Late game SE or economic transition?

Building infrastructure with a CE is better done with whipping than working mines. For most of the game cities are relatively small, if you're working 4 mines, plus 4 farms to work those mines, what's left for cottages?
You can whip your way to 10 angry faces, or you can grow and have a steady hammer supply. Slavery is only worth it in the early game, and when you dont have anything worthwhile to work. By city size 10, mines are better and this is available right around pyramids.
 
No - since we are using slavery for production, a farm can be used for either production or supporting specialists.
A CE can also use slavery and they dont need anything to support cottages. And they can build farms too! (le gasp)

more science than cottages but lose in the long run
Okay, im putting my foot down. Referring to 10 turns as "long term" is henceforth verboten.

a SE is better at turning off its science altogether and devoting all its food towards production for a burst of production - eg every city drops its scientists and immediately whips three macemen as fast as it can.
Look, just play a few CE games and see for yourself okay? Whipping is whipping is whipping, and there is nothing that stops a CE city from working some farms to grow back, just like a SE would.

Of course that flexibility comes at a price - your burst of production has destroyed your science base - but your cities do regrow faster.
Its the same. Each reborn scientist eats food which means the next guy will take longer to pop up. In a CE the surplus food is constant all the way to the happy cap.

Alternatively, you could put everyone on farms until you got the people you want, but that puts your science on hold for even longer. Meanwhile the CE is pulling in beakers as it grows.
 
A CE can also use slavery and they dont need anything to support cottages. And they can build farms too! (le gasp)
But not as many as the SE player.


Look, just play a few CE games and see for yourself okay? Whipping is whipping is whipping, and there is nothing that stops a CE city from working some farms to grow back, just like a SE would.
But the CE player doesn't have as many farms available to use.


Its the same. Each reborn scientist eats food which means the next guy will take longer to pop up. In a CE the surplus food is constant all the way to the happy cap.

Alternatively, you could put everyone on farms until you got the people you want, but that puts your science on hold for even longer. Meanwhile the CE is pulling in beakers as it grows.
That's a bad way to grow. The best overall output comes from working nothing but farms until you're nearly full size. But you don't have that option, because your tiles are cottaged.

(Assuming you don't need those flasks right this instant)
 
But not as many as the SE player.
They dont need as many to get the same results.

But the CE player doesn't have as many farms available to use.
They dont need as many to get the same results.

That's a bad way to grow. The best overall output comes from working nothing but farms until you're nearly full size. But you don't have that option, because your tiles are cottaged.
The best way is a balance. And you are still wrong.
 
A CE can also use slavery and they dont need anything to support cottages. And they can build farms too! (le gasp)

Surprise surprise a SE can also build cottages too (gasp!).

Okay, im putting my foot down. Referring to 10 turns as "long term" is henceforth verboten.

Look, just play a few CE games and see for yourself okay? Whipping is whipping is whipping, and there is nothing that stops a CE city from working some farms to grow back, just like a SE would.

I play more CE than SE. In fact I'm probably more confident/competent with a CE. I've played and won CE games on Immortal, my best SE results so far are Emperor. And yes CE can whip and draft too. Somehow you interpreted my post as being an SE fan - what I was trying to do was inject some balance into the SE argument that "an SE has higher production than a CE". Read back some posts you will see it. And on countless other posts in this forum.

My argument is that when it isn't running specialists then yes it will - you cannot convince me that a cottage tile generates more production than a farm can (either directly through slavery or indirectly by running mines). But a SE is either optimizing production or running specialists for research - it can't do both at the same time - so anyone claiming that it is faster for both research and production isn't right - it can only achieve one by sacrificing the other.

Early research of an SE can be faster - mainly due to earlier great people and the fact that with a low happy cap you can run 2 scientists off a single food source giving you a very quick +6 science or +12 if you built the pyramids. An economy that concentrates on cottages will catch this up (not in 10 turns though) and will ultimately surpass it once the cottage civics come fully online and towns are running free speech.

