late game BTS SE economy

TheLee

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So after my days cottage spamming in vanilla civ, I figured I'd give an SE strat a try on Monarch.

So, pre-modern era, things are great! I'm way ahead of the AI in techs, I get liberalism in 1100 AD (wow!), I manage to found both Confucianism and Taoism (founding religion on Monarch? wow!) and my research is going smoothly.

However, once I hit modern/future era I start petering out horribly. My past attempts playing with a friend on multiplayer I stuck with State Property, but lately (after discovering how awesome corporations are), I've been switching to Environmentalism, both for the massive health benefits and the extra commerce on my windmills (and a few forest preserves).

I'm not sure if my strategy should shift - it seems SE is less good when great scientists only lighbulb for 2-3 turns of research, and while it feels like wasting them to use 3 to lightbulb Ecology, I guess that's better than having to manually spend those 6-9 turns researching it - but it no longer feels like the massive advantage over the AI of, say, saving 20+ turns on Education or Printing Press with just one GS. I incorporate Mining Inc and Standard Ethanol (the two GS corps I guess), and while it does boost my production/research, I still ended up losing to the space race (by *1* turn thanks to enemy sabotage on one of my parts), which was horribly shocking to me because I had been used to in Warlords of consistently winning in the early-to-mid 1900's and of getting a culture victory in BTS around early to late 1800's.

So I guess I'm wondering, how do you guys maintain the energy of an SE strat. The early-to-mid game is just so outrageously good that I was shocked to see myself climbing into the 2000's and still not launching a spaceship.
 
If you're going to play a late game BtS SE, you really want a food generating corporation, not Standard Ethanol. Which of Sushi and Cereal Mills is better depends on the map type, but they both are vastly superior to Ethanol unless you a) Have no oil and b) Will be immininetly destroyed without it. Several extra specialists in each city can have a huge impact - with representation it will be way more than the science from Ethanol for the same number of resources.

Lightbulbing does get a lot weaker later in the game - the amount they give simply doesn't increase as fast as tech costs. Tech trades also become fewer, further weakening them. Golden ages are preferable in the late game if at all possible (switch some specialist types to get different GPs for them).
 
SPECIALIST ECONOMY ECONOMY

If you really want to do it later on, avoid using GPs for golden ages in the early and middle eras. That way, you can get 2 of them for 3 GPs by the time GPs aren't good for anything else. Late golden ages are tits.

Really though it'd be far smarter to just start cottaging over everything once GPs start sucking. You should be at or nearing democracy by that point; your cottages will mature FAST. You might even consider doing this after education, as that means you're about to get free speech.

Maybe you could do a GP GA as the SE's final huzzah when you get democracy. Start that GA, and use the pseudo spirituality to simultaneously switch to free speech, universal suffrage and emancipation. I dunno, I've never done a balls out transition economy before, I prefer a mix to get through the early and mid parts.
 
would sid's sushi really make that big of a difference over standard ethanol? Sid's Sushi gets me .5 food per resource right? Which translates to 1/4 of a scientist or other specialist which means at best 1.5 extra research, whereas Std Ethanol gives me 2 research per resource, without running into huge health/happiness problems, and I'm not so sure that in the modern era the loss of .5 research in best-case scenario is worth the incrementally more GP points.

I'll have to try moving some cities from scientists to merchants/engineers/artists, see if getting late golden ages helps me out.
 
So is it just generally accepted that you have to switch to cottages for late game?
 
TheLee said:
would sid's sushi really make that big of a difference over standard ethanol? Sid's Sushi gets me .5 food per resource right? Which translates to 1/4 of a scientist or other specialist which means at best 1.5 extra research, whereas Std Ethanol gives me 2 research per resource

The assumption is that Sushi resources are more abundant than Ethanol resources. Given the way the map generator uses seafood to boost starting locations, that is generally the case except on Pangaea and some continents maps. If Sushi is not more abundant, then you should go for Cereal Mills, which is .75 food, and so is ahead of Standard Ethanol anyway.

There's also the major issue that Sushi shows up midgame with Medicine. Standard Ethanol won't be around till much later at Plastics. Finally food is far more flexible than science - I can use Sushi to build science, but it works just as well to turn a tiny tundra city into a production powerhouse, or to boost a GP farm.

So is it just generally accepted that you have to switch to cottages for late game?

Nope. The SE has its advocates for the whole game. Personally I prefer cottage cities and then use Sushi to run specialists on top of them later on, but it works reasonably with just specialists. A fully developed CE has the edge over an SE in the end game, but the transition is often more hassle than it is worth.
 
