Whosit
Entropic Knight
Unfortunately, I won't be able to finish up tonight. Too much on my plate. However, I should be able to finish my set by tomorrow evening. Sorry for the wait.
aCK-3 The Cat with the Hat
- Thread starter S.ilver
- Start date
Whosit
Entropic Knight
It's the Economy, stupid
-or-
It's all about the Beakers, baby
OK, time to take a crack at this.
(Edit: Because I've been doing this bit by bit over the week, and I tried to explain my actions more than normal, it is a bit long.)
I'll start by reviewing each city to see if the micromanagement can be improved. Not my strongest point, but I've picked a few things up.
Actually, first I clean up the signs.
Ulundi: Take the corn back, fire a miner (Harbor still finishes next turn) and keep 2 scientists. I'll probably push a Worker out after that, but then a Bank or Grocer, perhaps Grocer for the Health.
Nicomedia: Fire a Scientist to make him a farmer.
Kassite is doing a Courthouse. A Granary should have gone in first.
Angora: Also should do a Granary before a Courthouse. Granaries let cities grow at twice the rate, so they are a very valuable first building. Higher populations let the city bring in more food, hammers, gold, whatever.
Constantinople: Switch Grocer to a 6-turn Worker. It should do a Bank next, as it is not in critical need of extra health.
Thessalonica: Switch to a Buddhist Temple for the extra hammers.
Berlin: Change a miner to a farmer for faster growth.
Adrianople: Fire the Engineer for a farmer, gear the city for faster growth. Scratch that, switch a farm to a mine for the Grocer before growth (due to health problems).
Education has increased from 6 to 7 turns, but I think that it's a necessary evil.
Trades:
Give Capac Clams for Bananas (Grocer health resource).
Renegotiate Wines from 6 to 8 gpt.
I belatedly realize that I should have sold the Gold, rather than Clams. I'll make due.
Sell Hannibal Gold for 6 gpt.
Tell Tokugawa our only Dyes for 10 gpt. As more will soon be connected, not a major loss.
Renegotiate Gems deal with Suryavarman from 11 gpt to 15 gpt.
We now have a +23 gpt surplus at 40% science. Unfortunately, it's not quite enough to turn it up to 40%, but building up some cash can't hurt.
Start building Spice plantation (happiness plus health with Grocer) and cancel some farm jobs that aren't as critical.
I note more clams near Angora that could use a fishing boat. Those should have been connected first, too, and then maybe the Corn could go back to Constantinople.
Civic Changes: Caste System to Slavery (not really taking advantage of Caste right now, but I now realize that I'll have to re-micro the cities), pick up Mercantilism, no other changes right now.
Losing a lot of money now. Time to do some more fixin' up. Well, now we're at 7 turns for Education, 7 gold in the bank, losing 1 per turn. Awesome.
However, the switch to Slavery was necessary. Gotta whip out some infrastructure.
Hrm, but some can't be yet. 2-pop whip a Market in Antioch, so at least it can run Merchants after that.
Pop a Granary in Nicomedia. Overflow to go into a Hippodrome.
Change the Grocer in Gem City to a Granary.
Since the Courthouse in Kassite is about half done, I'll let it build a bit more and whip it into a Granary.
Same in Angora.
And that was the inherited turn! Only took me about half an hour, ha ha.
-End Turn-
Turn 297, 1385 AD
Antioch: Market < Forge (With so few hammers, a Forge will at least allow an Engineering specialist when it finally builds).
Iron Will: Forge < Buddhist Temple (+2 AP hammers)
Ulundi: Harbor < Worker
Tokugawa completes the UoS, so that settles the debate on which Wonder to rush. Although Imhotep cannot do the whole thing, so we'll have to start it somewhere and wait until Imhotep can do it in one go (better than spending him first and getting beaten to it later).
Gem City would a be a nice place for it (+10 culture from building itself), but doesn't have the hammers to do it. Send him to Ulundi.
Didn't notice that a Worker trio was on a Go-To. Please don't put units on Go-To orders! Or, if you do, cancel them at the end of your set. It can be very hard for the next player to manage.
I'm going to send the Great Spy to Capac since he is the tech leader.
None of the buildings I want to whip are ready, so I move on.
-End Turn-
Turn 298, 1390 AD
Odd. The Engineer WILL fully rush the Sistine in Ulundi, but not in Gem City? Oh, well. Will have to get Buddhism in our fringe towns now.
Rather quiet, just move some Workers.
-End Turn-
Turn 299, 1395 AD
Adrianople: Grocer < Crossbowman
Ulundi: The Sistine Chapel < Buddhist Missionary (gotta spread the faith quickly now)
Note that Andahuaylas is the cheapest Incan city to steal techs from at the moment (check the Espionage screen). Will move future spies there.
1st Spice Plantation finishes. When the second is done, will trade to Toku for Fish or something.
Kassite: Whip Courthouse, start Granary next turn.
Whip Hippodrome in Nicomedia.
I keep hoping that I can ask Tokugawa to switch to Merc, but no go so far.
-End Turn-
Turn 300, 1400 AD
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < Buddhist Missionary
Nicomedia: Hippodrome < Library
Thessalonica: Hippodrame < Stable (nix the bank from the queue).
Our Great Spy Infiltrates Cuzco. Looks like we got about 4000 EP to play with.
I'll steal Printing Press, as it is on the way to Replacable Parts. Might be able to trade for Gunpowder or whatever and might bring us in a little money, but I'm not sure how many Villages we even have.
And we enter the Renaissance era. We earn a few more gold pieces. Can run 50% science at break-even and cut a turn off of Education.
Not much else to do this turn.
-End Turn-
Turn 301, 1405 AD
We're almost the least cultured civilization on the planet.
Our Caravel loses to a Barb Galley. Wow. Well, combat rolls aren't really within my power to control . . . .
Spread the word of the Buddha to Gem City.
Nothing else to write home about.
-End Turn-
Turn 302, 1410 AD
Education is in. Start Liberalism.
Constantinople: Worker < Lighthouse
Berlin: Bank < Grocer
Nicaea: Harbor < Grocer
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < Buddhist Missionary
I notice that Grocer was in Gem City's queue. Can't have that. Do a Buddhist Temple. Hammers AND Culture!
Second Spice Planation done. Start on Dyes. Trade to Japan for Fish.
Even though he is pleased, Tokugawa "doesn't like us enough" to switch to his favorite civic. Go figure. He WILL Declare on Capac for Education and Printing Press. Something to keep in mind . . . .
Currently making a slight profit at 50% science.
Micro Ulundi for max growth. Missionary falls from 1 turn to 2, but I want Ulundi at max food so it can run more specialists. It now has a surplus of +8, so all future growth will go into specialists. Also, there is a plains hill mine that could be turned into a specialist as well. The Happy Cap is adequate, but the city will need more health. I'll put in for a Grocer next, as we now have all Grocer resources available.
Most other cities are alright. I'll probably get a quick Settler or two out soon. Actually, I switch Constantinople to a Settler. It can still grow, but its most useful tiles are already being used. Due in 6, should coincide with a few new troops that can be used for garrison duty.
Oh, almost forgot, don't want to tech Liberalism, do I? I'll start Teching Gunpowder. Tokugawa has it, but won't trade, and we can tech it a lot faster than Shaka. If another AI starts on it, I might switch next turn, though.
-End Turn-
Turn 303, 1415 AD
Hannibal circles the globe. I doubt that +1 ship movement will be a big deal on this map, though.
Iron Will: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (for two more hammers, +10%--A library should be next)
Nobamba: Buddhist Monastery < Forge
Spread Buddhism in Kassite. Let the culture wars continue. Nothing is really whippable just yet.
Shaka was 23 turns from Gunpowder last turn, but it looks like Toku gifted the tech to his Vassal. Neither will trade. Will continue with Gunpowder ourselves.
-End Turn-
Turn 304, 1420 AD
Thessalonica: Stable < Cataphract (time to get some UU out)
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < University
Huayna Capac has adopted Emancipation. That's going to become a pain pretty quickly. We'll need more happiness in our largest cities.
Trade: Sury also has Gunpowder now, and will trade. All we can offer is Printing Press, though. We can get some gold and his World Map as well, but it's probably not worth it. Tempting though it is, I pass on the trade considering that Sury is already the tech leader.
-End Turn-
Turn 305, 1425 AD
Adrianople: Crossbowman < ?
Gem City: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (more hammers, more culture, maybe it can grab the other gems)
And the Forge burns down in Iron Will. We don't have enough money to save it. I take the unhappiness because the city is stagnated, anyway.
In better news, Tokugawa finally converts to Mercantilism.
Spread Buddhism to Adrianople and switch it to a Buddhist Temple for the hammers.
I will probably do another round of whipping next turn, but things are coming slowly, so I'll probably switch back to Caste next turn, as well.
All the AI have gunpowder, so they must have traded amongst themselves.
-End Turn-
Turn 306, 1430 AD
I go pretty whip crazy. Maybe a bit too much, honestly.
However, most of the cities will bounce back fairly quickly. I switch back to Caste System so that, as Ulundi and Berlin grow, they can hire the right specialists. I'll also go around and switch specialists around, with preference for Merchants.
Happily do I turn citizen specialists into Merchants. We now have a strong surplus, despite the whippings.
-End Turn-
Turn 307, 1435 AD
Turn Thessalonica: Cataphract < Cataphract
Berlin: Grocer < Buddhist Temple
Nicaea: Grocer < Buddhist Temple (badly needs the hammers)
Ulundi: University < Bank
Nicomedia: Library < Buddhist Temple
Nobamba: Forge < Grocer (for health)
Granary: Kassite < Library
Hire a couple more Merchants in Berlin and I can crank Science up to 60% at a profit, cutting a turn off of Gunpowder.
The Apostolic Palace elections come up. I'll vote for Tokugawa to get those diplomatic points. Capac was the other choice. Both are pleased with us at the moment. Actually, everyone important is pleased with us right now.
Great Person next turn. 75% Merchant, 25% Spy. A merchant would be lovely as a trade mission should let us tech at 100% for awhile.
-End Turn-
Turn 308, 1440 AD
Tokugawa wins the elections by a landslide. He has the most votes, but we're in at a close second. No one can really control the voting, though.
We pull a Great Merchant. Nice. I'll want to grow Ulundi as much as possible now. I vaguely recall that you get more out of a Trade Mission the bigger your capital is, and the bigger the target city is (usually the capital).
Gundpowder in next turn.
Tokugawa still isn't Friendly, but we should be close . . . . We're 1 point away.
-End Turn-
Turn 309, 1445 AD
Gunpowder is in, start Chemistry. 13 turns. I don't think that we're teching quite as fast as the AI. I'll focus more on beaker output. I need to remember that with Rep, any city running a few specialists can make use of Libraries and Universities.
Constantinople: Settler < University
I try to steal Nationalism from Capac. 77% chance of success . . . we get the tech, but the spy is caught. I'll make a shot at Constitution or something next turn.
OK, so back from a break. Let's take a quick tour of the cities again. I'll spell out my plans for each one, so this'll probably eat up the 20 minutes I have at the moment.
