Yeah I've never gotten much use out of the SoL. In comes late and it's really expensive, so the game is pretty much over before you can finish it. It would be powerful though- adding extra free hammers to all your cities is always very powerful.
Yes it is. Once they fix engineers to give 2 hammers, one Factory engineer will be able to generate 6 hammers (3 from engineer, 3 from factory+railroad). Add to that the base 10 you get from Communism and you have 16 hammers in a 1-pop city (that costs 0,5 happy to sustain with Forbidden Palace). All you need to do is rushbuy the Factory. If you're chinese and your first build is a paper maker, your city is generating a gold surplus once it reaches pop 3 (papermaker will pay for itself + factory, while the two citizens will pay for the railroad connection).
Running a mine won't generate Great Engineer Points, which generates Great Engineer hammers after a it pops, so running the tiles instead of a Engineers doesn't exactly generate the same results.
Moreover, under certain policies, the Engineer will consume half food, so he's functionally also giving one food. He'll also generate half the unhappiness. The change to the Engineers will make them very, very strong. Scientists are better for teching, of course, so they look better if you're a tech-junkie.
I may be wrong here, but I do believe that in Civ V, Great People points are no longer pooled. This means that you can generate Great Engineers in your production centers and their generation won't affect the rate at which you otherwise acquire Great Scientists in you Science cities.
Exactly.they have separate gpp pool - true
they have common gpp limit... so when you generate engineer you move limit for scientist effectively delaying it
pi-r8:
Not sure I get your point. Why would you run Scientists in your Production Cities?
no matter what I do, I always have that problem. That's originally why I made this strategy, to get +8 hammers in each city, and that's why I never bother with rationalism. I also build factories and windmills everywhere, and no science buildings except libraries. Scientists are really really powerful in this game.If you're prioritizing Science that much, don't you get problems with teching too quickly and not having enough production?
pi-r8:
Perhaps you haven't done quite nearly enough.
Scientists are powerful for racing up the tech tree, but they don't help you with much of anything else. If you prioritize them above all else, you end up with lots of tech and no way to build what you know how to build.
How's your base hammer rate for each city? 20's a nice, round benchmark for Medieval and Renaissance. It's possible to get base hammers up that high, if you focus for it. If you think about it, it's just the center tile plus 6 Mines ('bout a pop 8 city, I reckon). With a Forge, such a city would build Musketmen in 6-ish turns, and a Cannon in 10-11.
It'd probably be possible to have three such cities up by that time, if you REX hard enough.
No it doesn't cost culture points as such, each culture point goes towards border expansion and towards policies. What I meant to say is that tile claiming normally takes a long time. Each city gives you six tiles "for free" that would have otherwise needed a lot of turns to unlock.
If you're willing to forego getting social policies completely, you never need to build any culture buildings with ICS, and this is most likely not a bad strategy.