Late-Game SE City Examples

[futurehermit]

For quite awhile now I've been a believer in transitioning to a CE for a late-game space race. I'm not saying that I've changed my mind on this and I'm not interested in creating another CE-SE thread, although that will probably happen anyways

What I wanted to say in this thread is that just for fun I tried a SE space race with Ramesses and was pleasantly surprised. It kind of happened organically in a game I was playing. I started out with my usual Ramesses opening. I built stonehenge/GW/oracle then war-chariot rushed my closest neighbour (Gilgamesh) then settled down to building more wonders, stabilizing my economy, and expanding my empire. The only other civ on my continent was Darius and he was far to the North leaving me enough terrain to build a 19-city empire peacefully. I consider this a nice-sized empire for going for a space race. We shared a religion and I remained at peace for most of the rest of the game except for a couple pathetic invasions by Vicky.

What follows are city-screen screenshots from some of my main cities at the time of the launch of my spaceship. No other AIs had even completed apollo at this point. I'm playing monarch/standard/normal/hemispheres. I only built I think 2 cottages in my empire and that was because I had a couple grasslands that were not chain-irrigatable and I was too lazy to farm over them post-biology. I remained in rep/bur/cs/merc/pac for the majority of the game as these civics became available. I also built the SoL.

Here are the screenshots:

Empire:



Capital with Oxford and IW (Settled GP: 10GP, 8GS, 1GM, 4GE, 1GSpy):



Gilgamesh's capital with NE:



GT + NP city:



Wall Street city:



An average city representative of the rest of my cities:



Victory screen:



I was able to manage the emancipation by running 30-40% culture slider. I was quite pleased with my late-game tech rate of around 3 turns/tech during the industrial era and about 4-5 turns/tech during the modern era. Obviously Sushi helped a lot in this game, but even without it I think that I was pleasantly surprised with how a SE can tech later in the game. In games past where I've tried I realize now that I didn't run the huge piles of specialists that I ran in this game. I think if you do that things can work out nicely. As I said in the intro, I'm not making a comparative statement here because I still think per pop it is hard to match a mature town under CE civics. I'm just saying that I was pleased at my ability to use a WE/SE to tech well enough late game to get a space race in a reasonably timely manner.

[Incan Emperor]

You are HUGE and have Sushi, you would complete the same techs in 1-2 turns under the same circumstances except Sushi, you would probably be better off running SP on a CE.

[Rusten]

I'm feeling a little lazy so here are some examples quoted from another recent thread on the forums. (No food corps)

Originally Posted by Rusten

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:



That first city does have the Globe Theatre, but I was able to get many size 30 cities so it's not a one-city thing, you can get almost the same in most of them.

[iamnleth]

Population of Heliopolis is 41. I feel a strange sense of joy in seeing huge cities. Can we get a screenshot of what that looked like on the map?

[Airefuego]

Great cities FH!!

Can I ask - why didn't you put N Park in Thebes (which has four forests left), and ironworks in Memphis instead (it has 40 base hammers compared to 33 in Thebes) ?

[Incan Emperor]

Originally Posted by Airefuego

Great cities FH!!

Can I ask - why didn't you put N Park in Thebes (which has four forests left), and ironworks in Memphis instead (it has 40 base hammers compared to 33 in Thebes) ?

I guess it is because he is running Bureacracy and hammers are the only thing an Specialist provides that is multiplied by this, therefor the Engineers are put to better use there, if health is not a problem (which I doubt it is with Sushi) you may want to chop those forests and farm them too.

[Wlauzon]

I noticed in one city you were not working the Oil. Any particular reason for that?

I nearly always work the less common resources, even secondary supplies, since you can often trade them to the AI's for quite a few gold per turn.

[Airefuego]

Wlauzon - you don't need to "work" the resource to be able to trade it - you just need to have it developed (fort or refinery) and linked up by road/river/rail.

[Wlauzon]

Originally Posted by Airefuego

Wlauzon - you don't need to "work" the resource to be able to trade it - you just need to have it developed (fort or refinery) and linked up by road/river/rail.

OOPS!

I guess you learn something new every day <blush>

[Johan^^]

nice to see a good SE. One thing people forget is the extra commerce from trade routes in SE compaired with CE. 7 and 9 national traderoute

[Shadzy19]

I very rarely change my economy to a CE late game , 90% of my city's will grow as big as possible hiring scientist besides the wall street city while managing about 5 production city's to make my army , once all the SS techs are in you can workshop up a couple more city's and build everything very rapidly.
Ive been becoming a big fan of environalism for a late game SE , being able to run 3 or 4 extra scientist that you would otherwise lose to health problems is better then you would get from a extra trade route or SP.
The only drawback is the increased cost to corporations but I rarely use those and have no real clue how expensive these are.

