Ce / Se

Hallo everyone, I am qwertz and I have been playing civ IV for a while. Few weeks ago I discovered this forum and I learned some really useful stuff here. Recently I have a problem that doesn't let me sleep since 3 days so I decided to register here and ask what do you think about it;
Until now I have been using CE and mostly a financial leader. But as I wanted to try out something new I started a Peter/normal size and speed/ continents/prince game and I decided not to build a single cottage during the whole game. I had a lot of specialists and surprisingly my eco was quite good and I also was swimming in GP. Finally I even managed to win a space race victory without a lot of problems.
Now I decided to move up to monarch as my last few prince games were a breeze, but I am not very sure what strategy should I use. Stick with CE or definitely move to SE? I'd like to use SE as those GP can really help you, but there are some major problems with SE you can't disregard:
1. Pyramids: If I don't get them I am screwed. If I get them my main production city wasn't doing anything for 2000 years and I am in all likelihood sitting somewhere in the corner of the world without any space to expand and with neighbors who have 10 times stronger military. Also I am not sure weather you can get them on a higher difficulty level as the AI gets the production bonuses.
2.:Setteling in the flood plains, spamming farms to every square you have, insanely growing your city and cutting every single forest you see so you can build those libraries faster are all things a good SE should include, but doing so makes your cities unhealthy extremely fast and 2=1 less specialist
3. Emancipation: CS is extremely useful for SE, but unfortunately my citizens don't share this opinion and even if I manage to make them happy the UN can really screw you. Deciding to adopt US and emancipation as global civics is equivalent to voting for "as we don't use our nukes anymore, let's destroy them by lunching them all at <player>'s cities"

So what do you think CE or SE? Thanks in advance.


P.S.
Sorry for my sucking English, it isn't my first language

I would vote for hybrid economy, no option though

I voted "don't know" because I always use a hybrid economy with highly specialized cities -- some are cottage farms, others use specialists.

CE!
SE is way too much micro.

I would also vote hybrid since in a lot of cases it depends on the city whether it is cottaged or I hire specialists.

i voted CE, altho i do tend to have a few cities running specialists. Mainly cottages tho

A cottage economy with one or two dedicated great people farms is what I usually go for. I only even consider a specialist economy when 1) I have stone and can expect to build the pyramids and 2) I have a lot of surplus food (pre-Civil Service).

A cottage-less specialist economy in conjunction with the Pyramids (Representation) can provide an amazing lead in the early game between village-farms (+1 food is about half a specialist to oversimplify things) and all the great people you get. But a cottage economy eventually catches up as their cottages develop and as they get bonuses from stuff like Printing Press and Free Speech. A specialist economy, on the other hand, has to wait all the way until Biology to see a comparable bonus. In my limited experience, specialist economy also requires an obnoxious amount of micromanagement to get the most out of it.

easy...SE = 38 Great persons in my last game.....!


http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=244133

Yeah, I hate the microing and also run mostly CE with a city or two as GP farms. Reading stuff on these forums have made me try SE out of curiosity, though.

I usually run CE, but often go SE at the start of the game, especially if I can't find any initial suitable commerce cities. Like Kissamies, I try to have 1-2 GP farms-- cities with lots of food that I farm up, stick the right national wonders in (national epic, sometimes globe theater to not worry about happiness, but depends on the map)... and crank GPs. My problem is I usually do it a bit too late and half-ass it, and whenever you half-ass something in Civ it usually haunts you.

Hybrid, found some commerce-heavy cities in the early games but keep at least one GP-farm. In mid-game I'd rather grow a specialist city than growing cottages from scratch. Of course, if you build the Pyramids you should go more heavy on the specialists.

No "both , depending of traits and terrain" option ?

This poll really needs to have an option for Hybrid economies....

Hybrid. Didn't vote.

Thanks for the replies so far.
I should have added a "hybrid" or "depends on the situation" option, but now it's too late .
I never really tried a hybrid eco (the 3 specialists in the heroic epic city don't count), maybe I should. But I think that the problem would be that you don't ab(use) your bonuses as much as you could. E.g. with representation only your specialists get the bonus and with US only the towns or you don't get the bonus when you are financial.
Building cottages in early cities and farms in the later ones sounds like a good idea, I will give it try.
@thomson: your thread brought me to the idea to try out SE

I voted cottage economy, but I always build several great person farms (or in BTS, a national park city). So it's not a pure cottage economy, but it's also not a hybrid economy. In a hybrid economy, you dedicate a fraction of your cities for a specific duty whether that is a 100% gold slider with specialists for the research or a 100% science slider with specialist for the gold. I don't do that.

A spy economy is also feasible in BTS: you pick the enemy civilisation which you guess is going to be the most advanced one and you dedicate your whole economy towards gaining espionage points against that civilisation and combine this with the buildings that enhance spy point generation. In this economy, you could get the gold with specialists or by using the slider.
A disadvantage with such an economy is that you can't get ahead of the tech leader without converting your economy to a different type of economy.

You should play a few SE games to get used to the SE style. I play both games, but often I find running a CE tedious as it really limits the expansion early on since a player needs to wait for cottages to mature. At the same time, I feel SE is tedious cause it is ALOT of micro. And it's worse in BtS since the AI automatically reassigns working tiles when an improvement is finished.

Roland Johansen said:

I voted cottage economy, but I always build several great person farms (or in BTS, a national park city). So it's not a pure cottage economy, but it's also not a hybrid economy. In a hybrid economy, you dedicate a fraction of your cities for a specific duty whether that is a 100% gold slider with specialists for the research or a 100% science slider with specialist for the gold. I don't do that.

A spy economy is also feasible in BTS: you pick the enemy civilisation which you guess is going to be the most advanced one and you dedicate your whole economy towards gaining espionage points against that civilisation and combine this with the buildings that enhance spy point generation. In this economy, you could get the gold with specialists or by using the slider.
A disadvantage with such an economy is that you can't get ahead of the tech leader without converting your economy to a different type of economy.

Click to expand...

I've tried spy economy before, and it seems almost impossible. Getting a modern tech pretty much emtpies the entire pool. I had several thousand, but perhaps that's not enough. I definitely didn't focus on one Civ.

That game was on monach difficulty.

Is there a flow chart or something of which techs are lightbulb-able by which Great People? I know that certain techs can be bulbed by more than 1 type of GP, and certain techs which are not explicitly marked as such can be bulbed.

If you're got to pick one, the CE has a slight edge over the SE (particularly if you don't get the Pyramids). BtS has rather blurred the SE/CE distinction in the later phases of the game though, and the best strategy is usually a hybrid economy.