What exactly is a specialist economy?

I've heard the terms "cottage economy" and "specialist economy" across the forums. I feel I understand a CE, which I frequently use and love. I want to try new things, but I am a little confused on how to set up a specialist economy. Could you guys give me some tips? I know that philosophical is the specialist economy counterpart to financial for CE's, and that instead of cottaging the crap out of cities, you farm? An explanation would be nice.

A specialist economy basically get's techs from scientist specialists. There have been many walkthroughs, and several of my classic RPCs used a SE (Montezuma to the first that comes to mind).

General principals

1) As you said, farm most tiles. Grassland riverside are the best, non riverside can be exploited with civil service.

2) Run scientists once you have libraries. 2 per city with a library means 7.5 beakers per city. Later you can add other specilists

3) The pyramids helps alot as you cna run early representation. Myself I usually only use the SE when I can get the pyramids.

4) Code of Laws early for caste system. The more scientists you can get out, the stronger your game.

5) Biology is the Nuclear bomb of the SE while Democracy (specifically emancipation) is the Se plague. The more food you get, the more specialists.

6) Commerce is important and you can get them from resources, trade routes, miscelanneous tiles.

7) Here is the tricky part, use bulbing with you Great people and trade techs. Bulb Philosophy and trade it around. Similar education (once liberalism is locked up), printing press etc... This is an important part of the strategy.

8) in Vanilla and Warlords it was tough to stay in an SE after democracy, but not so in BTS. Indistrial parks, national parks, corps, supermarkets (+1 food) can all get you more food and specialist slots. Often I find myself adopting an SE based game post Constituion.

The classic SE involves no or little cottages (the CE). However, I do not recommend that myself and prefer a hybrid economy using both cottages and specislists.

Also understand that the SE vs. CE question is apt to open up a slew of very emotional responses on this forum, or it used to.

^^That is ,at most , a scientist SE

I would also like to know what is a SE , please But please explain in a shorter time than the one you can stand in one foot

Wait so do you use great people to tech, as in bulbing techs? Is that the focus of a SE?

BigTime said:

Wait so do you use great people to tech, as in bulbing techs? Is that the focus of a SE?

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That's something that is often done with any economy - bulb techs that haven't been researched and trade it around to backfill key techs. The common thing is to bulb with GS's down the Liberalism line. Running an SE it is easy to produce lots of GS.

Mad's summary has some good tips. I'd also add that the SE does well for maps with high food but poor cottage land. If you want to try it out I'd play a game where you can't build any cottages - it's quite fun.

In the end it is best to adapt your economy to the map and most of the time a hybrid economy works best. A cottaged bureaucracy capital with academy and oxford is tough to beat. If you have a city with plenty of food but not too many tiles, consider running specs there.

BigTime said:

Wait so do you use great people to tech, as in bulbing techs? Is that the focus of a SE?

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you can, but the GS's gained can also be settled into your oxford city to create an SSE [super specialist economy], where the vast majority of your science output is from that city. Combine that city with a national epic, GS built academy, high food yield to support as many scientists as possible, the GL [if you can build it], and you'll be surprised how many beakers you can generate. A settled GS under representation nets +9 raw beakers before modifiers.

So how you use your GS's is up to you, personally, I'll usually bulb only if it's a critical tech in the early game [philosophy, paper, education are most prominent in my mind], and bulb more often in the later game, but this is because I'm still more inclined to research things myself rather than trade for them, while stealing techs to back fill.

Biology is great for the SE, but so is sushi and cereal mills.

Furthermore, if you're running an SSE more often than not, you'll come to a crunch point where you have to switch out of slavery into caste to maximize the potential of that city. In a traditional SE it's not as important as you can often get by on the scientist slots available via buildings, but the switch from slavery to caste can be tricky to time without practice.

The culture slider becomes your way of adapting to emancipation, which is why it's often regarded that creative is a top tier SE trait, cheap theatres and libraries. And why Justinian's UB is great in an SE as well [double happiness theatres]

Industrious is also a great SE trait as it gives you a fighting chance at the 'myds without stone, which essentially makes the SE most viable anyway.

Spiritual is another great SE trait as it can allow you to flip between slavery and caste, as well as pacifism and theocracy when cycling between production and science.

On hybrid economies:
Because your cities are food rich, commerce poor, you will need some kind of economic-based cities to support a large empire. Whether this be with with a few cottage cities, or a hybrid hammer-based [a very nice option with caste workshops in the mid-late game] or some combination of, something will have to be generating money for you. Just remember, that if you are in an SE, you're science slider will be running much lower and the cottage cities will benefit most from markets, banks, and grocers, so your cities become more specialized with a clear distinction between wealth generating and science generating.

