Has the SE evolved over time?

[sunrise089]

Hello. After lurking FutureHermit's Emperor SE SG I decided to read up some more on the specialist economy in this sub-forum. I have quickly become confused however. I have read several threads that say something like this:

"The specialist economy works best if you play as an Industrious leader. The correct play is to beeline Pyramids, adpot Representation, and settle scientists. Slavery is to be avoided to allow max population, and hence max specialists. It is also a good idea to run cotteges in the capital in order to earn lots of gold through Beaurocracy."

I also see this:

"The specialist economy works best if you beeline the Great Library (and maybe the Parthenon in a second city). Once the library is built, assign scientist specialists. The ultimate goal is to generate lots of GS so many valuable techs can be lightbulbed. Because you want to generate so many great people, Philosophical is the best tech to use. Slavery is also your friend."

In the end it's fine if there are simply differences of opinion. But I'm wondering if any of these differences in opinion have reached a consensus of what strategy is actually best.

Specifically, is there now a fairly decisive answer to these questions:

-Pyramids vs Great Library

-Industrious vs Philisophical

-Slavery vs Caste System vs You Need Both so Play Someone Spiritual

-Cottages in the Capital vs Civil Service isn't a high-priority


Thanks for any and all comments.

 

[shyuhe]

if you can get the pyramids, then the SE will be a lot stronger but it's not necessary. Industrial will not help nearly as much as philosophical (or spiritual) will for running an SE. Cottaging the capital for CS will help somewhat but it's also not necessary. What is critical is that you be able to swap between a production geared setup (slavery + mines) and also a research setup (caste system + scientists). Running a pure SE requires a lot of MM - which is why a hybrid will be a lot easier to run than a pure SE (although there are definite trade-offs).

 

[vale]

First of all, the SE is a very flexible strategy with many effective ways to use it. There are really no absolute must have traits or wonders. That being said I do have some comments from personal experience regarding some of your questions.

Both of your quotes are very absolutist in nature and thus probably not the most accurate descriptions of how to run an SE. The main benefit is flexibility, and it becomes hard to leverage that benefit if you lock yourself into a recipe that must be obeyed at all times. However, the second one is more in line with how one typically plays out in most of my cases though.

-Pyramids vs Great Library

I very rarely build the pyramids. If someone builds it for me, thats ok with me, if not I can live without it. I can also live without the Great Library but typically build it myself anyway for a couple of reasons: First, I benefit much more from being able to choose its location than being able to choose the location of the pyramids. Second, it comes with a cheap tech that the AI seems to not prioritize very heavily making it relatively easy to get.

-Industrious vs Philisophical

Lightbulbing is so powerful that I pretty much have to say Philisophical out of hand.

-Slavery vs Caste System vs You Need Both so Play Someone Spiritual

My preference is the third option, but even when I'm spiritual, once both are unlocked I spend the vast majority of the time in Caste System with short bursts of Slavery for quick production boosts. When not spiritual I just stick with caste system once I switch.

-Cottages in the Capital vs Civil Service isn't a high-priority

These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. CS is an extremely high priority for an SE because it unlocks half of the maceman combo, allows you to farm basically everything and lets you start lightbulbing up the liberalism trail. My preference is to skip Bureaucracy so I farm and mine up my Capital just like everything else in the empire. Vassalage and Nationhood are both very good alternatives to Bureaucracy (although they address different concerns of your empire than your economy).

 

[futurehermit]

When I first wrote about the SE I was under the belief that settling GSs was the way to go. Acidsatyr convinced me otherwise. The lightbulbed and traded-for beakers vastly outweigh the settled beakers in the short-to-mid-term, which is always more important than the long-and-very-long term in this game. Settling may be an attractive option if going for a space race win via SE, but I am still unsure about that.

re: Pyramids. People always say it's not necessary, and it isn't. BUT, it makes the SE incredibly more powerful (doubles all the base output of your specialists). So, if you have stone, go for it!! Also, this makes industrious leaders quite attractive for me. The best domination victory I've recorded thusfar was with Louis and I build the pyramids, GL, and parthenon and had a phenomenal economy, which I could completely transition into military production (draft/whipping) whenever I had a tech advantage, which I often had.

re: GL. It is never pyramids OR GL. The GL is the staple of the SE. You should always gun for it. You want to be generating GSs and two free scientists is just huge. Lit also comes with the NE (and the HE), which you should get going asap in your GL city (run many scientists to minimize the amount of GAs you get).

-re: Phil vs. Ind. These are two of the strongest SE traits. If you go phil, the goal is GSs early and often. So target the GL and get libraries up early to start producing them. If you go ind, the goal is the wonder combo: pyramids-parthenon (built in a military city to avoid GS-GE polution)-GL. Industrious will have better base beaker production. It will have slower and ultimately fewer GS production, but this is offset somewhat by the parthenon.

-Slavery vs Caste system: Again, it's not either-or, it's both, making spiritual an attractive SE trait. When you are in "research mode" you run caste system, along with pacificism and ideally representation (and mercantilism later). When you're in "military mode" you run slavery, along with feudalism or nationhood, theocracy, and ideally police state. The strength of the SE is the ability to transition your ENTIRE empire (minus say your HE city, which is constant) from research to military as dictated by the circumstances. You can see why I really like Rameses and Gandhi.

-Acidsatyr never had much use for CS (he liked its production bonus) and would never cottage the capital. The thing is the capital is usually high-food so makes a great SE city. It's really too bad there isn't a SE-economic civic in that category. I tend to cottage the capital and run bureaucracy until nationhood comes on board, but if the capital has amazing food output (specials, not floodplains) then I will pass on bureaucracy and run specialists instead.

