Looking for advice on the best leader/strategy on vanilla. I'm going to try my hand at a SE for the first time, on warlord. Thinking Philisophical, for the GP Farm benefit, and want to balance the other trait with UU for best results. Maybe Aggressive? There's no Philisophical/Industrious combo in vanilla which his disappointing. Maybe Alexander? But Greek UU seems weak...

I like perciles....not sure if he is in vanilla or if his traits are the same as i've never played vanilla. He is creative/philosophical in BTS. Cheaper libraries = earlier scientists, meaning getting your SE up earlier.

In vanilla I'd try Gandhi (spi/ind), Peter (phi/exp), Fred (phi/org) or Saladin (spi/phi).

Alexander is good though as well.

It's not good to go into a map intending to run a SE or CE or whatever, play the map and specialize cities.
Obviously its wise to give greater weight to cottages if Financial or Specialists if Philosophical, but getting bound by building these is never a good thing, this goes double for committing before you even see the map.

^^ In that case use Elizabeth. She rocks anyway.

^^ In that case use Elizabeth. She rocks anyway.

Yes, this should give a strong base economy to learn to play around with specialists to generate your :science: and :gold: :D

Well, if you want to try something out, then I don't see a problem going in to a game with a goal to experiment. If after scouting out the initial area, it looks very anti-specialist, then restart. One idea would be to try an archipelago map, since then you'll probably see lots of seafood to help out.

I "learned" how to run a specialist economy with Suleiman (Phi/Imp), but he's not in vanilla. I don't think Imp really helped me out too much, but the Ottomans were good to try, since I could bulb my way to Janissaries to try to get them early. On a similar vein, taking Peter and bulbing towards Cossacks could be a good gambit, especially with how overpowered they are in vanilla.

It's not good to go into a map intending to run a SE or CE or whatever, play the map and specialize cities.
Obviously its wise to give greater weight to cottages if Financial or Specialists if Philosophical, but getting bound by building these is never a good thing, this goes double for committing before you even see the map.

Okay, I believe these are valid points. I appreciate the feedback. I guess my response would be 1) I'm playing warlord, so I'm not too concerned by optimizing everything (I am hoping to be good enough to experiment and still win) and 2) I'm not sure I know what is meant by "play the map". Can you give me one or two examples of what you mean?

If you want to keep up a SE into the modern age, I suggest Peter. PHI makes the first half work with or without the Pyramids, the Research Institute is quite beelinable and rewards you for sticking to that economy type in the late game.

Regarding the 'play the map' advice: Assume great football fields of grassland but very few food resources. You can spam cottages, but you'll be hard-pressed to get strong specialist cities (at 2 grassland farms per specialist, you won't get many until you run into your growth caps). Conversely, specialists are attractive when there is little decent land, and you have resources + junk.

I'd suggest Gandhi or Saladin with the prior being my first pick because it guarantees the Mids. If you get a bad map just regenerate - after all, you're trying to learn so give yourself a map that at the minimum, doesn't kill what your trying to practice.

I have a few pictures here, don't copy the placements of them, I put no thought into them apart from getting what would be decent spot to show a specific city type. Ignore all tiles outside the BFC's.
The only thing that matters here is what can be done with the city after its made.


210989

This city is made for cottaging all those floodplains will generate huge amounts of :commerce: from cottages and the extra food from the floodplains will let the city work the gold and coal mines for some production. :commerce: is the thing you put into your tax sliders 100 :commerce: going into the slider at 100% research will give 100 :science:
at 100% :gold: it'll give 100 :gold: (assuming nothing like libraries exist) and other percentages give all things in between.
The very high base :commerce: from cottages, towns etc will mean lots to run through your :science: or :gold: multipliers (libraries or markets etc)

On the production side, the coal and gold hills will give *some* :hammers:
If you run the Universal Sufferage (US) civic all those cottages will give one :hammers: each when they mature into towns.
The city can (Under US) have a secondary job as a decent production city later in the game, but it's best job will be to create :commerce: through cottages.

If your tax slider was near 100% :science: then libraries, universities and the like are what you would build here.
If your tax was high :gold:% then you would want markets (probably will happen if you run many specialists in other cities)


210991

This will make a great production city it has many mines and production resources to work, and a lot of food (pigs + irrigated corn) with which to work them,
The improvements here would be forges, factories, barracks, airports and either the Iron Works or Heroic Epic national wonders (both is overkill). Again the huge base :hammers: will benefit most from forges, factories and other multipliers.


