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.
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.