I usually play financial. Orange is my favorite. I have couple of questions

1) I try to build mids but mostly for happiness. I have few specialists but I dont think I take full advantage of Mids. Is it worth the effort on Prince then?

2) Being financial, I am a bit reluctant to build farms and prefer cottages. Do you think farms and financial are kind of contradicting?

Financial = cottage spam.

Pyramids should be build for representation. Anything else is a waste of hammers. If you just want happiness, it's only a couple techs to Monarchy and HR.

Even in a CE you will want some production cities and they will be feed by the farms, so you will want some.

Since you asked about CE economy. The CE will want at least a few of the following:
GP Farm (1 or 2 depending on who you are) - specialist fueled by bonues resources/farms
Production Cities - Farms feeding hills + copper/iron/bonus resources
Cottage cities - Self explanatory

Most good players will tell you to play the map and have a combination of specialist cities/cottage cities in addition to production/GP farms but i'm not that good.

I have never built pyramids for a CE, personally but i'm sure some have for Rep like you described.

I'm a bit confused by this. How do you work the cottages if you don't have the citizens? If you only build cottages the city can't grow very much correct?

Financial = cottage spam.

Pyramids should be build for representation. Anything else is a waste of hammers. If you just want happiness, it's only a couple techs to Monarchy and HR.

Even a Cottage spammer needs a GPF and Rep helps. You can also switch to Police State and Universal Suffrage long before you could research all those techs. P.S. is great for War Mongering. U.S. has good synergy with Financial. It's not essential to a cottage spam strategy, but it can be a nice boost if you're Industrious and/or have stone.

I'm a bit confused by this. How do you work the cottages if you don't have the citizens? If you only build cottages the city can't grow very much correct?

If they are floodplain cottages they'll grow plenty fast by themselves. Grassland cottages are food neutral, which means if you work them the city will still grow due to the 2 free food on the city square. Usually though it's a good idea to place your cities around at least one good food tile for faster growth. If there's no food around, I'll usually place one or two farms down to help speed things up.

I would never invest hammers into the 'Mids as a financial leader unless there was so much food found in my initial exploration that I would be a fool to forgo a specialist heavy economy. It's happened a few times. One game as Darius I, started on coast with 2 fish, 2 clam, 1 irrigated corn, 1 flood plains and the surrounding area was almost just as food heavy.

But if I'm seeing good land for cottage spam and am a Fin leader, I'll never go for 'Mids. The only reason would be to deny the AI 'Mids. Even then, there's a decent chance that the builder will be close enough to steal it via pointy-stick-diplomacy :D

Usually don't pursue mids with financial though stone + a lot of room to expand may call for it...reason being you can put them up while continuing to spam cities and disregard tech pace early on (the places you do use specialists will give you enough research). In cities where you run specialists they'll still help, and as mentioned trading through guilds/banking then putting up all the :gold: multipliers can allow you to turn those towns into production early in the renaissance.

A similar function (allowing expansion while hurting initial tech less) can come from great lighthouse, too, but its power also depends on the map.

Another thing to consider w/ rep is the existence of :) resources and your ability to trade for more. 5 cities w/ +3 :) isn't going to cut it without more :) available...4 monarchy scientists are better than 2 rep scientists (due to gpp)!

Specialize at the city level, and build wonders if you think they'll give you more than you give up to get them. FIN benefits greatly from more cities, so it's less likely you'll want to apply early :hammers: to pyramids w/ FIN, but not impossible.

and as mentioned trading through guilds/banking then putting up all the multipliers can allow you to turn those towns into production early in the renaissance.

Can you expand on this? Do you mean using tons of :gold: to rush buy?

Can you expand on this? Do you mean using tons of :gold: to rush buy?

Yes. I did it in MS De Gaulle if you're interested. He's not FIN but I got mids there and used them to do just this. It's a little inefficient w/o the kremlin (3 gold ---> 1 hammer instead of 2 gold ----> 1 hammer) but a US town is 7 :commerce: (8 if riverside) + 1 base hammer...so a grassland town looks like a 2F3+H tile depending on traits/riverside. However, don't forget that you get 100% :gold: multipliers before 100% :hammers: (banking vs assembly line). With the kremlin, towns are among the most efficient hammer sources possible.

Empires with excessive amounts of cottages (typically a lot of riverside land early on) can definitely consider forgoing the unhealth of the :hammers: buildings and just $$$ buying everything (especially w/ kremlin). Not good for space parts, quite good for anything else.