210988

In this city we have a lot of food, and not a lot else, this city will only be good at 2 things, slavery and running specialists.

The specialists you would use to tailor the city to whatever you needed most making it very flexible , but I would never expect it to be a good producer of anything.
If made earlier in the game where number of specialists in a city is few, it may even make a workable Great Person farm again though this particular city will never excel.
Here you would only need the buildings to allow you to use the specialist you want i.e libraries for scientist, markets for merchants.


This pic may seem overly harsh toward specialist cities but, in fact this shows the greatest strength of specialists The only thing they need is food to make a city usable.


210990

This last city is very different though, being on mostly riverside grassland tiles cottages are very attractive (all revealed after clearing jungle) however the 3 food resources (banana, rice and pigs) combined with possible riverside farms makes this a candidate for a GP farm.
To decide you'd need to consider a few things:-

-Do you already have a GP Farm thats better OR has the National epic?
-Are is your leader financial?

Yes to either of these 2 makes a cottage city much more attractive.

-Are you philosophical?
-Are you, or will you soon be running pacifism?
-Are you in representation?

Where a yes for these supports a GP farm.

I like perciles....not sure if he is in vanilla or if his traits are the same as i've never played vanilla. He is creative/philosophical in BTS. Cheaper libraries = earlier scientists, meaning getting your SE up earlier.

+1 on pericles.

I'd say a spiritual leader, but cycling between civics can be delayed until you get a handle on the science-culture sliders and specialists.

Besides, we all know the rule of 'play the map', but if he's looking to try running an SE, chances are he's not playing to win, but playing to learn.

Pericles is not a leader in Vanilla or in Warlords.

The best candidates imo for vanilla are:

Gandhi - Spi/Ind
Mao - Phil/Org
Saladin - Phil/Spi
Roosevelt - Ind/Org
Frederick Philo/Cre
Louie - Ind/Cre

In vanilla, i checked this page

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info#Empires

Mao is phi/org (not Fred), and Fred is cre/phi, same as Pericles in BtS.

Except its important to note that the CRE trait in vanilla is inferior to the same trait in BtS.

no cheap libraries for cre in vanilla, right? in that case i would say ind/spi or phi/spi would be best. i think that makes it gandhi and saladin.

however, i think if you are only playing warlord difficulty you are better off learning to play a standard CE instead. SE really works best at the higher skill levels imo, although, granted, it is easier to get the pyramids at the lower levels. so, in that case, i would recommend getting the pyramids, running representation, and settling your great people so you can tech things yourself (fewer opportunities for tech trades).

Tile micro, tech choices, and city specialization will blow out most difficulties regardless of where you're getting your :science:.

Also, I continue to recommend scrapping the garbage terminology, and talking about what you're actually doing. Especially since you're still learning. "SE" doesn't mean anything. Show us some land, some city sites, some desire for certain techs, and so forth.............or at least name some kind of goal.

"SE" doesn't mean anything.

:rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

You can roll your eyes all you want, but I wonder. First of all, there has never been an agreed-upon definition of "SE", other than that you use specialists. How many specialists? Who DOESN'T use specialists? How does this differ from any other "E"? Not a lot, since they don't have standardized definitions either.

So, without strings attached, describe how "SE" dictates one's play on a map. The deliberate avoidance of the cottage improvement no matter what? If not, then you're defining it as some distribution of specs and cottages. Problem with that is, what distribution. And, why does it matter?

You dedicated multiple walkthroughs to "SE", which is an excellent example of how "SE" is garbage and should be instantly ignored by anybody who sees it, much like "CE". With SE only, could they have pictured your games? Of course not...you played them quite differently.

Then we have the civics argument, as if it's not a dynamic of tiles available, nearby AIs, and immediate goals.

I stand by it. SE means nothing. If you're going to contest it, I'd like to see you do a little better than ":rolleyes:", expecting this player in the OP to improve by telling him some good "SE" leaders and traits and sending him on his merry way to get spanked the instant he needs to think about something other than "running specs" (the lone exception was somebody showing him how to specialize cities, the result of which was an argument for specialization at the city level and ignoring the terms).

