Nuances of a CE

[§L¥ Gµ¥]

Since moving up from noble [playing monarch now], I've been almost exclusively been playing specialist driven economies. After a random leader roll of Hannibal, starting with decent food in the capital, and a plethora of floodplains in the surrounding countryside, I decided to try my hand at a cottage driven economy, and although the game has now turned into a runaway victory [via an above average domination score], I'd like to know some general features I might be missing out on to make my economy even more robust.

- I abused HR in bumping my happiness caps.
- My GP farm was one for merchants, I chose this because I was expecting to run my science slider much higher, I figured a GP farm could double as a financial city.
- I prioritized Democracy immediately after winning steel via liberalism instead of biology.

things I noticed, but am unsure of how to maximize my benefits from:

- city specialization : because my science slider was running between 40-60% for most of the game, although my economy was quite strong and I was teching at a rate almost comparable to my better SE games, running a slider at around 50% to me says my cities are not specialized. Generally speaking, my cottaged cities are generating just as much gold as they are beakers in raw form, which means I probably should be building both financial and science buildings in them. But this in itself means there is little difference between a financial and science city, and that I'm using a lot of hammers on buildings I'm not getting maximal benefits from in far too many cities.

- GP farms : I chose a merchant GP farm because at the onset of the game, I figured I'd be running my science slider a lot higher than 50%, so to that end, I'd need the wealth generated by merchants to support an empire than scientists to bulb/settle/academy. Furthermore, it was the most pitiful GP farm I'd seen in 2 difficulty levels, running so few specialists it almost seemed pointless all those farms for little to no benefit. For a GP farm in a CE, should I just pollute my pool, trying to maximize my GP numbers and use the useless spies and late prophets for golden ages?

- national wonders, namely oxford and wall street : where am I to put them? Since my science slider is running around 50%, my best financial city is by necessity my best science city as well. It means I'm losing a ton on the efficiency of both national wonders, and it makes me cringe at the loss of two of the most powerful buildings a city can have.

- world wonders : which are optimal for a CE? I started with stone [it was a runaway game because of my incredible start more than anything] and I managed to build the Great Wall and Stonehenge. But if I'm aiming for more golden ages, should I prioritize the Mausoleum [for the polluted GP farm I mentioned above], Artemis, Great Lighthouse, etc to create a stronger trade route economy to help offset maintenance? I had 4 military cities well before I normally do, and entirely too many units for a good portion of the game, I'm sure I could have thrown some of those hammers into wonders, but didn't know of any strategies to effectively use them in tandem with a CE.

so any thoughts on cleaning up my CE? Right now, I think I'm benefiting from the raw power of a financial civ coupled with a good start, but I wanna know how to clean things up a little bit.

 

[DaveMcW]

(putting my hand over the topic name so I don't have to read it)

Rule 5: Growing cottages is more important than building gold and science improvements.

Put down cottages, then decide on buildings. If you don't have a good specialist farm, it's ok to put Oxford and Wall Street in the same city.

 

[tycoonist]

step 1: build cottages everywhere. go for grass rivers first, then grass, then plains rivers
step 2: city with most food and least cottaging potential becomes GP farm. goal is to generate at least 3 GS by liberalism. first builds academy in bureaucracy capital. second bulbs philosophy, third bulbs education.
step 3: build no wonders. maybe the great library. hammers are precious in a CE, so it is better to use them on libraries, granaries, markets etc.
step 4: renaissance techs are your best friends. we're talking liberalism, printing press and democracy specifically.

oh and as dave said, dont whip away cottages. in fact as soon as you are working cottages, then your age of whipping has really come to an end for your larger cities.

 

[StrategeryBush]

City specialization is much more relative (not relevant, relative) in a "CE." You'll likely build libraries everywhere. Until Universities there are no other science multipliers, unless you have multiple religions for Monasteries. There are lots of commerce multipliers between Libraries and Universities. The city with a market, harbor, grocer, bank, maybe a shrine, assuming it has the hammers to have built all those, can build commerce in lieu of building temples or barracks or such and take advantage of those multipliers. Other cities can build science, though this is less efficient pre-university. Still, the OP is right, commerce cities can often be completely interchangable between science and cash.

My take on specialization in a CE is more between Production and Commerce than money and science.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

city specialization : because my science slider was running between 40-60% for most of the game, although my economy was quite strong and I was teching at a rate almost comparable to my better SE games, running a slider at around 50% to me says my cities are not specialized. Generally speaking, my cottaged cities are generating just as much gold as they are beakers in raw form, which means I probably should be building both financial and science buildings in them. But this in itself means there is little difference between a financial and science city, and that I'm using a lot of hammers on buildings I'm not getting maximal benefits from in far too many cities.

Wobble - think about what binary research does to the leverage of commerce in specialized cities. In a city with research infrastructure, the marginal cost of moving from a cottage to a mine is lowest when the gold slider is maxed (because you are only losing the raw commerce) and highest when the science slider is maxed (because you are losing the raw commerce AND the multiplier effect). The reverse is true of wealth specialized cities. So you get a zim zam: when the slider is up, the research cities go purely cottages, and the wealth cities mix infrastructure and growth. When the slider is down, the arrows point the other way.


In short - if you create two different ways of specializing your cottage cities, you can then exploit the slider to make up for some of the lost bonuses (and thereby profiting by the number of hammers you no longer need).

 

[Crusher1]

My basic CE set up resembles something like

1 HE city no later than 200 ADish - non stop Mace and as I near Liberalism more cities help.
1 Oxford Capital no later than 1000 AD (250-400+ bpt)
1 NE city no later than 1 AD
The rest of the cities working at least 6 cottages. My typical CE empire brings in 500-750 gpt at 1000 AD.