Empires with excessive amounts of cottages (typically a lot of riverside land early on) can definitely consider forgoing the unhealth of the buildings and just $$$ buying everything (especially w/ kremlin). Not good for space parts, quite good for anything else.

Now, do you kill your :science: for this by dropping the slider to 0 or near 0? Or do you just "build" wealth in all of your :hammers: cities? I remember rush buying a lot of things but later in the game and because I had a severe tech lead so I didn't mind dropping my slider to 10-20% and collecting huge amounts of :gold: while taking three times as many turns to get a tech.

Drop to 0% when you get your military edge. Can be cannons, infantry, artillery. Drop to 0%, rushbuy what you need, reconsider when the target(s) is/are dead.
He did it at steel in the current MS game, then beelined to inf/artillery, rinse and repeat.

I did it with tanks in the current NC game (Cyrus). Not impressive as his game, and a level below, but I've built well over 100 tanks in 50ish turns, not counting destroyers/transports/mobile artillery. And at some point I resumed research to tech from tanks to mobile artillery. Can't do that with standard production, unless you bulldoze all your cottages and spam workshops everywhere.

I admit I was a bit skeptical before trying an all-out rushbuy approach but I have to say I'm really impressed. Totally gamebreaking if you build or capture the Kremlin.

Of course, I'm not talking above Emperor.

Works fine @ immortal.

Yes, you drop your slider to 0%. Don't be fooled though, it's standard commerce vs not rules. If you have more hammers building units, they're not directing tiles toward research either. Cottages w/o the slider are a bit more extreme, but you also have the ability to rapidly gain access to powerful research potential too. The problem is that usually the techs and time to set this up are prohibitive...but not always.

I'd vote more for avoiding pyramids and finding some way to get Colossus (and possibly GLH) because then coastal cities become so valuable and powerful with Fin leaders. Obviously you build Cottages but having a few farms does increase growth to work more cottages later. Plus you can replace farms with cottages as your city approaches its ideal size.

Fin really makes cottages good early but later it becomes less advantageous as 1 gold becomes more irrelevant.

I'd vote for a rush to GLH and Oracle. Use that to tech Metal Casting instantly and get a head start on Colossus and then trade for so many techs as you'll be the only one with MC.

With Hannibal this can be a dangerous combo. Unfortunately it contradicts getting a strong Numi rush (Don't underestimate the ability of this UU).

If you're on a land map and have stone in your BFC or where you want to put your 2nd or 3rd city, and you have room to peacefully expand, grabbing the Mids and running Monarchy can save you hundreds and hundreds of years in research and let you forgoe your initial economy and just keep making settlers - after all, you no longer need to tech Myst, Med, Prst, and Monarchy. With the stone and a slight detour to Masonry you can save some time and pick up more land in the long run - even though you gave some up initially to get the Mids.

If I got mids I'd go for an early SE before I went hereditary rule. Running just one specialist early (combining mids with oracle and getting CoL which also saves hundreds of years of teching) and running maybe one specialist per city will make your civ by far the dominant one.

I just wouldn't prefer a fin leader to do this. I like to get my second city up fast in the case that I wonder rush so I can have one set/worker farm to continue expansion

In that case maybe expansionist, industrious, philo (maximizes value of wonders), or organized are all preferable to me.

Also the oracle/mids/Col combo gives a free religion (for those non mysticism types) and a guaranteed prophet. Plus the 3 extra happiness goes a long way raising max city sizes a lot early

if i'm IND or have stone then i'll try for the 'mids, partly for REP but also for the GE boost. Stick a forge with Eng specialist and the Hanging Gardens (if poss), add in the NE and you have a nice GE farm....:goodjob:

If financial, GLH is better than Pyramids - coastal cities with the +1 commerce coupled with the extra trade routes means you can expand nonstop.

Pyramids aren't a complete loss though - you'll get some value from running HR early for extra happiness (and thus, more worked cottages) or even +3 happy in your biggest cities in Rep, specialists or not. You're just not getting full value from Rep without massive numbers of specialists.

If you're on a land map and have stone in your BFC or where you want to put your 2nd or 3rd city, and you have room to peacefully expand, grabbing the Mids and running Monarchy can save you hundreds and hundreds of years in research and let you forgoe your initial economy and just keep making settlers - after all, you no longer need to tech Myst, Med, Prst, and Monarchy. With the stone and a slight detour to Masonry you can save some time and pick up more land in the long run - even though you gave some up initially to get the Mids.