Ulundi: It is on max growth (it is working the highest yield food tiles). At +10 food, all future growth should be hired as Scientist specialists. Ignore the plains mines. Those should only be used when a hammer boost is really critical. I stick a Temple before the bank. It's really not making that much Gold anymore, but happiness may become an issue soon. A Grocer would also be valuable to allow the city to grow to its full potential. So I queued them up.
Nicomedia: The empty grassland could be a farm or a Cottage. Either should work. Eventually, a lighthouse would be good to let the city work the coast for money. Maybe after the temple is done. Right now, hire Scientists because the city has a Beaker multiplier, but no gold multipliers just yet.
Nobamba: Similar to Nicomedia. Also focus on Scientists because this city does not yet have a gold multiplier.
Gem City: It's not growing very fast, but the Granary is helping. I have a Merchant here. Beaker multipliers will be important, but we can run Merchants and build a Market and Bank here. Grasslands should have farms.
Kassite: It's small right now, but it should grow rapidly due to all the farms. The grassland cottage can probably be farmed over pretty quickly, once the other tiles have farms. This city should be able to run many specialists. Try to get both Beaker and Gold multipliers so that we can run whichever we need most efficiently.
Angora: Farm it up and get a Lighthouse. A work boat for the clams is being built in Constantinople. This city should see some income from coast tiles and Specialists. It can run whatever, so build the multipliers to maximize whichever specialists you have. Maybe Bank and Market to run Merchants and prop up our economy?
Constantinople: Our capital is never going to run many specialists. I think that a Lighthouse should be built soon, maybe next, so that it can work the coastal tiles for some income before we stagnate it. After that, focus on beaker multipliers because we will probably try to keep the slider above 50%.
Thessalonica: It is being developed as a hammer city. Base production is still only 20, but it's growing with +6 food, with a few more farms to come on line, so it should be able to add about 16 base hammers shortly. It is running an Engineer for obvious reasons. It should probably work all available food tiles first so that it gets up to max population more quickly.
Berlin: Currently clocking in at +9 food, there are two more grassland farms to work which should bring it up to +11 food. Enough to hire 5 more specialists and stagnate on a hill mine. Perhaps the plains should be famred, as well, and let the city work all 2+ food tiles, to get some more income/hammers. This city is being geared for Merchants. Wall Street should probably go here, unless a better location pops out. It's finishing up a Temple for hammers and Happy, but a University should go next so its commerce is translated into Beakers more efficiently. A Hippodrome and Colosseum might be useful.
Adrianople: Probably a hammer city, too. It still needs some work, though. Many workshops and farms should let it grow more and get more hammers. It can probably get +14 base hammers more, though it's finishing a Temple and will start a Monastery for +4 base religious hammers.
Nicaea: This is set up as a more traditional cottage city. It should work all the cottage tiles, then the coast tiles for income, and finally can work the plains tiles for hammers. It has too few hammers to really make a Forge worthwhile (it would only net +1 hammer) at this point, but it should slow-build a University, then maybe a Bank or something.
Antioch: Kind of a mixed bag here. Let it work the coast tiles for some income, I suppose, so build some Beaker and Gold multipliers here. Might want to eventually get the marked mine built to let it actually get some hammers, or work the Iron mine. Whichever, but probably not both.
Iron Will: Finishing off a Buddhist Monastery for the hammers. It is currently stagnated, so just build a Library, University, Bank, etc. in that order to maximize the efficiency of its income, slight as it is.
And, like I thought, that's all I have time for at the moment. Though that was partly to re-familiarize myself with the empire since I've been playing over the course of a week. But hopefully it's a good reference for all of you and should help in thinking about how to plan out the cities. Remember, multiplying your income is very important! The higher the tech slider, the more important Beaker multipliers become, and vice-versa. Any city that you plan to run Merchants in, though, can also make good use of Gold multipliers. Unless Happiness or Health is a big issue, a Bank is always the best Gold multiplier to build because it is the most cost-efficent (only slightly more expensive than either a Market or Grocer, it is twice as effective).
Keep an eye on cities as they grow. BUG can help, otherwise just be vigilant. Right now, it's probably best to work as many farms and food sources as possible to maximize growth, then put all that excess food into specialists or hammers or what have you.
OK, I think that covers it for this turn. I might still want to squeeze another worker out here or there since there's still a bit of work to do.
-End Turn-
Turn 310, 1450 AD
Thessalonica: Cataphract < Cataphract
Berlin: Buddhist Temple < University
Adrianople: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery
Capac gets the Spiral Minaret. As though he needed more money.
BUG lets me know that three cities have grown, so I'll see if they need any micro.
We have enough EP againts Capac to go for one more tech. The best one available is Constitution, though it'll eat up most of our points, so I'll probably have to set most of the EP against Capac so we can see his research again. Jails may be useful in some cities to boost EPs.
Success. We can't see his research, though, but we may get it back within another set.
Not much else. We'll see some more city growth next turn, though.
-End Turn-
Turn 311, 1455 AD
Sury wants PP and some cash for Liberalism. No way.
Constantinople: Work Boat < Lighthouse
Nicaea: Buddhist Temple < University (a slow one)
Iron Will: Buddhist Monastery < Library
Thessalonica grew, work a plains workshop since the last grassland farm isn't ready yet.
Adrianople grew. A grassland hill won't net a shorter build time for the Monastery, so just work a coast tile for now.
Other cities are OK.
Blue dot will be founded next turn. I forgot to have a missionary ready, so I'll probably do that in Thess after the next unit build.
-End Turn-
Turn 312, 1460 AD
Ulundi grew. The governor put the new citizen in the mines, but I hire him as a scientist.
Nothing much else. Tokugawa is about to finish Printing Press, but won't pay enough to make it worth selling.
Our icebox city:
-End Turn-
Turn 313, 1465 AD
Thessalonica: Cataphract < Buddhist Missionary
Sury's capital, Yasodharapura, will earn us 1650 gold. Maybe we should keep looking.
-End Turn-
Turn 314, 1470 AD
Our spy finds another Incan town hidden in their territory.
Trebizond's borders expanded. I forgot that our specialists produce culture. We now have Marble, so I'm going to have Thessa start on the Taj. We're not likely to get it, but it can build it the fastest so we will probably get some gold out a failure. Or, in the unlikely even that the AI can't finish it in 20 turns, we get a Golden Age. Win-Win. Our power is OK, and unit maintenance is still a problem. I haven't really found anything that's safe deleting just yet, and we still have warriors as garrison in many cities, so those WILL have to be replaced . . . eventually.
-End Turn-
Turn 315, 1475 AD
Sury comes, asking nicely for Printing Press. Although it's valuable, all the other AI (who matter) have it. I give in, hoping the diplo bonus pushes us to Friendly. Indeed it does! That's one AI down who won't attack us . . . for now. +11 is the magic number for Sury.
Thessalonica: Missionary < Taj Mahal
Adrianople: Buddhist Monastery < Harbor (for the health bonus)
Berlin grew. I'm not 100% sure where the gov' added the new citizen, maybe a farm, but I make a new Merchant to help control the deficit. The city should still grow quickly. It may be worth working the lake tiles as well for the extra income before we stagnate it.
Nobamba grew. I decide to make another Scientist from the miner.
-End Turn-
Turn 316, 1480 AD
Nicomedia: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (free hammers are not something to turn down, plus the major culture bonus we now get)
We get a Great Scientist in Ulundi. We have many options.
Settle: Net 1 hammer, 14 beakers, and some culture.
Academy: +50% research, so about 24 beakers now, more in the future.
Bulb: Chemistry. We're almost there as it is. Looks like he'll do Scientific Method next, which may be worth it.
Start a Golden Age. A possibility, but maybe not the best use.
I'll sleep him for now, and put up a sign.
Micro Thessa: Lake to Workshop. More hammers = more Taj gold (or actual Golden Age).
Another miner to Scientist in Ulundi.
Nicaea: Horse to coast. Going for gold here.
-End Turn-
Turn 317, 1485 AD
Constantinople: Lighthouse < Buddhist Temple (hammers, of course)
Merchant can get 1650 in Cuzco. Hmm, might be the best deal? Should we check in Kyoto?
Spread the faith to our newest city.
BUG said a few cities grew, so micro time.
Another Merchant in Angora.
Adrianople is doing more coast. OK until the Workshops finish, then move 'em.
Nicromedia: Gov' added spy, change to scientist.
Alright, so that's it for this turnset. We should have Chemistry in a turn before Toku, so we might be able to sell it to him. Beakerwise, we're up to 347 per turn at 60%. I think about 8 turns ago it was more like 280 per turn, but I don't remember exactly.
Remember, the economy is really how many beakers you're making. That's what drives tech forward, and tech is what the game is all about. Because of Rep, the more specialists we hire, the more beakers, but especially scientists.
I just realize a small mistake I made: We only have one University actually complete! We're going to want 5 more very quickly, build them wherever you can so that we can put Oxford in Ulundi. That's currently worth 50+ beakers, and will only get more valuable as we hire more scientists there.
So I switch Constantinople to a 20 turn University. The Temple would still be valuable, but it won't pay for itself in the short term.
Berlin is working on a Uni.
Adrianople should build one after the Harbor.
Thessa should build one after the Taj.
Nobamba after the Grocer
Iron Will after the Library
I don't think any other city can get one out in a reasonable amount of time. It'll still take awhile, slow building, but we should have all 6 in 20+ turns.
We should also probably get Astronomy. I thought it might come up for trade, but Hannibal is still holding onto to it. Observatories are worth a lot of beakers.
Sci Meth could be helpful, but let's get as many Monasteries first since Sci Meth obsoletes them. I think the hammer bonus should remain.
Some city notes:
Thessa: When it grows, go straight to the plains workshops to stagnate the city. It'll be at the health cap. If we end up building an aqueduct there, it might be worth working the lake tiles for a bit of extra commerce.
Berlin: It's still growing pretty rapidly. There's one more grassland farm it can work, but otherwise make sure that you hire more Merchants. Working the lake tiles is OK, but wait until the growth is slowing down. Merchants are worth more.
Ulundi: Avoid the hammer temptation. It can hire 3 more scientists, each worth 9 beakers taking into account the city's bonuses.
If we farm all the grassland around Kassite, it should get up to +14 food surplus, so it could run 7 specialists from that (8 total with Merc), about as many as Ulundi or Berlin.
We'll want the National Epic somewhere. Probably not Berlin, since we'll want Wall Street there and at already has the Forbidden Palace.
Basically, just grow cities, hire Specialists when the surplus starts getting high. Adrianople and Thessa are our hammer cities. Everything else should be geared towards the economy somehow.
Remember, beakers = power!
Oh, and when we can see Capac's tech again, rebalance the EP spending.
Hopefully I covered everything, I do tend to be a bit verbose. You should be able to refer to my city guides a few turns back for general pointers.
No pictures now 'cuz it's late. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after that.
-or-
It's all about the Beakers, baby
OK, time to take a crack at this.
(Edit: Because I've been doing this bit by bit over the week, and I tried to explain my actions more than normal, it is a bit long.)