I typically get my 1st GS used as an Academy in my Capital no later than 900 BC then use my GPF in conjunction with GAs to produce GS/GMs (taj) to bulb Philo, Paper, Education, PP and run several trade missions and mass upgrade 30-40 units between 1000-1100 AD.

The World Wonder I always get is Taj - others I shoot for are TGL, Parthenon, Mausoleum

 

[Iranon]

Specialisation in a CE is... interesting. If you can keep the diplomatic situation under control, you could well decide against generic production cities and rely on rushbuy. This allows you to channel the output of your entire empire into whatever you want at the moment and it's frightfully efficient...

Consider a Renaissance town with 100% gold on rushbuy:

1 +25% from a forge: 1.25
7+100% from grocer/market/bank on rushbuy: 4.67
total: 5.92

This is almost as good as a railroaded mine with +100% hammer infrastructure, and more than twice the output of a mine in the Renaissance.
Windmills go well with an extreme cottage spam: You don't want to farm cottageable land if you can avoid it, and windmills get their major upgrade earlier than mines. With most of your production coming from rushbuy, this also means you can skip industrialisation and its assorted health troubles without too much of a sacrifice.

In the industrial/modern era, towns on rushbuy are still a contender for the best production improvement with the Kremlin (workshops can give more production under ideal circumstances, but I'd still prefer towns for the flexibility outside my ironworks and heroic epic cities).

*

This approach has its drawbacks though... without dedicated production cities, an unplanned war in the first half of the game can set you back a bit. Whipping will probably see you through, but it's going to slow you down quite a bit economically.

 

[mi6agent]

Cottaged Bureau capital , 1 production city, all other cities cottaged

 

[Bostock]

The city with a market, harbor, grocer, bank, maybe a shrine, assuming it has the hammers to have built all those, can build commerce in lieu of building temples or barracks or such and take advantage of those multipliers.

I believe this is wrong: that only production multipliers enhance the Build Foo orders.

 

[KingMorgan]

Building wealth or research does not get mutliplied iirc.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Building wealth or research does not get mutliplied iirc.

It does. The multipliers are what affects the output though, so forge/factory/power will have more output from the wealth aspect. PaulisKhan is one of HoF's best space racers and he'll using mining inc to build wealth/research in a lot of cities...

 

[§L¥ Gµ¥]

yeah, the power of mining inc for a hammer driven economy is something I've been using to supplement a strong SE in as many games as I can afford it these days. -7gpt is nothing compared to a +17hpt gain.

I've actually wanted to try out the rush-buy strategy, but given the fact that HR is critical to bumping the happiness caps in the earlier game, doesn't it makes sense to have some military cities? Besides, where else will you put your HE, if not in your strongest production city? Also, if I'm waiting all the way for universal suffrage, I'm gonna be so far behind in power even gandhi will be beating the war drums to the sound of my falling cities.

Also isn't there an additional penalty for rush-buying from scratch? I haven't done it since the warlords expansion, but I do remember a distinct premium on rush-buying a unit with no hammers invested in it.

 

[Iranon]

There is a penalty for rushbuying from scratch... but that doesn't become relevant too often: Economically, the most efficient use of rushbuy gold is often to get the subpar cities up to scratch, which will mostly have inferior production. Militarily, all you need is a few filler cities... they don't need to actually do anything, just to give another shipping adress.
Also... even with the penalty for immediate rushbuy, towns with all the frills including the Kremlin still beat mines (but not fully pimped workshops).

*

Even when working towards a rushbuy-driven economy, I still keep a production city for the Heroic Epic; depending on the land/need for an army, I might also have a second one which will get the Ironworks later on.

I rarely miss Hereditary Rule all that much, but then I settle a lot tighter than most players.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

yeah, the power of mining inc for a hammer driven economy is something I've been using to supplement a strong SE in as many games as I can afford it these days. -7gpt is nothing compared to a +17hpt gain.

I've actually wanted to try out the rush-buy strategy, but given the fact that HR is critical to bumping the happiness caps in the earlier game, doesn't it makes sense to have some military cities? Besides, where else will you put your HE, if not in your strongest production city? Also, if I'm waiting all the way for universal suffrage, I'm gonna be so far behind in power even gandhi will be beating the war drums to the sound of my falling cities.

Also isn't there an additional penalty for rush-buying from scratch? I haven't done it since the warlords expansion, but I do remember a distinct premium on rush-buying a unit with no hammers invested in it.

Between heroic epic and rush buy you can do a LOT of damage. I just finished posting in IU 28 (izzy), and I used rushbuy quite extensively there if you want to look at the results.

A couple hammer cities can do you good in terms of power...definitely no reason to avoid an IW city and a HE city no matter what else you're doing (same goes for using the other major national wonders...for those cities you might as well emphasize the highest yields you can get from them).

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

oh and as dave said, dont whip away cottages. in fact as soon as you are working cottages, then your age of whipping has really come to an end for your larger cities.

Should I be laying farms down first, then? Then after whipping multipliers, build cottages over the farms? I guess I"m confused by this because the sooner you have multiplier buildings up, the more benefit you get from them. IE if I whip a university and have food to regrow fast, then I'll be getting the benefits of the university throughout the entire growth cycles of all the cottages->towns.

I think I've asked this before, but I can't recall why it's better to take 50+ turns (marathon) to build a multiplier building.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I think I've asked this before, but I can't recall why it's better to take 50+ turns (marathon) to build a multiplier building.

Opportunity cost. 600 (?) hammers producing a University is mumble turns working production instead of cottages or mumble turns regrowing instead of working cottages.

In other words, compare 600 hammers invested in a University to 50 hammers invested in wealth and 50 x X extra turns of cottage development. Don't forget to include interest (that hamburger on Tuesday is smaller than the hamburger today).