This depends a lot. If stone in BFC or 2nd/3rd city locale, then 'Mids is viable. But if you have close rivals for neighbors that will be a problem. Sure it saves you on research to get HerRule without researching monarchy, but I feel like you're wasting hammers if you build the 'Mids with no intention to use Representation or Police State (both of which are MUCH further into the game than Monarchy/HerRule).

In the early game, food is best used for whipping than for population. A small, large pop empire may be beneficial to the specific city, but not the overall civ. I'd rather have many cities with low populations while whipping out infrastructure/defense and claiming larger expanses of land. Once the infrastructure is in place, and enough land is claimed, then it's optimal to grow as much as possible. Even with extra happiness from units, you're not going to want to stack whipping :mad: unless it's an emergency, so early HerRule isn't really as big a boon as early Representation / Caste Syste.

The map should determine all of this, though. Food heavy maps cry out for a specialist heavy economy even with a FIN leader.

About farms and cottages:

To grow a city to work cottages you need farms. DaveMcW wrote a guide to cottage cities a while back, I think in the strategry articles forum, titled "Cottages!!". His rule of thumb is that the food surplus should be the same as the hapiness surplus, ie if a city is size 8 and has a happy cap of 12, you want +4 food to grow into it. I think given infinite workers the best strategy is to have only farms under the happy cap, and only cottages at the happy cap.

I used to build cottage cities with just cottages but it goes so much faster with a couple farms, as the sooner you work more cottages, the sooner they mature... Obviously, floodplains help in getting the food surplus, but even there it might be better to farm the floodplain and cottage two plains tile to get up to high city size quicker.

Representation isn't needed for a great person farm, and you need a huge amount of specialists in one city (IE, way more than your health cap at that point in the game) to make it worth getting the Pyramids for a single city unless you are Industrious and have stone.

You can easily get +3 happiness in a city by researching Monarchy and building 3 archers.

Now, do you kill your :science: for this by dropping the slider to 0 or near 0? Or do you just "build" wealth in all of your :hammers: cities?

If you settled great prophets and great merchants in a city with a shrine or two and wall street you can get a large stockpile of cash without needing to drop your slider to 0. This usually happens when you are playing an industrious leader with a cottage economy. With Huayna Capac or Roosevelt I usually end up with a city like this.

I think most people just drop the slider, though.

If you settled great prophets and great merchants in a city with a shrine or two and wall street you can get a large stockpile of cash without needing to drop your slider to 0. This usually happens when you are playing an industrious leader with a cottage economy. With Huayna Capac or Roosevelt I usually end up with a city like this.

I think most people just drop the slider, though.

Whenever I'm playing as either Egypt, Arabia, or a civ that starts with Mysticism, I'll try for a Prophet farm to settle Prophets in whatever shrine city I'm able to get/steal. In the "Most useful great person" thread, I talked about my preference for Prophets above all other GP in a Cottage Economy.

I'd probably end up dropping the :science: slider to 0% anyway (for even more :gold:)

On Immortal and below you can:

SH -> Oracle -> CoL -> Caste -> Priest or Merchant GPF - bulbing MC (GM) is always an option, especially if your Industrious. This allows you to found the Confucius Holy city then farm the GPs of your choosing. The specifics of when (Philo timing is much different), where, and what type of GP you wanna use will be different but the overall strategy offers a lot of nice versatility leading to great production, commerce, and tech potential - not to mention it makes losing GPT nearly impossible so long as you block off enough land you can power REX to your hearts content.

Cottages are very nice in this situation because you can run at 100% slider while powering tech + REXing.

SH -> Oracle -> CoL -> Caste -> Priest or Merchant GPF
Unfortunately, you don't get unlimited priests with Caste System. Fortunately, as long as you either steal a holy city with shrine or shrine the Confucian Holy City, you can build a temple and run 4 priests. Get another religion, another temple, another priest. Get Angkor Wat in that city, that's a total of 8 priests you can run.

The Great Prophet farm runs best in a religious/cottage economy IMO because you get the 2:gold: (Spiral Min), 2:hammers: (AP), 2:science: (Univ Sangkor) with the temples. Oh, and 2:culture: from whatever that wonder is (I usually don't bother with it).

