Questions about Specialist Economy

[djdeth]

Hey Everyone,

I have been reading a lot about Specialist Economy's lately and they seem very interesting. They do leave out a few things for the noob civ4 player. I hear people talk about a SSC, but I don't know what that is. When they talk about a Science city, do I just click the emphasize science? Also, I like to try to chop rush to get the pyramids. What order would I build things to do so? I was thinking:

1) Town A builds a settler.
2) Town A builds a worker.
3) Town B builds a worker.
4) Town A Builds Pyramids.
5) Worker from Town A and B start chopping the trees.

I am really new so any advice would be good.

[Cam_H]

Re. SSC

"SSC" = the Super Science Centre - so 'yes', you got it.

The idea is to maximise the city's haul, so building city improvements (a Great Scientist's Academy, a Library, Monasteries, a University, an Observatory, and a Laboratory), and The Oxford University National Wonder is a start.

Furthermore, the city wants to have a good haul, so working -heavy tiles such as Gems and Incense resources, as well as building Cottages into Towns is important. Better yet if the city is the capital and you're running the Bureaucracy civic, as there is a and booster for the capital. Financial leaders get a bonus here too.

Running Specialist Scientists is another useful source of , and can lend to popping Great Scientists. As you've been reading about the Specialist Economy you'd be aware that Representation provides every specialist with +3 under normal playing conditions, and then gets a boost through the abovementioned city improvements. The Caste System allows for 'unlimited' Specialist Scientists if you assess that need more than the number that your city can accommodate.

There are further considerations such as Wonders of the World - for instance The Great Library, or if you have Warlords; the Temple of Artemis are just a two of the WoWs that can add more 'kickers' to a SSC.

Re. The Pyramids

It's hard to say that there's a single solution to every case, but chopping out The Pyramids is certainly not unheard of as a way of accelerating the production of this WoW.

Adopting Organised Religion with the city having the chosen State Religion, and selecting a leader with the Industrious trait are other moves that would improve your chances of getting them. Obviously hooking up a Stone Quarry if you can is a plus. If you see Stone at the start of the game, you might want to actually settle on the Stone as when Masonry is learned you instantly get access to the resource and don't need to build a Quarry and a connection. It depends how important it is to you I guess .

There are other tricks to try to generate a Great Engineer to hurry The Pyramids such as; selecting a Philosophical leader, chasing The Oracle and ensuring that Metal Casting is an option, and then rushing a Forge and running a Specialist Engineer. If you have Warlords you can generate Great Engineer points with The Great Wall which would also work well with a Philosophical leader. I've not tried a similar strategy for The Hanging Gardens (also produces Great Engineer points), but I guess at lower levels it could be 'do able'.

Wonder addiction!

Having said all that - I would warn that getting The Pyramids is not something I would encourage "noob Civ4 players" to get into the habit of absolutely needing. As you advance in levels, there's less-and-less chance that you'll be able to build this Wonder yourself, and an increasing chance that you'll either get invaded or that you've made such a sacrifice in other aspects that you'll struggle for much of the game.

Wonder addiction is not a healthy thing to have if you're trying to advance in levels. Sure - it's fun to experiment with the Cottage Economy vs. the Farm Economy or the Specialist Economy vs. the Transitional Economy so you can better understand them, but being reliant on The Pyramids, or The Oracle, or The Great Library, etc. is unhelpful for the longer-term development of your Civ skills.

Best of luck!

[frob2900]

Originally Posted by Cam_H

Wonder addiction is not a healthy thing to have if you're trying to advance in levels. ...being reliant on The Pyramids, or The Oracle, or The Great Library, etc. is unhelpful for the longer-term development of your Civ skills.

But for your amusement, check out the crazy wonder-junkie strategy being successfully applied by forum member obsolete on both Monarch and Emperor difficulty (though both his starts had floodplains and stone nearby, but still).

[Cam_H]

Frob,

Indeed I have.

I admire what he's doing in terms of showing alternative approaches to the game, and in that sense creating new horizons.

