feralminded
Obsessive Number Cruncher
The Premise
Recently I've been pushing the idea of a late game SE with powered by scientists and powered by cottages run under FS/PP. The idea is that late game an SE can simply out-specialize its cities compared to the CE counterparts and as a result at least keep up despite cottages being slightly more efficient per tile. The irony here is that CE and SE trade places when it comes to their financial capital. The SE cottages the hell out of a decent city and the CE farms the hell out of a big food city and runs as many merchant specialists as possible. Both drop WallStreet and there you go ... empire wide . But for research both economies invert with SE's running as many scientists as possible and CE's supporting as many cottages as possible.
The Setup
Using a save from the same game I just ran a tutorial for I went to town with WB. Out of 20-25 cities I kept 5 production cities as they were. I had one SSC, one Wall street city, one espionage city, and the rest were research cities if possible. I tested SE using Rep/FS/CS/SP/FR and tested CE using both US/FS/EM/FM/FR and US/FS/EM/FM/FR. I did my best to optimize both economies (this took hours ... a lot more than I anticipated). I found out a lot of interesting things about them along the way ...
As for buildings all cities got forge/granary/courthouse/airport/supermarket. All water cities got lighthouses/harbors/custom's houses.
All river cities got levees.
All science cities all got labs/libraries/Universities/Observatories
All production cities got barracks/stables/drydock(if water)/factories/power
All gold cities got banks/grocers/markets
SSC got Oxford
Wallstreet got Wallstreet
Espionage city got all of the EP buildings.
In addition I had to fudge one of the CE cities to try and get it as close to 0 / turn so it has both financial and research buildings.
I added and buildings as necessary although needless to say SE took a lot more than CE so total invested were higher on the SE.
First of all here's the early shots of the Super Cities
SE-SSC
CE-SSC
SE-WallStreet
CE-Wallstreet
As you can see the SSC's are in a virtual dead heat. As for the wallstreet cities the SE is kicking the CE in the nuts. In fact initially I had to run 2 extra merchant cities to support the CE at an 80% slider. Due to that ridiculous Wallstreet city the SE was able to run a 50% slider with 10% culture to mitigate unhappiness.
Test #1: No Research from hammers
The first test I ran had every city producing to see what the raw research production was. This favored SE since we were not really giving the CE any benefit from it's US. I don't have any good screen shots from this test but the SE handily out-performed the CE. I believe the SE scored just slightly over 2900 / turn while the CE was in the mid 2600s. However what was more instructive was that the SE was running a 50% science slider so I decided to abandon the WallStreet city altogether and turned it into another science city. This actually got the SE to just barely break 3000 /turn For the rest of the tests I ran an SE with no wallstreet city at all. 0 towns period.
Test #2: Add Research from hammers
Things got a lot closer once I changed all of the cities to producing instead of . CE became far more competitive, although it still couldn't quite catch SE. At this point I had been running CE under FM and I thought to run it under SP. SP yielded more which helped in the production of research but it also reduced maintenance costs enough that I was able to eliminate almost all of the CE's extra merchant cities and it was able to run an 80% slider on virtually the Wall Street city alone. I've included screen shots of all three (SE, CE-FM, CE-SP) below
CE-FM
CE-SP
SE
So SE wins? Not quite ... first of all the SE required quite a few more buildings to support happiness and food ... this was not accounted for. Second of all if instead of happiness and food buildings like the SE had to build, if the CE had built some markets or grocers in some of its better research cities the CE *might* be able to push up to a 90% slider ... which should push it into a slight lead. I'm not certain about that one but I'd say they would be damned close in any case. But finally this was Ramesses ... who is notably NOT FIN. I counted just shy of 200 tiles on that map which would yield an extra 1 under FIN ... which run through the gambit of multiplier buildings and sliders will yield the CE approximately 250 more . Of course here we are building research which may not be realistic.
So the conclusion ... well I think they're damned close when fully optimized but I doubt this is terribly realistic to expect. Regardless I think its very hard to definitely say either is that much better than the other.