"SE" and "CE" are just as good as ":rolleyes:" economy, so in that sense maybe you nailed it.

I prefer FE and CE myself and see no problems with the label. The problems arise within the interpretation usually caused by human error because they have no idea what they're talking about =D.

You can roll your eyes all you want, but I wonder. First of all, there has never been an agreed-upon definition of "SE", other than that you use specialists. How many specialists? Who DOESN'T use specialists? How does this differ from any other "E"? Not a lot, since they don't have standardized definitions either.

So, without strings attached, describe how "SE" dictates one's play on a map. The deliberate avoidance of the cottage improvement no matter what? If not, then you're defining it as some distribution of specs and cottages. Problem with that is, what distribution. And, why does it matter?

You dedicated multiple walkthroughs to "SE", which is an excellent example of how "SE" is garbage and should be instantly ignored by anybody who sees it, much like "CE". With SE only, could they have pictured your games? Of course not...you played them quite differently.

Then we have the civics argument, as if it's not a dynamic of tiles available, nearby AIs, and immediate goals.

I stand by it. SE means nothing. If you're going to contest it, I'd like to see you do a little better than ":rolleyes:", expecting this player in the OP to improve by telling him some good "SE" leaders and traits and sending him on his merry way to get spanked the instant he needs to think about something other than "running specs" (the lone exception was somebody showing him how to specialize cities, the result of which was an argument for specialization at the city level and ignoring the terms).

"SE" and "CE" are just as good as ":rolleyes:" economy, so in that sense maybe you nailed it.

This.

Personally, I just play the map now. Let's face it, you're almost never going to have a pure-"SE" friendly map. You're going to be starved for places that allow you to grab resources but still allow a large number of farms.

I wonder how many supporters there are of the other possible pure "CE's" you know,
The Coast Economy, where you work nothing but coast tiles not forgetting,
The Crap Economy where you work nothing but ice, deserts, tundra and ocean!

The Crap Economy where you work nothing but ice, deserts, tundra and ocean!

Mao's AI seems to work that one in my games.

Mao's AI seems to work that one in my games.

:lol: I was unlucky on my move up to monarch, the first monarch game I ever played I was forced to run the Hybrid 'Crappy Coastal' Economy due to the worst tundra start I have ever seen. Needless to say I lost that one, though I did get to sack Kyoto and bribing people to war was fun.
Napoleans Empire was even funnier than mine, his capital was completely surrounded by ice, his 3 cities overlapped each other horribly as the only workable tiles were in his cap BFC.

This.

Personally, I just play the map now. Let's face it, you're almost never going to have a pure-"SE" friendly map. You're going to be starved for places that allow you to grab resources but still allow a large number of farms.

I rolled my eyes because I agree that SE doesn't dictate on a move-by-move basis what you should do in a game, but does it really not mean ANYTHING, which you said?

Of course not. That is just a silly statement imo. SE means a number of things, but, in general, I find it to mean that you are getting most of your beakers from specialists/settled great people compared to the CE where you are getting most of your beakers from cottage commerce that is converted through the science slider. Civ is a very complex game and of course each game is going to be more complicated than a simple label can describe. And I too play the map each game.

However, when trying to communicate information on these forums in a short space SE and CE and similar descriptions can orient the reader to what is going on and then we can get into details from there.

Of course we can all pick apart a posted game on a turn-by-turn basis and I agree that is preferable. But qualitatively intensive analysis like that, which takes a lot of space, is not the only way we are communicating on these forums. Sometimes we communicate more in macro-strategy terms at which point I find SE, CE, and similar designations to be helpful.

When you prefer to talk in micro terms, macro labels appear too superficial, but, in contrast, when you prefer to talk in macro terms (as I do) sometimes all the micro-detail emphasis appears to be overdone to convey more general points.

Does "SE" mean absolutely nothing? Of course not. And that is why I was :rolleyes: at you :p

Thanks all for the replies. I think these responses are eye-opening in ways I didn't consider. It's true that I haven't really thought through what my goals are in "learning SE".

I suppose I'm most interested in:

- experimenting with a GP farm
- getting a better handle on city specialization
- seeing, in action, how science/gold balance is impacted by a specialist-heavy civ
- unrelated (probably counter to having lots specialists, I would think??), experimenting with slavery civic and whipping. Maybe save that one for the next game.