That said, I wouldn't lay these games out for new players and suggest "This is how you're supposed to do it". He's debunking other 'myths' such as 'Cottage addiction' and 'Lightbulb addiction' in a very clear and compelling manner, much as I guess I'm hoping to (less demonstrably) convey about 'Wonder addiction'.

(btw - haven't said it before, but love your footer! )

[frob2900]

Originally Posted by Cam_H

That said, I wouldn't lay these games out for new players and suggest "This is how you're supposed to do it". He's debunking other 'myths' such as 'Cottage addiction' and 'Lightbulb addiction' in a very clear and compelling manner

Yeah, I agree, the tried and tested cottage+lightbulb route is probably the best way to get a firm footing. You can start mucking around once you're winning a level consistently..

(btw - haven't said it before, but love your footer! )

Thanks The footer content was actually a big insight for me ways back when I still was a wonder addict. I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that an actual wonder that gave free cities would be #1 on the wonder building list, so Axemen are they way to go even for builders

[djdeth]

So, at the beginning of the game, how fast do I want to be building towns? When do I bring my + science to 0? Thanks for the info so far.

[Cam_H]

Settling cities in the early-game

According to Sisiutil's Strategy Guilde for Beginners a useful 'rule of thumb' is when your commercial predicament by necessity drops to 60% you probably should address the situation somehow. A large contributor to your costs is city maintenance, and a large proportion of the city maintenance cost is the number of cities that you control.

At increasingly challenging difficulty levels, after about three cities your economy can look pretty shaky early on, but at the introductory levels you should be able to get five or six cities up with comparative comfort. There are a lot of 'ifs and buts' though here, as each case is different.

There are loads of ways to address a flagging economy, which are already addressed in the Guide, but some include razing rather than keeping captured cities, and acquiring the key technologies of; Currency and Code of Laws.

Towns and Cities

Please note that in Civ4 that 'Cities' (i.e. where your population resides) are different from 'Towns' (a fully matured Cottage tile).

Drop to 0%

You rarely want to reduce your to 0%. Some exceptions might be;

• A quick grab for military upgrades (or under Universal Suffrage to hurry other important builds), or

• You've got nothing further that you want to research because you've reached the end of the Tech' Tree and Future Technologies won't improve the situation noticably, or

• You're going for a Culture Victory and would prefer to direct your commerce into , confident that you can defend your empire if attacked and further technological advancement would not outweigh the benefit.

Usually just keep 'tech-ing' .

[Carnage04]

I have a question about SE that is about later in the game. I know it may be off topic but it's better than bombarding the board with SE n00b questions.

I've gotten to the point where I am able to get off to a good start, rushing a civ early and still being able to build a few of my own cities and usually at least the GL. I'm pretty far ahead in techs early on but I'd say just after the Scientific Method offshoots (Physics, Biology) my economy falls into shambles and I cannot keep up. The GPs start coming farther apart as the GP number gets into the 2000's and lightbulbing no longer is good for getting an entire tech or ever half a tech. How do you prevent later game sag?

I think one of my problems comes after my second or third invasion. I start trying to build my infrastructure up and therefore have a lengthy period of peace. New cities I have conquered need to be outfitted with the proper buildings...workers need to be brought in to fix up the land that has been pilferred/never improved, etc. Should I be saying to heck with improvements and just blasting into another opponent right away?

[frob2900]

Originally Posted by Carnage04

I'm pretty far ahead in techs early on but I'd say just after the Scientific Method offshoots (Physics, Biology) my economy falls into shambles and I cannot keep up. The GPs start coming farther apart as the GP number gets into the 2000's and lightbulbing no longer is good for getting an entire tech or ever half a tech....

SE does get weaker after biology/physics. (It can hold its own up to Computers, though).

Originally Posted by Carnage04

...Should I be saying to heck with improvements and just blasting into another opponent right away?

Yes, you should Make your empire into the largest (Stay short of domination if your going for Space race, though), then switch to state property and any victory is easy.