[Napalm102]

So if you are breaking even then you would probably get about 2500 beakers per turn? Just guessing roughly, since you are getting 2230 beakers and still making profit of 385 gold per turn. If I had to guess the best that CE could do on the same land mass would be about 1500 beakers per turn. Ouch I should really try playing SE. Just shows you how really important pyramids are.

I'm guessing from the ammount of settled speciallists you don't lightbulb techs, and maybe use just a few to build an academy or a shrine? Really nice.

[Incan Emperor]

Originally Posted by Napalm102

So if you are breaking even then you would probably get about 2500 beakers per turn? Just guessing roughly, since you are getting 2230 beakers and still making profit of 385 gold per turn. If I had to guess the best that CE could do on the same land mass would be about 1500 beakers per turn. Ouch I should really try playing SE. Just shows you how really important pyramids are.

I'm guessing from the ammount of settled speciallists you don't lightbulb techs, and maybe use just a few to build an academy or a shrine? Really nice.

He actually has pretty few settled super specialists, the ones you are seeing are the free ones from wonders and such, if they dont have the little star they are normal specialists, if they do they are GP who where settled.

Oh and by the way, if you could only yield that from a CE, you need to improve your CE management.

Also Ind/Spi/Phi are the best traits for an SE, he is Ind/Spi Ramesses in this game, only fair to compare it with a Fin leader running a CE.

[r_rolo1]

I would had runned priests and engineers with Ramesses in the end of the game ( depending of the avaliable slots ), but your empire is quite nice, hermit...

A nice show of a late SE is with Pericles.... the Greek UB is quite good for a SE

[oyzar]

With 19 cities it is not hard to get 4K beakers in the late game with a CE... That is really beside the point though. He just wanted to post an effective late game SE...

[futurehermit]

Originally Posted by Incan Emperor

He actually has pretty few settled super specialists, the ones you are seeing are the free ones from wonders and such, if they dont have the little star they are normal specialists, if they do they are GP who where settled.

Oh and by the way, if you could only yield that from a CE, you need to improve your CE management.

Also Ind/Spi/Phi are the best traits for an SE, he is Ind/Spi Ramesses in this game, only fair to compare it with a Fin leader running a CE.

Actually I have so many settled great people you can't see them all, that is why I listed them in my original post

So if you are breaking even then you would probably get about 2500 beakers per turn? Just guessing roughly, since you are getting 2230 beakers and still making profit of 385 gold per turn. If I had to guess the best that CE could do on the same land mass would be about 1500 beakers per turn. Ouch I should really try playing SE. Just shows you how really important pyramids are.

I'm guessing from the ammount of settled speciallists you don't lightbulb techs, and maybe use just a few to build an academy or a shrine? Really nice.

I didn't lightbulb any techs. I used one GS on an academy in my capital. I used 3 for two golden ages early and once the game was over already I used my last 3 for another golden age just for fun. I also had two GMs settled in my WS city. I didn't build any shrines.

Great cities FH!!

Can I ask - why didn't you put N Park in Thebes (which has four forests left), and ironworks in Memphis instead (it has 40 base hammers compared to 33 in Thebes) ?

I was trying out a strategy I read on these forums posted I think by InvisibleStalker, which is to put the NP and GT in the same city to grow it huge. The thing is the NP cuts your unhealthiness to a minimum so you can grow HUGE when combined with Sushi and unlimited happiness. It worked very nicely imo.

Thanks for your feedback everybody!

[The Rook]

Originally Posted by futurehermit

I was trying out a strategy I read on these forums posted I think by InvisibleStalker, which is to put the NP and GT in the same city to grow it huge. The thing is the NP cuts your unhealthiness to a minimum so you can grow HUGE when combined with Sushi and unlimited happiness. It worked very nicely imo.

How about NP+NE for a huge, focussed, super-GP farm? If you are running a SE you can stay in Caste System, and use the culture slider to combat post-Emancipation unhappiness. Without cottages, the commerce lost through tweaking the culture slider is comparatively negligable.

[schwartz]

No levee in IW city??
Nevertheless, nice example of a solid SE

[Geoffroy]

Quick question: I see you use Mercantilism (for a free spec, right?), but when do you know when that offsets the foreign trade routes?

[Bleys]

Ramses is my favorite leader, by FAR. I just love him. I also usually try to swap to a CE later in games, but I have noticed you can really use Ramses for mega-strong end game SEs.

My latest Ramses game I tried to really use the benefits of the AP, and even pulled a little "move". I founded Confu (self teched, took MC with Oracle), but agreed to join the religion of my continent-mates (Saladin and Hannibal, I rushed Gilga out early) to keep the peace. I quietly spread Confu to all my cities, while Sal was aggressively spreading his religion (hindu) across the continent. As the AP was building, I was quietly building an army as well, and one turn before the AP was done, I swapped to Confu as my state religion, and watched my production jump a BIG notch with all the temples/monasteries, while my opponents had only 1 Confu city between them, a city that was later "voted" to me by the AP, LOL. Vasselized them both before I even met the other continents AIs, heh.