My games now, while fun, don't have much planning, in the sense that I don't specialize, other than maybe a military city. Meh, I guess I'm all over the map, and not in the good way. :p

How does one grab/post screen shots? I'm interested in checking my rationale (when I start my new game) with what other civvers here think.

The Sliderindependent Economy is really a good thing. At a first glance it doesn't matter where your beakers come from. But with SE you are not bound to the slider nor do you have to wait for maturing cottages. Ideally you change from whipping to mines to Scientists or Merchants in an instant.

And the slider can be used for happiness with cols and theatres. Very cheap and nice way to combat war weariness. Not to be underestimated. (BTW the slider happy mechanism is darn cheap compared to CE as only % not money matters)

Very useful for a flexibel war economy. The more cottaged land you conquere the better you can convert to a potential late game CE.

Much needed health and happy resources are not always easy to come by

Thanks all for the replies. I think these responses are eye-opening in ways I didn't consider. It's true that I haven't really thought through what my goals are in "learning SE".

I suppose I'm most interested in:

- experimenting with a GP farm
- getting a better handle on city specialization
- seeing, in action, how science/gold balance is impacted by a specialist-heavy civ

The easiest way to think about this is to ask yourself
"What can this city do for me?"
and
"What do I want this city to do for me?"
Then build stuff to maximise it :)

Unrelated (probably counter to having lots specialists, I would think??), experimenting with slavery civic and whipping. Maybe save that one for the next game.
In fact slavery is necessary in a lot of cities that would work well for running specialists as they don't have enough :hammers: to build the necessary city buildings up without slaving.


How does one grab/post screen shots? I'm interested in checking my rationale (when I start my new game) with what other civvers here think.

Hit the PrintScreen button on your keyboard then paste it into paint, save it as a JPeg file. To upload it click the paperclip symbol that appears while creating a post. Then just make sure to paste the link into your post.
Same thing can be done to post game save too.

Keep in mind "purer" forms of SEs tend to follow:

- Farms- will be the mainstay of your empire.
- Production- largely achieved by excess food which allows you to whip or create more improvements that increase production.
- Research- Primarily derived from specialist and or bulbing key techs (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952). At some point the rate at which GP are produced severely diminishes so you will need enough land to run many specialist to generate enough research. A general guideline I use it to run at least 12 scientist after COL and at least 20 scientist (preferably more) by Liberalilsm.
- Specialist- You're best friend, especially under Representation and early Mids.
- Commerce- generally you only need enough commerce to prevent yourself from going on strike because as already mentioned, most of your research will be in the form of pure beakers and strategic bulbs. Some cottages or building wealth are good for this.
- Research Slider- typically ran from 0-20%
- Culture Slider- as high as you need to in order to grow your cities with the help of theaters and colosseums and to fight War Wariness and unhappy faces from all the drafting and whipping you will be doing.
- Happiness- addressed early by Mids and Representation or luxury resources. Mid game it is addressed through the appropriate buildings and the culture slider + strategic trades.
- GPF- I suggest growing to max population and building the NE, then switch to max specialist.
- Civics- Early game it will be slavery, Representation (Mids), and Caste and possible OR. Mid game will be the first 3 with Pacifism. Late game I generally run Representation, Nationhood (for drafting, a MUST!) or Bureaucracy, Caste, SP, whatever religious civic I need the most.
- Tech Path - after the basics I generally take the Alphabet for trade and build research, currency (build wealth) to fix economy, CoL to fix economy (if I'm still in trouble), Asthetics, Literature, Drama. If you get COL before drama bulb philo then. If you get Drama before COL bulb philo from drama. Don't worry about running more than 2 specialist per city until your economy and happiness is fixed, then switch to caste. Later in the game you should prioritize Biology (super farms) and Communism for SP and beefed up work shops (all the bonuses will be in full effect by this time).
- Other factors - Quite often its best to cycle research and production. This is achieved by having every single city emphasize research by running max scientist and building wealth - which at this time is a good idea to run your science slider as high as possible. After the research phase you could have an infrastructure phase where you switch civics to slavery and whip/build every building you need. The same is then done with building units - if unhappiness starts to add up simply crank up the culture slider.
- Final thoughts - Running a smooth SE is one of the most difficult things to accomplish in civilization and takes a lot of practice. There is plenty of good reading on the forums and people are always quick to help - Just be prepared for a wide variety of answers because peoples opinions are quite different :)

erm seeing as you're still on warlord, id forget about SE or CE or whatever and just learn how to play the game better - decision making, city specilisation etc. Who says you cant run some specialists in some cities and cottage others?

