Late game SE vs CE, a direct comparison

feralminded

Obsessive Number Cruncher
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Nov 11, 2008
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Hudson, MA
The Premise
Recently I've been pushing the idea of a late game SE with :science: powered by scientists and :gold: powered by cottages run under FS/PP. The idea is that late game an SE can simply out-specialize its cities compared to the CE counterparts and as a result at least keep up despite cottages being slightly more efficient per tile. The irony here is that CE and SE trade places when it comes to their financial capital. The SE cottages the hell out of a decent city and the CE farms the hell out of a big food city and runs as many merchant specialists as possible. Both drop WallStreet and there you go ... empire wide :gold:. But for research both economies invert with SE's running as many scientists as possible and CE's supporting as many cottages as possible.

The Setup
Using a save from the same game I just ran a tutorial for I went to town with WB. Out of 20-25 cities I kept 5 production cities as they were. I had one SSC, one Wall street city, one espionage city, and the rest were research cities if possible. I tested SE using Rep/FS/CS/SP/FR and tested CE using both US/FS/EM/FM/FR and US/FS/EM/FM/FR. I did my best to optimize both economies (this took hours ... a lot more than I anticipated). I found out a lot of interesting things about them along the way ...

As for buildings all cities got forge/granary/courthouse/airport/supermarket. All water cities got lighthouses/harbors/custom's houses.
All river cities got levees.
All science cities all got labs/libraries/Universities/Observatories
All production cities got barracks/stables/drydock(if water)/factories/power
All gold cities got banks/grocers/markets
SSC got Oxford
Wallstreet got Wallstreet
Espionage city got all of the EP buildings.

In addition I had to fudge one of the CE cities to try and get it as close to 0 :gold: / turn so it has both financial and research buildings.

I added :health: and :) buildings as necessary although needless to say SE took a lot more than CE so total :hammers: invested were higher on the SE.


First of all here's the early shots of the Super Cities
SE-SSC


CE-SSC


SE-WallStreet


CE-Wallstreet


As you can see the SSC's are in a virtual dead heat. As for the wallstreet cities the SE is kicking the CE in the nuts. In fact initially I had to run 2 extra merchant cities to support the CE at an 80% slider. Due to that ridiculous Wallstreet city the SE was able to run a 50% slider with 10% culture to mitigate unhappiness.


Test #1: No Research from hammers
The first test I ran had every city producing :culture: to see what the raw research production was. This favored SE since we were not really giving the CE any benefit from it's US. I don't have any good screen shots from this test but the SE handily out-performed the CE. I believe the SE scored just slightly over 2900 :science: / turn while the CE was in the mid 2600s. However what was more instructive was that the SE was running a 50% science slider so I decided to abandon the WallStreet city altogether and turned it into another science city. This actually got the SE to just barely break 3000 :science:/turn For the rest of the tests I ran an SE with no wallstreet city at all. 0 towns period.

Test #2: Add Research from hammers
Things got a lot closer once I changed all of the cities to producing :science: instead of :culture:. CE became far more competitive, although it still couldn't quite catch SE. At this point I had been running CE under FM and I thought to run it under SP. SP yielded more :hammers: which helped in the production of research but it also reduced maintenance costs enough that I was able to eliminate almost all of the CE's extra merchant cities and it was able to run an 80% slider on virtually the Wall Street city alone. I've included screen shots of all three (SE, CE-FM, CE-SP) below

CE-FM


CE-SP


SE



So SE wins? Not quite ... first of all the SE required quite a few more buildings to support happiness and food ... this was not accounted for. Second of all if instead of happiness and food buildings like the SE had to build, if the CE had built some markets or grocers in some of its better research cities the CE *might* be able to push up to a 90% slider ... which should push it into a slight lead. I'm not certain about that one but I'd say they would be damned close in any case. But finally this was Ramesses ... who is notably NOT FIN. I counted just shy of 200 tiles on that map which would yield an extra 1 :commerce: under FIN ... which run through the gambit of multiplier buildings and sliders will yield the CE approximately 250 more :science:. Of course here we are building research which may not be realistic.

So the conclusion ... well I think they're damned close when fully optimized but I doubt this is terribly realistic to expect. Regardless I think its very hard to definitely say either is that much better than the other.
 
I know that in a SE you can make one super city that will outperform any city in a CE, however, the average city in a CE will outperform the average city in a SE. This is why SE is better for a small empire and CE better for a large one. How you got a SE to outperform a CE on a large scale escapes me. It's just not possible. You screwed the data up somehow. With the slider at only 50% why did you not build markets/grocers in everty city for the CE? Heck...some cities should have banks, and not just the WS city. Your method is dubious, at best.
 
Seems they're both pretty viable. Really, I think again, it's just a "play the map" case. You could probably get better by cottaging everything, but maybe keep a couple GP farm cities.

