Specialists

[Insidion]

Could someone explain specialists to me? more specifically, the reason i ask is that i'm confused about the trade-offs. For example, a scientist, gives 3 flasks, but if you got a cottage up to max it would be giving you 6 or more gold right? so wouldnt that be like 6 flasks?

The thing is i know i'm wrong or confused because people write about them all the time, i just don't really get it yet.

Thanks,
-Insidion

 

[mice]

You opened a real can of worms asking which is better , a specialist or a cottage.

If you do a search in the stategys and tips forum for SE or specialist economy you'll see some of the many many debates about which econ is better. Specialist econ or Commerce econ (aka cottage econ)

First comment, specialists not only give you beakers but they also give Great person points ( GPP). These go towards Great people appearing, and they in turn can lighbulb techs. This means you can trade the new tech to the AI and get a big return by trading it to 3,4 ,5 civs on the same turn for something different each time.

Or you can just settle the Great person to add more goodies to your city.

Philosophical trait give double GPP so you get a lot of Great people by running specialists.

 

[Insidion]

ok. so if i wanted to use specialists i would just build tons of farms so that i could support all the specialists?

 

[occam]

ok. so if i wanted to use specialists i would just build tons of farms so that i could support all the specialists?

Yes, but there are other forced trade-offs... without lots of cottages, your upkeep costs are at a higher slider setting, so your science slider must drop, so you must be mentally prepared to lightbulb and trade for almost all your tech needs.

You may wish to emphasize certain specialists, libraries are often used.

- O

 

[mice]

Another thing is "polluting the pool". For example

A city with the pyramids (engineer GPP) and running an engineer from a forge, will only spawn a Great engineer. You run a merchant in there for a few turns, and you could get a great Merchant.

Try a 'no cottages' game with a philo civ, like Gandhi , and see how you go. It's fun and interesting, but it's hard to beat cottage spam.

The hard core players use specialists and a farm heavy econ in order to use draft and whipping to force a domination win.

Have a look at these games.

no cottages,monarch

Acidsatyr game

 

[OTAKUjbski]

IMHO:

Along a baseline comparison of Village vs. Scientist, the Scientist always loses, because 3 < 4.

But, like the above posters mentioned, you have to consider .

In the early game, when Great People come fairly frequently, I think it's worth neglecting a cottage over a scientist or two.

My games usually transition from SE --> CE about the time I pick up Printing Press and Free Speech, because it starts becoming very difficult for a Scientist to compete with Towns unless I'm Philosophical and/or running Pacifism.

If I build the Pyramids, I almost always want to run Scientists ... sometimes even the whole game.

The battle of CE vs SE has been raging a long time and is likely to continue for a very long time.

I say pick a side that makes the most sense to you and run with it, because both appear equally viable.

 

[mice]

The battle of CE vs SE has been raging a long time and is likely to continue for a very long time.

The funny thing is that with Beyond the Sword I'm guessing that they will introduce features that make the debate flare up again.

In the mean time, Insidion, cottage spam will get you a long way.
Especially with a couple of good production cities and a GP farm. See this thread about the GP farm

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=217739

 

[Immaculate]

its also worth noting that certain traits are better suited to a particular style:

financial
Most people would agree that civilizations with the financial trait are well suited to cottage-based economies because cottages can make use of the +1 whereas farms cannot

philosophical
Most people would agree that the philosophical trait suits the specialist-based economy very well. The specialist you are employing will generate great people that much quicker.

spiritual
The spiritual trait suits the specialist-based economy quite well. The reason is that with spiritual you can jump in and out of those civics which best suit either infrastructure development (organized religion, slavery) and specialist employment/great person generation (caste system, pacifism) at the drop of a hat. Ghandi (or Saladin in Vanilla) is an excellent leader for a specialist-based economy for this reason.

Creative
Not many people have discussed this too much, but in my opinion, the creative trait is well suited to a specialist-based economy as well. The reason for this is not the increased culture generation, but the cheap buildings which are made possible with this trait. The specialist-based economy will need libraries to run specialists (unless you are employing caste system) and its nice to pay 1/2 price for those. Additionally, the specialist-based economy is not as dependent upon the science slider for beaker generation and is free to run the culture slider to increase the happiness cap and grow bigger cities (and in turn run more specialists). I would propose that cheaper theatres would make running 20% culture that much more lucrative at an earlier phase of the game. To be honest, i have not actually tested the benefits of the creative trait with a specialist economy, but it suspect i soon will.

Other traits
I am unsure as to how the other traits might favor the specialist or cottage-based economies. Others might have an opinion or advice on the subject however.