I'll start by reviewing each city to see if the micromanagement can be improved. Not my strongest point, but I've picked a few things up.
Actually, first I clean up the signs.
Ulundi: Take the corn back, fire a miner (Harbor still finishes next turn) and keep 2 scientists. I'll probably push a Worker out after that, but then a Bank or Grocer, perhaps Grocer for the Health.
Nicomedia: Fire a Scientist to make him a farmer.
Kassite is doing a Courthouse. A Granary should have gone in first.
Angora: Also should do a Granary before a Courthouse. Granaries let cities grow at twice the rate, so they are a very valuable first building. Higher populations let the city bring in more food, hammers, gold, whatever.
Constantinople: Switch Grocer to a 6-turn Worker. It should do a Bank next, as it is not in critical need of extra health.
Thessalonica: Switch to a Buddhist Temple for the extra hammers.
Berlin: Change a miner to a farmer for faster growth.
Adrianople: Fire the Engineer for a farmer, gear the city for faster growth. Scratch that, switch a farm to a mine for the Grocer before growth (due to health problems).
Education has increased from 6 to 7 turns, but I think that it's a necessary evil.
Trades:
Give Capac Clams for Bananas (Grocer health resource).
Renegotiate Wines from 6 to 8 gpt.
I belatedly realize that I should have sold the Gold, rather than Clams. I'll make due.
Sell Hannibal Gold for 6 gpt.
Tell Tokugawa our only Dyes for 10 gpt. As more will soon be connected, not a major loss.
Renegotiate Gems deal with Suryavarman from 11 gpt to 15 gpt.
We now have a +23 gpt surplus at 40% science. Unfortunately, it's not quite enough to turn it up to 40%, but building up some cash can't hurt.
Start building Spice plantation (happiness plus health with Grocer) and cancel some farm jobs that aren't as critical.
I note more clams near Angora that could use a fishing boat. Those should have been connected first, too, and then maybe the Corn could go back to Constantinople.
Civic Changes: Caste System to Slavery (not really taking advantage of Caste right now, but I now realize that I'll have to re-micro the cities), pick up Mercantilism, no other changes right now.
Losing a lot of money now. Time to do some more fixin' up. Well, now we're at 7 turns for Education, 7 gold in the bank, losing 1 per turn. Awesome.
However, the switch to Slavery was necessary. Gotta whip out some infrastructure.
Hrm, but some can't be yet. 2-pop whip a Market in Antioch, so at least it can run Merchants after that.
Pop a Granary in Nicomedia. Overflow to go into a Hippodrome.
Change the Grocer in Gem City to a Granary.
Since the Courthouse in Kassite is about half done, I'll let it build a bit more and whip it into a Granary.
Same in Angora.
And that was the inherited turn! Only took me about half an hour, ha ha.
-End Turn-
Turn 297, 1385 AD
Antioch: Market < Forge (With so few hammers, a Forge will at least allow an Engineering specialist when it finally builds).
Iron Will: Forge < Buddhist Temple (+2 AP hammers)
Ulundi: Harbor < Worker
Tokugawa completes the UoS, so that settles the debate on which Wonder to rush. Although Imhotep cannot do the whole thing, so we'll have to start it somewhere and wait until Imhotep can do it in one go (better than spending him first and getting beaten to it later).
Gem City would a be a nice place for it (+10 culture from building itself), but doesn't have the hammers to do it. Send him to Ulundi.
Didn't notice that a Worker trio was on a Go-To. Please don't put units on Go-To orders! Or, if you do, cancel them at the end of your set. It can be very hard for the next player to manage.
I'm going to send the Great Spy to Capac since he is the tech leader.
None of the buildings I want to whip are ready, so I move on.
-End Turn-
Turn 298, 1390 AD
Odd. The Engineer WILL fully rush the Sistine in Ulundi, but not in Gem City? Oh, well. Will have to get Buddhism in our fringe towns now.
Rather quiet, just move some Workers.
-End Turn-
Turn 299, 1395 AD
Adrianople: Grocer < Crossbowman
Ulundi: The Sistine Chapel < Buddhist Missionary (gotta spread the faith quickly now)
Note that Andahuaylas is the cheapest Incan city to steal techs from at the moment (check the Espionage screen). Will move future spies there.
1st Spice Plantation finishes. When the second is done, will trade to Toku for Fish or something.
Kassite: Whip Courthouse, start Granary next turn.
Whip Hippodrome in Nicomedia.
I keep hoping that I can ask Tokugawa to switch to Merc, but no go so far.
-End Turn-
Turn 300, 1400 AD
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < Buddhist Missionary
Nicomedia: Hippodrome < Library
Thessalonica: Hippodrame < Stable (nix the bank from the queue).
Our Great Spy Infiltrates Cuzco. Looks like we got about 4000 EP to play with.
I'll steal Printing Press, as it is on the way to Replacable Parts. Might be able to trade for Gunpowder or whatever and might bring us in a little money, but I'm not sure how many Villages we even have.
And we enter the Renaissance era. We earn a few more gold pieces. Can run 50% science at break-even and cut a turn off of Education.
Not much else to do this turn.
-End Turn-
Turn 301, 1405 AD
We're almost the least cultured civilization on the planet.
Our Caravel loses to a Barb Galley. Wow. Well, combat rolls aren't really within my power to control . . . .
Spread the word of the Buddha to Gem City.
Nothing else to write home about.
-End Turn-
Turn 302, 1410 AD
Education is in. Start Liberalism.
Constantinople: Worker < Lighthouse
Berlin: Bank < Grocer
Nicaea: Harbor < Grocer
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < Buddhist Missionary
I notice that Grocer was in Gem City's queue. Can't have that. Do a Buddhist Temple. Hammers AND Culture!
Second Spice Planation done. Start on Dyes. Trade to Japan for Fish.
Even though he is pleased, Tokugawa "doesn't like us enough" to switch to his favorite civic. Go figure. He WILL Declare on Capac for Education and Printing Press. Something to keep in mind . . . .
Currently making a slight profit at 50% science.
Micro Ulundi for max growth. Missionary falls from 1 turn to 2, but I want Ulundi at max food so it can run more specialists. It now has a surplus of +8, so all future growth will go into specialists. Also, there is a plains hill mine that could be turned into a specialist as well. The Happy Cap is adequate, but the city will need more health. I'll put in for a Grocer next, as we now have all Grocer resources available.
Most other cities are alright. I'll probably get a quick Settler or two out soon. Actually, I switch Constantinople to a Settler. It can still grow, but its most useful tiles are already being used. Due in 6, should coincide with a few new troops that can be used for garrison duty.
Oh, almost forgot, don't want to tech Liberalism, do I? I'll start Teching Gunpowder. Tokugawa has it, but won't trade, and we can tech it a lot faster than Shaka. If another AI starts on it, I might switch next turn, though.
-End Turn-
Turn 303, 1415 AD
Hannibal circles the globe. I doubt that +1 ship movement will be a big deal on this map, though.
Iron Will: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (for two more hammers, +10%--A library should be next)
Nobamba: Buddhist Monastery < Forge
Spread Buddhism in Kassite. Let the culture wars continue. Nothing is really whippable just yet.
Shaka was 23 turns from Gunpowder last turn, but it looks like Toku gifted the tech to his Vassal. Neither will trade. Will continue with Gunpowder ourselves.
-End Turn-
Turn 304, 1420 AD
Thessalonica: Stable < Cataphract (time to get some UU out)
Ulundi: Buddhist Missionary < University
Huayna Capac has adopted Emancipation. That's going to become a pain pretty quickly. We'll need more happiness in our largest cities.
Trade: Sury also has Gunpowder now, and will trade. All we can offer is Printing Press, though. We can get some gold and his World Map as well, but it's probably not worth it. Tempting though it is, I pass on the trade considering that Sury is already the tech leader.
-End Turn-
Turn 305, 1425 AD
Adrianople: Crossbowman < ?
Gem City: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (more hammers, more culture, maybe it can grab the other gems)
And the Forge burns down in Iron Will. We don't have enough money to save it. I take the unhappiness because the city is stagnated, anyway.
In better news, Tokugawa finally converts to Mercantilism.
Spread Buddhism to Adrianople and switch it to a Buddhist Temple for the hammers.
I will probably do another round of whipping next turn, but things are coming slowly, so I'll probably switch back to Caste next turn, as well.
All the AI have gunpowder, so they must have traded amongst themselves.
-End Turn-
Turn 306, 1430 AD
I go pretty whip crazy. Maybe a bit too much, honestly.
However, most of the cities will bounce back fairly quickly. I switch back to Caste System so that, as Ulundi and Berlin grow, they can hire the right specialists. I'll also go around and switch specialists around, with preference for Merchants.
Happily do I turn citizen specialists into Merchants. We now have a strong surplus, despite the whippings.
-End Turn-
Turn 307, 1435 AD
Turn Thessalonica: Cataphract < Cataphract
Berlin: Grocer < Buddhist Temple
Nicaea: Grocer < Buddhist Temple (badly needs the hammers)
Ulundi: University < Bank
Nicomedia: Library < Buddhist Temple
Nobamba: Forge < Grocer (for health)
Granary: Kassite < Library
Hire a couple more Merchants in Berlin and I can crank Science up to 60% at a profit, cutting a turn off of Gunpowder.
The Apostolic Palace elections come up. I'll vote for Tokugawa to get those diplomatic points. Capac was the other choice. Both are pleased with us at the moment. Actually, everyone important is pleased with us right now.
Great Person next turn. 75% Merchant, 25% Spy. A merchant would be lovely as a trade mission should let us tech at 100% for awhile.
-End Turn-
Turn 308, 1440 AD
Tokugawa wins the elections by a landslide. He has the most votes, but we're in at a close second. No one can really control the voting, though.
We pull a Great Merchant. Nice. I'll want to grow Ulundi as much as possible now. I vaguely recall that you get more out of a Trade Mission the bigger your capital is, and the bigger the target city is (usually the capital).
Gundpowder in next turn.
Tokugawa still isn't Friendly, but we should be close . . . . We're 1 point away.
-End Turn-
Turn 309, 1445 AD
Gunpowder is in, start Chemistry. 13 turns. I don't think that we're teching quite as fast as the AI. I'll focus more on beaker output. I need to remember that with Rep, any city running a few specialists can make use of Libraries and Universities.
Constantinople: Settler < University
I try to steal Nationalism from Capac. 77% chance of success . . . we get the tech, but the spy is caught. I'll make a shot at Constitution or something next turn.
OK, so back from a break. Let's take a quick tour of the cities again. I'll spell out my plans for each one, so this'll probably eat up the 20 minutes I have at the moment.
Ulundi: It is on max growth (it is working the highest yield food tiles). At +10 food, all future growth should be hired as Scientist specialists. Ignore the plains mines. Those should only be used when a hammer boost is really critical. I stick a Temple before the bank. It's really not making that much Gold anymore, but happiness may become an issue soon. A Grocer would also be valuable to allow the city to grow to its full potential. So I queued them up.
