Micro-managing specialists - essential or not?

reddishrecue said:

Youre probably using financial and many cottages.

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No, I have played every leader, every victory type, every map, every speed and you havn't understood what I wrote.

Unit produced -> walks to front -> dies -> new unit arrives -> dies -> new unit arrives

That's a build-supply-chain. Now if you attack with many units and late, when one also needs many units, more time is needed for the unit to die, the stacks move slower, maybe one has only 1 stack instead of 2...

A good war looks like that, that you only always just have enough troops to get the next city, and once you're again at the next city, reinforcements must have exactly filled up the empty slots through losses or more defenders and greatly reduces the numbers of active troops on the field.

Don't overbuild, once you got enough to take a city, go conquer one, as long as you keep building units, you'll also have enough to take the next city afterwards.

Seraiel said:

No, I have played every leader, every victory type, every map, every speed and you havn't understood what I wrote.

Unit produced -> walks to front -> dies -> new unit arrives -> dies -> new unit arrives

That's a build-supply-chain. Now if you attack with many units and late, when one also needs many units, more time is needed for the unit to die, the stacks move slower, maybe one has only 1 stack instead of 2...

A good war looks like that, that you only always just have enough troops to get the next city, and once you're again at the next city, reinforcements must have exactly filled up the empty slots through losses or more defenders and greatly reduces the numbers of active troops on the field.

Don't overbuild, once you got enough to take a city, go conquer one, as long as you keep building units, you'll also have enough to take the next city afterwards.

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It's nerve-wrecking, but beautiful, when it works out perfectly. The last or next last unit take a city. And you have a stream of units marching or riding to the frontlines, preferably many front lines, from your core cities. You're a hurricane that sweeps across the land, and no force can stop you.

Having one massive stack can look awesome, but unless you're up against a fierce stack yourself, it's usually more effective to split it up and bear down on more cities at once. Co-ordinating stuff like that is a lot of fun

To quickly return to the point about the army costing money in your cities: if you have a big army, you should use it, or it's just money down the drain. Go out there and grab cities

Pangaea said:

You're a hurricane that sweeps across the land, and no force can stop you.

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Except for the RNG of course.

Heh, theoretically it can, but overall you won't have that much bad luck throughout so many battles. The RNG being in a bad mood will have a bigger effect on few battles, as the consequences are bigger. With a never-ending torrent of troops, it will just postpone the inevitable

Seraiel said:

No, I have played every leader, every victory type, every map, every speed and you havn't understood what I wrote.

Unit produced -> walks to front -> dies -> new unit arrives -> dies -> new unit arrives

That's a build-supply-chain. Now if you attack with many units and late, when one also needs many units, more time is needed for the unit to die, the stacks move slower, maybe one has only 1 stack instead of 2...

A good war looks like that, that you only always just have enough troops to get the next city, and once you're again at the next city, reinforcements must have exactly filled up the empty slots through losses or more defenders and greatly reduces the numbers of active troops on the field.

Don't overbuild, once you got enough to take a city, go conquer one, as long as you keep building units, you'll also have enough to take the next city afterwards.

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Have you ever had your units gone on strike then? Have your units disbanded from mass lack of funding? From your earlier posts it seems that your answer is no.

reddishrecue said:

Have you ever had your units gone on strike then? Have your units disbanded from mass lack of funding? From your earlier posts it seems that your answer is no.

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Yes, my answer is no, I never had only a single unit disbanded from lack of funding. I go for Cottages in the capital and apart from that mostly finance everything by Traderoutes. In Spaceraces, I build more Cottages and also build the Mids to run Specialists, but in war-games it's really only the cottaged capital + TRs.

Seraiel said:

Yes, my answer is no, I never had only a single unit disbanded from lack of funding. I go for Cottages in the capital and apart from that mostly finance everything by Traderoutes. In Spaceraces, I build more Cottages and also build the Mids to run Specialists, but in war-games it's really only the cottaged capital + TRs.

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I had and I survived.

reddishrecue said:

I had and I survived.

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Gratz.

/10 chars

Specialists aren't really that useful anyways. I prefer using wonders and their great people points to get great people. The only type of specialists that I find useful are scientists at this point but it varies because you need gold to fund research so merchants also become useful. It I somehow managed to obtain a holy city without a shrine then i would use a priest.

Specialists are extremely useful, early scientists can get your beakers per turn higher than you can any other way.

reddishrecue said:

Specialists aren't really that useful anyways. I prefer using wonders and their great people points to get great people. The only type of specialists that I find useful are scientists at this point but it varies because you need gold to fund research so merchants also become useful. It I somehow managed to obtain a holy city without a shrine then i would use a priest.

