I'm currently trying pure EE (no research after CoL+alphabet) in my offline monarch games. So far it looks that imperialistic civs are great for it. Cheap settlers help with early blocking and extra GG points have synergy with TGW in defensive wars. I tried Suleiman and Augustus and both work great (unless you are surrounded by agressive slow-teching moronites). While Janissary is no match for praetorian it still helps when you turn your drafted muskets against medieval rival. As for Augustus he is great as with him TGW is likely not the only wonder you build.

Surely it is easier to run EE with several good techers with different paths, Willem+Wang+Hannibal is great for EE.

What leaders do you prefer for pure EE?

I did not try EE as Peter madscientist style, but at the first glance he is not as good for EE.

P.S: How do you run EE if you start near Toku, Monty and Shaka? ;)

In my opinion, Suleiman is the best. Get the great wall, and you'll have the fastest settled great spy in your capital. Get a couple more and build scotland yard or settle in your capital, and your capital will be an espionage machine.

Philosophical-->Faster GSpy emergence
Financial-->More ep from slider
Organized-->Cheap courthouses for early spy specialists
Protective-->Cheap walls/castles

Those are the direct and early bonuses. I like Liz a lot for running a EE, but she has such strengths that running a EE is not really necessary.

The thing is, the best traits for a EE can also be used for sheer teching instead.

That's why I like to run a EE more with protective civs. Gilgamesh is a good example as he has access to very early spy specialists. Chop the GW, hit priesthood for a zig in the GW city, run a spy and you should have a few GSPies in short order.

An EE can really be run with any leader, but certain traits benefit it

1) Philosphical: The faster you get GSpies the faster you can build Scottland Yards all over. This is the single most important feature of an EE, Great Spies.

2) Industrious: Helps to assure you get the Great Wall and early GSpy points. Otherwise you are sutck waiting for courthouses or the Ziggerat.

3) Financial: More commerce means more eps.

4) ORG: Faster courthouses.

5) IMP: Faster settlers. Not sure why GG's are favored as any war decreases overall commerce (damaged trade routes) and absorbing so much land means your researching faster than the AIs anyway.

6) PRO: faster castles

7) SPI: Swapping civics, especially nationhood.

I was toying with listing spiritual and think a good case can be made for it. However, I don't agree that Imperialistic has any direct bearing on running an EE. Cheap settlers is good for everything and does not have any specific bearing on running an EE. Yes, there is good synergy with the GW, but that is about it really and requires you to be fighting defensive wars.

Early wars as EEer will likely be defensive. Early GG for killing a stack of Monty's 7 Jaguars in my territory is great (Still lost that game as Peri and Wang tried to dogpile me and while they failed the other continent was too far ahead in tech).

I'll add "civilizations with free promotions on UU" to the list. At the end of the game your sliders are low you can easily upgrade everything. In my current EE game most of my production comes from US town hammers and US hurry production. Under such circumstances "Build or upgrade?" is not a question. Oromos would be nice for this but Zara's traits are not very EE oriented.

I know it is a bit unusual but I hate ORG/FIN.

Asoka ???????????

There is no such thing as a EE. There are variants of other economies that use diferent sliders or diferent specialists to get EPT points instead of direct beakers. This said, if you know good leaders for using cottages to get beakers or specialists to get beakers, you already know the answer to the OP question :D

I've actually had quite a bit success with Freddy. Philo helps in getting those Great Spies quicker, and org lets me chop out cheap courthouses everywhere and start running spies in those cities too.

The biggest problem I've run into with the EE is that I'm only a monarch-emperor player, and in many cases, the AI just techs too damn slowly. I think when I start playing immortal I might find this economy a lot more useful.

I do love espionage in general way too much though. I don't know why, but stealing techs is just a thrill for me. I don't care if it's the best way to play or not, it's so FUN!

Asoka ???????????

I vote for Gandhi. Mainly for the irony, but also because Philo will create Great Spies more quickly and he starts with mysticism and mining, which is only a stone's throw away from masonry and the GW. I've never tried running a EE economy, but I think it would be interesting to try. Is it still possible to steal techs late in the game?

Late game is actually when it's easiest to steal techs, by that point you have runaway espionage against the AI! The problem then becomes that they up their esp. slider to try to compensate...and of course this slows down their tech which is no good. Early game, I usually have 1 good target that I focus on and can steal from. Later in the game I find myself changing my "spy target" much more often depending on which techs I want to steal/who I want to sabotage.
P.S: How do you run EE if you start near Toku, Monty and Shaka?
The simple answer is, you don't!

There is no such thing as a EE. There are variants of other economies that use diferent sliders or diferent specialists to get EPT points instead of direct beakers. This said, if you know good leaders for using cottages to get beakers or specialists to get beakers, you already know the answer to the OP question :D

Not necessarily. To maximize eps you want Scotland Yard which is the only multiplier building that get's you 100% tield AND can be built in numerous cities. For this reason Philosophical leaders are much more important to an EE game (Slider, settled Great Spies, or spy specialists) compared with something like the SE or CE game.