Pros of an SE:
-Can expand faster, as you're less worried about keeping your science slider up in the early game because you're offsetting the difference with scientists, and can delay the building of pure financial cities longer because of it.
-More specialized cities mean less building per city.
-It tends to 'take off' faster than a CE, because each scientist is of larger start up raw beakers than most cottages.
-More GS's mean more bulbing options, or the SSE city [consequently better trade bait, or even more beakers]
-flexible in productive capabilities and cycling through war time production [setting those Specialists to work mines and workshops, and peaceful scientific research
-EDIT-
-easier to rebuild after being pillaged

Cons:
-No HR to grow your cities, so happiness can become a factor
-Loses out in raw beaker output to fully mature cottages
-emancipation hurts every SE in time
-micromanagement intensive, and the city governor often doesn't do a good job
-no slavery in caste.
Personally, I prefer an SE to a CE, but I'm finding it's much more situational than a CE. It's great for warring, and it's rare that I'll go for any other victory than domination or cultural with it, because enduring the late-years for a time or space victory is painful to watch.

madscientist said:

5) Biology is the Nuclear bomb of the SE while Democracy (specifically emancipation) is the Se plague. The more food you get, the more specialists.

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Democracy is the death of the scientist driven SE.

But at the same time you're forced to drop Caste System for Emancipation, you open up a bunch of spy slots via buildings.

Generally speaking SE is very viable if you play a PHI type leader because of the % increase of great people, you start pumping out scientists and prophets like nobodys business, and especially once you snag Oxford in your major science city, you start researching techs FASTER in some eras than a CE economy, even with a Financial type leader. Ultimately endgame (and some disagree) a financial boosted CE economy researches techs faster, but the main benefit of a SE is that you can adjust the science slider low, mainly to fund war efforts and troops without crashing your tech output. Religious leaders work aswell to use it, or a hybrid system of it using cottages and specialists for tech, because of the gold output of a religion, especially in your capital with bureaucracy, to fund war efforts and then specialists for techs, monty works great for it from a warmongers perspective, Alex aswell is my favourite SE warmonger. SE's real benefit comes from when someone DoWs on you and you have cottages all over with a financial leader, and all of a sudden theyre pillaging your cottages, costing you 30+ turns to try and build them up again to where they were, there goes your economy! For a SE, its a 5 turn (less later on) farm thats right back up, and your city wont starve until then anyways. You basically have one major science city that you settle your first GS in, and build an academy with your second, have one engineer city that builds things like pyramids, gardens, etc, one city that builds your gold wonders for prophets and merchants to fund everything, and one GOOD production city to start, really you only need four cities to begin your wars with, and can conquer the rest since youll need about 7+ come the medieval age.

A specialist economy is an economy that is driven by specialists. That means most sliders are at 0%, and only specialists are generating raw science and gold. This, with lots of wonder grabbing, net you a lot of GPP and make it so that you can bulb techs, rush wonders, or settle as a super specialists, which under a Pyramid driven Representation, is a lot of beakers. That, and the +3 happiness you get from Representation means early-game you can launch ahead, but later in the game the SE starts to lack, around Democracy time.

madscientist said:

3) The pyramids helps alot as you cna run early representation. Myself I usually only use the SE when I can get the pyramids.

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IMO if you're playing on Emp and higher, or monarch if you're new to the strategy, and you dont end up building the pyramids.....capture them within an age or two or you're done for. A common strat is to build them in your original capital, then transfer the capital later on to your commerce city for bureaucracy.

Hmph. The SE and CE thing should have died years back. They're garbage terms and they mislead people learning.

You optimize every city based on how it best contributes to your empire. Sometimes there will be more or less cottages, mines, workshops, farms, etc. Early on, it's a mish-mash of the best outputs you can get. Later on, you will probably want to convert to one major improvement set (keeping the national wonder cities in their specialization only) such as cottages, farms, or workshops. Do whatever you want then. Run rep specs for science or use commerce.

But you don't get a magic wand. You still have to pay for your new cities and you still have to find a way to climb the tech tree.

Also, heavy GPP and bulbing can lead to some very fast initial tech ----> enough to hold a military tech lead and take advantage. Mids are not necessary there though if you can get them without trading away several cities in the process they do help.

@ TMiT, nice summary

Sly, I would add that it's easier to recover from pillaging.

Personally, I go mostly based on a city by city basis.