Actually, for this empire here, the best thing to see is that at least for this empire, SP really doesn't help enough, especially if you added on Sid's Sushi, for example.
 
Hey, Guys - check out the trade routes. They're getting shuffled around in a way that favors the SE. Could that be the factor everyone is ignoring?
 
- good point. The trade routes are worth nearly double for the SE due to the larger population.
 
One factor that makes no sense is why he made the CE have a sucky wallstreet city...huh? There's absolutely no need to farm Merchant specialists - if you were setting up a specific great person farm (common in a CE) that would be something I could understand, but it's not necessarily the Wall street city.

Second, I'd really like to know a bit more about the actual hammer deficit (in buildings) the SE was running. You're kinda cheating by just worldbuilding in all the unis/banks/etc... there is no way in a real game that you can get all of these. The lack of hammers from US would be very significant in that case. Similarly you lose the ability to buy rush, which can be quite significant (on the other hand you could also account for more total GP throughout the game from the SE - perhaps granting academies proportional to what would be expected). Overall, I'm sorry to say, not impressed with this "test."

However, this certainly made me interested in some sort of new Silly Economy vs. Crazy Economy contest - if we could get enough players. I'm always up for defending the Crazy Economy side.
 
@Earthling:
What would you do with your Wallstreet city while running 100% science?
 
Shrines, Corporations, in short. You don't just build Wallstreet in a city with like 8 merchants... Also, it's very rare that you can run 100% science, with things like military costs and inflation (in fact, the OP's example does not have 100% science).
 
I thought we were discussing the tile development. Shrines and Corporations do not dictate what improvements you build.
 
Yes, but as the OP mentioned he saw a significant difference when he actually made the Wall Street city into just a regular science city - in other words Wall Street had no beneficial effects on the comparison, and was just causing him to waste a whole city in the CE version. Also, he even suggests there are other "merchant cities" out there? Given all the other simplifications the OP might as well have just turned both sliders to 100%, had no Wallstreet, and look at it from there. Not trying to criticize him though - it's just worldbuilding this comparison is tough and I don't think it's very realistic.
 
oh he did this in worldbuilder? Wellt that explains it. The problem with the SE is getting enough population to actually make it work. A CE city is at maximum power with 20 pop. The SE city needs 40+ population. How you get that much happy and health bonus is...well...good luck
 
Yes, but as the OP mentioned he saw a significant difference when he actually made the Wall Street city into just a regular science city - in other words Wall Street had no beneficial effects on the comparison, and was just causing him to waste a whole city in the CE version. Also, he even suggests there are other "merchant cities" out there? Given all the other simplifications the OP might as well have just turned both sliders to 100%, had no Wallstreet, and look at it from there. Not trying to criticize him though - it's just worldbuilding this comparison is tough and I don't think it's very realistic.

Oh really?

I believe the SE scored just slightly over 2900 :science: / turn while the CE was in the mid 2600s. However what was more instructive was that the SE was running a 50% science slider so I decided to abandon the WallStreet city altogether and turned it into another science city. This actually got the SE to just barely break 3000 :science:/turn For the rest of the tests I ran an SE with no wallstreet city at all. 0 towns period.*
*Bold by me
OK SE with no wallstreet city

At this point I had been running CE under FM and I thought to run it under SP. SP yielded more :hammers: which helped in the production of research but it also reduced maintenance costs enough that I was able to eliminate almost all of the CE's extra merchant cities and it was able to run an 80% slider on virtually the Wall Street city alone.


CE was able to get to 80% slider with just the wallstreet city running priest and merchants and being in SP.

Neither city with a shrine or corps. When you are running a high science slider farming your wallstreet city and running merchants and priests will yield more cash then cottages since the cottage commerce gets turned into beakers.

Granted, you want shrines and corps but it is not always possible. In this instance he is running SP so corps are out. He does not have a shrine but so what he is maximizing what he does have and it doubles as a secondary gp farm... if you do not care about gps anymore just settle the GP or GM and get the best multipliers for them.

So if you can do this in a shrined city and add corps you are really going to well off. Rather then wasting the +100% to gold.

The SE wallstreet city did so well with cottages because it was running at a low cash slider so a greater percentage of the commerce from the maxed out cottages was being converted to gold.

I think you did not read the OP very well and are being entirely too closed minded about specialist. They do have a place out side of the gp farm, they allow you to maximize the NW no independent of the slider.
 
Wow ... didn't realize I was going to step into a giant pile of dung with this one. This was purely theoretical ... I wasn't trying to prove anything beyond support my assertion that SE's can be competitive late game on a per tile basis ... at least on paper. I was not trying to prove anything else. The map is likely not as optimized as possible and no corporations or shrines were used because those could in theory benefit both empires equally. Also food corporations explicitly favor SE late game as SE can put the food to better use. I also don't believe the empire current has every resource for happiness and health reasons ... again I wasn't trying to overly maximize anything ... just lay down a comparison. I understand this is pure theory here.