Burst production of an SE can be higher - every tile that runs a cottage has zero production value - it just supports itself. An SE will have fewer cottages and therefore either more farms or mines, both of which can produce hammers. If it isn't using the food surplus to run specialists, then it will have higher production. If it is then it may have lower production than a corresponding CE city.
 
A CE doesnt have to give up all its beakers to get some hammers. In fact its a pretty bad idea for either type to do it once past a certain size so i dunno why you keep talking about that. Mines work the same way for both.

Their overall production is the same, with whatever method used. The only meaningful comparison is cottages vs specialists.

a SE is either optimizing production or running specialists for research - it can't do both at the same time -
Of course it can. You just cant do a lot of both.

You might as well say that you cant work cottages and mines at the same time. Actually, that does seem to be what you are saying.

Also a CE is going to use surplus food for specialists too. That doesnt define what kind of economy it is, since its dictated by circumstances and not by choice.
 
If a CE city is working farms for any purposes other than pure growth or to support cottage on land that do not generate 2 food then that city is either a hybrid or, if running zero cottages, an FE. If you are running farms to grow the city and then make use of slavery for hammers your are running a hybrid/SLAVE ECONOMY.

The idea of discussing pure economies is to highlight their strengths and weaknesses. Running a pure economy the entire game is probably impossible since you will want specialists, cottages, slaves, etc at some point during the game.
 
They dont need as many to get the same results.
How do you figure? Farms give the same amount of food no matter what economy you're running.


They dont need as many to get the same results.
How do you figure? Farms give the same amount of food no matter what economy you're running.


The best way is a balance. And you are still wrong.
How do you figure? The rough idea is that you need to generate the same amount of surplus food no matter how you plan on growing back to full size. If you grow faster, you have more citizens to work that food.

The simplest case is all grassland. Suppose your city is size 6, and your happiness cap is size 10. At full size, you will work 10 cottages and have 2 food surplus. You need X food to grow.

If you just work cottages, you are producing -4 towns relative to your maximum, and take X/2 turns to grow. That's a loss of -2 X town-turns.

If you work 1 farm, you are producing -5 towns relative to your maximum, and take X/3 turns to grow. That's a loss of -1.67 X town-turns.

If you work 2 farms, you are producing -6 towns relative to your maximum, and take X/4 turns to grow. That's a loss of -1.50 X town-turns.

...

If you work 6 farms, you are producing -10 towns relative to your maximum, and take X/8 turns to grow. That's a loss of -1.25 X town-turns.


This is a general phenomenon, at least when your food surplus is coming from grassland farms: over the long-term, to get the most of whatever you really want from your city (i..e hammers, commerce from towns, flasks from scientists), the best method is to work nothing but farms until you get to a size near your maximum, at which point you switch to a small food surplus.
 
A CE doesnt have to give up all its beakers to get some hammers. In fact its a pretty bad idea for either type to do it once past a certain size so i dunno why you keep talking about that. Mines work the same way for both.

Their overall production is the same, with whatever method used.
His point is that a CE generally can't give up all its flasks to get some hammers, even if it wanted to... because its tiles are cottaged.
 
If your entire empire is whipping/drafting and working max farms to regrow quickily then you are going to generate more production--in bursts--than having a few dedicated production cities.

A FE will go like this: ~100% tech (caste system; military tech) --> ~100% production (slavery; wipe out opponent) --> ~100% tech (caste system; military tech) --> ~100% production (slavery; wipe out opponent).

A CE will go like this: ~70% tech, dedicated production cities, some whipping; gets stronger over time.

This is the general approach, with myriad variations of course.

I like the flexibility afforded there by the FE. You can transition your entire empire depending on your immediate needs. It is more focused to what it wants at any given time. When your expansion needs are done (mid-game usually in spaceraces), you can settle down and grow cottages empire-wide. Coincidentally :mischief: this is the time when CE civics become available.
 
I played my first and second monarch games ever today. In the first one, shaka pantsed me so I got gg'd (whoa...much earlier DoW than prince!) But early war is generally to my taste so in the 2nd one i ran the early scientist specialists.