Of course not. That is just a silly statement imo. SE means a number of things, but, in general, I find it to mean that you are getting most of your beakers from specialists/settled great people compared to the CE where you are getting most of your beakers from cottage commerce that is converted through the science slider. Civ is a very complex game and of course each game is going to be more complicated than a simple label can describe. And I too play the map each game.

However, when trying to communicate information on these forums in a short space SE and CE and similar descriptions can orient the reader to what is going on and then we can get into details from there.

I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't make it correct. Most of your :science: from settled specialists and specialists? Says who? I ran a game w/ SB where I built no cottages, and the vast majority of beakers was from BULBING, but that doesn't fit the definition you put here even though you'd define it as "SE".

Now, what about games where you have 1 GP farm, 2 cottage cities, and 5 hammer cities? CE? SE? Hammer?! The vast majority of the :science: in that empire can easily be traced to the GP farm!

From the start, defining an "economy" based on :science: rather than output is arbitrary...we can just as easily use :gold: and it would tell us JUST as much...

However, when trying to communicate information on these forums in a short space SE and CE and similar descriptions can orient the reader to what is going on and then we can get into details from there.

They don't orient players at all, they take up space. Unless you mean orient as in "prepare myself...I'm about to see an empire that has 3 specialist cities and only 1 cottage city instead of 3 cottage cities and 1 specialist city...or possibly an only specialist empire...or possibly only 2 specialist cities but with rep...or possibly...

Assuming not @ war with terrible WW:

SE civics: Ideally rep, but could be HR too. Other civics can be anything.
CE civics: Ideally HR early game, US late game. Other civics can be anything.

We're not getting a lot closer to these terms being meaningful. Specialization cities based on return to empire is meaningful. SE and CE are useless for that. New terms that either give improvements or the # of cities specialized a certain way are probably best if we're going to "short hand". Shorthand is intended to be meaningful. As it stands, there's 100+ definitions of CE and SE and the amount of in game variance is so much that even 1 player can't be consistent. They're serving no purpose, certainly not the purpose you claim.

Doesn't this argument get tiresome after a while?

Opportunities to specialise on a per-city-basis should be seized... cottage economies will still benefit from a strong GP farm (the initial rewards for GPP are excellent... single-use applications or buildings don't even depend on Representation), scientist-driven economies still need to pay the bills which can be done effectively with a cottaged Bureaucratic capital later getting the wall street (commerce and gold multipliers are fully cumulative; +50% commerce +200% gold ends up as +350% gold if you lack direct income like shrines/corporation HQs/merchants), any economy might want/need an army which can be taken care of by a production-heavy city with the Heroic Epic.

The question remains what to do with generic cities?

Total specialisation? Scientists for science cities, cottages for gold cities, mines and workshops for military cities means you can get by with very little infrastructure for more immediate pay-offs. Caste System plays well into this - further cutting down the need for infrastructure for specialist slots while enabling efficient production cities almost everywhere.

Specialist spam? This frees you from the tyranny of the slider, meaning you can use culture to solve all your happiness problems. Without representation, the net gain beyond Great People is mediocre to non-existent though (since every population point has associated cost in maintenance and upkeep).
Slavery means an all-food setup can be used either for economy or a decent mix of economy and production (but not all-production so we might want to keep a few dedicated hammer cities).

Cottage Spam? Once the civics kick in for mature towns, they can take care of all our needs efficiently, apart from wonders and projects. That's what our Ironworks city is for. For general 'production' in cities without national wonders, towns beat mines (and with the Kremlin, fully pimped-out workshops), don't need (unhealthy) production modifiers as badly and, another nice bonus, can deliver the goods anywhere in your empire.