[UncleJJ]

Originally Posted by Carnage04

I have a question about SE that is about later in the game. I know it may be off topic but it's better than bombarding the board with SE n00b questions.

You clearly think about this game. These are not n00b questions and many experienced players still haven't grasped the way a SE develops in the late game... they seem to imagine that it is just a case of lightbulbing the whole way

I've gotten to the point where I am able to get off to a good start, rushing a civ early and still being able to build a few of my own cities and usually at least the GL. I'm pretty far ahead in techs early on but I'd say just after the Scientific Method offshoots (Physics, Biology) my economy falls into shambles and I cannot keep up. The GPs start coming farther apart as the GP number gets into the 2000's and lightbulbing no longer is good for getting an entire tech or ever half a tech. How do you prevent later game sag?

That is the key question for a late game SE. The answer is in relegating GPPs to a secondary role and concentrating on running the specialists for their basic output. The key civic is Representation, and probably Mercantilism (at least until State Property is available, and unless you have some great trading partners) and hopefully Slavery (until Emancipation gets too painful). The religious civic depends on whether you have a state religion and whether it helps with what you're doing more than it upsets your freinds and rivals diplomatically. Free Religion can be good but so can OR, Theocracy and Pacificism depending on what you want to do, so we'll leave that for now.

So what specialists should you be running? Well that depends on how well the city has been developed. Newly conquered cities need all sorts of things for them to be productive (forges, granaries), need culture (to fight neighbors culture and Motherland and pop borders), need cost control (courthouse) and need happiness and finally economic buildings. If you are running Slavery you can whip, and build with normal hammers, and installing infrastructure is a good move in a SE. In newly conquered cities I prioritise science buildings as they add culture automatically and allow scientists to be run. Take for instance a city with 3 scientists (one from Mercantilism) produces 18 beakers and with library, university and observatory that becomes 31.5 and all from just 4 food / turn (spare food is used to fuel Slavery). If the commerce slider is kept high then any free commerce in that city also gets that +75% science boost. That is good for a newly conquered city.

My core cities that have been running a long time will already have built all their science buildings and they should build the market, grocer, bank (MGB)combination. Running 4 merchants in a city with +100% gold gives 24 gold ans 21 beakers for 6 food. Extra food can be used to run scientists each giving 10.5 beakers for 2 food. That is not too bad a return after Biology revs up your farms. It is essential in my mind to combine the right economic buildings with the right specialists if they are to compete with cottages at this stage of the game. As your empire grows by conquest so your newly conquered cities will eventually transition into core cities with MGB and running merchants in preference to scientists (to keep the Science slider high across the whole empire). That works because all cities will have science buildings to boost commerce +75% and only core cities will have all the gold buildings. Other ways of raising gold are also important for a SE and these include selling the spare resources (the ones you captured ) for gold and spreading a religion if you have the shrines.

I think one of my problems comes after my second or third invasion. I start trying to build my infrastructure up and therefore have a lengthy period of peace. New cities I have conquered need to be outfitted with the proper buildings...workers need to be brought in to fix up the land that has been pilferred/never improved, etc. Should I be saying to heck with improvements and just blasting into another opponent right away?

You should only really conquer more land for two reasons. One reason is if it will increase your competetiveness and research rate. More land, properly used, can greatly increase your research rate as long as you have costs under control and the science slider is at a high%. Make gold in your core cities to finance the conquered cities to make extra beakers.

The other reason is to spoil your main research rival (often Mansa or Kyros) as a cottage economy gets ruined quickly by a war. Taking his cities is worth it to slow him down even if it also slows you somewhat.

In summary; once the cheap GPs have been generated a SE needs to rely on running specialists under Representation and using infrastructure to boost beakers and gold output. Building infrastructure in the right cities and then running the right specialists can make the SE an economic powerhouse that blows its more passive CE rivals away. There is no "sag" since you should be owning a lot more land and it is the number of tiles under your control that determines how economically powerful you are at any stage of the game. If you own twice as much land and it is well managed you'll out tech your rivals.