I never transitioned out to more hybrid/CE, unless you count all those captured cities. I got sandwiched by monty and brennus DoWing me, and would have probably lost had I not bribed egypt into distracting brennus. After assembly line I basically got 1-2 techs in the next 50-80 turns. I DID win, mostly due to about 107 infantry...and i had just finished steel by the time hatty was starting to build casings! :(. Domination regardless :). I had over 25 cities, and they were all massing infantry...

I was kind of forced not to by nutballs, but imo you either end the game or transition to at least hybrid. Pure SE seems to get steamrolled later on, especially when you're forced to use the slider for money and :) primarily.
 
Hmm... I was just thinking. Would changing the base Farm yield from 0F to +1F (for a total of +3F with Irrigation and Biology) change anything?

Or perhaps keeping the base Farm yield at 0F and instead increasing the Farm yield by +1 with the discovery of Liberalism? Or making Free Speech increase the beaker yield of all specialists by two? Or even combining two of the above?

Any of these should render the SE still rather competitive even late game. What do you think?

Edit 1
Alternatively, one could change the University to boost the beaker output of scientists by two. (Since Education is the advanced prerequirement of Liberalism, you would be building Universities in your science cities at about the same time you'd switch to Free Speech.) Similarly the Bank could boost the gold output of merchants by two. (Banking comes a little early perhaps, but they're quite expensive to build. And merchants aren't used much as it is anyway.)

Edit 2
Forget about the buildings as it would require either an elegant SDK mod or a Python kludge to get it to work. I'm not in position to do any SDK mods at the moment and quite frankly I'm unwilling to do any dirty Python kludges. Instead the Free Speech thing would be the thing to do, if any.
 
Any of these should render the SE still rather competitive even late game. What do you think?
SE is highly competitive late game as it is, no reason to buff it, that would just make it incredibly overpowered. This forum is too easily brainwashed by DaveMcW and the like. Ever since acidsatyr left there's been SE bashing everywhere, I don't understand why.

I just finished a FE game with the Khmer today which I can use as an example. I was the tech leader from Liberalism and onwards and I didn't get a single cottage (except for like 5-7 captured ones, but those horsehockey cities never did anything anyway). I could've gone for domination/vassaling MM and a sooner win, but all this talk about how space with SE is "impossible" made me go passive instead and play it out the long boring way. Here are some screens from the game, immortal difficulty, put in spoilers to not take up too much space.
Spoiler :

Empire 1 turn before space win, everything is farmed, windmilled or watermilled.



The GNP Gold:



Demographics:



My biggest city, please note that this does NOT have Oxfords Uni, the science amplifiers are something you can achieve in any city. I don't have any of the food corps either as I got an unlucky GP roll. Still, the city is a powerhouse.



My Wall Street:





If you all have fun playing cottages then by all means keep with your fun, but don't start trashing FE saying it gets weak when it works perfectly well at all stages of the game.
 
I run a hybrid most of the game, tilted towards the SE side, after the change of tide I switch to a hybrid CE.

I play Gandhi, usually cottage my capital and found a Religion on it if posible, I build production cities mostly, and farm my 2 or so science cities.

After switching from Bureacracy Ill farm my capital and expand (through aggressive means) , I cottage the cities I acquire (they normally already are).

My capital goes from cottage spam/science/GPT hybrid to an all out GPT farm city to fund my expansion, my Oxford/GL city remains farmed for the scientist slots Oxford provides and I use all the new cities as cottage based science cities.

Of course except for the ones that have either good production or lots of food and no cottagable tiles. The ones with lots of food will get GT and Ill use Spiritual to switch back and forth to Nationhood/Slavery.

The production cities obviously get farms/mines/workshops/waterwheels. And finally Ill look for a Moai city and a NP/NE forrest/tundra city.

Moai may come early although I wont always have a city worthy of it, in that case I will wait instead of rushing it into a sub-optimal city.

The SE civic I have the most trouble switching from is Rep into US but I usually still do switch once I have enough cottaged cities to warrant the switch.