Focus on hammers and build research/wealth directly? Not too efficient per tile (becoming somewhat better with State Property), but flexible and allowing some tricks (chopping hammers are saved without decay while we build science etc. Good for stockpiling hammers in advance to build something instantly once we get the tech, or abusing overflow after discounted objects). Also frees us to turn up the culture slider with relative impunity and, unlike the use of specialists, doesn't inflate city size (less maintenance/upkeep, less trouble with the health cap).


Sorry if I got carried away a little, but sometimes the terminology used on these forums isn't very clear. TMIT's example of 1 GP farm, 2 cottage cities, rest on hammers (assuming those aren't building science...) has nothing beyond the essentials, so IMO no widely used economy term really applies. It's not a hammer economy (we aren't building science), it's not a Specialist Economy (no use beyond a dedicated GP farm that any civ should have), it's not a cottage economy since it doesn't milk that improvement.
That approach is likely to revolve around shrewd monopoly bulbing/trading and getting others to pay us for ceasing to kick them where it hurts. I'd call it a nutcracker economy if we didn't have an overabundance of confusing terms :)

I couldn't resist myself from giving my opinion about this debate eventhough I'm not a pro player like most of you guys. This might be also a bit off-topic of choosing the leader for specialist biased economy, but I believe this might help to understand the game and this debate more clearly.

To me those terms CE and SE provided actually pretty good guidance at the beginning. They set kind of a borders how you can run your empire. The other end is almost completely biased to cottages and the other end relies heavily on specialists. Pretty quickly I also learnt that these terms are somehow misleading because as a whole almost every empire is hybrid of some sort and there are also many other aspects that influence your success. I must say that ultimately I agree with TMIT that it is more important to try to specialize your cities to do what they can do best than try to run certain economic system, but I also think that the terms and this infinite debate can help new players like myself to learn these things more rapidly and enjoy the game. So, please keep on debating :D

In my case it also might have helped me that I know pretty much about real economies where are also wide variety of economic systems and terminology and infinite debate about it to create confusion.

And my contirbution to topic is: Phi trait is nice for specialist biased systems ;)

I have a few pictures here, don't copy the placements of them, I put no thought into them apart from getting what would be decent spot to show a specific city type. Ignore all tiles outside the BFC's.
The only thing that matters here is what can be done with the city after its made.


210989

This city is made for cottaging all those floodplains will generate huge amounts of :commerce: from cottages and the extra food from the floodplains will let the city work the gold and coal mines for some production. :commerce: is the thing you put into your tax sliders 100 :commerce: going into the slider at 100% research will give 100 :science:
at 100% :gold: it'll give 100 :gold: (assuming nothing like libraries exist) and other percentages give all things in between.
The very high base :commerce: from cottages, towns etc will mean lots to run through your :science: or :gold: multipliers (libraries or markets etc)

On the production side, the coal and gold hills will give *some* :hammers:
If you run the Universal Sufferage (US) civic all those cottages will give one :hammers: each when they mature into towns.
The city can (Under US) have a secondary job as a decent production city later in the game, but it's best job will be to create :commerce: through cottages.

If your tax slider was near 100% :science: then libraries, universities and the like are what you would build here.
If your tax was high :gold:% then you would want markets (probably will happen if you run many specialists in other cities)


210991

This will make a great production city it has many mines and production resources to work, and a lot of food (pigs + irrigated corn) with which to work them,
The improvements here would be forges, factories, barracks, airports and either the Iron Works or Heroic Epic national wonders (both is overkill). Again the huge base :hammers: will benefit most from forges, factories and other multipliers.


210988

In this city we have a lot of food, and not a lot else, this city will only be good at 2 things, slavery and running specialists.

The specialists you would use to tailor the city to whatever you needed most making it very flexible , but I would never expect it to be a good producer of anything.
If made earlier in the game where number of specialists in a city is few, it may even make a workable Great Person farm again though this particular city will never excel.
Here you would only need the buildings to allow you to use the specialist you want i.e libraries for scientist, markets for merchants.


This pic may seem overly harsh toward specialist cities but, in fact this shows the greatest strength of specialists The only thing they need is food to make a city usable.


210990

This last city is very different though, being on mostly riverside grassland tiles cottages are very attractive (all revealed after clearing jungle) however the 3 food resources (banana, rice and pigs) combined with possible riverside farms makes this a candidate for a GP farm.
To decide you'd need to consider a few things:-

-Do you already have a GP Farm thats better OR has the National epic?
-Are is your leader financial?

