EDIT: A Specialist-Cottage Super Economy Hybrid

[MarigoldRan]

"As long as you're not working lots of un-improved tiles, your economy is fine."

This works very, very well, up to Emperor.

What is the Caste System Economy Without Caste System?

1. You're running slavery for whipping.
2. You're whipping out a lot of buildings (libraries, forges, and marketplaces).
3. You have the Pyramids.
4. Your worker count is very, very low (because you're not working a lot of tiles).
5. You have a lot of specialists because of the buildings you whipped.

It's basically a Caste System economy but with slavery. I like slavery better than Caste System, since I like the added production boost and the "panic button." I like to combine this with:

1. A super-science capital.
2. Lots of cottages to take advantage of the libraries and marketplaces you whipped.
3. Wonder-spam.
4. Lots of cities.
5. Beeline to Banking to take advantage of my low science-slider and to run Mercantilism to take advantage of Representation.
6. In turn, Banking is useful for a beeline to Rifling.

Example of such an economy is provided in the attachment below. You'll notice that my worker count is very, very low.

This is very easy to teach to new-comers. All you need is solid worker-mirco, and an understanding of the mechanics of Representation, specialists, and infrastructure. It also encourages newcomers to develop a habit of using slavery. If you're SPI this works even better, since you can run serfdom most of the time, with occasional switches back to slavery.

[Ghpstage]

It's basically a Caste System economy but with slavery

No its nothing like Caste system economies, this is a 'strong leader with some suspiciously () strong land on marathon' economy......

Spoiler:

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It reads a lot like "Specialist Economy".

[Kid R]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

5. You have a lot of specialists because of the buildings you whipped.

...

2. Lots of cottages to take advantage of the libraries and marketplaces you whipped.

Can the two be done at the same time? To me specialists means not cottages. Cottages don't deliver enough food either to run specialists or to regrow efficiently after whipping. Farm, baby, farm.

Isn't what you call the "caste system economy" just the old-skool "specialist economy" (SE)? In which case yes you can do it with library/market/temple, etc. specialists, but if you do it suffers from at least one severe problem at higher levels. Namely the lack of control over what great people you get. Actual caste system is far superior in that respect.

Pyramids is clearly a boon to the SE but it has been shown numerous times to be realistic without.

No real problems with any of the rest

In particular the fact that SPI rocks. Toggling between caste system and slavery is my most favouritest thing about it. Serfdom ... facepalm.

[MarigoldRan]

It was a random leader, and the land I got was kick-ass awesome.

It would have worked better with Capac. Compensated with awesome land, though. And no, I do not like Giggles.

Ok, so I have no idea what a Caste System economy is actually. You got me there.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Kid R

Can the two be done at the same time? To me specialists means not cottages. Cottages don't deliver enough food either to run specialists or to regrow efficiently after whipping. Farm, baby, farm.

Isn't what you call the "caste system economy" just the old-skool "specialist economy" (SE)? In which case yes you can do it with library/market/temple, etc. specialists, but if you do it suffers from at least one severe problem at higher levels. Namely the lack of control over what great people you get. Actual caste system is far superior in that respect.

Pyramids is clearly a boon to the SE but it has been shown numerous times to be realistic without.

No real problems with any of the rest

In particular the fact that SPI rocks. Toggling between caste system and slavery is my most favouritest thing about it. Serfdom ... facepalm.

Apparently so. The two can be done at the same time with slavery to compensate for the low-production of your cities. You start massing production when the cottages morph into towns. Until then, you run slavery.

[Windsor]

1-3 specialists per city is not what I would call "a lot".

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by VoiceOfUnreason

It reads a lot like "Specialist Economy".

Fair enough. It's a specialist economy with cottages and lots of whipping.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Windsor

1-3 specialists per city is not what I would call "a lot".

Yes. But with 30+ cities, you're talking about "a lot."

The problem with specialists is they're linear. They always provide the same benefits for the entire game. Hence the cottages are there for exponential growth for Renaissance and Industrial explosions.

[Um the Muse]

Why specialists instead of building wealth? Mines are linear, too; they save you from having to whip in gold multipliers; you gain flexibility without resorting to whipping except in emergencies (I believe that it's been proven that whipping miners does not increase production); and you become less wonder dependent.

Btw, merchants and mines are really quasi-linear; per person, they are but they don't have infinite room for expansion per city (you're limited by food, slots/hills, food, happies, food, and health. And finally, food). Also, they could theoretically help you get more cities out, but maintenance costs aren't linear. I've found to my chagrin that ICS via a merchant/ city doesn't work

[Cusanus]

[Greyed out part is not that important.]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

This works very, very well, up to Emperor.