Here's the saves if people want to check them out. I meant to attach them in the first place but was pressed for time. I'm sure there's optimizations I could have laid down for both empires but even just doing this took several hours and I basically ran out of steam. I was not surprised to see the research rates compare ... I WAS surprised to see the SE have little to no need for a wallstreet city.

The GPs that are settled were done over the course of the game before I opened it up for WB. Again this was an existing empire that I was playing in another game that I decided to just farm/cottage over to see how it would do. I mean its easy enough to show how they compare once city at a time (see the SSC and WS cities above) ... but I wanted to see how they compared on an empire-wide basis.

As to the person saying an SE can out-produce a CE city in pure :science: ... I think you might be a little wrong. See the first post and compare the SSCs ... the CE actually marginally out-produces the SE at 80% slider and this is a non-fin leader. I guess if you had infinite happiness and a major food corp the SE could out-produce the CE but I don't know. If you run the slider at 100% for the CE I think that SSC produces close to 600 :science: / turn. Honestly where the SE comes out way ahead is in those fishing villages that support a lot of pop but not a lot of cottages.

Again I was simply exploring if the SE could keep up with the CE ... which I now believe it kind of can. I think things get complicated with shrines and corporations and its obvious that CE's I believe have a higher top end. If you can get the CE to run 90 or 100% slider there's no honest way for an SE to keep up without a major food corporation or a ton of sea-side fishing villages. However if you are stuck at 80% slider I think its a very close race. SE's are tricky like that because they are slider independent and in fact the wall street city starts to perform dramatically BETTER for the SE as the slider goes down unlike the CE's wall street city which is slider independent.
 

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oh he did this in worldbuilder? Wellt that explains it. The problem with the SE is getting enough population to actually make it work. A CE city is at maximum power with 20 pop. The SE city needs 40+ population. How you get that much happy and health bonus is...well...good luck

Most late game SE's run 10-30% culture slider which combined with theatres and colloseums really amp up the happiness. Health is a bit more of an issue but you can reasonably hit 30-35 :health: in cities with water and/or forests. Beyond that you need environmentalism which I didn't bother with here but it might have been an idea. Again I didn't explore it much beyond the basic swapping cottages out for farms and comparing.
 
A nice comparison on the whole, but there are a few shortcomings which are hard to ignore...But I am not an expert so take my comments with a grain of salt.

feralminded you have said before that in a SE one tends to hyper-specialize cities more, and this works well.

One possible flaw I see with the comparison you did was that in the CE you had science cities and gold cities only build the relevant buildings. In reality, in a CE your commerce cities will tend to build both gold and science buildings, leaning more towards the type of building that you run the slider highest on.

Personally I would not have added labs to every science city. IMO that will inflate the benefits of the SE a bit more than should be done in a fair comparison.

As others have said, without other significant costs (unit costs in particular), the results could be a bit off. Also, having every one of those buildings by that date where inflation is not yet a problem will also bias results potentially.

And the extra health/happiness resources you needed for the SE looks to be significant. That it was only mentioned in passing at the end of your analysis was IMO not the best way to handle it.

EDIT
By the way I noticed a nice feature of the SE version was the much higher score due to pop - this could be worth mentioning...
 
Yeah I did think about inflation but I don't have the patience to sit there and click 300 times to hit the 1900s. Again I was mostly being exploratory here. Also I did think about trying to calculate out exactly how many :hammers: in extra :health: and :) buildings the SE took and reward the CE with an exact number of markets and/or grocers to make up for it ... but that would have taken a lot more time and if I was going to go that far I would have been better served playing a game on fast speed to 1900 so at least I could get the inflation part right.

There's A LOT of variables here and as I said in my initial conclusion I think FIN-CE would have flat out beaten SE, at least in this empire. As for unit upkeep costs I'm pretty sure those hurt CE more than SE. The thing about this setup is the SE's research rate is mostly slider independent. So if we have to drop the slider to support a massive army big deal. The CE is far more slider-sensitive. That said ... the CE is indeed far more slider sensitive and if we can reasonably run a 90% slider again I don't see how SE can keep up without a lot of fishing villages or food corps.

I guess I should have put up a big disclaimer non-scientific analysis inside. To be fair its easy math to see that an SE can keep up on a per tile basis ... a 6 :science: scientist is equal to a 7 :commerce: cottage run through an 85% slider or an 8 :commerce: cottage run through a 75% slider. That was less interesting to me than finding out that the SE didn't really much need a Wallstreet city. I mean you'd be crazy not to build it ... the ROI on a cottaged up Wallstreet city when you know you are going to be running a slider in the 10-30% area is obvious ... but still I had assumed it would NEED that city. I guess all that extra commerce from all those river tiles and windmills and whatnot add up.

