I can see now
wow: <- you opened my eyes
) (if I understood correctly)
I don't remember much discussion about city specialization and stuff (or missed it), and behind your quoted replies, I think I sense a quiet and strong strategy.
We don't have any cottages yet (well, one or two could be just freshly finished around the capital in the few turns Tachy played), and starting to develop a cottage economy at this stage of the game, could be very slow. What you are implying is running a food heavy variant with Caste system and representation. Run as many scientist specialists as we can, and put enough merchants to be able to run the science slider 100% all the time. The representation bonus bakers from merchants is just a plus on the scale to take this route. The speed at which this system can get developed beats the cottage variant on its knees
.
We are close to CS, so a cottaged capital won't hurt either.
I wonder if this approach would work in a space race game which lasts longer. In a quicky one where we beeline MM, it's very strong.
I often put a few merchant specialists in my games, but never enough to make my economy float. I always put more scientists, and just run binary research. (I also screw the city specialisation every time
)
In fact, the UN diplo victory condition seems most suited for this kind of play. With no need to research the complete tech tree, it still lasts long enough to make this variant interesting.
(or, am I just jumping into conclusions?)