks and awkward diplomatic problems. Then if the troops used to provide the happiness garrison are needed for a war then they can be freed up easily by whipping out a couple of expensive units each costing 2 or 3 pop (e.g. trebuchet). That reduces the pop and the need for some of the garrison troops. So the trebuchets and the freed up garrison troops can join the SoD. Do that in several cities and you have an instant army that can exploit a new military technology. The population stored in your big cities can in this case be considered as trebuchets-in-waiting but they work tiles for you in the meantime. That's not possible with Representation as your army serves no useful purpose between wars, and you still need an army even if it's not as big as under HR. This strategy works well with a leader like Alexander who doesn't want to build many wonders but is happy to take them.




To be honest, I think Representation is so powerful that it's actually overpowered.

I can't agree with this in the early game, as I have explained. In the late game Representation is the preferred peacetime civic for a specialist based game but it is never overpowered. HR is more reliable at high levels and works better in several ways in the early game depending on how you want to play.

It does depend on what leader and map you play and the assumptions you make. What size of empire are you thinking of when you say Representation is better than HR? Give the number of cities and sizes and what assumptions you've made for the availability of happiness resources so that I may better understand the point you make about Representation.

My way of thinking is well put by silverbullet and zenspider, who explains the advantages concisely.

HR (used properly) is quite as good as rep (although in a different way) until rep becomes naturally available with constitution.

HR gives you a potentially unlimited happy cap. Meaning you can grow your cities to higher pop than with rep (especially in early game where other sources of happiness are limited) which means more specialists (albiet less beaker productive ones) which equals more GPP (and better trade route yield) + a big military!

What about building the Pyramids and NOT using Representation?
I had neighbors who favor the HR civic, so I adopted their favourite civic
to have unlimited tech trading opportunities.
I don't think the extra beakers would have compensated the amount of tech trades.
(To make it even more crazy, I played Pericles. :crazyeye:)

HR (used properly) is quite as good as rep (although in a different way) until rep becomes naturally available with constitution.

HR gives you a potentially unlimited happy cap. Meaning you can grow your cities to higher pop than with rep (especially in early game where other sources of happiness are limited) which means more specialists (albiet less beaker productive ones) which equals more GPP (and better trade route yield) + a big military!

You are giving too much weight to HR here.

Rep work INSTANTLY. HR takes time... not only to get the tech, but then you have to pour a lot of time and hammers into the units to get to that point you want. This all takes time! And of course, Rep doesn't force you to pay maintenance for those HAPPY HAMMERS either.

A big issue missed here, is most rep followers like philosophy for the GP doubler civic. This makes sense. Unfortunately for HR, running this civic would be so rediculously expensive it isn't really worth it.

Saying HR gives more specialists seems quite off to me.

Plus the "big" military HR enables is mostly an illusion. It is tied up in your cities instead of out in the AIs territory.

Not to mention people seem to have ignored the bonus beakers to settled great people which can be a large boost throughout.

I would take early rep off pyramids over HR anyday. However, HR is quite good in its own right, especially if you have a cottagable capital. If you can't get pyramids, SE is still quite viable. You only need to tech through cs and then you can bulb your way through liberalism. From there you only need to tech constitution (assuming nationalism off liberalism) to double your research (representation). This allows you to tech through biology (bulbing through scientific method) to further increase your research.

When going for a cultural victory, I try to build the Pyramids in my 2nd city every time.

I agree with the posts that building the Pyramids can limit early expansion, but if you queue it up as your first building in a newly founded size 1 city, you are losing nothing. You send a couple of workes to chop forests for the production while the fledgeling city grows in size. You continue to build settlers/workers/units in your capitol for early expansion.

This works especially well if your leader is Industrious and you have linked up stone already.

Once you have your early expansion done, you should be near to researching Literature. Build the Great Library in the capitol (or one of the other cities if it is better suited) at this point and add a couple of extra scientists. Four scientists under representation produce 30 research (you need a Library to build the Great Library so that is 6 research per scientist x4 +25%). As GS appear, one should build an Academy in the research city and the rest should bulb their way towards Liberalism.

Back in the Pyramids city, try to add a Forge when it becomes available to run an engineer specialist. That will give 5 GE points per turn and eventually a GE will pop. If this is timed right, the GE can be used to rush the Sistine Chapel which the most valuable wonder in BTS when going for a cultural win running a SE.

Now all specialists produce +3 research and +2 culture. When you reach Printing Press (for the extra commerce per town), turn the research slider down and the culture slider up as high as possible. At least one of the big cities should be cottaged up and will generate monster Culture from commerce. The specialist farms should switch all available specialists to artists at this point. Every GA that pops can culture bomb in one of the three soon to be legendary cities. You will continue to research (all be is a little slower) because all of the artists will produce 3 research under Representation.

If you don't take mids for rep you need more cities to match the research. That's only natural, and balanced. What exactly are you putting the mids hammers into if not a wonder? Probably either workers/settlers or units. I recommend axes. If you rush your way to 8-10 cities in the BC's, you HAVE to run SE for a while, because your slider will be toast, probably around 0. If 6 of your cities whip libraries and run specialists though, you're still getting respectable beakers, and the second you hit currency it gets even nicer. Then either cottages grow or you get courthouses etc.

If you're talking 15 cities by 300-500 AD, then a mids-less empire can still probably keep up with a representation civ using only specialists ;). It will also start to run away eventually.

Getting more cities is deceptively powerful, as your hammer output potential skyrockets, so the opportunity cost of using hammers for one thing drops as you have more cities. IMO if you're going to go SE without mids then you should be looking at using those hammers for some heavy expansion.