I'm not denying the analysis was flawed but that fact doesn't make it totally useless. There IS some INTERESTING information there that at least before I did it I was not aware of. I wasn't sure if other people were aware of it either.
 
The CE is more slider-insensitive but a good CE player will (I assume) work with that in mind. Slider flexibility is possibly the strongest pro the SE has going for it (I dont' do SEs too often so I'm guessing this), and if you put too much emphasis on that feature then the SE will always look more attractive.

In this particular game, I think you had a dominating position in terms of the amount of land you had, so happiness/health resources were abundant. In a game where the lategame is just as critical in terms of trying to get the edge on the AI, it might be more worthwhile considering a greater limit on these resources. Having all three of the hit movies/singles/musicals is IMO a bit odd.

I think if you were to put banks in most of the science cities in the CE version it would look a lot nicer in comparison with the SE.

The Wallstreet cities for the two economies should look more comparable under the assumption that they are used for shrine/corporations. Without either, the CE one will look considerably weaker. I'm not entirely sure but if you usually run your science slider no higher than about 80% in a CE, then wallstreet is better of working as many cottages as possible before employing merchants (I think). With science buildings the city could produce a decent number of beakers as well, just as the SE-Wallstreet would too.

I guess I should have put up a big disclaimer non-scientific analysis inside. To be fair its easy math to see that an SE can keep up on a per tile basis ... a 6 :science: scientist is equal to a 7 :commerce: cottage run through an 85% slider or an 8 :commerce: cottage run through a 75% slider. That was less interesting to me than finding out that the SE didn't really much need a Wallstreet city. I mean you'd be crazy not to build it ... the ROI on a cottaged up Wallstreet city when you know you are going to be running a slider in the 10-30% area is obvious ... but still I had assumed it would NEED that city. I guess all that extra commerce from all those river tiles and windmills and whatnot add up.

I'm not denying the analysis was flawed but that fact doesn't make it totally useless. There IS some INTERESTING information there that at least before I did it I was not aware of. I wasn't sure if other people were aware of it either.

The way you approached the problem seemed very scientific. ;) It's nice for a glance comparison but IMO there are some issues which are more likely to favour the SE over the CE. But I agree it's very difficult to do a completely level comparison without having to make some practical assumptions somewhere along the line.
 
Well the problem is if you are running an 80% slider in a CE if you start working cottages instead of merchants in wall street you will find yourself running a 70 or 60% slider right quick. I mean take my save there and try and you'll see. That said what I personally do in CE is try and settled 2 or more great merchants in the wall street city and they definitely go a long way to helping the bottom line. I think expecting a shrine is a bit over the top, but it is safe to expect at least Sids. I cannot remember the last CE I played where I didn't get sids. That said internal corps don't help you a ton in terms of :gold: ... at least not unless you've got and Ikhandra or Rathaus. Its really the shrine that can make the huge difference in your wallstreet city but I personally rarely see a shrine I didn't conquer. I don't know, I'm not a deity player ... but in my CE's its a lucky day that I can build wallstreet on top of a shrine.
 
The way you approached the problem seemed very scientific. ;) It's nice for a glance comparison but IMO there are some issues which are more likely to favour the SE over the CE. But I agree it's very difficult to do a completely level comparison without having to make some practical assumptions somewhere along the line.

Yeah I might have been setting the wrong expectation here. I guess what I might do is try and do this with a smaller empire. I mean difficulty level and game doesnt matter for this so I can easily just put it on a stupid low difficulty and fast-forward through a bazillion turns. If the number of cities is low enough it will be easy to calculate the equivalent :hammers: worth of buildings for each empire to give them both a fair shake ... however its still not truly comparable. SE still has marked advantages in fishing and tundra villages with food, and CE still had marked advantages under FIN. Also in a smaller empire I think SE gets an unfair advantage from a much stronger WS city. Again not sure how to do this in a "pure" fashion that could satisfy everyone. I mean people earlier in this thread thought it was unfair that SE got more from trade routes without thinking about how little SE cares about :commerce: in the first place. Only 40% of those trade routes were applying to the :science: / turn calculations whereas CE was getting 80%. And in the end this is really the bottomline ... :science: / turn. As for the SE's happiness that's less of a concern than :health:. Honestly I was probably very inefficient with the SE by dropping all those temples and crap around when I could simply run the :culture: slider up to 30% or whatever. It's 3 :) / Culture bump and its not going to affect the research rate that much.

Sigh. As much as I like numbers it sounds like a LOT of work for very little return when I already know in my head ... its going to be a very close wash.
 
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