A thought regarding transition economy?

[futurehermit]

I've been thinking again about running a transition economy.

And I was thinking, especially with a philo leader (building bonus), a good time to transition might be after you complete Oxford in your science city/gpfarm. Assuming you have the great library in this city, oxford gives you the ability to run (iirc) 3 extra scientists.

Since you probably have generated a bunch of GSs already this city will probably be your primary gp producing center now. With the extra 3 scientists, that probably means you can afford to let go of caste system and switch into serdom (great if spiritual, if not you could insert hagia sophia instead) and start transitioning cities into commerce ones.

You would have to make sure you have a pile of workers (10-20) to ensure you transition your cities quickly though as the loss of caste system could mean other science cities have now dropped to 2 (library) scientists + 1 (courthouse) spy.

I rarely use Oxford for the scientists, so thought this might be worth trying out. Ideal candidate: Gandhi.

Thoughts?

 

[Carnage04]

Honestly, are you that concerned about the build rate of cottages? In the overall scheme of things, where you are building things that are going to take many times more turns to mature than to build do you really need to go over to Vassalage?

 

[axident]

I've been thinking again about running a transition economy.

And I was thinking, especially with a philo leader (building bonus), a good time to transition might be after you complete Oxford in your science city/gpfarm. Assuming you have the great library in this city, oxford gives you the ability to run (iirc) 3 extra scientists.

Since you probably have generated a bunch of GSs already this city will probably be your primary gp producing center now. With the extra 3 scientists, that probably means you can afford to let go of caste system and switch into serdom (great if spiritual, if not you could insert hagia sophia instead) and start transitioning cities into commerce ones.

You would have to make sure you have a pile of workers (10-20) to ensure you transition your cities quickly though as the loss of caste system could mean other science cities have now dropped to 2 (library) scientists + 1 (courthouse) spy.

I rarely use Oxford for the scientists, so thought this might be worth trying out. Ideal candidate: Gandhi.

Thoughts?

I'm not sure what you mean by TE, but my Dutch Domination thread has a quasi-SE going on early in my capital thanks to massive food, then more and more cottages in preparation for Bureau/Oxford, but in the end it gets the best of both worlds as a HE: many specialists, many wonders for GPP, but also many towns + Financial for strong Bureau. Ironically in an act of desperation I also made a Mil Acad in it so for most of the late game, starting with privateers, it was cranking out warships.

 

[Phrederick]

You would have to make sure you have a pile of workers (10-20) to ensure you transition your cities quickly though as the loss of caste system could mean other science cities have now dropped to 2 (library) scientists + 1 (courthouse) spy.

Why not begin building cottages while in Caste System, and when they start finishing being built switch over? You could let them all build cottages with one per tile, and when they are one turn from finishing take them off and have them start somewhere else. Then, you can convert a farm to a cottage in one turn when you're ready to do so. A lower-micro way might be have a stack of workers totalling one less than the number of turns to build a cottage (so five workers on Marathon speed), and immediately after having them start a cottage cancel the order, so you don't have to check on them every turn to make sure you cancel them before they finish the cottage.

 

[DarkFyre99]

You could always go with a hybrid economy, so you don't have to worry as much about the Emancipation switch. That way, you only have to worry about two cities to convert from all specialists, to a specialist/cottage mix, rather than most of your cities from specialists to cottages.

But I agree that the best strategy is to prebuild cottages over your farms when your workers don't have anything to do.
This is, after all, usually pre-railroad. Once you make the switch to Emancipation, you can have your workers finish the cottages in one turn. It simply isn't worth the switch from Bureacracy to Serfdom to quickly build a bunch of cottages.