Nicomedia: The empty grassland could be a farm or a Cottage. Either should work. Eventually, a lighthouse would be good to let the city work the coast for money. Maybe after the temple is done. Right now, hire Scientists because the city has a Beaker multiplier, but no gold multipliers just yet.
Nobamba: Similar to Nicomedia. Also focus on Scientists because this city does not yet have a gold multiplier.
Gem City: It's not growing very fast, but the Granary is helping. I have a Merchant here. Beaker multipliers will be important, but we can run Merchants and build a Market and Bank here. Grasslands should have farms.
Kassite: It's small right now, but it should grow rapidly due to all the farms. The grassland cottage can probably be farmed over pretty quickly, once the other tiles have farms. This city should be able to run many specialists. Try to get both Beaker and Gold multipliers so that we can run whichever we need most efficiently.
Angora: Farm it up and get a Lighthouse. A work boat for the clams is being built in Constantinople. This city should see some income from coast tiles and Specialists. It can run whatever, so build the multipliers to maximize whichever specialists you have. Maybe Bank and Market to run Merchants and prop up our economy?
Constantinople: Our capital is never going to run many specialists. I think that a Lighthouse should be built soon, maybe next, so that it can work the coastal tiles for some income before we stagnate it. After that, focus on beaker multipliers because we will probably try to keep the slider above 50%.
Thessalonica: It is being developed as a hammer city. Base production is still only 20, but it's growing with +6 food, with a few more farms to come on line, so it should be able to add about 16 base hammers shortly. It is running an Engineer for obvious reasons. It should probably work all available food tiles first so that it gets up to max population more quickly.
Berlin: Currently clocking in at +9 food, there are two more grassland farms to work which should bring it up to +11 food. Enough to hire 5 more specialists and stagnate on a hill mine. Perhaps the plains should be famred, as well, and let the city work all 2+ food tiles, to get some more income/hammers. This city is being geared for Merchants. Wall Street should probably go here, unless a better location pops out. It's finishing up a Temple for hammers and Happy, but a University should go next so its commerce is translated into Beakers more efficiently. A Hippodrome and Colosseum might be useful.
Adrianople: Probably a hammer city, too. It still needs some work, though. Many workshops and farms should let it grow more and get more hammers. It can probably get +14 base hammers more, though it's finishing a Temple and will start a Monastery for +4 base religious hammers.
Nicaea: This is set up as a more traditional cottage city. It should work all the cottage tiles, then the coast tiles for income, and finally can work the plains tiles for hammers. It has too few hammers to really make a Forge worthwhile (it would only net +1 hammer) at this point, but it should slow-build a University, then maybe a Bank or something.
Antioch: Kind of a mixed bag here. Let it work the coast tiles for some income, I suppose, so build some Beaker and Gold multipliers here. Might want to eventually get the marked mine built to let it actually get some hammers, or work the Iron mine. Whichever, but probably not both.
Iron Will: Finishing off a Buddhist Monastery for the hammers. It is currently stagnated, so just build a Library, University, Bank, etc. in that order to maximize the efficiency of its income, slight as it is.
And, like I thought, that's all I have time for at the moment. Though that was partly to re-familiarize myself with the empire since I've been playing over the course of a week. But hopefully it's a good reference for all of you and should help in thinking about how to plan out the cities. Remember, multiplying your income is very important! The higher the tech slider, the more important Beaker multipliers become, and vice-versa. Any city that you plan to run Merchants in, though, can also make good use of Gold multipliers. Unless Happiness or Health is a big issue, a Bank is always the best Gold multiplier to build because it is the most cost-efficent (only slightly more expensive than either a Market or Grocer, it is twice as effective).
Keep an eye on cities as they grow. BUG can help, otherwise just be vigilant. Right now, it's probably best to work as many farms and food sources as possible to maximize growth, then put all that excess food into specialists or hammers or what have you.
OK, I think that covers it for this turn. I might still want to squeeze another worker out here or there since there's still a bit of work to do.
-End Turn-
Turn 310, 1450 AD
Thessalonica: Cataphract < Cataphract
Berlin: Buddhist Temple < University
Adrianople: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery
Capac gets the Spiral Minaret. As though he needed more money.
BUG lets me know that three cities have grown, so I'll see if they need any micro.
We have enough EP againts Capac to go for one more tech. The best one available is Constitution, though it'll eat up most of our points, so I'll probably have to set most of the EP against Capac so we can see his research again. Jails may be useful in some cities to boost EPs.
Success. We can't see his research, though, but we may get it back within another set.
Not much else. We'll see some more city growth next turn, though.
-End Turn-
Turn 311, 1455 AD
Sury wants PP and some cash for Liberalism. No way.
Constantinople: Work Boat < Lighthouse
Nicaea: Buddhist Temple < University (a slow one)
Iron Will: Buddhist Monastery < Library
Thessalonica grew, work a plains workshop since the last grassland farm isn't ready yet.
Adrianople grew. A grassland hill won't net a shorter build time for the Monastery, so just work a coast tile for now.
Other cities are OK.
Blue dot will be founded next turn. I forgot to have a missionary ready, so I'll probably do that in Thess after the next unit build.
-End Turn-
Turn 312, 1460 AD
Ulundi grew. The governor put the new citizen in the mines, but I hire him as a scientist.
Nothing much else. Tokugawa is about to finish Printing Press, but won't pay enough to make it worth selling.
Our icebox city:
-End Turn-
Turn 313, 1465 AD
Thessalonica: Cataphract < Buddhist Missionary
Sury's capital, Yasodharapura, will earn us 1650 gold. Maybe we should keep looking.
-End Turn-
Turn 314, 1470 AD
Our spy finds another Incan town hidden in their territory.
Trebizond's borders expanded. I forgot that our specialists produce culture. We now have Marble, so I'm going to have Thessa start on the Taj. We're not likely to get it, but it can build it the fastest so we will probably get some gold out a failure. Or, in the unlikely even that the AI can't finish it in 20 turns, we get a Golden Age. Win-Win. Our power is OK, and unit maintenance is still a problem. I haven't really found anything that's safe deleting just yet, and we still have warriors as garrison in many cities, so those WILL have to be replaced . . . eventually.
-End Turn-
Turn 315, 1475 AD
Sury comes, asking nicely for Printing Press. Although it's valuable, all the other AI (who matter) have it. I give in, hoping the diplo bonus pushes us to Friendly. Indeed it does! That's one AI down who won't attack us . . . for now. +11 is the magic number for Sury.
Thessalonica: Missionary < Taj Mahal
Adrianople: Buddhist Monastery < Harbor (for the health bonus)
Berlin grew. I'm not 100% sure where the gov' added the new citizen, maybe a farm, but I make a new Merchant to help control the deficit. The city should still grow quickly. It may be worth working the lake tiles as well for the extra income before we stagnate it.
Nobamba grew. I decide to make another Scientist from the miner.
-End Turn-
Turn 316, 1480 AD
Nicomedia: Buddhist Temple < Buddhist Monastery (free hammers are not something to turn down, plus the major culture bonus we now get)
We get a Great Scientist in Ulundi. We have many options.
Settle: Net 1 hammer, 14 beakers, and some culture.
Academy: +50% research, so about 24 beakers now, more in the future.
Bulb: Chemistry. We're almost there as it is. Looks like he'll do Scientific Method next, which may be worth it.
Start a Golden Age. A possibility, but maybe not the best use.
I'll sleep him for now, and put up a sign.
Micro Thessa: Lake to Workshop. More hammers = more Taj gold (or actual Golden Age).
Another miner to Scientist in Ulundi.
Nicaea: Horse to coast. Going for gold here.
-End Turn-
Turn 317, 1485 AD
Constantinople: Lighthouse < Buddhist Temple (hammers, of course)
Merchant can get 1650 in Cuzco. Hmm, might be the best deal? Should we check in Kyoto?
Spread the faith to our newest city.
BUG said a few cities grew, so micro time.
Another Merchant in Angora.
Adrianople is doing more coast. OK until the Workshops finish, then move 'em.
Nicromedia: Gov' added spy, change to scientist.
Alright, so that's it for this turnset. We should have Chemistry in a turn before Toku, so we might be able to sell it to him. Beakerwise, we're up to 347 per turn at 60%. I think about 8 turns ago it was more like 280 per turn, but I don't remember exactly.
Remember, the economy is really how many beakers you're making. That's what drives tech forward, and tech is what the game is all about. Because of Rep, the more specialists we hire, the more beakers, but especially scientists.
I just realize a small mistake I made: We only have one University actually complete! We're going to want 5 more very quickly, build them wherever you can so that we can put Oxford in Ulundi. That's currently worth 50+ beakers, and will only get more valuable as we hire more scientists there.
So I switch Constantinople to a 20 turn University. The Temple would still be valuable, but it won't pay for itself in the short term.
Berlin is working on a Uni.
Adrianople should build one after the Harbor.
Thessa should build one after the Taj.
Nobamba after the Grocer
Iron Will after the Library
I don't think any other city can get one out in a reasonable amount of time. It'll still take awhile, slow building, but we should have all 6 in 20+ turns.
We should also probably get Astronomy. I thought it might come up for trade, but Hannibal is still holding onto to it. Observatories are worth a lot of beakers.
Sci Meth could be helpful, but let's get as many Monasteries first since Sci Meth obsoletes them. I think the hammer bonus should remain.
Some city notes:
Thessa: When it grows, go straight to the plains workshops to stagnate the city. It'll be at the health cap. If we end up building an aqueduct there, it might be worth working the lake tiles for a bit of extra commerce.
Berlin: It's still growing pretty rapidly. There's one more grassland farm it can work, but otherwise make sure that you hire more Merchants. Working the lake tiles is OK, but wait until the growth is slowing down. Merchants are worth more.
Ulundi: Avoid the hammer temptation. It can hire 3 more scientists, each worth 9 beakers taking into account the city's bonuses.
If we farm all the grassland around Kassite, it should get up to +14 food surplus, so it could run 7 specialists from that (8 total with Merc), about as many as Ulundi or Berlin.
We'll want the National Epic somewhere. Probably not Berlin, since we'll want Wall Street there and at already has the Forbidden Palace.
Basically, just grow cities, hire Specialists when the surplus starts getting high. Adrianople and Thessa are our hammer cities. Everything else should be geared towards the economy somehow.
Remember, beakers = power!
Oh, and when we can see Capac's tech again, rebalance the EP spending.
Hopefully I covered everything, I do tend to be a bit verbose. You should be able to refer to my city guides a few turns back for general pointers.
This is new to me, I'm at work so can't check the game. It says this on the espionage screen somewhere?
Well all speak Swahili now, we moved our capital to Ulundi.
Thank you Whosit, I'll hopefully get a turn off Sunday after we discuss a bit more of what to do.
The Simple Mind
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2007
- Messages
- 291
Yes. Click on the figurehead, then city and it is the white number on the right hand box. It is just a case of selecting each city to see which has the lowest cost.
Civics - as we are in builder mode and only 2 cities don't have buddhism, would we better swapping from pacifism to OR? Our gold per turn goes from -2 to -10 but if we reduce the slider from 60% to 50% we make +20 gold / turn and Chemistry will still be researched in 3 turns. Hammers / builds go from
to
an improvement in 8 out of 14 cities.