@ Blitz -

I also said : This allows you to found the Confucius Holy city then farm the GPs of your choosing. I take for granted that just as people know how to place cottages they also know how to set up a GP priest farm and how many slots are available. I'm not going to address basic and well known facts in every single post - I would be more long winded than I already am.

How have your attempts at Monarch been lately?

I also said : This allows you to found the Confucius Holy city then farm the GPs of your choosing. I take for granted that just as people know how to place cottages they also know how to set up a GP priest farm and how many slots are available. I'm not going to address basic and well known facts in every single post - I would be more long winded than I already am.

Well, for 1 thing, you actually said "SH -> Oracle -> CoL -> Caste -> Priest or Merchant GPF" which looks more like Caste System therefore farm Priests or Merchants. So my bad if you lack skillful communication abilities or just choose the shorter, less explicit route.

How have your attempts at Monarch been lately?

Haven't had too much time lately. Been having a lot of fun IRL where boasting and taking jabs actually means something. Wait... forget that. Even IRL it means very little.

Haven't had too much time lately. Been having a lot of fun IRL where boasting and taking jabs actually means something. Wait... forget that. Even IRL it means very little.

Success is paramount in any aspect of life and is best demonstrated with action rather than words. Someone seems to be having a sensitive day eh?

Success is paramount in any aspect of life and is best demonstrated with action rather than words. Someone seems to be having a sensitive day eh?

Nah, your just "one of those guys" on internet forums and I have a low tolerance for such. You know, the kind who post pompous threads and use fly-by insults and then hit the "report" button when someone talks back.

Success is paramount in any aspect of life
And who decides what this "success" is? Does it have anything to do with taking jabs? :lol: I love this stuff.

There wasn't any thing nasty in my previous post at all Blitz. I simply made a reference that the vast majority of people who play this game know how many priest slots are available and I don't need to take the time to insult their intelligence by stating something so obvious. I save that role for other people.

How have your attempts at Monarch been lately?
Fly by insult

Success is paramount in any aspect of life and is best demonstrated with action rather than words. Someone seems to be having a sensitive day eh?
Pompous quote / flyby jab

And I won't reference the other thread however I was sort of allowing my attitude towards it into this thread.
BTW, I'm :yuck: as a dog... so yeah, I'm having a crappy day.

Not all "lower level" players understand that priests are not part of the Caste System unlimited specialists. In fact, a monarch player had this mixed up the other day in another thread where we were discussing priests. So, I was simply trying to clear any confusion up for this Noble level player.

Not reading everything, but for those who want to see the use of US for a financial leader, check sisiutil's ALC, the mansa musa game.
I have a vague memory of good effect for fast tanks :)

For the record, both SH and Oracle are both prophet wonders, so even 1 temple can get you a healthy 7 prophet points/turn...you can probably get a GP out of this city, although one can choose to slightly gamble by running scientists or merchants there as well with GPP multipliers and knowing there's a reasonable chance of getting a prophet at some point.

2 temples, angkor wat, and so forth can mean a very potent prophet farm. CoL DOES open up Chichen Itza which is also a prophet wonder IIRC ;).

For the record, both SH and Oracle are both prophet wonders, so even 1 temple can get you a healthy 7 prophet points/turn...you can probably get a GP out of this city, although one can choose to slightly gamble by running scientists or merchants there as well with GPP multipliers and knowing there's a reasonable chance of getting a prophet at some point.

2 temples, angkor wat, and so forth can mean a very potent prophet farm. CoL DOES open up Chichen Itza which is also a prophet wonder IIRC ;).

When I do specific GP farms, I try my best to have as pure a pool as possible. Sometimes, that's just not going to happen. But when I see a decent opening for a religious economy (even from a stolen Holy City), I want PROPHETS ;). I'll have another city set aside for scientists (usually try to chop/build the GrLib in that one).

In my last Noble game ever as Hatty, I had a city build SH/Oracle/Chicken Pizza/AW and it had the Temple of Solomon. Also had a Jewish temple, obelisk (2 priest slots) and synagogue. The only pollution it had was 2 scientist GPP from UnivSangkor and an Artist GPP from National Epic. I had so many prophets spitting out of that city that it was disgusting :D. That city was a rare one with 2 food resources, 3 floodplains and lots of plains/hills tiles. It made a great Wonder spammer and then Prophet farm