Emperor, Fractal, Elizabeth. Standard everything else.

Started an emperor game last night and wanted to run a specialist economy, something I am horrible at and it didn't work out the way I planned last night either. Reasonable starting position, coastal, 2 food sites (pig, wheat) and incense. No river or water food but lots of forest to chop and hills to mine. Founded second city near copper and third city near stone and found Shaka. Continent was a long thin strip of land and Shaka quickly blocked me off from going east. Couldn't get enough food to run a true GPP farm anywhere but wanted to run SE so I made a break for the pyramids and representation. Succeeded and decided to try for the GLH and head west. Whole other end of the continent was desert with a couple of mediocre coastal city sites. GLH came through so money was fine and I ramped up for war with Shaka. Everybody but London building units. Founded the 2 coastal cities and popped an engineer. Built great library with him and another engineer popped, Parthenon for him (oracle and TOA already gone). Started caste system and suddenly the GPs started flying out. 4 scientist came out quickly, 1 academy and 3 settled in London. 2 merchants were settled in London as well. While this was going on Shaka declared on me. Had no iron, horses or elephants but had copper and tons of catapults/axemen/spears. Took 3 cities, cease-fire for a tech, built more units and got to macemen, launched again. Took the last 4 cities to destroy Shaka when I stopped for the night. Just got printing press as last tech and no one else has it to give you an idea of tech stage.

The strange thing is when I surveyed my empire before shutting down I realized I had never seen such a lopsided country before. I had 14 (7 from Shaka) cities and in 13 of them I had built nothing except granarys/monuments/barracks and a few lighthouses. All other builds were military units and a couple settlers and workers. The 14th, London, I had non-stop been building structures. The aforementioned pyramids/GLH/GL/Parth as well as the Colossus/Notre Dame/Sankore/the Mausoleum/National Epic/workin on Sistene. Most available buildings as well. I am making money at 50% research and am equal with the leaders in the Tech race. I have no idea how this worked when I basically only developed one city due to war pressure. Yea the GLH and Colossus are big financial crutches as well as the financial trait itself but it just doesn't seem like it should work.

So do I continue this lopsided mess and ramp up for war with Jao, the leader who is next in line down the snakey continent while continuing the London development or should I halt and build up the empire as a whole. Land isn't great but I have built a pile of cottages that are coming to fruition, had to do something with my workers while the war was going on. Couldn't keep them near the front as Shaka kept sending raiders after them. Thanks.

This is called WE/SSE (wonder economy/settled specialst economy)

Really? I guess you learn a new acronym everyday. I'm still shocked one city can carry a whole empire that far into a game.

look at obsolete's walkthroughs, he does a great job of building crazy many wonders in his capital, he has insane focus, ie reasearching masonry before fishing while starting next to 3 seafood... they're very educational in my opinion, and in those cases where the RNG gives you a great capital site but crappy land, OR where you are isolated (so speed of expansion is not relevant) going for a capital-centric approach can work out really wel...

I actually do this often. If I see a single prime city-site balancing food and production, and have stone. The great thing about the settled-SE economy is the fact settled GPs cost you no food.

This strategy does run out of steam eventually. You'll tap your GP-well dry at some point, and although that particular city may generate a generous amount of beakers, it'll still lose out to a proper cottage/hammer/specialist economy in the end.

Just make sure you use this as an early game measure when appropriate, and switch to something a little more conventional after your mid-game wars allow you to expand and compensate for the AI bonuses.

Actually, I do have a question myself, does anyone know of any good walkthroughs for transitioning out of this or a pure SE to a hammer based economy in the late game? I recently moved up level, and I can no longer get away with simply a military tech advantage to seal domination victories before the AI can catch up every time anymore.