Recently I've been pushing the idea of a late game SE with powered by scientists and powered by cottages run under FS/PP. The idea is that late game an SE can simply out-specialize its cities compared to the CE counterparts and as a result at least keep up despite cottages being slightly more efficient per tile. The irony here is that CE and SE trade places when it comes to their financial capital. The SE cottages the hell out of a decent city and the CE farms the hell out of a big food city and runs as many merchant specialists as possible. Both drop WallStreet and there you go ... empire wide . But for research both economies invert with SE's running as many scientists as possible and CE's supporting as many cottages as possible.
The Setup
Using a save from the same game I just ran a tutorial for I went to town with WB. Out of 20-25 cities I kept 5 production cities as they were. I had one SSC, one Wall street city, one espionage city, and the rest were research cities if possible. I tested SE using Rep/FS/CS/SP/FR and tested CE using both US/FS/EM/FM/FR and US/FS/EM/FM/FR. I did my best to optimize both economies (this took hours ... a lot more than I anticipated). I found out a lot of interesting things about them along the way ...
As for buildings all cities got forge/granary/courthouse/airport/supermarket. All water cities got lighthouses/harbors/custom's houses.
All river cities got levees.
All science cities all got labs/libraries/Universities/Observatories
All production cities got barracks/stables/drydock(if water)/factories/power
All gold cities got banks/grocers/markets
SSC got Oxford
Wallstreet got Wallstreet
Espionage city got all of the EP buildings.
In addition I had to fudge one of the CE cities to try and get it as close to 0 / turn so it has both financial and research buildings.
I added and buildings as necessary although needless to say SE took a lot more than CE so total invested were higher on the SE.
First of all here's the early shots of the Super Cities
SE-SSC
CE-SSC
SE-WallStreet
CE-Wallstreet
As you can see the SSC's are in a virtual dead heat. As for the wallstreet cities the SE is kicking the CE in the nuts. In fact initially I had to run 2 extra merchant cities to support the CE at an 80% slider. Due to that ridiculous Wallstreet city the SE was able to run a 50% slider with 10% culture to mitigate unhappiness.
Test #1: No Research from hammers
The first test I ran had every city producing to see what the raw research production was. This favored SE since we were not really giving the CE any benefit from it's US. I don't have any good screen shots from this test but the SE handily out-performed the CE. I believe the SE scored just slightly over 2900 / turn while the CE was in the mid 2600s. However what was more instructive was that the SE was running a 50% science slider so I decided to abandon the WallStreet city altogether and turned it into another science city. This actually got the SE to just barely break 3000 /turn For the rest of the tests I ran an SE with no wallstreet city at all. 0 towns period.
Test #2: Add Research from hammers
Things got a lot closer once I changed all of the cities to producing instead of . CE became far more competitive, although it still couldn't quite catch SE. At this point I had been running CE under FM and I thought to run it under SP. SP yielded more which helped in the production of research but it also reduced maintenance costs enough that I was able to eliminate almost all of the CE's extra merchant cities and it was able to run an 80% slider on virtually the Wall Street city alone. I've included screen shots of all three (SE, CE-FM, CE-SP) below
CE-FM
CE-SP
SE
So SE wins? Not quite ... first of all the SE required quite a few more buildings to support happiness and food ... this was not accounted for. Second of all if instead of happiness and food buildings like the SE had to build, if the CE had built some markets or grocers in some of its better research cities the CE *might* be able to push up to a 90% slider ... which should push it into a slight lead. I'm not certain about that one but I'd say they would be damned close in any case. But finally this was Ramesses ... who is notably NOT FIN. I counted just shy of 200 tiles on that map which would yield an extra 1 under FIN ... which run through the gambit of multiplier buildings and sliders will yield the CE approximately 250 more . Of course here we are building research which may not be realistic.
So the conclusion ... well I think they're damned close when fully optimized but I doubt this is terribly realistic to expect. Regardless I think its very hard to definitely say either is that much better than the other.