There is no such thing as a EE. There are variants of other economies that use diferent sliders or diferent specialists to get EPT points instead of direct beakers. This said, if you know good leaders for using cottages to get beakers or specialists to get beakers, you already know the answer to the OP question :D


You are correct in that there is no single EE, however it is distinct from from "traditional" CE or SE in several key ways:
1. Your city optimization path is extremely different. A traditional CE wants, ultimately, large cities with only a few needed overlaps so that maximal gains can be made off your :commerce: with minimal :hammers: invested in infrastructure. EEs, of all varieties, turn this on its head. ICS is by far and away the most powerful way to rack up EP, thanks to all the inherit EP from buildings. Likewise the utility of close target cities makes for extremely interesting choices with regards to "blocking".
2. EE tech paths are vastly different than normal CoL (priesthood) vault far higher up the ladder; econ becomes detrimental. Both democracy and communism become key techs in the mid/late game; traditional CE or SE can normally make do with one xor the other.
3. Civic optimization changes. EE gets idioticly more mileage out of nat and PS than either traditional SE or CE.

For a dedicated EE I settle differently (if I make the decision soon enough), I take a vastly different tech path, and I run different civics (with the limits of diplomacy).

Personally my favorites are the English, the Sumerians, the HRE, and Spain. The English have several nice advantages:
1. Redcoat is among, if not the best, draftable UUs in the game.
2. Brokerage let's you really improve your terminal economy; steal computers, sabotage production to build the internet, and then flip your CE(E) to a rushbuy economy.
3. A good set of traits: philo for mass SYs, Fin for more :commerce:, imp for cheap settlers so you can more efficiently leverage direct building EP production, and Charismatic/protective being utterly silly in the gunpowder era (not to mention cheap castles).

Gilga runs of Cre for easy blocking (though the lib bonus is lost), early zig means idioticly early GSp production and lower costs, and the vulture is useful for a quick extortion run while you are teching alpha.

HRE - cheap rathus which makes the empire cheap. Pro is good for castles and draftees.

Spain - so EE likes its castles, so does my general asking for freebie CRIII arty. Spi is also insanely strong with EE as you can flip at whim from Nat to Vassalage and Theo to Pac (or OR). PS - US/HR can also be very handy. Oh and a nice two move unit MADE for spy driven warfare? Yes its all good.

I would argue that being non-Financial means EE is a better path. Generally speaking being non-Financial means you'll be getting less commerce from tiles. This makes the EE more attractive because the per city bonuses given by espionage buildings would be the same regardless.

IMO any civ that has good drafted units is perfect for an EE. It almost doesn't matter what the leader traits are. Tokugawa can draft awesome units from muskets onwards and staying in Nationhood for a long time is really strong, so an EE works well for him. The fact he gets cheap castles is almost irrelevant as generally speaking it is not wise to delay Rifling for too long.

India has a good UB for someone who runs an EE.

ind/phi leader is best for it.
you don't know his name or civ just because he's that good at espionage...

@madscientist & mirthadir

You are both correct, but I haven't talked about empire development ( that is indeed quite diferent if you go to espionage mode ). I specifically answered the OP question of good leaders for "EE" ... to get ept you need specialists and/or cottages and slider and in the core , the multipliers will only get you that far if you have a good raw ept buildup ( not mentioning the multiplier you can get in espionage missions just for producing ept :crazyeye: ). A good leader to get beakers from cottages will be a good leader to get ept from cottages and a good leader fro getting beakers from specs will be a good leader fro getting ept from specs... this doesn't mean you will play equally in both situations OFC ;)

R_rolo1:

Well yes and no; Saladin has some benefits for a SE, particularly SE(p), due to the UB which are completely useless for an EE, similarly the Korean UB becomes an epic fail. Likewise one of the strengths of a creative SE is the cheap price of libs; which is again uselss to an EE. A large number of the traits become less important to EE, most notably Cre, Cha (if you are going peaceful), and Exp (if you opt for ICS and an early war). Org, already strong, becomes even stronger while Pro gets a major boost. Yes you just need to generate spec slots or :commerce:; however the way in which those slots are generated and that :commerce: is multiplied changes the relative values of civs' UBs, traits, and even UUs.

Offtopic: Does any mention of Oromo warriors automatically summon PieceOfMind to the thread?

As for nationhood - I'm not impressed. FS gives me almost the same EP as I have more commerce from tiles. Buro gives me more EP early, especially with blocked start.

Offtopic: Does any mention of Oromo warriors automatically summon PieceOfMind to the thread?

As for nationhood - I'm not impressed. FS gives me almost the same EP as I have more commerce from tiles. Buro gives me more EP early, especially with blocked start.

FS will give you more overall ep in a heavily cottaged empire. If you running spy specialists to boost eps and more GSpies then your likely using farms and nationhood is the way to go. Depends on how you go about it, both ways work.

In my current EE game my empire is so cottaged that I'm actually running an universal suffrage industry... I will try specialist heavy approach in my next game.

Offtopic: Does any mention of Oromo warriors automatically summon PieceOfMind to the thread?

Yes.:lol: tada!

Keep in mind nationhood has no civic upkeep and +2:) from barracks, and the ability to draft.

As I said before, it's not going to be worth running Nationhood over FS unless you are going to take advantage of the other benefits of Nationhood - particularly the drafting. If you use the drafting properly, it would probably equate to a +50% production boost or something of that order, in the cities you're drafting from.

Also, if you're running 10% science or more (i.e. haven't gone full blown espionage economy yet) then it is very very possible that FS will still suit you better if your empire is mostly cottages. I usually play heavily-cottaged empires and I still find Nationhood to be superior after a certain point in the game. But remember, you need to do the drafting.;)

Gilgamesh if you don't take CoL from the oracle. Otherwise, organised/philosophical would be my best bet.