S.ilver
Emperor
Hey guys. Just wanted to apologize for so rudely poofing on you. Seems my computer failure was more widespread than just an isolated problem with the video card. I probably should not have started this game without Liq around to back me up 
.
I haven't read the thread yet or caught up on anything, but I will, if you guys want me to chip in with any advice still.
Thanks for picking my mess up btw Whosit.
.I haven't read the thread yet or caught up on anything, but I will, if you guys want me to chip in with any advice still.
Thanks for picking my mess up btw Whosit.
The Simple Mind
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2007
- Messages
- 291
Hooray 
, the man is back. Glad to see you got your pc problems sorted.
Regarding the game, we're doing ok considering the crappy land we started with. Any advice will be appreciated and you are more than welcome to take a turn or two in your own game
.
, the man is back. Glad to see you got your pc problems sorted. Regarding the game, we're doing ok considering the crappy land we started with. Any advice will be appreciated and you are more than welcome to take a turn or two in your own game
.
Whosit
Entropic Knight
Semantics.
@The Simple Mind: The switch might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, we have two strong Great Person Cities. It is true that Pacifism will basically just benefit a couple of cities, but I think that it is worth it right now. I think that being able to pump out Great Scientists and Great Merchants slightly outweighs a few extra hammers.
Also, Kissite will eventually grow into a strong Great Person city, too.
Most of the cities that see an improvement are just by 1 turn. However, I'll take a look at the switch and see what it does to Great Person times. I'm not sure that the trade-off is worth it, but it's not necessarily a bad idea.
We'll also want to figure out where to put the National Epic.
Berlin: Forbidden Palace, (Wall Street); Can't go here.
Ulundi: (Oxford), (?); Possibly (I don't think it has another national wonder), but we'd be popping more Great Scientists.
Kissite: Nothing; but it's rather immature now.
Another possibility, perhaps, is to turn Ulundi into a Merchant city and Berlin into a Scientist city. We'd just have to get the right multipliers there, and then build an Academy in Berlin rather than Ulundi. Might be worth discussing and I'll take another look at the cities when I look at the save again.
Speaking of, we have the Great Scientist and Wandering Merchant to deal with.
Merchant: Might just want to spend him. I think that the odds of Kyoto giving a better pay-off is slim, but you never know. Basically, you spend the Merchant, and run 100% slider as long as possible.
Scientist: An Academy in our REAL Capital is probably the best long-term move. As we will be able to run four more super Scientists, it's value will grow.
@S.ilver: Yikes. What happened, did your motherboard melt?
Hopefully your reappearance means that you've got something working now.How is Liq, anyway? Have you heard from him lately?
And no prob. My only regret is that I may be leading them down the path to lunacy.
If you're able to make it back into the game, I'd be happy to stay on as your left-handed man.
IamJohn
(was)?
Very nice turnset Whosit! That's quite a job in maximization, something that's obviously not my strong point. 
As for Pacifism vs OR, I think that it'd probably be better to temporarily switch to OR. Although we in the past it's been through GP that we've managed to stay equal in technology I think that's something that's really starting to die down as we've been using up all the spies, and as technologies are getting more expensive. We are transitioning to a GP economy (or was at least
), but right now we're really pushing buildings, and the faster we get them done the faster we start getting those multipliers, which would be a good trade for the lost GP points imo. (although we should evaluate the difference in maintenance cost for OR vs Pacifism)
As for Pacifism vs OR, I think that it'd probably be better to temporarily switch to OR. Although we in the past it's been through GP that we've managed to stay equal in technology I think that's something that's really starting to die down as we've been using up all the spies, and as technologies are getting more expensive. We are transitioning to a GP economy (or was at least
), but right now we're really pushing buildings, and the faster we get them done the faster we start getting those multipliers, which would be a good trade for the lost GP points imo. (although we should evaluate the difference in maintenance cost for OR vs Pacifism)Welcome back Silver!!! 
Feel free to step in and take a turn.
I think I'm next on the list, but don't know what the focus of the next turn set should be. Keep improving the economy is assumed, but should we prepare for a war in the turn set after that? I've got the turn unless Silver wants it. But won't do anything until tomorrow evening at the earliest.
Feel free to step in and take a turn.
I think I'm next on the list, but don't know what the focus of the next turn set should be. Keep improving the economy is assumed, but should we prepare for a war in the turn set after that? I've got the turn unless Silver wants it. But won't do anything until tomorrow evening at the earliest.
S.ilver
Emperor
@ Whosit. Yeah, I somehow managed to brick a laptop and the backup tower. No idea what happened, but the equipment was getting old. Liq is "back" kind of. When I finally got back on here, I found a couple of messages from him last month, so I'm trying to figure out where he's at right now.
In regards to the game (finally got Civ and everything else installed on the new tower); we have the land and population advantage. Now we just need to leverage it properly. There's a whole ton of stuff I can talk about, and I'll get to it shortly in another post (and probably after some sleep), but let me punt out a "big picture" suggestion to everyone.
Whosit's assertion is correct. It is, definitely, all about the economy. This game, at it's base, is a game about developing a stable economy. Without one, you cannot do anything, or at very best, you won't be able to go far in whatever objective you're trying to accomplish. So it's imperative to nail down an economic plan as early as possible.
My fault entirely for poofing on you guys of course, but from my initial perusing of everything I missed, it appears that you've been at war most of the time, and haven't had the resources to deal with the economy. That's understandable of course, but to pull out an end game military win requires a solid economic base.
At this point in the game, we're beginning to reach the stage where the Specialist Economy starts to lose it's potency and the Cottage Economy begins to become more powerful (this is, of course, my opinion based on how I play the game). I would suggest that this is because Cottages typically begin to mature around now and provide equal or better commerce equivalent. As well, cities are becoming larger and are growing towards that health cap faster. Since you need citizens to farm as well as to be specialists, you'll be using more citizens to achieve the same goal as a cottage economy. Your benefit, ostensibly, is the generation of GPP, but at this stage, when several GPs should have popped already (I don't actually know how many we've previously got), the GPPs are better concentrated, rather that spread across many cities. You also free up citizens for production, rather that commerce, or you can ditch those citizens entirely, and save on either city maintenance, or the health cap (happy cap is usually not an issue, as you can theoretically have an unlimited one with HR, but you have a finite amount of health).
Therefore, it's a bit painful for me to see the empire transitioning into an SE at this point in the game. I personally love specialists, as they're great for fine tuning commerce based goals, but when techs get very expensive, such fine tuning cannot be done.
I'll have a better post in a bit, once I've had some time to think and examine the save more closely, but I just wanted to state my general feeling on the economic direction of the game.
BTW, whoever is next can play if they don't really want to read another book first, but PLEASE do not use that Great Merchant on a trade mission. Beg for gold from anyone who is happy and we have not begged yet (beg for a map too while we're at it). The Merchant can be put to good use doubling our Golden Age time if and when we bag the Taj.
In regards to the game (finally got Civ and everything else installed on the new tower); we have the land and population advantage. Now we just need to leverage it properly. There's a whole ton of stuff I can talk about, and I'll get to it shortly in another post (and probably after some sleep), but let me punt out a "big picture" suggestion to everyone.
Whosit's assertion is correct. It is, definitely, all about the economy. This game, at it's base, is a game about developing a stable economy. Without one, you cannot do anything, or at very best, you won't be able to go far in whatever objective you're trying to accomplish. So it's imperative to nail down an economic plan as early as possible.
My fault entirely for poofing on you guys of course, but from my initial perusing of everything I missed, it appears that you've been at war most of the time, and haven't had the resources to deal with the economy. That's understandable of course, but to pull out an end game military win requires a solid economic base.
At this point in the game, we're beginning to reach the stage where the Specialist Economy starts to lose it's potency and the Cottage Economy begins to become more powerful (this is, of course, my opinion based on how I play the game). I would suggest that this is because Cottages typically begin to mature around now and provide equal or better commerce equivalent. As well, cities are becoming larger and are growing towards that health cap faster. Since you need citizens to farm as well as to be specialists, you'll be using more citizens to achieve the same goal as a cottage economy. Your benefit, ostensibly, is the generation of GPP, but at this stage, when several GPs should have popped already (I don't actually know how many we've previously got), the GPPs are better concentrated, rather that spread across many cities. You also free up citizens for production, rather that commerce, or you can ditch those citizens entirely, and save on either city maintenance, or the health cap (happy cap is usually not an issue, as you can theoretically have an unlimited one with HR, but you have a finite amount of health).
Therefore, it's a bit painful for me to see the empire transitioning into an SE at this point in the game. I personally love specialists, as they're great for fine tuning commerce based goals, but when techs get very expensive, such fine tuning cannot be done.
I'll have a better post in a bit, once I've had some time to think and examine the save more closely, but I just wanted to state my general feeling on the economic direction of the game.
BTW, whoever is next can play if they don't really want to read another book first, but PLEASE do not use that Great Merchant on a trade mission. Beg for gold from anyone who is happy and we have not begged yet (beg for a map too while we're at it). The Merchant can be put to good use doubling our Golden Age time if and when we bag the Taj.
IamJohn
(was)?
The problem though is that we just finished (relatively) farming over all our cottages to go SE, going back to a cottage economy would be pretty wasteful imo, especially since it would take quite awhile for all the cottages to mature.
Whosit
Entropic Knight
That about sums it up.
I'll do this backwards?
@IamJohn: Not sure about the previous turns, but on my set I avoided farming over anything hamlet and above. Though I do share your concern about the time it will take to mature cottages.
However: We could get Democracy and make the switch to Emancipation which will double the growth rate of cottages. Yeah, it may seem that we've wasted worker actions, but we could, say cottage Kissite and some other cities we have and hope to pull out some coinage.
@S.ilver: Well, I hope you were able to save your important files . . . though it sounds like things got real messy.
For better or for worse, I'm the one that really pushed the Specialist Economy. If nothing else, the economy is a lot stronger than it was 20 turns ago. Of course, that's not saying much.
I've never really done the math, but doing some real fast, I see what you mean that cottages (rather, Towns) can end up stronger. Town is base 4. Next to a river? 5. With Free Speech? 6. 1 Citizen works the town. Slider at 50%: 3 Gold, 3 Beakers. It would take two specialists to make that same split.
Even factoring Rep in, I do see now the issue of having to spend the citizens working the farms. Come Biology, it's a bit less painful, but that still comes down to 1 farmer = 1 specialist.
To summarize the method to my madness: I suppose I was a bit short-sighted and thought that a Specialist Economy could patch things up faster than waiting on cottages. Again, hadn't done the math. Recently. I'll wait for S.ilver's book.
Also: I COMPLETELY forgot to beg for gold. Like, I'd think about it, then forget. Oy oy.
Soooo . . . probably no war in the immediate future. Let's just keep the AI all nice and friendly, while we continue to fix the economy.
Although, if we do get Toku to Friendly, we can probably engineer a war with the Incas, get Toku's back-up if necessary, and claim a bit more fertile land. Capac is likely to have tons of mature cottages, although our Army still sorely needs modernization. And we'll want at least a basic navy.