So I dont really convert MY cities into CE cities, its more like I adjust to the cities I capture from the AI.
 
However, I feel sorry for newbies who are told "never use cottages" or "always axe rush". They end up missing a lot of the game.

I feel the same way about newbies getting talked into making cottages everywhere instead of working on their overall game knowledge. Axe rushes aren't necessary in BTS, don't see how anyone could say that, and I'm not saying you can't make any cottages, that's just how I played out this one, they are ok.

This game for instance I didn't go to war with anyone until Rifling and I still managed to stay ahead in tech and grab land. I was also neighbouring one of the better AI's, the CRE/ORG landgrabbing Zara, which didn't make it any easier for me early on.
 
Specialists are great.

However, I feel sorry for newbies who are told "never use cottages" or "always axe rush". They end up missing a lot of the game.

:lol:

I feel the same way. I don't know where people come off saying "never do this" or "always do that," especially when they don't even do a good job explaining their position to a player who's clearly trying to learn about the game.
 
First of all, I'm not sure why your economy is crashing late game to begin with. Do the math. After biology, 1 grassland tile, with representation, can yield 6 beakers. A town yielding 7 or 8 commerce would not usually yield more than 6 beakers anyway given the slider is rarely above 80%. You can keep running caste system as you dont need the commerce slider to generate research and can boost the culture slider. Also, at that point in the game you should have many settled GPs or academies to boost your research. Given the proper techs you should be able to make it work. That said, however, I think it's unnecessary to play a game where you NEVER build ANY cottages. It makes little sense. It does make sense to lean in one direction vs. the other. For example, if I were playing Korea, I would have a lot of cottage-spammed cities, whereas if i were playing Alexander I would have more high-farm cities with lots of specialists, but in both cases this would not be taken to the extreme. Playing as Korea I'd still have hammer heavy cities and still have at least one GP farm, playing as Alexander I'd still have cottages on tiles in several cities, with perhaps the capital being cottage spammed. So use all the improvements at your disposal.
 
Can't help but grin at all of you guys, veterens and newcomers alike, getting so heated up on this SE vs CE topic from time to time. First of all, I agree with DaveM that one should try all strategies. I used to only cottage spam exclusively in vanila & warlord because (i) cottage is a new feature from CIV II & III, (ii) it is powerful, (iii) i didn't know how to do SE then... :)

Come BTS, I find SE (i) fun to play, (ii) my addiction to slavery, (iii) flexibility, (iv) I gotr a shot of getting those shinny thingy. Allow me to explain. I play my own oversion of mixed-up SE, which go like this:

a - wonderspam on capital. buero for its 50% hammer bonus
b - rex like mad & war like mad. slider goes 0% after a few libraries are built
c - extort tech from war, espinoge
d - bulb or settle GPs, depending on situation
e - slavery rush all cities except capital to get as much infra built as possible
f - when the option of rushing and running scientist is in conflict, prefer the former

The goal is to make my empire 2x as large as the next best AIs pre-liberalism. Trade routes, riverside farmed commerce, beakers from settled GPs, bulbing, etc are the means to get there. Post-liberalism,

g - switch to caste, let cities recover from rushing, start running as much scientists as possible

If I can get my empire (land + pop) 2x as large as the next best AIs, I would have won the game by then.

Dealing with falling behind tech post-liberalism
I would not have fall behind in tech pace eventhough I don't have a single cottage in my empire (I farm over anything less than village gotten from early war) simply because I got so much cities running so much scientists. Late war, I keep the mature town.

Dealing with the conflict between slavery & caste
What I do is to slave rush as much as possible first to get the infra up (science, commerce, happy, health buildings). Only switch to caste around liberalism time. Post biology, I can regrow my pathetic pop 4 cities back in no time.

This is of course, my perfect setup. It is very flexible in term of victory condition, I can go space or domi, whichever suit me. But I have to admit that so far I have only done this on philo leaders, up to emperor. Again, I admit that on a random player with most of the conditions, a hybrid with emphazise in CE will probably give you more consistent win-rate.
 
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