Yes to either of these 2 makes a cottage city much more attractive.

-Are you philosophical?
-Are you, or will you soon be running pacifism?
-Are you in representation?

Where a yes for these supports a GP farm.

Nice examples and great summary! It's great to see someone give advice more specific than "play the map".

:rolleyes:
You can roll your eyes all you want, but I wonder. First of all, there has never been an agreed-upon definition of "SE", other than that you use specialists. How many specialists? Who DOESN'T use specialists? How does this differ from any other "E"? Not a lot, since they don't have standardized definitions either.

So, without strings attached, describe how "SE" dictates one's play on a map. The deliberate avoidance of the cottage improvement no matter what? If not, then you're defining it as some distribution of specs and cottages. Problem with that is, what distribution. And, why does it matter?

You dedicated multiple walkthroughs to "SE", which is an excellent example of how "SE" is garbage and should be instantly ignored by anybody who sees it, much like "CE". With SE only, could they have pictured your games? Of course not...you played them quite differently.

Then we have the civics argument, as if it's not a dynamic of tiles available, nearby AIs, and immediate goals.

I stand by it. SE means nothing. If you're going to contest it, I'd like to see you do a little better than ":rolleyes:", expecting this player in the OP to improve by telling him some good "SE" leaders and traits and sending him on his merry way to get spanked the instant he needs to think about something other than "running specs" (the lone exception was somebody showing him how to specialize cities, the result of which was an argument for specialization at the city level and ignoring the terms).

"SE" and "CE" are just as good as ":rolleyes:" economy, so in that sense maybe you nailed it.

Doesn't this argument get tiresome after a while?
Yes. But since it has made its way into this thread I feel obliged to provide my comments. :)
I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't make it correct. Most of your :science: from settled specialists and specialists? Says who? I ran a game w/ SB where I built no cottages, and the vast majority of beakers was from BULBING, but that doesn't fit the definition you put here even though you'd define it as "SE".

Now, what about games where you have 1 GP farm, 2 cottage cities, and 5 hammer cities? CE? SE? Hammer?! The vast majority of the :science: in that empire can easily be traced to the GP farm!

From the start, defining an "economy" based on :science: rather than output is arbitrary...we can just as easily use :gold: and it would tell us JUST as much...



They don't orient players at all, they take up space. Unless you mean orient as in "prepare myself...I'm about to see an empire that has 3 specialist cities and only 1 cottage city instead of 3 cottage cities and 1 specialist city...or possibly an only specialist empire...or possibly only 2 specialist cities but with rep...or possibly...

Assuming not @ war with terrible WW:

SE civics: Ideally rep, but could be HR too. Other civics can be anything.
CE civics: Ideally HR early game, US late game. Other civics can be anything.

We're not getting a lot closer to these terms being meaningful. Specialization cities based on return to empire is meaningful. SE and CE are useless for that. New terms that either give improvements or the # of cities specialized a certain way are probably best if we're going to "short hand". Shorthand is intended to be meaningful. As it stands, there's 100+ definitions of CE and SE and the amount of in game variance is so much that even 1 player can't be consistent. They're serving no purpose, certainly not the purpose you claim.
(Emphasis added by me)

It seems it is now you who is creating the false dichotomy TMIT. Every time this comes up I have to remind you "SE" may not be the best term but "CE" does make a fair bit of sense. Your arguments are always about fairly hybridized empires and to show SE to be meaningless, yet you figure if you can show SE to be meaningless CE must be as well.

I'd suggest accepting that CE and (to some extent) SE are economy types but very limited in application. Also, why do you keep bringing it up in off-topic threads? If you feel so strongly about it it would be better for everyone involved if you created another thread about it? I guarantee you a lot of people would engage in the debate.

Now, what about games where you have 1 GP farm, 2 cottage cities, and 5 hammer cities? CE? SE? Hammer?! The vast majority of the in that empire can easily be traced to the GP farm!

The question remains what to do with generic cities?

I'm quoting Iranon here because he identified the whole point. SE and CE are not meant to describe necessarily the structure of an entire empire. Things like GP farms and Beuracracy capitals can be fit in in many types of empire. It's what happens with the generic cities or "income" cities as I sometimes call them. Running cottage cities and specialist cities can be done in both the SE and CE but when the decision of whether to go cottage or specialist city is not entirely obvious (maybe some riverside grass on coast with seafood and Financial leader) having a more macro-economic goal influences the decision for how to both (a) build improvements for the city and (b) build infrastructre in the city.