IamJohn
(was)?
I'm thinking mostly about my turnset, and just to make things clear, after I supported the decision as well, and I don't think it was the wrong choice at the time either. Getting those great scientists are the only thing that's kept us in the tech game, our economy has done very little tech wise until recently.
I suppose, I just think we're a bit too eager to change things up when we've started to turn things around. Also from several people I've talked to who are really good at MM, it's almost always seemed like specialists were the best course if you wanted to maximize science output. If you want a good look at this just look at Team Sancta in the civ4 MTDG (just join the team as a lurker). Krill and Memphus have done an amazing job at squeezing everything possible from their cities.
It's saying a huge amount, we were losing money at 0% science, we're doing quite a bit better than that now.
I might agree with the way you lean if we were financial, but we're not, and one thing you are forgetting about is the science that we can get from popping GP, as well as forgetting about the percentage of money we lose from maintenance.
Biology isn't all that far away, especially if we make an effort to get there soon.
For the record, I think it was the right decision. We needed money Right Then, and we couldn't wait till the cottages matured otherwise our entire army would have evaporated (and there was a couple times when we got very close to that too, at least during 1 or 2 of my turn sets). If we had gone cottage we would not have had the army to hit shaka like we did, and would be in a large hole techwise.
I don't think it's a huge deal, gold is nice, but we couldn't have gotten anything that would make a huge difference. *shrug*
Do have a point when we do want to hit the AI again? Not to keep hitting a dead horse (over and over) again, but this is also a potential advantage of a food based economy- we can magically appear an army once we hit rifling if we want with drafting if we stay in a specialist economy, from what I've read, drafting if done right can be very hammer efficient.
Remember once we declare on HC we're going to drop a couple diplo points with at least Toku, so we'll probably need more then a single point difference between friendly and pleased.
In any case what ever the team decides to do specialist vs cottage economy I'm happy to follow, but don't think I'm not going to have an opinion.
Sorry Silver but I'm not going to let you magically reappear and change everything.
S.ilver
Emperor
No worries IamJohn. Just a clash of opinions, which I respect, so long as you can back up your opinion. For my part, I'll attempt to do that right now.
I'm not advocating a "tear down everything that's been done for cottages immediately". I think I must've typed two paragraphs about the importance of a stable economic base. In no way do I advocate wrecking any sort of economic base in one fell swoop. Again, I said this is the part of the game where I normally "transition" more to a cottage economy. The reason usually, is because my original cottages have matured completely by now, and I can tear down some other improvements for more, in lieu of specialists. Our current situation has us with not a lot of mature cottages, so yes, we will have to lean more heavily on specialists than I would normally like. My overall point is that we should be looking "big picture wise" to head towards CE, and my concern arises from seeing us still demolishing cottages for farms.
DISCLAIMER: I have little experience using an SE in late game situations; to my knowledge, I have only done it once in an SG, because I lost a debate on why we should not have used an SE (I brought the wrong arguments to the table). Needless to say, massed unhappiness and unhealthiness rocked the empire, and we were forced to ditch that idea. So if anyone can show me a late game SE working, than I would be very interested and grateful, as it would be a learning experience for me as well.
One other thing. Using GPs to bulb techs is a very valid tactic, and one that you essentially NEED to use at the higher difficulties to beeline things and keep up in tech. I am not denying that. I am also not saying I know how to do that, as I'm not a Deity player, nor am I even an Immortal player (some may dispute that, but I don't consider myself at a level until I can beat it consistently, and a winning 1/x games, where x is the number of players on the map is not consistent in my book). However, I will say that using bulbs now is an inefficient use of GPs. They no longer fully bulb a tech on each use, and they take longer to generate each time.
To Whosit's credit, he made the right choice advocating specialists to rescue a 0% slider deficit economy. There's simply no time there to wait for cottages to mature and save the economy, you need to do something immediately.
Let me address a few of IamJohn's points that I haven't already talked about...
Think about it again. As cottages mature, financial actually becomes less of a benefit, because it provides a base +1 increase, and not a percentage increase. So it's GREAT in the early game, but tends to become unspectacular late game.
While we're at it, let's look at the stats on a mature cottage (towns, for everyone else who doesn't interchange town and city):
+4 commerce base, +1 with printing press, +2 with free speech
Free speech is basically a given, unless you are looking to draft troops. Which I do on occasion, but nowhere near enough to consider myself an expert at.
Suffrage gives +1 hammers, but it's a civic of personal preference, occasionally useful for buying out an airport on a beach head city.
So, typical case is a town that generates +7 commerce. Ideally we are built on a grassland to be food neutral.
If we are tricking out for specialists, we can farm that grassland. With irrigation and biology, we have a +2 food farm, which means the farmer can support himself and exactly one other person who generates no food (not going to consider irrigated farms, they suck). That's either a plains hill mine with a railroad(5 hammers), a non-SP plains workshop(4 hammers), or some sort of specialist. Commerce wise, the best spec is a spy with Representation (8 modified commerce), but since EPs are passive in most playstyles, and success is not guaranteed in any case, we end up looking at the scientist or merchant (who are both 6 modified commerce). And yes, they get GPP as well, but recall that GPP generated in a city that is not ever going to generate a GP is wasted. Oh, and that GPP gives diminishing returns.
So a mature cottage is already ahead by 1 unmodified commerce. Let's also consider that you only need one citizen to run that cottage, but for the specialist, you need a farmer AND a specialist. So, in technical terms, your cottages are more than 2x as efficient as specialists. For practical reasons, this is not the case, as you would not be able to run double the cottages with double the people, if only because you run out of land. However, you easily run into another problem with the additional citizens from running specialists, and that's running headlong into the health and happy caps. Happy cap is trivial to fix, with the Hit's wonders, etc... worst case you can even use the culture slider, which is less painful under an SE. However, health will be a huge problem. Landlocked cities can't get harbors, and not every city has access to fresh water. Then you have all these beautiful buildings which add pollution but do wonderful things in return (can eventually be cleaned up by Recycling... but how far away is that?). You've also got coal and oil, which cannot be cleaned up at all. So all these lovely things push at your health cap end game. It seems that adding more people to generate more pollution is not the best way to solve this problem. And if you decide to just deal with the unhealth... well that basically means you need another half-farm for every citizen, which is even more inefficient.
Regarding maintenance... Maintenance is based solely on cities, their size and distance from the capital/FP/Versailles. It has absolutely nothing to do with how you generate your commerce, or how much you generate. So actually, having bigger cities would increase your maintenance.
The one thing you lose with Cottages is flexibility and the ability to fine tune. But how much fine tuning are you going to need to do on a tech that costs 8k beakers? There is also the more painful culture slider, but, IMO, if you are running your empire properly, you will not ever have to touch the culture slider (unless you're going for a Culture win). The only time you should need it is to deal with war weariness, which, hey, happens to depend on the size of your city again (the more citizens, the larger the percentage which will be angry). And honestly speaking, Police state + Rushmore + Jails are the best way to deal with war weariness. You get a marginal increase in civic upkeep for the ability to completely ignore WW. Although you can't rush buy that beach head airport anymore .
It doesn't make a huge difference, agreed, but it will allow us to run the slider higher for longer amounts of time. HC and Toku have more than 500 gold between them.
Again, I'm not looking to poke holes or deride anyone's play. But begging from pleased or friendly AIs gives no penalty, even if they say no, and anything you get is something you didn't have to work for, and therefore an advantage for nothing.
Keep in mind that you should beg AIs 20 from the last begging, as there is some sort of percentage timer. After giving into a demand, there is a 100% refusal modifier that drops by 5% a turn. So while it's not guaranteed that an AI will give you stuff after 20 turns, it provides the best chance (they won't give you something outrageous, like an expensive tech).
My war strategy has always been based around elite, high experience units, and generally not with using masses of fodder. I recognize that the Gunpowder bonus to avoid walls is significant, but culture defenses are also significant, so cannons are still needed. I dunno, perhaps I am missing something in how this is supposed to be executed, but it seems that you still need to BUILD most of your army. Granted, it can speed the construction of your generic stack defenders and mop-up squad.
Any insight you have on the draft-attack strategy would be highly appreciated and informative.
It's -1 for "you declared war on our friend". Toku isn't friendly with us anyways, so it's not a huge deal. A bigger problem is if he gets a new vassal and we get a bigger war out of it. I believe that this can be solved by having a "forced peace" with Toku, either him giving into one of our "requests" or us giving into a request of his. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
More on CE economic strategy for our particular situation in another post.
I'm not advocating a "tear down everything that's been done for cottages immediately". I think I must've typed two paragraphs about the importance of a stable economic base. In no way do I advocate wrecking any sort of economic base in one fell swoop. Again, I said this is the part of the game where I normally "transition" more to a cottage economy. The reason usually, is because my original cottages have matured completely by now, and I can tear down some other improvements for more, in lieu of specialists. Our current situation has us with not a lot of mature cottages, so yes, we will have to lean more heavily on specialists than I would normally like. My overall point is that we should be looking "big picture wise" to head towards CE, and my concern arises from seeing us still demolishing cottages for farms.
DISCLAIMER: I have little experience using an SE in late game situations; to my knowledge, I have only done it once in an SG, because I lost a debate on why we should not have used an SE (I brought the wrong arguments to the table). Needless to say, massed unhappiness and unhealthiness rocked the empire, and we were forced to ditch that idea. So if anyone can show me a late game SE working, than I would be very interested and grateful, as it would be a learning experience for me as well.
One other thing. Using GPs to bulb techs is a very valid tactic, and one that you essentially NEED to use at the higher difficulties to beeline things and keep up in tech. I am not denying that. I am also not saying I know how to do that, as I'm not a Deity player, nor am I even an Immortal player (some may dispute that, but I don't consider myself at a level until I can beat it consistently, and a winning 1/x games, where x is the number of players on the map is not consistent in my book). However, I will say that using bulbs now is an inefficient use of GPs. They no longer fully bulb a tech on each use, and they take longer to generate each time.
To Whosit's credit, he made the right choice advocating specialists to rescue a 0% slider deficit economy. There's simply no time there to wait for cottages to mature and save the economy, you need to do something immediately.
Let me address a few of IamJohn's points that I haven't already talked about...
Think about it again. As cottages mature, financial actually becomes less of a benefit, because it provides a base +1 increase, and not a percentage increase. So it's GREAT in the early game, but tends to become unspectacular late game.
While we're at it, let's look at the stats on a mature cottage (towns, for everyone else who doesn't interchange town and city
):+4 commerce base, +1 with printing press, +2 with free speech
Free speech is basically a given, unless you are looking to draft troops. Which I do on occasion, but nowhere near enough to consider myself an expert at.
Suffrage gives +1 hammers, but it's a civic of personal preference, occasionally useful for buying out an airport on a beach head city.
So, typical case is a town that generates +7 commerce. Ideally we are built on a grassland to be food neutral.