[futurehermit]

Play as an industrious leader. Ramesses is a good choice. Roosevelt also. Louis also.

Start with a worker and get your food tiles developed (rice/wheat/pigs/sheep/clams/fish/etc.) and build some mines. Get your other special resources developed.

Grow to size 4. Then build a worker. Then a settler (whipped/slavery).

Repeat.

In your new cities, repeat the process, but don't forget to build some defending units. Your first city should claim copper or horses for barb defense.

Don't stop expanding from your new cities until there is no more land or you are going to go broke. The slider can go down to 0 at some point, that is ok.

Once you have your first two settlers out from your capital, start the pyramids and chop it out to completion. If you have stone (bonus) you can do the great wall first (save some chops for pyramids) and no more worrying about barbs.

Once you have pyramids, adopt representation. Work food tiles in all your cities. Beeline literature. Once you have literature get the Great Library in a high-food city. If you get a GE in time from the pyramids, burn it on the GL in your highest-food city (probably your capital which will have no chops left).

After literature, beeline code of laws. Make sure you are running enough scientists to get a good tech pace. Once you hit col, whip courthouses in all your cities. Then switch to caste system and pacificism (use your first or second [first can go for an academy in your GL city if you want] on philosophy--make sure you have meditation). Spread one of your religions around, but watch diplomacy. You may have to gift some free techs to your neighbours to ward off war due to religion.

Then beeline drama and construction. Get theatres and coliseums up in all your cities. Set culture slider at 20% for 5 in all your cities. Increase the number of scientists you are running in all cities, make sure you are working food tiles.

Then beeline civil service (this gives you irrigation, so make sure to chain-link your farms in all cities to increase your food output!). Save up any additional GSs you get. Once you have civil service lightbulb: paper, education. Self-research or trade for: calendar, metal casting, compass. Then lightbulb liberalism (take nationalism). Then self-research or trade for machinery, engineering, gunpowder. If you have horses, self-research music and military tradition. Lightbulb printing press, chemistry, optics, astronomy, scientific method as you are able.

Switch civics to police state, nationhood, slavery, theocracy (if diplomacy is ok, free religion if not).

Whip cavalry or grenadiers empire-wide. Work food tiles only for fast regrowth! Draft muskets empire-wide. If possible, increase culture slider to 40% for extra to combat whip/draft

Once you have a huge army of 30-60 units then wipe out your closest rival. Keep whip/drafting units and take out your 2nd closest rival.

If you are on a large continent, rinse repeat until you win domination.

If you are on a small continent, finish claiming YOUR continent then cottage spam, switch to CE civics (universal sufferage, free speech, emancipation, free market, free religion) and tech til you win space race. Keep your highest-food city as a gpfarm. Use great people now on golden-ages once your cottages start to mature.

NOTE: My tips assume you are able to build at least 8 cities peacefully early on and also assume lower skill level (warlord-prince) since the op said he/she is newer to the game. If you can't build at least 8 cities peacefully then find yourself some copper or iron, mass axes (and swords if iron) and wipe out one neighbour early (raze distant cities except for capital/holy cities). Then follow the same procedure.

Good Luck!

[Jeff1787]

Great post, futurehermit!! What major differences would you have in your strategy at Monarch or Emperor difficulty??

Thanks...

[futurehermit]

Originally Posted by Jeff1787

Great post, futurehermit!! What major differences would you have in your strategy at Monarch or Emperor difficulty??

Thanks...

Early warring becomes almost essential because you get boxed in. So, I would implement an early axe and/or sword rush (followed by catapults if necessary) to take out one close neighbour. Then I would follow the same approach.

Good Luck!

[dozenlong]

It's hard to say that there's a single solution to every case, but chopping out The Pyramids is certainly not unheard of as a way of accelerating the production of this WoW.

So I saw "WoW" and immediately thought of World of Warcrack. I play WoW and Civ4. I sometimes wonder if a heroin or meth addiction would suck less of my time.

