Artichoker
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2007
- Messages
- 1,711
Many people have questioned the worthiness of the Caste System civic, especially in comparison to Slavery. The main criticism is that production capacity tends to be lower, especially before enhancements to workshops have been gained through Guilds and Chemistry.
But calculations show that for large city sizes, workshops become a better source of production compared to the whip. More significantly, the adoption of State Property can really kick a workshop-based economy into full gear.
The real question about Caste System is getting its two separate benefits to work in synergy. Since we know that Guilds, Chemistry, and State Property come into the game only in the middle and late stages of the game, the aim is to schedule a switch to Caste System approximately around that time. The next aim, obviously, is to maximize the other bonus of Caste System while doing so.
The weapon we have at our diposal is invoking the "unlimited" part of "unlimited specialists". In a steady-state progression of city production, a city must operate at 0 food or more to survive. However, in the short-term progression, this is not necessarily true. As long as we limit the total duration of the unlimited specialists period, our cities will not starve!
Enter the Golden Age. The Golden Age provides us two separate benefits that work in synergy: 1) anarchy-free civic switches and 2) an additional +100% bonus to GPP. With the Golden Age, we run as many specialists as we can select in our city screen for all of our GP farms, leaving only enough to grab the high-food tiles. If we have not done so, we also make sure our religion civic is Pacifism up until the last turn of the Golden Age.
Of course, we must prepare for this last-minute sprint in the turns leading up to the Golden Age. We do this by growing the size of our GP Farms so that their total food capacity increases, as well as their total population. During this preparatory phase, our other cities meanwhile can continue to whip infrastructure and/or units as normal.
Once we get the Golden Age, which will typically be the time of sprinting to Liberalism, we unlock our "unlimited specialists" clause to boost both our science and GPP generation.
As for the means of triggering the Golden Age, we can either aim to win the Great Artist from the Music race, or use one of our spare Great Scientists that we have gained right before the start of the Golden Age.
But calculations show that for large city sizes, workshops become a better source of production compared to the whip. More significantly, the adoption of State Property can really kick a workshop-based economy into full gear.
The real question about Caste System is getting its two separate benefits to work in synergy. Since we know that Guilds, Chemistry, and State Property come into the game only in the middle and late stages of the game, the aim is to schedule a switch to Caste System approximately around that time. The next aim, obviously, is to maximize the other bonus of Caste System while doing so.
The weapon we have at our diposal is invoking the "unlimited" part of "unlimited specialists". In a steady-state progression of city production, a city must operate at 0 food or more to survive. However, in the short-term progression, this is not necessarily true. As long as we limit the total duration of the unlimited specialists period, our cities will not starve!
Enter the Golden Age. The Golden Age provides us two separate benefits that work in synergy: 1) anarchy-free civic switches and 2) an additional +100% bonus to GPP. With the Golden Age, we run as many specialists as we can select in our city screen for all of our GP farms, leaving only enough to grab the high-food tiles. If we have not done so, we also make sure our religion civic is Pacifism up until the last turn of the Golden Age.
Of course, we must prepare for this last-minute sprint in the turns leading up to the Golden Age. We do this by growing the size of our GP Farms so that their total food capacity increases, as well as their total population. During this preparatory phase, our other cities meanwhile can continue to whip infrastructure and/or units as normal.
Once we get the Golden Age, which will typically be the time of sprinting to Liberalism, we unlock our "unlimited specialists" clause to boost both our science and GPP generation.
As for the means of triggering the Golden Age, we can either aim to win the Great Artist from the Music race, or use one of our spare Great Scientists that we have gained right before the start of the Golden Age.