Basically, the SE has two main economic functions: 1) beakers from scientists and 2) beakers from lightbulbing and trading lightbulbed techs. Originally, I failed to see the power of the latter and focused exclusively on the former. I think now that this is a mistake since you can use 'bulbed techs from GSs to beeline liberalism quite effectively, especially at higher levels.

The SE goes hand-in-hand with military pursuits since your base of farms everywhere allows you to regrow much faster after whipping and drafting. Also, since you are not relying on the science slider for beakers, you can expand your empire much larger, much earlier even to the point where your slider is at 0. And you can do this constantly throughout the game. This is in contrast to the CE where you want to stay over 50% and closer to 70%.

 

[DaveMcW]

The SE will always remain inferior to CE in games that last past Liberalism.

 

[futurehermit]

The SE will always remain inferior to CE in games that last past Liberalism.

What you mean to say is that SE is superior for domination victories that terminate in the renaissance era (only slightly after liberalism) whereas CE is superior for space race games.

 

[Solver]

Speaking of that, a question I'd add - how and when should one make a transition from a SE to CE? The how is, I guess, fairly simple... just cottage over many of the farms, and run Emancipation if possible for faster growth. But when? If you have the Parthenon, do you abandon a SE once it goes obsolete? Or do you abandon it after a certain amount of Great Scientists?

 

[futurehermit]

Follow the transition economy thread in my sig as we are attempting to answer that very question.

My thoughts going into the game are that a transition economy works best when going for space race and that the point of transition should come 1) once you've generated enough GSs for your lightbulbing needs; 2) once you have feudalism (serfdom) and/or engineering (hagia sophia); and 3) significantly before democracy (emancipation) so you can have your cottages ready to grow.

 

[Solver]

Ah, thanks for pointing me to the thread link, will be sure to read it

 

[Hold The Onion]

I love these economical debates. We really need a test game one day to be played by different people with different economies to match them up at different points in the game. Maybe 3 or 4 people representing each economy playing the same map against same opponents for as close to a controlled enviroment as we can have.

 

[futurehermit]

I love these economical debates. We really need a test game one day to be played by different people with different economies to match them up at different points in the game. Maybe 3 or 4 people representing each economy playing the same map against same opponents for as close to a controlled enviroment as we can have.

Part of the problem is that different people are differently skilled, but yeah, if we get multiple people using each economy then you could take an average of each and that would probably be as good as it gets. The map could be checked by a neutral non-player beforehand to ensure it is not slanted toward one economy or the other (i.e., not super-filled with floodplains and river grasslands; not super-filled with food specials all over the place)

 

[mice]

The interesting thing for me will be to see how Beyond the Sword changes things.

Will the developers gear things slightly in favor of specialists, or cottages, or something else?

Either way the changes promise to be substantial enough that the debates will all start up again.

 

[Galileo44]

Does anyone else find it really funny that DaveMcW make almost the exact same post in every SE thread. Not only that, but he says it in such a confidant way that if he weren't a well-known and experianced player he would be completely bashed for it. It shows the power of wisdom and experiance!

 

[futurehermit]

Dave's right about the power of cottages mid-to-late game, especially if going for a space-race win. I just think he doesn't take seriously enough the power of specialists early-to-mid game and how they can be leveraged in pursuit of domination victories. The acidsatyr games really showcase this quite well.

 

[Tatran]

From own experience, I'm playing large/huge maps, I've no tech/military
problems running a CE, but running a pure SE it's just a matter of time
my science is at 0%.

So, my question, "does a SE work on huge maps?" where the AIs are faraway
and can't be destroyed by an axe rush and a lot of land need to be settled.

 

[Jarrod32]

I run a version of a specialist economy...I put Oxford and National Epic together in a high-food city and effectively combine my great person farm and my science city. Lots of scientists, with all the normal science improvements, popping lots of great scientists, makes for a powerful research center.

Upside...if you need to lower your science rate, your specialist-based science city keeps your research at a high level...you don't lose much in terms of research time if you have to drop your science rate several notches.

Downside...the combination makes it tough to get a great person of any ilk other than scientist. But I can live with that...scientists are good to have.

 

[sunrise089]

Thanks for the detailed response F-H. I have been following your SG thread closely, and that's what inspired this thread. After reading your SG discussion thread, I decided to look over some SE guides, but I kept seeing contradictory information....which brought me here.

 

[futurehermit]

It doesn't matter if your science is at 0% in a SE.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I think there are two strategies and we shouldn't call them both a specialist economy.

1) The Scientist economy - gets its research via scientists, ideally running representation. It suits industrious since the pyramids are almost essential for this strategy and it settles great people to get a very powerful science city.

2) The Lightbulb economy - gets its research mainly by lightbulbing techs and then trading them. It suits Philosophical since what you want is fast GP. Pyramids are not essential.

Both benefit hugely from the great library, making Literature a key tech. Both suit warring very well.

Which is best? I think they both suit different situations and traits.

The Lightbulb economy weakens considerably if the trade options aren't good IMO. It suits maps where there are several AIs on your starting continent and you are likely to be able to trade with 3-4 of them.

The Lightbulb economy is less reliant on wonders and is probably stronger on higher levels because the AIs will have more valuable techs to trade.

The Lightbulb economy won't be as strong in the late-mid game as lightbulbing costs more and more and the GP come later and later. Representation and Biology helps, but in the late game it will produce less science than either a Scientist or a Cottage economy. It may still be strong enough to win due to the sheer size of the early conquests, or a transition with Emancipation into a cottage economy. The scientist economy has a stronger central research but will probably also need to transition to a cottage economy if involved in a late game space race.

 

[sunrise089]

Invisible: Interesting take. You argue your point well, but at least in terms of Civfanatics people still are all saying "Specialist Economy", which is problamatic if there really are many different ways to go about it that differ in as fundamantal of a manner as your two definitions.