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If you can get Education or Astronomy in the BCs on normal speed with that strategy, then congratulations. If not, then you should consider learning how to use specialists.

Bulbing with Great Scientists is by far the fastest way to victory in most games. Great Merchants are also useful sometimes, but mainly when you need a lot of gold at once, for example to upgrade huge amounts of units immediately after researching a new offensive unit. Gold for teching can be acquired by other means.

A Shrine built by a Prophet is an illusion. It's something the devs put in there that very skillfully fools all new players to think it is awesome. It's not. Sure, it's nice if you can capture one, but to spend Great People on building them is a huge waste.

elitetroops said:

If you can get Education or Astronomy in the BCs on normal speed with that strategy, then congratulations. If not, then you should consider learning how to use specialists.

Bulbing with Great Scientists is by far the fastest way to victory in most games. Great Merchants are also useful sometimes, but mainly when you need a lot of gold at once, for example to upgrade huge amounts of units immediately after researching a new offensive unit. Gold for teching can be acquired by other means.

A Shrine built by a Prophet is an illusion. It's something the devs put in there that very skillfully fools all new players to think it is awesome. It's not. Sure, it's nice if you can capture one, but to spend Great People on building them is a huge waste.

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The thing i kind of like more of priests is the split production gold output that merchants and engineers share. Engineers have a double hammer output per forge and only one can exist in a city that early. Priests, like citizens generate one hammer per specialist, but, like merchants, priests also generate 1 gold per turn. The priests really become kind of my favorite here is because you can have more than one priest in a city per temple and religion that exist (if theocracy, please skip) so you can produce, gain income and get 2 great people points per priest.

reddishrecue said:

The thing i kind of like more of priests is the split production gold output that merchants and engineers share. Engineers have a double hammer output per forge and only one can exist in a city that early. Priests, like citizens generate one hammer per specialist, but, like merchants, priests also generate 1 gold per turn. The priests really become kind of my favorite here is because you can have more than one priest in a city per temple and religion that exist (if theocracy, please skip) so you can produce, gain income and get 2 great people points per priest.

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Or you could just whip.

reddishrecue said:

The thing i kind of like more of priests is the split production gold output that merchants and engineers share. Engineers have a double hammer output per forge and only one can exist in a city that early. Priests, like citizens generate one hammer per specialist, but, like merchants, priests also generate 1 gold per turn. The priests really become kind of my favorite here is because you can have more than one priest in a city per temple and religion that exist (if theocracy, please skip) so you can produce, gain income and get 2 great people points per priest.

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But still, even an unimproved riverside plains tile for 1f1h1c is much better than a priest if you disregard the specialist points. Whipping the guy is still a lot better. And trust me, priest specialist points are really bad most of the time. They only serve to lower your chances of getting great scientists. You want scientist specialist points and you want to use the Great Scientists to build academy in capital, then to bulb techs. Nothing else comes close to that in gains in most cases.

Like most new players you have fallen into the trap of thinking that religion is important. Try one game where you don't care at all about religion, beeline writing, get libraries up in all cities with enough food to run 2 scientists, run scientists, build academy in your cottaged capital and use the rest of the scientists to bulb techs on the path to liberalism. Build no other wonders than the Great Library and if you have stone Pyramids (and change to Representation). Do this with a Philosophical leader and you will see results that you couldn't even dream of before.

elitetroops said:

You want scientist specialist points and you want to use the Great Scientists to build academy in capital, then to bulb techs. Nothing else comes close to that in gains in most cases.

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I'm curious: what does come close? A Great Engineer to rush the Taj Mahal right after taking Nationalism with your free tech, so you can adopt Caste System and pump out Great Scientists? A Great Merchant's trade mission used to upgrade your mounted units to cuirassiers?

Krugi said:

I'm curious: what does come close? A Great Engineer to rush the Taj Mahal right after taking Nationalism with your free tech, so you can adopt Caste System and pump out Great Scientists? A Great Merchant's trade mission used to upgrade your mounted units to cuirassiers?

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That would be situational. The merchants for upgrading units is a good example, if you can produce many troops in advance. Or sometimes you might be better off using some other GP for a bulb, if a Great Scientist wouldn't give you a monopoly tech. Prophet for Theology or Merchant for MC are typical examples of bulbing techs with great trade value. On the higher levels a Great Spy can also net you a lot of beakers if you can infiltrate some run away AI and steal a lot of techs. When playing for a fast culture victory you are best of creating mostly Great Artists for culture bombing, or if aiming for a space victory it might be best to save Great people for chained golden ages in the late game.