If we are tricking out for specialists, we can farm that grassland. With irrigation and biology, we have a +2 food farm, which means the farmer can support himself and exactly one other person who generates no food (not going to consider irrigated farms, they suck). That's either a plains hill mine with a railroad(5 hammers), a non-SP plains workshop(4 hammers), or some sort of specialist. Commerce wise, the best spec is a spy with Representation (8 modified commerce), but since EPs are passive in most playstyles, and success is not guaranteed in any case, we end up looking at the scientist or merchant (who are both 6 modified commerce). And yes, they get GPP as well, but recall that GPP generated in a city that is not ever going to generate a GP is wasted. Oh, and that GPP gives diminishing returns.
So a mature cottage is already ahead by 1 unmodified commerce. Let's also consider that you only need one citizen to run that cottage, but for the specialist, you need a farmer AND a specialist. So, in technical terms, your cottages are more than 2x as efficient as specialists. For practical reasons, this is not the case, as you would not be able to run double the cottages with double the people, if only because you run out of land. However, you easily run into another problem with the additional citizens from running specialists, and that's running headlong into the health and happy caps. Happy cap is trivial to fix, with the Hit's wonders, etc... worst case you can even use the culture slider, which is less painful under an SE. However, health will be a huge problem. Landlocked cities can't get harbors, and not every city has access to fresh water. Then you have all these beautiful buildings which add pollution but do wonderful things in return (can eventually be cleaned up by Recycling... but how far away is that?). You've also got coal and oil, which cannot be cleaned up at all. So all these lovely things push at your health cap end game. It seems that adding more people to generate more pollution is not the best way to solve this problem. And if you decide to just deal with the unhealth... well that basically means you need another half-farm for every citizen, which is even more inefficient.
Regarding maintenance... Maintenance is based solely on cities, their size and distance from the capital/FP/Versailles. It has absolutely nothing to do with how you generate your commerce, or how much you generate. So actually, having bigger cities would increase your maintenance.
The one thing you lose with Cottages is flexibility and the ability to fine tune. But how much fine tuning are you going to need to do on a tech that costs 8k beakers? There is also the more painful culture slider, but, IMO, if you are running your empire properly, you will not ever have to touch the culture slider (unless you're going for a Culture win
). The only time you should need it is to deal with war weariness, which, hey, happens to depend on the size of your city again (the more citizens, the larger the percentage which will be angry). And honestly speaking, Police state + Rushmore + Jails are the best way to deal with war weariness. You get a marginal increase in civic upkeep for the ability to completely ignore WW. Although you can't rush buy that beach head airport anymore .It doesn't make a huge difference, agreed, but it will allow us to run the slider higher for longer amounts of time. HC and Toku have more than 500 gold between them.
Again, I'm not looking to poke holes or deride anyone's play. But begging from pleased or friendly AIs gives no penalty, even if they say no, and anything you get is something you didn't have to work for, and therefore an advantage for nothing.
Keep in mind that you should beg AIs 20 from the last begging, as there is some sort of percentage timer. After giving into a demand, there is a 100% refusal modifier that drops by 5% a turn. So while it's not guaranteed that an AI will give you stuff after 20 turns, it provides the best chance (they won't give you something outrageous, like an expensive tech).
My war strategy has always been based around elite, high experience units, and generally not with using masses of fodder. I recognize that the Gunpowder bonus to avoid walls is significant, but culture defenses are also significant, so cannons are still needed. I dunno, perhaps I am missing something in how this is supposed to be executed, but it seems that you still need to BUILD most of your army. Granted, it can speed the construction of your generic stack defenders and mop-up squad.
Any insight you have on the draft-attack strategy would be highly appreciated and informative.
It's -1 for "you declared war on our friend". Toku isn't friendly with us anyways, so it's not a huge deal. A bigger problem is if he gets a new vassal and we get a bigger war out of it. I believe that this can be solved by having a "forced peace" with Toku, either him giving into one of our "requests" or us giving into a request of his. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
More on CE economic strategy for our particular situation in another post.
S.ilver
Emperor
Ok, so looking at our specific game situation... The first thing I'll say is that we need more workers. We have 10 workers. We have 14 cities. There's a lot more work to be done and we're close to hitting the age of Railroads. Adrianople can spit out some workers for us, as it seems to be a designated production site.
The military... is largely obsolete across the boards. Thess is building the Taj right now, which is important, but let's get that thing spitting out military non-stop as soon as we are able. We don't have the money to upgrade most units, and many of them probably aren't worth upgrading at any rate.
We need to designate a Great People city as soon as possible, and get NE up there. This is the place where we will be running massed specs. Right now Ulundi is spamming scientists, and Berlin is spamming merchants. Berlin has a higher food potential, but one obvious problem: we put the Forbidden Palace in there. The problem with FP is that it kills a lot of potentially nice National Wonder combos (like NE/OU, or NE/WS, or even NE/NP if you're crazy). The point is that FP is a national wonder that gives no benefit to the city it's actually in, so you usually don't want to put it in a good city. Ideally, the best place to place the FP is in a city that is centrally located, but mediocre, and therefore not a candidate for being pimped out with National Wonders. FP is always a great candidate to pair with Rushmore, the other National Wonder that simply does nothing for the city it stands in.
Anyways... not a huge deal. We can live with having NE alone in Berlin, as it's our best food site, so will support the best spawning of Great People.
We need to place our other free national wonders as well, as they do no good sitting around, unless we have future plans for them.
Oxford typically goes where all the settled Great Scientists + Academy went. The problem? We don't have any of those, so it's basically a wash. We'll have to specialize a city for science and place Ox there now. Typically, with a CE, we'd plunk Ox into the higher base commerce city (as the Wall St city later on is capable of paying the maintenance bills generally), due to running a high slider.
The best place to spam cottages is typically a big belt of grassland with at least one food resource (to speed growing to fill the cottages). All things considered, our land is pretty bad and doesn't have many towns that fit that description. Kassite will eventually be the best town for this, but only after we clear out the foreigners from around it so it can grab the bananas. You also generally want the cottage cities in the rear, where they can't be pillaged. Nicomedia is an obvious choice to simply cottage over, and Angora has not much else going for it either.
We can spam a city for Moai stones on that Cow penninsula, and it would make a pretty decent production city. It has forced farms due to the irrigation channel, and can potentially have no ocean tiles.
On to civics...
Rep is solid right now because we are leaning hard on specialists. At a certain point, the bonus hammers from Suffrage will make it a better option, but we're a long way from that point it appears. Police state is obviously only good for wars or buildup to wars...
Bureau... is the only really staggeringly bad choice in civics that I see... High upkeep for an effect in ONE city. Which is Ulundi... +50% to hammers and commerce. However, this is ONLY to BASE hammers and commerce. What are the base rates in that town? Base hammers is 15. So we win 7.5 hammers. Base commerce is 20, so we win 10 more commerce. PLEASE NOTE: Bureau does NOT affect modified commerce (i.e. if it's been changed into something else already... say... the beakers from 5 scientist specs). So it is useless for boosting "commerce" produced by specialists, and basically only works on cottages and trade routes. It does however, work on hammers from engineers and priests.
Thess has better base hammers that Ulundi, and Constantinople and Nicaea have better base commerce. The point being that Ulundi is not very good at what is being enhanced, and there are better civics there anyways. Vass gives us free units for the same upkeep (great during buildups, not so great right now, as it also gives XP). Nationhood is free, let's us draft, AND gives us an EP boost, which we appear to be attempting to abuse to steal techs from HC. (speaking of which, let's get some jails up)
Caste is fine right now, as we need it to break the spec caps and keep our economy afloat until we can transition. However, this may actually be a good time to use the much derided Serfdom. We literally have a ton of work to do. We are reliant on Caste right now, so we may want to try and shed that reliance for when we hit railroads, as I doubt all the work will be done by then, and that tech will add a lot more. Emanci is our ultimate goal, whether it be to speed our cottages, or forced because of all the AIs switching (and the unhappiness is pretty much unmanageable in larger towns).
Merc is all we have for the economy right now, so it'll do. The question is whether we angle towards using Free Market, or using State Property. The extra route from FM is essentially a wash in all but the largest cities (which actually have lucrative routes). So it depends on if we want corporations to power our economy or not. My gut feeling is that because our land is so bad, we need the extra food and production from State Property.
Pacifism is a free civic, but it's benefits are questionable, because, as said before, GPP in a city that won't ever generate a GP is a wasted resource. Somewhat like Bureau, this only benefits one city (or two in our case). Meanwhile, we are building buildings in all towns. Organized would be a huge boost to the infra building initiative. It also saves us a turn on Taj, so let's go!
Speaking of Taj, if and when it finishes, note that the benefit that it provides to a spec driven economy is fairly depressing. More GPP? Only good in the few cities actually working on them. It's not going to do anything for the food output of our farms either (for obvious reasons). Therefore, our tiles generating only food are going to lose out on the Golden Age.
In regards to the tech path... I think the best bet after getting Chem (and brokering it to pick up Lib, so we can get Free Speech (no Free Religion yet until we can afford to have the religious block come after us)) would be either a run to Rifling, then Steam Power, then Railroad. This is assuming that the Emanci unhappiness does not get exponentially worse (only HC has Emanci right now, but Sury will soon). With only those two, it should be alright, so long as we don't dive headlong into "moar specs!" mode.
Uh... Just noticed that we have neither Parthenon, nor Great Library, so there is no compelling reason not to tech SciMeth. That's another option if we want to kill off Biology and grab STATE PROPERTY!
Otherwise... it seems like the biggest issue is that we need to do a bit more backfilling (i.e. we can found a city ON the marble to the east of Constantinople). With enough of a workforce, we can easily transform no food areas into something that is somewhat productive (see aCK-1)...
The military... is largely obsolete across the boards. Thess is building the Taj right now, which is important, but let's get that thing spitting out military non-stop as soon as we are able. We don't have the money to upgrade most units, and many of them probably aren't worth upgrading at any rate.
We need to designate a Great People city as soon as possible, and get NE up there. This is the place where we will be running massed specs. Right now Ulundi is spamming scientists, and Berlin is spamming merchants. Berlin has a higher food potential, but one obvious problem: we put the Forbidden Palace in there. The problem with FP is that it kills a lot of potentially nice National Wonder combos (like NE/OU, or NE/WS, or even NE/NP if you're crazy). The point is that FP is a national wonder that gives no benefit to the city it's actually in, so you usually don't want to put it in a good city. Ideally, the best place to place the FP is in a city that is centrally located, but mediocre, and therefore not a candidate for being pimped out with National Wonders. FP is always a great candidate to pair with Rushmore, the other National Wonder that simply does nothing for the city it stands in.
Anyways... not a huge deal. We can live with having NE alone in Berlin, as it's our best food site, so will support the best spawning of Great People.
We need to place our other free national wonders as well, as they do no good sitting around, unless we have future plans for them.
Oxford typically goes where all the settled Great Scientists + Academy went. The problem? We don't have any of those, so it's basically a wash. We'll have to specialize a city for science and place Ox there now. Typically, with a CE, we'd plunk Ox into the higher base commerce city (as the Wall St city later on is capable of paying the maintenance bills generally), due to running a high slider.
