Advice about GP farm please

[Handel]

Now I read almost all the thread about city specialization and especially about GP farm. What I know is, while for record population purposes, you can dump the Epic, but for a real game I doubt it is worth doing this. So the choices are to make between the Park and the Theater. Every unhappy citizen eats 2 food while every sickness point "eats" only one food so it seems the Theater is better choice to use then the Park.
But there are several alternatives:
1. Dumping park and building every healthcare building plus the environmentalism but it still will fell short on the needed health.
2. Dumping Theater and adopting hereditary rule and putting 35+ units in the GP farm (it seems to me building every possible religion building for every possible religion will do the job too but it is next to impossible to collect all the religions and even if they are gathered it will need a lot of buildings). Now 35+ obsolete units will cost 70 gold per turn on pacifism and dumping the representation will cost several hundred beakers per turn.
So which one choice is better? Or there is some other option?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm afraid the constraints are unclear to me - why do you think your GP farm needs to be so big?

 

[lymond]

answer: Neither

 

[Handel]

answer: Neither

Well, that's why I am asking for advice. Maybe you can elaborate what you think is the best?

 

[Seraiel]

A good GP Farm has 2+ Food Sources, is Size 10-18, has the NE and not much else. You're winning way too late if your GP Farm reaches that size, a good GP Farm has to be farmed out before Democracy, so it won't grow enormously large.

The GT is for a 2nd city, one where you whip a lot, possibly a Military City. The Park again is for another city, possibly a jungle site that's settled late. Good empires have multiple GP Farms, and not every GP Farm is always running Specialists.

 

[coanda]

What Seraiel said is spot-on. You need neither Park nor Globe in your GP farm, because your GP farm needn't be significantly larger than your other cities. The difference is where most of your cities are working lots of tiles, your GP farm will be working... your food resource tiles, and specialists. When your happy cap raises above the point that your food resource tiles can support alone, you start working a few farms too.

 

[ahcos]

Hm, i don't ever build the GT unless i'm drafting.

 

[ecuwins]

Hm, i don't ever build the GT unless i'm drafting.

Same here, Globe brings a whole new meaning to the word "farm".

 

[Seraiel]

Globe Draft / Whip city is OP.

 

[pepe26]

so are hills archers, huh?

 

[DrakeD]

Globe Draft / Whip city is OP.

Even better if its a coastal city with lots of seafood and maoi statues.

 

[TiglathPileser]

You don't need a specific GP farm every game. I've beaten Deity twice in the last month without one, albeit with financial civs, which helps. Each time I got two GS from secondary cities (for an academy and Education part-bulb). My other GP came from Music (for GA), and lucked into an Economics merchant in one game (used to money to reach rifling and upgrade my elephants/curs to cavalry).

Saying that, it is vital in games when you find yourself behind in tech around Caste system time, especially if you dont have access to philosophy/pacifism switch. Then you should build the NE and run all your specialists to maximise the percentage multiplier.

 

[ahcos]

It's not that GT isn't powerful (it certainly is), but i never have the time to set it up unless i have to (draft). It just takes soooooooo long... if my commerce cap or my HE city gets angry during war, i just set the slider up. Simply for whips i really doubt the value:

a) you build it in a high-pop city. Might aswell not whip there and focus on hammers.
b) in a small city, whipping anger practicaly never stacks so high that it's worth your invested hammers.

Beside that, whip just consumes too much pop, so a heavily whipped city WILL be small pretty much no matter what you do - maybe if you combine it with HE, but even then you can whip every 2 turns max for one pop (hopefully) and will have pretty much the same outcome as if you'd just focus on hammers. There might be maps where there's plenty of food and close to no hammers, but i haven't seen such maps apart from Archipelago (and i don't play those).

So:

Globe Draft / Whip city is OP.

Your marathon/huge pov again?

 

[Handel]

Thank you. I understand what you are meaning and I know you are right; but actually I just realized I don't really play to win but I play to play, so I leave only conquest and spaceship victory conditions (although the SS one is boring in the last 100 or so turns).

 

[Seraiel]

your marathon/huge pov again?

Don't know what you want to say with that, taking a city to +50 whipping / drafting anger certainly has nothing to do with gamespeed.

 

[ahcos]

As i was trying to say, from what i've seen it's not too useful to build the GT to whip. For drafting it's another story. Also, you will not want to whip AND draft in the same city, as the pop will be too low too fast.

So, i ask again: marathon/huge pov?

 

[Htadus]

As i was trying to say, from what i've seen it's not too useful to build the GT to whip. For drafting it's another story. Also, you will not want to whip AND draft in the same city, as the pop will be too low too fast.This comment is clearly era/unit dependent. It does not take that long to set up a Globe city via whip regardles of the game speed (Normal and epic). Just need to plan to get the tech and head that direction. Whipping that city down to 2 pop and suplementing the military is not the worst. I have used this in a Tokugava game where I was able to first whip about 8 samurai and then let the city grow while waring and heading to nationalism and then draft samurai's continuosly since the city grew back each turn using surplus food and stay pop 6 or seven. BTW, I agree that the use is better as the game speed head from normal to Epic. So it must be even better in Marthon

Also,GT city also make a great GP farm during early game during peace. Another thing about GT is that it sort of force you to build several theaters which come in very handy as war weirness creep up.

@ Handel

Your original question clearly indicate the use of free speacialists that show up with the national park and forest preserves.

However the thing about GP farm is that they are best setup as early in the game as possible. Start with just running 2 specialist and then increase the number as city grows and Casts System become available or has a market and what not. Once you have Lit, build NE and then head to Bio. Leave forests that you do not need to chop alone and once you can build forest preserves, start building them. Once you have Bio you are there.

I have once built a GP farm like this and ended up with about 15 free specialist from forests but found out I did a such a poor job of planning. Once I was forced to go into emancipation I realised most of the free specialist had to be non working citizens. Thankfully I was running rep and got the bulbs to go with the hammer.

 

[Handel]

Your original question clearly indicate the use of free specialists that show up with the national park and forest preserves.

Errr... actually I just now understood you don't need to work those forest preserves to have them generate free specialists

 

[TheWilltoAct]

As i was trying to say, from what i've seen it's not too useful to build the GT to whip. For drafting it's another story. Also, you will not want to whip AND draft in the same city, as the pop will be too low too fast.

So, i ask again: marathon/huge pov?

This marathon/huge stuff is for the birds, it's the same game.

I play Normal/Standard and I think the Globe Theatre is a powerful tool. Where it comes into its own is a city with 2 or more strong food resources (pigs, corn).

The population size of a city is irrelevant, because we will be cracking the whip so heavily that unhappiness will quickly outpace luxury resources / military garrison / etc.

 

[ahcos]

There's no doubt that the GT is a very powerful tool, BUT do you really want to a) build theatres b) build the GT itself while you could pump out tons of other stuff c) will you really run into unhappiness with a city that most likely won't outpass size4 most of the time? Seriously, the only reason for me to build GT is drafting. Maybe i'll have Kremlin+Factories+Bio some day and will whip Tanks like crazy, then that actually might be something i'd think about, but other than that?

The fact that i kept mentioning marathon/huge is simple: on slower gamespeed whip anger stays longer and the faster you get the units, the better, which makes whipping even more powerful and chainwhipping very strong.

So, although

it's the same game.

is right without question, the way that marathon/huge differs from normal/normal actually makes my question relevant - unless someone starts to put some facts on the table.