 

[vale]

Traits that lend themselves to warmongering: Aggressive, Charismatic, Imperialistic, and Protective lend themselves nicely to runnning an SE. The reason is that SEs have a better ability to wage war effectively:

1. Can use the culture slider without ruining the economy as much
2. Compare the following two statements: oh noes they are pillaging my farms lol vs. %^&$! they just pillaged my town
3. High food surpluses work well with whipping or drafting troops at wartime.


Agree about creative for the same reasons.

Some other minor synergies:

Organized: Half civic maintenance is actually pretty relevant here since the cost is primarily based on population which is generally higher in an SE. Also organized is very nice for warmongering if you plan to keep capture cities.
Expansive: Typically, health, not happiness, is the primary limiting factor of an SE once you get going.

A nearly non-existent synergy:
Industrious: Cheaper Pyramids? I dunno I skip Pyramids unless I can jack it from a neighbor usually.

 

[Dan Quale]

One thing you neglect about specialists is the effects of representation 1 scientist =6 beakers assuming you have built/ captured pyramids. I usually run a mixed econ, sort of heavy on the cottage spam, but with some specialist heavy cities. 2 or more food resources in a fat cross and you should definately run some specialists there.

 

[beeflow]

@insidion, why don't you just play two seperate games. One in which you use cottages primarily and one with specialists only.

People get caught up in which one is better blah blah blah. My thought is if you just use what you always use, you won't learn about the other aspects of the game which could make you a better player.

Take a look at some of the variant games such as always peace domination, no cottages, etc. Try a couple and you'll learn about the different aspects of the game to make you a better player.

 

[Insidion]

Try a 'no cottages' game with a philo civ, like Gandhi , and see how you go. It's fun and interesting, but it's hard to beat cottage spam.

The hard core players use specialists and a farm heavy econ in order to use draft and whipping to force a domination win.


no cottages,monarch

Acidsatyr game

I've definitely been playing a different game with a different leader everytime to learn the different aspects of the game better. I finished a game last night where i was friendly with everyone cept Monte, who i had everyone declare war on. Then i took out my neighbor on my continent, then another neighbor on an island that was pretty decent size a bit later. All the while still friendly with everyone else and totally blew out a UN victory (all votes cept like 90 from Monte who had been at war with 3 other civs the entire game .

The thing is, i want to try a SE, but I just don't know how to go about doing it. Sure build a lot of farms etc, but it seems like I'll still be starving cuz for every specialist i need a tile that has 4 food on it. All the guides seem to assume things that aren't so blatantly obvious to me i guess.

Anyway, im lookin at that no cottages game in a sec. we'll see how it goes

 

[OTAKUjbski]

The thing is, i want to try a SE, but I just don't know how to go about doing it. Sure build a lot of farms etc, but it seems like I'll still be starving cuz for every specialist i need a tile that has 4 food on it. All the guides seem to assume things that aren't so blatantly obvious to me i guess.

Eh ... this is only true if you think of things on a 1:1 basis. A grassland tile with a farm can support 0.5 specialists. So for every two grassland tiles you farm and work, there's 1 specialist. A farmed Plains tile only supports itself so really only comes heavy into play later with Biology.

Post-Biology: a grassland farm can support itself plus one specialist ... plains farm 0.5 specialists.

So, even if you have 20 farmed plains in your fat cross, that's still 11 specialists in a population 31 city.

But otherwise, yeah ... the best SE terrains are also the best CE terrains -- grasslands and floodplains.

--------

A little off-topic, but something I did to force my game to get better was to disable autosave.

You can do this by editing line 110 in the CivilizationIV.ini file:

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4​

I turned mine completely off to prevent me from reloading something I didn't like or agree with. It forced me to make far more decisive, calculated moves than I had been previously making.

 

[LlamaCat]

if you try it, I think you need to make sure you have food resources (at least one or two in a city) and then you will get fast growth. the other thing is flood plains - usually you will want to build cottages on flood plains (3 food/turn) but if you farm them that will be almost as good as a food resource

the other thing is that early on you won't be able to add a lot of specialists to your city anyway, so you won't starve. you can build a library early, but that only allows 2 scientist specialists. you will need caste system, other buildings, and wonders to really add a lot of specialists to the point where you will starve.

 

[Hold The Onion]

2. Compare the following two statements: oh noes they are pillaging my farms lol vs. %^&$! they just pillaged my town

that's probably one of the best benefits. of course they just go for my resources on the few meager attempts i've made at running an SE

 

[bardolph]

Could someone explain specialists to me? more specifically, the reason i ask is that i'm confused about the trade-offs. For example, a scientist, gives 3 flasks, but if you got a cottage up to max it would be giving you 6 or more gold right? so wouldnt that be like 6 flasks?

The specialist economy really kicks into gear when you're running Representation. The +3 per specialist really adds up fast.

 

[anima36]

how does always peace domination work