All the different Great People can have their good uses, but Scientists are very often the safest bet in a standard conquest game. They give the most beakers for bulbs and bulb techs on the path to liberalism. Techs that the AI doesn't prioritize highly early on, so you also get trade value.

It should also be noted that bulbing a tech with GP is a unique gain that you cannot produce in any other way. It is possible to build Taj Mahal and other wonders in one turn using chain whips and chops, and it is possible to generate more gold than a GM trade misison would give you through failgold. But there is no way to generate an extra 1000+ beakers out of the blue in one turn other than by bulbing.

elitetroops said:

It is possible to build Taj Mahal and other wonders in one turn using chain whips and chops, and it is possible to generate more gold than a GM trade misison would give you through failgold.

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I can see how this is possible with production modifiers. Presume that I'm playing as Louis, and my city, which produces a negligible amount of per turn, has a forge, the Organized Religion bonus, and access to marble. There's a library sitting in the queue at 59/90 .

If I whip away two population points now, I will receive 60 (base) * 2 (Creative) * 5/4 (Forge) * 5/4 (OR) = 182 , rounded down. Is that correct? That would yield 59 + 182 - 90 = 151 of overflow into the Taj Mahal next turn. I assume that they would be multiplied by 2 (marble) * 3/2 (Industrious) * 5/4 * 5/4 again, which equates 706 , and that's already enough.

How do you get such results without marble and Industrious, though? That's only 235 from overflow, and 46 per chop.

I'm sure that I'm not getting the mechanics quite right in any case, though.

I'd also like to learn about chain whipping.

You don't get double if you're CRE or PRO or whatever.

The concept behind chain-whipping or "whip-stacking" like more call it, is to i. e. produce a Library to the point of max OF, then change the queue for a Barracks 'til max OF, then change the queue again and so on to then at one turn, whip all buildings and sort them by the amount of they cost from low to high.
This leads to the OF from one whip being carried over to the next whip, where they meet the OF from that whip and carry on summed up to the next and so on 'til one finally has an OF to i. e. complete Oxford in 1T.

Of course, being able to chop into a building makes it far easier, as one needs less whips then.

[EDIT]

Whips btw. get bigger with having a Forge and stuff, so the Library you talked of would i. e. be a 1-pop whip with having a Forge, because 1pop = 37.5 .

Seraiel said:

You don't get double if you're CRE or PRO or whatever.

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I had assumed that "double production speed for library" works exactly like that. This game. So traits have no effect on whip hammers?

Whips btw. get bigger with having a Forge and stuff, so the Library you talked of would i. e. be a 1-pop whip with having a Forge, because 1pop = 37.5 .

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I know that production modifiers are applied to whips, but it's good to know that they are applied in calculating the pop cost for whips as well, even before the whip is conducted.

Traits apply to the hammers that go into the building, not to overflow. But if the overflow goes into a building that you have a trait or resource bonus for, you get the bonus for them. Basically hammers are just hammers until they are put into a build. Overflow hammers have not yet been put into a build, so they don't know yet what bonuses they get.

As Seraiel explained, chain whipping, or whip-stacking, if that's what it's called, is about whipping several items in succession. Overflow hammers can never exceed the cost of the building itself, so you need to start by whipping something small, then move on to larger builds. And all builds need hammers invested in advance. This needs a lot of preparation to set up and is not very easy to do.

Here's an example. You are playing as Zara (CRE/ORG) and want to build the Great Library (350) in one turn. You have marble, but only two forests available.

Preparations: Put <5 hammers into axe, just under 30 hammers into a monastery, just under 30 hammers into library and about 50 hammers into courthouse. The whipping starts 4 turns before you reach Literature. First whip axe for 35 overflow hammers, next turn whip monastery for 60 overflow hammers, then whip library for 90 overflow hammers and finally courthouse for about 115 overflow hammers. The 2 chops take care of the rest.

If the city isn't big enough, you can also do the first whips earlier, then build wealth while growing back to whippable size. The hammers will be stored.

To do the same with the twice as expensive Taj Mahal, you'd want a forge in your city and some more forests. If you can get 120 overflow hammers and chop 6 forests, that's 675 hammers with forge and marble, so the city itself still needs to produce 12 base hammers to finish Taj in one turn.

But sure, it is a lot easier to do it with a Great Engineer. Just wanted to say that it can be done even without.