The best place to spam cottages is typically a big belt of grassland with at least one food resource (to speed growing to fill the cottages). All things considered, our land is pretty bad and doesn't have many towns that fit that description. Kassite will eventually be the best town for this, but only after we clear out the foreigners from around it so it can grab the bananas. You also generally want the cottage cities in the rear, where they can't be pillaged. Nicomedia is an obvious choice to simply cottage over, and Angora has not much else going for it either.
We can spam a city for Moai stones on that Cow penninsula, and it would make a pretty decent production city. It has forced farms due to the irrigation channel, and can potentially have no ocean tiles.
On to civics...
Rep is solid right now because we are leaning hard on specialists. At a certain point, the bonus hammers from Suffrage will make it a better option, but we're a long way from that point it appears. Police state is obviously only good for wars or buildup to wars...
Bureau... is the only really staggeringly bad choice in civics that I see... High upkeep for an effect in ONE city. Which is Ulundi... +50% to hammers and commerce. However, this is ONLY to BASE hammers and commerce. What are the base rates in that town? Base hammers is 15. So we win 7.5 hammers. Base commerce is 20, so we win 10 more commerce. PLEASE NOTE: Bureau does NOT affect modified commerce (i.e. if it's been changed into something else already... say... the beakers from 5 scientist specs). So it is useless for boosting "commerce" produced by specialists, and basically only works on cottages and trade routes. It does however, work on hammers from engineers and priests.
Thess has better base hammers that Ulundi, and Constantinople and Nicaea have better base commerce. The point being that Ulundi is not very good at what is being enhanced, and there are better civics there anyways. Vass gives us free units for the same upkeep (great during buildups, not so great right now, as it also gives XP). Nationhood is free, let's us draft, AND gives us an EP boost, which we appear to be attempting to abuse to steal techs from HC. (speaking of which, let's get some jails up)
Caste is fine right now, as we need it to break the spec caps and keep our economy afloat until we can transition. However, this may actually be a good time to use the much derided Serfdom. We literally have a ton of work to do. We are reliant on Caste right now, so we may want to try and shed that reliance for when we hit railroads, as I doubt all the work will be done by then, and that tech will add a lot more. Emanci is our ultimate goal, whether it be to speed our cottages, or forced because of all the AIs switching (and the unhappiness is pretty much unmanageable in larger towns).
Merc is all we have for the economy right now, so it'll do. The question is whether we angle towards using Free Market, or using State Property. The extra route from FM is essentially a wash in all but the largest cities (which actually have lucrative routes). So it depends on if we want corporations to power our economy or not. My gut feeling is that because our land is so bad, we need the extra food and production from State Property.
Pacifism is a free civic, but it's benefits are questionable, because, as said before, GPP in a city that won't ever generate a GP is a wasted resource. Somewhat like Bureau, this only benefits one city (or two in our case). Meanwhile, we are building buildings in all towns. Organized would be a huge boost to the infra building initiative. It also saves us a turn on Taj, so let's go!
Speaking of Taj, if and when it finishes, note that the benefit that it provides to a spec driven economy is fairly depressing. More GPP? Only good in the few cities actually working on them. It's not going to do anything for the food output of our farms either (for obvious reasons). Therefore, our tiles generating only food are going to lose out on the Golden Age.
In regards to the tech path... I think the best bet after getting Chem (and brokering it to pick up Lib, so we can get Free Speech (no Free Religion yet until we can afford to have the religious block come after us)) would be either a run to Rifling, then Steam Power, then Railroad. This is assuming that the Emanci unhappiness does not get exponentially worse (only HC has Emanci right now, but Sury will soon). With only those two, it should be alright, so long as we don't dive headlong into "moar specs!" mode.
Uh... Just noticed that we have neither Parthenon, nor Great Library, so there is no compelling reason not to tech SciMeth. That's another option if we want to kill off Biology and grab STATE PROPERTY!
Otherwise... it seems like the biggest issue is that we need to do a bit more backfilling (i.e. we can found a city ON the marble to the east of Constantinople). With enough of a workforce, we can easily transform no food areas into something that is somewhat productive (see aCK-1)...
IamJohn
(was)?
If you want an example of people working through a specialist economy here's a thread from the strategy section (It's from 2006, but still relevant 
)
Full Thread
Evaluation of game, including what they think of trying to run SE.
After researching it for awhile I guess I can agree with you- both methods require preparation, and the problem with SE is that it really only starts to shine if you build the wonders that would help (such as pyramids) early, where we are right now we won't be able to pull so much from it.
)Full Thread
Evaluation of game, including what they think of trying to run SE.
After researching it for awhile I guess I can agree with you- both methods require preparation, and the problem with SE is that it really only starts to shine if you build the wonders that would help (such as pyramids) early, where we are right now we won't be able to pull so much from it.
The Simple Mind
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2007
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Interesting debate about CE v SE. I dont think we can run pure forms of either of these types of economies. I see our economy as having a couple of dedicated science cities / GP farms, a few commerce cities and the rest production. Im sure there is a name for this mixed bag economy but Im damned if I can think what it is. I see our cities as:
Overall, I dont think there are that many tiles that have to be re-worked. Though building some more workers to get a 1:1 ratio with cities would be good.
Globe (drafting) city at the moment the two best candidates are Berlin and Ulundi which have a food surplus of +15 and +13 respectively. I can honestly say that Ive never put the globe in my capital before. Should we consider it? If we go Berlin then Wall St has to go elsewhere as Berlin already has the FP.
Wall St City Are we likely to have Corporations before we go to war? If not, and assuming HC is our target, Wall St should go into Cuzco when we capture it. It would be a commerce monster as Buddhism has spread to 52% of the world.
Civic Im for switching to OR immediately to boost production.
- Constantinople all land tiles have cottages, mines (hills) or plantations no changes required. Decent commerce and production city.
- Thessalonica HE, military pump city. Should produce only units once Taj completed. All grassland tiles have been farmed to workshop plains & up production. No change required.
- Berlin GP farm or production city.
- Adrianople Good production city. If we want to work all tiles then require the three farms. Only changes to our previous intentions should be to keep the grassland cottage 1W of corn and the grassland 2N1E should be a cottage instead of a workshop.
- Nicaea Decent commerce city. Could cottage the 3 plains tiles if we want but I would say we shouldnt do this until after weve built a uni & a bank. And even then it would probably be better to have the hammers to help build military units. At the moment no change.
- Antioch a production city. To support the additional mines on the 3 desert hills + working the iron we need farms. Possibly replace 1 of the cottages with a farm?
- Iron Will a poor city that cant support any cottages.
- Ulundi (Cap) The capital should normally have lots of cottage to get the 50% gold bonus from bureau but are we likely to be building up for war soon? ie when we have rifles and/or cannons. At that point I would envisage us swapping from bureau to nationhood for drafting rifles or going into vassalage for the +2XP. There are 3 grassland and 3 plains (excluding the canal) that could be cottaged but I dont think Ulundi would significantly benefit from them now.
- Nicomedia 2 farmed grassland to be cottaged to boost the coffers.
- Nobamba If the 4 grassland tiles were cottaged we would still be able to work all tiles.
- Gem City An ok city whose land will be under a lot of cultural pressure until we go to war. Would consider building watermills instead of cottages to boost production.
- Kassite this could be a great commerce city and when it has the appropriate commerce buildings would be my choice for Wall St (though see below). All tiles should have cottages except for resources & the hill.
- Angora An ok city with jungle & grassland that could be cottaged and still support the mined hills.
- Trebizond Therell be no cottages here. Resources camped / quarried and all other tiles farmed.
Overall, I dont think there are that many tiles that have to be re-worked. Though building some more workers to get a 1:1 ratio with cities would be good.
Globe (drafting) city at the moment the two best candidates are Berlin and Ulundi which have a food surplus of +15 and +13 respectively. I can honestly say that Ive never put the globe in my capital before. Should we consider it? If we go Berlin then Wall St has to go elsewhere as Berlin already has the FP.
Wall St City Are we likely to have Corporations before we go to war? If not, and assuming HC is our target, Wall St should go into Cuzco when we capture it. It would be a commerce monster as Buddhism has spread to 52% of the world.
Civic Im for switching to OR immediately to boost production.
Whosit
Entropic Knight
I'm playing in the current SGOTM and we're in the Modern age using an almost pure Specialist Economy. Nary a cottage in sight. Of course, the start conditions were somewhat unusual. The starting position is also fairly food rich, which brings the farmer to specialist ratio closer to 1:2. Perhaps not the best example, but I thought I'd throw it out.
Regarding the Taj, as I said, it was a gambit on my part. Honestly, I just started it hoping for some gold since the AI have had Nationalism for awhile. I figured that our empire could use a chunk of gold and I chose Thessa since it could get the most hammers in it in a short amount of time, although I know we desperately need to modernize the military.
On another note, I love the National Park, but I don't think there's a good spot for it. (In a recent single player game, my capital had 15 or so forests in the BFC, and I saved them all.)
Regarding drafting . . . I would not put the Globe in a specialist city. We don't want to draft away our specialists. I think the best place is a food-rich, but otherwise marginal city. A city that can quickly grow back so that you can draft every couple of turns or so, and with the Globe, ignore what would otherwise be a crippling unhappiness penalty.
Re: The army again, perhaps we should retool another city or two to get some more hammers, considering that we'll have to replace most of our forces? Though, if we tech to Rifling and switch to Nationhood, we can draft ourselves an army (or a good part of one) to help.
I think I had more to say, but I forget, and I have a paper due in a few hours, so I should probably start working on that . . . I mean, finish it . . . . Yeah.
Regarding the Taj, as I said, it was a gambit on my part. Honestly, I just started it hoping for some gold since the AI have had Nationalism for awhile. I figured that our empire could use a chunk of gold and I chose Thessa since it could get the most hammers in it in a short amount of time, although I know we desperately need to modernize the military.
On another note, I love the National Park, but I don't think there's a good spot for it. (In a recent single player game, my capital had 15 or so forests in the BFC, and I saved them all.)
Regarding drafting . . . I would not put the Globe in a specialist city. We don't want to draft away our specialists. I think the best place is a food-rich, but otherwise marginal city. A city that can quickly grow back so that you can draft every couple of turns or so, and with the Globe, ignore what would otherwise be a crippling unhappiness penalty.
Re: The army again, perhaps we should retool another city or two to get some more hammers, considering that we'll have to replace most of our forces? Though, if we tech to Rifling and switch to Nationhood, we can draft ourselves an army (or a good part of one) to help.
I think I had more to say, but I forget, and I have a paper due in a few hours, so I should probably start working on that . . . I mean, finish it . . . . Yeah.
I think one of the problems with our economy was the lack of rivers and flood plains.
I'm going over the save tonight, and I'll try to look at it and everyone's thoughts and try to come up with a specific strategy for the next 20 turns. I hope to post my more complete thoughts in a couple of hours. I'll wait for tomorrow before starting the turn set.
I'm going over the save tonight, and I'll try to look at it and everyone's thoughts and try to come up with a specific strategy for the next 20 turns. I hope to post my more complete thoughts in a couple of hours. I'll wait for tomorrow before starting the turn set.
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