I have a couple questions to add:

lets say you are running a hybrid economy, where some cities will have cottages, and others have farms+specialists, how do you decide which cities will be which depending on the terrain?
for example, I understand that cities beside lots of grassland with rivers will become specialist farms, but most of the time the terrain is very mixed. What is the best terrain for cottages anyway, do cottages work best with plains, non-river grasslands, something else?

secondly, if you are creating a city that will become a specialist farm, do you begin building libraries right away from turn 1 size 1 in that city? After you get the libraries, or assuming you have caste system, at what size population do you begin making citizens into specialists, size 4, size 6, size 8, OR is it dependent on the happiness? If you play on the easier difficulties, the happyness cap is very high, so it would be good to know a general size city size where you start running specialists. Do you try to run a surplus for city growth AND run specialists at the same time OR do you run as many specialists as you can and make growth 'stagnate'? If you don't stagnate, how much city growth do you want to have?

If you are running a specialist economy, with your sliders all near zero, than that means you should also be generating a ton of money. Does this mean all your specialist cities need to build all science and money buildings to get the most out of your specialist scientists and your sliders effectively being 100% money? If you have mostly specialists, this means most things are farms and that you aren't working as many tiles as you could, which means you aren't producing as many hammers as you could. So how can you afford the time to build these buildings and build other things like new settlers, army, wonders, other buildings, etc.?

Lastly, the great people you generate. Generally speaking, i like to settle my great people into great people cities, and almost never bulb techs. But it appears i should be bulbing more often. Out of your first, say, 6 great scientists/people, how many do you settle and how many do you bulb with? Also, do you build an academy first, then settle gs in it, or the other way around?

Lastly, sorry so many questions, assuming you had 6 cities in a se/hybrid economy, would it be correct to have: 1 specialist super science city, 1 all engineer specialist city, 1 specialist money city (or is it a cottage city for the money city?), 1 production city (farms and mines, no specialists or cottages), and 2 generic specialist science cities?

thx in advance,
veqryn

Veqryn said:

for example, I understand that cities beside lots of grassland with rivers will become specialist farms

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For me I see that as a cottage city, riverside grassland offers +1C to inital cottages and grassland tiles will help the city steadily grow and work as many cottages as possible (its nice to have atleast 1 food source around aswell)

Specialist cities (atleast in the early game) need a concerntration of food. So say a pigs, irrigated corn and a fish would be nice because working those 3 tiles at size 9 would allow you to run 6 specialists.

Veqryn said:

secondly, if you are creating a city that will become a specialist farm, do you begin building libraries right away from turn 1 size 1 in that city?

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I'd normally build monument during the earlygame (assuming you need the urgent borderpop), then granary then library, and don't forget if your running more food it makes sense to use the whip.

Veqryn said:

If you are running a specialist economy, with your sliders all near zero, than that means you should also be generating a ton of money

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I wouldn't actually say to myself "I'm running a specialist economy I'll just put my slider to zero" but generally speaking as you expand and the fact your not running many commerce tiles your slider will naturally drop. Its wise to have one cottaged city even in a full on specialist economy to help generate some cash.

Veqryn said:

Out of your first, say, 6 great scientists/people, how many do you settle and how many do you bulb with?

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Generally speaking I'd acadamy first, depending on how soon you get your second I'd settle in the acadamy city or bulb philosophy if available. I tend to use 1 or 2 more scientists for bulbing education and thats about as much as I bulb.

a specialist economy is a fiction created on the board

there are however "specialists" and you can assign them in cities.

you can assign a merchant specialist in a city with a market, bank and settled great merchant- ect.

TheMeInTeam said:

Hmph. The SE and CE thing should have died years back. They're garbage terms and they mislead people learning.

.

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Yeah I agree with this.

One other point from the Vanilla days which is not that important in BTS, the AI rarely pillages in wars now. Before your great cottage empire could easily be torched by an enemy while the SE is easier to rebuild because farms do not require time to regrow.

However, one point about SE I have found, it is a fun challenge to run games without cottages occasionally!

Not building cottages is a totally viable on any difficulty, and often I don't build 'em.

TheMeInTeam said:

Hmph. The SE and CE thing should have died years back. They're garbage terms and they mislead people learning.

You optimize every city based on how it best contributes to your empire. Sometimes there will be more or less cottages, mines, workshops, farms, etc. Early on, it's a mish-mash of the best outputs you can get.

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I agree. I was just a little confused on what exactly a SE is. I find myself having some cottage cities, some hammer cities, and 1 or 2 GP farms. So I guess I use a hybrid economy?

dirtyparrot said:

Sly, I would add that it's easier to recover from pillaging.

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you sir, are correct, and oversight on my part to be sure.