[Carnage04]

Originally Posted by UncleJJ

You clearly think about this game. These are not n00b questions and many experienced players still haven't grasped the way a SE develops in the late game... they seem to imagine that it is just a case of lightbulbing the whole way

Yeah, I love strategy gaming. I guess I've been playing Civ for a long time....I've been playing since Civ I was out.....but mostly I would just fire it up on "Warlord" or whatever the second lowest setting was and beat the other Civs brains in with Catapaults and Tanks. Since I found this board it has opened up a whole new ideas for me and has made the game much more interesting.

Originally Posted by UncleJJ

That is the key question for a late game SE. The answer is in relegating GPPs to a secondary role and concentrating on running the specialists for their basic output. The key civic is Representation, and probably Mercantilism (at least until State Property is available, and unless you have some great trading partners) and hopefully Slavery (until Emancipation gets too painful). The religious civic depends on whether you have a state religion and whether it helps with what you're doing more than it upsets your freinds and rivals diplomatically. Free Religion can be good but so can OR, Theocracy and Pacificism depending on what you want to do, so we'll leave that for now.

So what specialists should you be running? Well that depends on how well the city has been developed. Newly conquered cities need all sorts of things for them to be productive (forges, granaries), need culture (to fight neighbors culture and Motherland and pop borders), need cost control (courthouse) and need happiness and finally economic buildings. If you are running Slavery you can whip, and build with normal hammers, and installing infrastructure is a good move in a SE. In newly conquered cities I prioritise science buildings as they add culture automatically and allow scientists to be run. Take for instance a city with 3 scientists (one from Mercantilism) produces 18 beakers and with library, university and observatory that becomes 31.5 and all from just 4 food / turn (spare food is used to fuel Slavery). If the commerce slider is kept high then any free commerce in that city also gets that +75% science boost. That is good for a newly conquered city.

I've been setting newly conquered cities to start building library or if the city shrinks massively and doesn't have much land to work with, i'll try to get a theatre put in in an attempt to expand the borders. I am currently playing a game as the Incans...my first game with them actually (I can't believe how strong Huyana seems to be) and a few conquered cities I went right for the Terrace....Culture and Help with regrowing whipped citizens is pretty decent.

Originally Posted by UncleJJ

My core cities that have been running a long time will already have built all their science buildings and they should build the market, grocer, bank (MGB)combination. Running 4 merchants in a city with +100% gold gives 24 gold ans 21 beakers for 6 food. Extra food can be used to run scientists each giving 10.5 beakers for 2 food. That is not too bad a return after Biology revs up your farms. It is essential in my mind to combine the right economic buildings with the right specialists if they are to compete with cottages at this stage of the game. As your empire grows by conquest so your newly conquered cities will eventually transition into core cities with MGB and running merchants in preference to scientists (to keep the Science slider high across the whole empire). That works because all cities will have science buildings to boost commerce +75% and only core cities will have all the gold buildings. Other ways of raising gold are also important for a SE and these include selling the spare resources (the ones you captured ) for gold and spreading a religion if you have the shrines.

I think I may be seeing one of my failings here. I have ignored Merchants for the most part...and in return have ignored banks perhaps a little too much in my core cities. Markets and Grocers I have always built due to the sickness and unhappiness that can plague an empire....but banks (Obviously the more powerful in terms of strict financial benefit) didn't have side effects like the others so I kept away from them...perhaps way too much.

Originally Posted by UncleJJ

You should only really conquer more land for two reasons. One reason is if it will increase your competetiveness and research rate. More land, properly used, can greatly increase your research rate as long as you have costs under control and the science slider is at a high%. Make gold in your core cities to finance the conquered cities to make extra beakers.

The other reason is to spoil your main research rival (often Mansa or Kyros) as a cottage economy gets ruined quickly by a war. Taking his cities is worth it to slow him down even if it also slows you somewhat.