Can I just finish with this point. I think many people here, particularly TMIT, want to remove SE and CE from discussions because they are not the only two economies you can run. If people are being mislead it is because of the assumption that economies must fit into only a small number of categories (e.g. CE, SE and HE). Of course, wouldn't you be better off arguing their mainly useful for theoretical discussion (i.e. in their mostly pure forms) rather than obliterating them outright?

SE is used by many decent players on the forum (I don't care whether they're in the elite Deity club or not) so it's unfair to mock them by saying "SE doesn't mean anything", IMHO.

IMHO to say that SE means all,or nothing,is wrong.
One needs beakers and gold,surely,and perhaps culture and espionage.
One possible way is to get commerce and split it as needed. Some happy resources give a lot of commerce, no decision required; and cottages,too. But cottages give no food or hammers. And the biggest price of cottages is the time/turns they "spend" actually 70 at normal speed. This way can be called CE.
One can have gold,beakers,culture,espionage - some of them or all - from specialists.
This way can be called SE. Specialists would "the always overall solution" if they did not need "slots" to exist and if they do not cost 2 food each. The -2F is the question here. Some food surplus needed to compensate. This food surplus has to come from tiles And population points. Let's say one pig or one fish allows two specialists, but the city must spend 3 pop points to that. Then, in the dawn of the city, the FS must be as high as possible and from so few tiles as possible.
Yes,we are arriving at "play the map". But play the map is the answer,so a qustion is
needed first and CE or SE or others help to put the questions.
Best regards,

I'd suggest accepting that CE and (to some extent) SE are economy types but very limited in application. Also, why do you keep bringing it up in off-topic threads? If you feel so strongly about it it would be better for everyone involved if you created another thread about it? I guarantee you a lot of people would engage in the debate.

My semester is a couple weeks from ending. Once it ends unless something goes VERY well I won't be employed instantly (there's this "BE" aka bad economy going on in real life...:(). During that time period I intend to write a strategy article, that first tackles the uselessness of the current terms, gives an intermediate analysis on city specialization/civic choice, and suggests new terminology that tells us a lot more about what is going on without being more than 4-8 characters, with an opening for suggestion on improving it. Give me a little bit though...it's hard to write 5000 words worth of papers in a week AND still actually play :p.

It seems it is now you who is creating the false dichotomy TMIT. Every time this comes up I have to remind you "SE" may not be the best term but "CE" does make a fair bit of sense. Your arguments are always about fairly hybridized empires and to show SE to be meaningless, yet you figure if you can show SE to be meaningless CE must be as well.


I deliberately include CE each time for a reason. Its use above SE is very questionable. Your tech-specialized cities are going to represent a lot of output, but hammer cities and cities that grant gold are very, very important components too (sometimes over half of your ability to tech via income streams, USUALLY more than half your total output). DaveMCW's guide suggests something between 30%-70% cottage cities depending on goals and land. However, if you're under 50% you're playing fast and loose with whether it's really a "CE" (whatever that means). Also, the usage of the remaining % of cities is crucial, that's where you get your GPP and units to keep you from getting buried before cottages grow. It's not the same every time, nor is the distribution of cottage cities. If you use a 2nd GP farm because your land is poor and you want a faster tech turnaround to capture more land, suddenly arguments that you're in SE (as defined now) are valid.

Can I just finish with this point. I think many people here, particularly TMIT, want to remove SE and CE from discussions because they are not the only two economies you can run.

That's actually not QUITE my argument (though a relevant consideration). My argument is that even within a "SE" or "CE" empire, so much is not dependent on cottages or specialists that you're often explaining well under half of the empire's output (take oyzar's example of getting about 25% of his output from cottages and specialists combined), ON TOP of the issue where we have trouble with composition/how the specs/cottages are used, ON TOP of the fact that economies usually aren't pure (excepting late-mid to late game possibly, but not always).

IMHO to say that SE means all,or nothing,is wrong.

In order to prove this point, you need to do a little more than suggest definitions that look more like city specialization than "economies"

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