Everything works well up to Emperor.

Well, yes: "...as long as you're doing a few things right."
And you named one of the most important things: don't work unimproved tiles!

This is very easy to teach to new-comers.

If you mean this to be purely educative (and not actually competitive with e.g. pure specialist economy), you might have a point.
At least, I'll not argue here, because honestly: who knows how to best teach new-comers?

Although I doubt that someone with "solid worker-mirco, and an understanding of the mechanics of Representation, specialists, and infrastructure" can still be called a new-comer.
I'd rather try teaching that at-least-solid-monarch player strategies that seem stronger than this one.

I'll try to explain why I (and, obviously, others) think it's a rather bad strategy:

Cottages are really bad while they still are cottages - you mostly work them so that the grow to be (ultimatively) towns.
Any citizen working a cottage could be working a farm instead, but he's not. So for every cottage worked, you're city basically pays 1 food per turn.

When using specialists, you need your cities to grow rather big so that they can use *many* specialists.
[Btw: specialists usually aren't that great unless you're also using their GPP's, i.e. spawning Great People. That means that having five cities with 2 specialists each is a lot worse than having one city with 10 specialists; even if you don't have the NE there (yet).]
Growing your cities needs all the food you can get.

This is even more important when whipping is an important part of your strategy: you whip your cities down, you need them to grow back asap!
That's the reason why specialists and the whip don't mix too well, even all by themselves.

You take that mix and also throw in cottages - those things make both specialists *and* whipping less efficient. Doesn't sound like a good idea.



On a side note:

If you're SPI this works even better, since you can run serfdom most of the time, with occasional switches back to slavery.

I thought one of the adventages was not having to improve many tiles - that would make serfdom even less interesting than in normal games.

[Mylene]

^^ You took a lot of time there to explain what could be said with 1 word: nonsense

[Kid R]

BTW got to say, huge marathon is THE superior

[Htadus]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

Ok, so I have no idea what a Caste System economy is actually. You got me there.

MarigoldRan, you should take a little time to at least brows through the War Academy and learn what has already been dicovered and is known, such a CE, SE and FE. Then once you know what is already known come up with something new and better. So far you have been reinventing the wheel and it has not been round or better yet. But don't be discouraged.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Cusanus

[Greyed out part is not that important.]

Everything works well up to Emperor.

Well, yes: "...as long as you're doing a few things right."
And you named one of the most important things: don't work unimproved tiles!




If you mean this to be purely educative (and not actually competitive with e.g. pure specialist economy), you might have a point.
At least, I'll not argue here, because honestly: who knows how to best teach new-comers?

Although I doubt that someone with "solid worker-mirco, and an understanding of the mechanics of Representation, specialists, and infrastructure" can still be called a new-comer.
I'd rather try teaching that at-least-solid-monarch player strategies that seem stronger than this one.

I'll try to explain why I (and, obviously, others) think it's a rather bad strategy:

Cottages are really bad while they still are cottages - you mostly work them so that the grow to be (ultimatively) towns.
Any citizen working a cottage could be working a farm instead, but he's not. So for every cottage worked, you're city basically pays 1 food per turn.

When using specialists, you need your cities to grow rather big so that they can use *many* specialists.
[Btw: specialists usually aren't that great unless you're also using their GPP's, i.e. spawning Great People. That means that having five cities with 2 specialists each is a lot worse than having one city with 10 specialists; even if you don't have the NE there (yet).]
Growing your cities needs all the food you can get.

This is even more important when whipping is an important part of your strategy: you whip your cities down, you need them to grow back asap!
That's the reason why specialists and the whip don't mix too well, even all by themselves.

You take that mix and also throw in cottages - those things make both specialists *and* whipping less efficient. Doesn't sound like a good idea.



On a side note:



I thought one of the adventages was not having to improve many tiles - that would make serfdom even less interesting than in normal games.

Ok. I'll call you out on this one. Play the same map according to how you would do it and compare the results. This is a good test case because you pretty much don't have to worry about military after choking Monty and building the GW since it's easy to keep the southerners occupied with themselves.

The thing is that I don't want my cities to grow back too fast. Otherwise unhappiness becomes a problem. I guess that's why you people build workers. It's a cumulative effect. If you have a lot of farms, you have a lot of workers (which are built during whip recovery times). If you don't have a lot of farms, as is the case here, (and instead have cottages and buildings), you have a lot less workers (since building workers is inefficient because you need your cities to grow back).