Cool thanks for the pointers. You people are helpful *and* smart! what a combination
 
Specialist Economies are back with a vengeance post-biology... if you can get there before running out of steam you are fine.

I actually consider corporations stronger for cottage spammers - they on average get more output per person, and are less likely to operate past their health/happiness caps so more food helps them out more.
I mostly use State Property with a lategame SE, supporting my farms with workshops and watermills to avoid the health cap; corporations are a tremendous boost if you have little land worth working though.

As others have said, don't lightbulb in the late game; in fact if you avoid cottages and intend to stay in Representation the whole time there is a strong case for settling the early ones.
 
Basically by the time you reach the modern era what you really want weather you started with CE or SE is a HYRBID economy.

As several posters above mentioned, found the best food corporation (normally Sushi's) and if you were a CE have the city grow the new citizens into specalists directly.

While if you were a SE chances are your very close to the health limit (which matters more in the modern era due to the increased value of a city being free of maintenance costs during a WLT_D) and so are probably better off converting grassland farms not needed for irrigation channels into grassland cottages which become towns.
 
i find that whilst lightbulbing is good for getting a good tech lead, to stay ahead in the late game with an SE you need to settle all your GS in your science city aftr building an academy.

i typically only ligbulb education (u dont get the full tech, and maybe philosophy)

in a game with pericles running an SE i had 14 settle GS by early 1900s. however by this stage i had captured my whole continent so i had a few AI spawned cottage cities.

wasa good game to say the least!

but yea, food corps any day of the week!
 
The point of using Sid's Sushi to grow the cities isn't just to create more specialists - theres' also something of a return on the trade routes - they get better the larger the city is. If you can get your city up to about size 25-30, you can get multiple trade routes in the 7-10 range. That's very buff.

Of course, you can also do this with a Cottaged city, but growing SE cities to happy cap once that happy cap goes to 28+ or infinite (Globe Theater) is easier with SE focused Food cities. Getting a mostly land tiled city on the coast is a definite advantage here, as the Harbor and the Customs House together boost the trade routes output as well as boost the health cap, which is the more common limitation in the latter eras.

For production, you can go with Workshopping over the Farms as "usual" for direct production output, but you can also go with Engineers on top of those if you have the right food corporations.

For Space Race, techs are the real issue. obsolete had something to say to that effect in the new "Food Economy Test," and it bears repeating as it's true: you need to stop the AI from acquiring key Wonders like the Internet that helps it tech along. You do that by building the key Wonders yourself.

On a per tile basis, mature Cottages, even under FS, rarely produce more than 5 beakers per turn (unless you can afford to turn up the science rate to close to 100%, anyway). Under Representation, you get a Scientist and a Farmer for each Farmed Grassland tile, getting you 6 beakers per grassland tile, effectively. As you generate and settle GSs, that rate will "accelerate." The real issue you have there is the happiness cap, and finding enough food.

Some Civs have more trouble raising the happiness cap than others. If you're running Specs, you can actually use Theaters, Coliseums, and the culture slider to benefit you there, raising the happiness cap Civ-wide quite impressively for a few gpt. Some people use that to run Caste System even against massive Emancipation, but you can alternatively run Emancipation and use the culture slider and food corporations to boost city population sky-high. Not as easy as a Cottage economy, but doable.
 
For Space Race, techs are the real issue. obsolete had something to say to that effect in the new "Food Economy Test," and it bears repeating as it's true: you need to stop the AI from acquiring key Wonders like the Internet that helps it tech along. You do that by building the key Wonders yourself.

Ah, well that sort of explains that. Wang Kon finished internet and was one of 2 AI opponents in my last game that beat me by 1 turn (the other one just had insane land mass so it was probably inevitable that they out teched me in modern era, especially given some missteps I may have made according to other posts).
 
Early game, I settle all of my GP's and do so according to where i will build the big three NW's: Ironworks, Wall Street and Oxford.

GE's go in the Ironworks city as their 3 hammers will become nine hammers late game. GM's go in the Wall Street City as they will become 18 gpt. A settled GS becomes 31.5 bpt.

A settled Spy in your Oxford city with Scotland Yard and all of the espionage buildings is truly amazing. That solitary individual will produce 21 beakers and 36 EP's per turn.