In summary; once the cheap GPs have been generated a SE needs to rely on running specialists under Representation and using infrastructure to boost beakers and gold output. Building infrastructure in the right cities and then running the right specialists can make the SE an economic powerhouse that blows its more passive CE rivals away. There is no "sag" since you should be owning a lot more land and it is the number of tiles under your control that determines how economically powerful you are at any stage of the game. If you own twice as much land and it is well managed you'll out tech your rivals.

Like I said, I've started a new game (That managed to have a really sweet starting position) and will try to follow some of what you have told me. As I'm playing with HC I think I have a good chance of doing pretty well. I started on top of copper and with a joint axe/quechua rush did a number on Brennus who had the unfortunate position of being closest to me. I happened to have stone AND marble nearby and cranked out the Pyramids and GL (Those pyramids are brutal to get without stone/Industrious). Add all that to the fact that I have an absolutely huge food city and I think it's probably the best start I had. It is kind of a loaded deck but it may help me figure out where I need to be in the future.

[vicawoo]

One of the deity culture players always gets pyramids. I think he picks nice enemies, though.

[The Tyrant]

I'm playing my first SE game now - Frederick, Monarch, Marathon, Fractal (all seven civs ended up on one large continent with me parked right beside Monty). I'm at work, so I don't have a savegame to post right now, but I could use some advice.

I was able to get four cities before we became boxed in and recently managed to squeeze in a fifth. My copper city is a crap city settled just to grab the copper, and one of my other cities is being chopped out of the jungle (three grassland gems). Now, if I can just keep my cities. Monty has just declared on me and sent his horse archers to pillage before his stacks arrive. Due to geography he has only one tiny, weak Arabian civ at his back and can effectively throw everything he has at me. I bribed Cyrus into helping but his troops will have to pass through my territory before he can get into the fight.

I'm amazed at how powerful the SE strategy becomes once you have either Libraries or Caste System. With fewer cities than the AI's, I am definitely the tech leader. I've never reached Civil Service so quickly and in about twenty turns I'll have macemen. My problem is keeping up production of units, which is of course why I was attacked. Well, other than Monty just being Monty. I normally have a warmonger approach and forego building wonders other than the Oracle in the early game. So far this game I've built the Oracle, Pyramids, Great Library and (just finished) the Hanging Gardens. All of those in my capitol, of course. The problem is that my other cities aren't that great for production, plus they're running specialists to boost my science as well. With my only real production powerhouse dedicated to wonder production I've seriously hampered my ability to turn out units.

Everyone says that SE goes well with constant warmongering, but pursuit of wonders has kept me from my usual axe rush. Should I have delayed the wonders until after building a stack and going off to war? Or are most people able to settle more/better cities before getting boxed in? I've built barracks and granaries in most of the cities. Should I have built those? I'm caught in the middle of changing playing styles here and feel like there must be something I'm not getting. SE is obviously very powerful for teching, but I'm falling behind in unit production and the power graph shows it. How do you guys handle that tradeoff?

[futurehermit]

WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP WHIP

Spiritual is good for going in and out of caste system and slavery. But even without it, you need periods of mass whipping and periods of mass scientist running. You should be working predominantly farms, with mines in your heroic epic city.

[The Tyrant]

Ah, so I should be whipping. Okay, that will be much more natural for me, as I'm usually fanatical about using the whip (hence the name "Tyrant"). This game I had been trying to let the cities grow so I could run more specialists, and had been able to limit growth when necessary so I didn't exceed the happiness cap. I've read what I could find about SE strategy, but no one really touched much on the issue of the whip. Thanks for the tip.

[Carnage04]

How late into the game do some of you guys whip? If not playing with a spiritual leader, flip flopping civics can really stink. Getting stuck without CS (Or Emancipation) for five turns can be painful. The Red faces can pile up, too. Buildings and Units cost more population points, meaning fewer Specialists in the aftermath. I have a hard time moving to slavery and cracking the whip probably around the time I hit Representation. Should I be sucking it up?