I'm going to finish out this game, in part because the 700 AD snapshot is of an economy that is just beginning to explode.

EDIT: This applies to anyone who thinks they can do better.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Um the Muse

Why specialists instead of building wealth? Mines are linear, too; they save you from having to whip in gold multipliers; you gain flexibility without resorting to whipping except in emergencies (I believe that it's been proven that whipping miners does not increase production); and you become less wonder dependent.

Btw, merchants and mines are really quasi-linear; per person, they are but they don't have infinite room for expansion per city (you're limited by food, slots/hills, food, happies, food, and health. And finally, food). Also, they could theoretically help you get more cities out, but maintenance costs aren't linear. I've found to my chagrin that ICS via a merchant/ city doesn't work

If you're building wealth, you're not building infrastructure.

I do build wealth and research sometimes, to get an important tech like currency for example, but I generally try to keep it at a min.

Hammer economies require a different heuristic from what I did here.

In truth, I have some buildaholic tendencies.

[Um the Muse]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

If you're building wealth, you're not building infrastructure...In truth, I have some buildaholic tendencies.

No disrespect intended, but I think that that is the crux of the issue. It sounds like you're building things whether or not it'll help you more than it'll cost you. That's fine; I myself like the shinies of a well-developed city. Just know that it'll be sub-optimal.

I hope you at least specialize the buildings to cater to the city? I know this is something that's holding me back too. "Every city needs a market! It'll make them happier! Oh a forge! Good idea! Never mind it's only going to give me one or two extra hammers per turn, I need it!"

After awhile, though, I realize that I literally can't build all the goodies (yay! That means my commerce cities' tiles are sufficiently specialized, at least!). Maybe it'll help you as well as it has helped me to realize that I can't do everything; that I need to give my cities a purpose--at least my main cities, the smaller cities can somewhat squeak by with slavery, they just won't amount to much on their own.

[MarigoldRan]

I specialize. The Heroic Epic city has, for example, built nothing except units after the Heroic Epic is built.

Then there are a few other cities where I'm like, "yeah, ok, there's no point in putting a building there."

But generally whenever I look at the map, I think, "well, this city spot looks pretty good for cottages. Since I'm getting cottages, I may as well get a marketplace and a forge."

But otherwise the reason so many buildings are built is because of slavery. I'm pretty much optimizing slavery to get the infrastructure up because what else are these cities going to do? I don't want to war right now since it's not efficient. I could build a settler or a worker, but that keeps my city from growing. I could build commerce, but I'm teching fast enough and honestly some of these cities are producing three shields per turn, which makes building commerce kind of pointless. So without anything better to do, I spam buildings, knowing that they're useful now, and they'll become even more useful later.

This could be a quirk of Marathon/Huge. Units are cheap in Marathon, which means you should build less of them because they'll kill your economy with maintenance. I'm half-joking here, but there is some truth to it.

[Noogai]

I always run hybrid economy, expect on special periods like golden age or when preparing for war.
Some cities run better with cottages and some with specialists, and some just work on hammers. Of course traits matter too, wether you have phil or fin or even spi.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Noogai

I always run hybrid economy, expect on special periods like golden age or when preparing for war.
Some cities run better with cottages and some with specialists, and some just work on hammers. Of course traits matter too, wether you have phil or fin or even spi.

Awesome. Very glad to hear it. What exactly is wrong with hybrid?

1215 AD, the entire continent is mine with Curraissers. The remaining 2 civs are my vassals. Have Rifling. Next step: Economics, Corporation, then Astronomy.

My research slider is 30%, but that's perfect because of all the banks, marketplaces, and grocers I had whipped earlier. Also, with Emancipation, it means all my villages are rapidly morphing into towns. I have six GP, sitting around and doing nothing, who'll begin churning out Golden Age after Golden Age once the captured cities recover. The Statue of Liberty is being built, I've got a trillion cities, and I have a massive tech lead. I also have too many workers, that I don't know what to do with. I really don't see how I'm doing anything wrong this game. Granted, that it's Emperor, and it's easy-as-heck, but still. It seems like I'm playing optimally.

Question:

Do you sometimes have moral qualms? Game mechanics-wise I should have invaded my two vassals and take their caps, but I just can't do it. They've been busy fighting the forces of darkness, led by Sh- and Ku-, for the last 5000 years and now that Sh- and Ku- are dead, I just can't bring myself to attack my friends!