Even late game I settle them, because a GS gives you an additional 2 or 3 hammers to their science bonus. A GP gives 6 hammers and 10 gold (Ironworks city) or 4 hammers and 15 gold (WS city). A GE gives 12 beakers and 9 hammers (IW city) or 21 beakers and 7.5 hammers (bureaucratic, representative, oxford capital). I mention all of these hammer bonuses because, can you put a price on extra production?
 
Well a few things
1. Settle Specialists Unless you will be getting a valuable monopoly tech that you will be trading around a bit once your Science city has an Academy, Oxford and 5 or 6 settled Great Scientists, it will be Mass pumping out science.

2. If you are going Solid SE, then probably go for Environmentalism... I'd agree that Ethanol probably is better than Sushi if you are running into health penalties.

3. Focus on Spies unless you are planning on staying way ahead in tech, even with Caste, they are limited so sticking with a few is good idea, because they give the best commerce return (8 v. 6) [counting commerce that can be used to get techs]

Also spies are REALLY useful for stopping a Space Race win. (sabotage of parts built before launch)
 
SE sux post Lib periods . but ppl play SE usually have very early Lib (mine record is 390 AD @ Monarch ) and very eary rifle you should go to war and have a lot of land at that time . If you kill 2 civ and have all the land so I can safely say it doesnt matter you keep SE or cottage everything . I always do a mix of SE and CE though , run Rep and usualy have a big scientist city that provide 700+ beaker per turn but every thing else is cottages :D
 
If you want to do a late game SE, settle more specialists and wait longer to burn GA's.

IMO the bulbing can make a SE really powerful though. If you have that kind of tech lead in the mid game, why are you not leveraging it? Take your more advanced units and run roughshod over rival civs. When you're 2-3x the size of the opponents, any economy starts seeming pretty effective! This has the interesting side effect of granting you some TOWNS (aka the AI's auto worker town spam), which can give you the option of converting CE if you want to, or else just using them for money or EP. If you like micro you could farm over them too. I don't like micro. I do it early on when it is necessary, then stop.
 
SE sux post Lib periods.

lovetramy

SE and CE both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have not learned how to manage a CE very well, but I can manage a SE very well. I can barely beat Prince games with a CE while I'm attempting to win Immortal games with a SE. However I won't say that a CE is worse than a SE just because I don't understand how to manage a CE.
 
lovetramy

SE and CE both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have not learned how to manage a CE very well, but I can manage a SE very well. I can barely beat Prince games with a CE while I'm attempting to win Immortal games with a SE. However I won't say that a CE is worse than a SE just because I don't understand how to manage a CE.

CE is all about the slider and commerce multipliers. It's kind of interesting to me that you run SE well but not CE :lol:. I'm the opposite after all.

CE needs less pop than SE, and it needs a decent amount of that pop working towns. Basically, you'll have 3 types of cities in CE:

1. Production (I don't think there's an economic style that can forgo production cities entirely...)
2. GP farm (no matter what, you'll want GP. Unlike SE, you'll mostly be running specialists in this one city, to get desired GP type. This is typically a scientist GP farm in most games I've seen, including my own).
3. Commerce. Yes, everything else is commerce. These cities try to work as many cottages as possible, and also favor commerce resources and food to support cottages on non-grassland or grow.

Now here's the theory: If you're researching more than 50%, you'll probably want libraries, universities, observatories, and labs in more of your commerce cities before you'd want markets, banks, grocers, and malls. If you're warring and expanding quickly the latter will keep you afloat (along with courthouses, but everybody who gets big makes those!). This is less specialization than in SE, but you still want to clump multipliers of a given kind in an individual city.

Note that this makes the slider a BIG DEAL for CE. Later on, a 10% change can be 100's of beakers, or at least 100. Many people argue that a fully developed town on a food neutral grassland will outperform a specialist, and with multipliers this is probably true in a straight up town vs 2 pop (farm + specialist) sense. Of course, that kind of argument ignores the higher # of GP's and the early and potentially well-leveraged advantage that SE can bring.

I understand SE much less so, but the slider is less of an impact than using food to run specialists. Indeed, the culture slider might become necessary if emancipation kicks in before one gets enough specialist-allowing buildings I'd assume. The wealth city you showed me in the other thread appeared pretty damned impressive, I must say. I'm considering working something along those lines into my CE games even, because that would let me run the slider several a notch or two higher (and as I pointed out earlier, that is pretty damned significant in a CE)

The more I learned the more it seems to me that a pure economy either way does indeed suck compared to a hybrid economy that is used properly, but then I'd probably have to get the nuances down in a SE before trying to apply its concept in a hybridization :eek:.
 
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